Book review: Steven J Jackson & Stephen Haigh (eds), Sport and Foreign Policy in a Globalizing World

In 2010 two international mega-sports events took place: the XXI Winter Olympic and X Paralympic Games in Vancouver and FIFA’s World Cup football competition in South Africa. It is appropriate therefore to review a book titled Sport and Foreign Policy in a Globalizing World. The book, edited by Steven J. Jackson and Stephen Haigh, first saw the light of day as a collection of 12 papers for a special issue of Sport and Society. Its subsequent publishing by Routledge is part of the Sport in the Global Society series under the editorship of J.A. Mangan, Boria Majumdar, and Mark Dyreson. There are presently more than 100 volumes in the series and the series editors have written the Foreword to the Jackson and Haigh collection. Here the reader is tantalized with the contention that sport is a ‘metaphysical mirror’ (p. vii); it is a global activity.