Coming to America: Historical Ontologies and United States Soccer

摘要

In January 2007, English international soccer star David Beckham announced to a global media that he would be leaving the Spanish giants Real Madrid to join Major League Soccer's (MLS) Los Angeles Galaxy. MLS Commissioner Don Garber feted Beckham as a global sporting icon whose presence attested to America's gradual transformation into a ‘Soccer Nation.’ However, following LA Galaxy's acquisition, a debate surrounding soccer's previous failure to compete at the highest echelons of American professional sport reappeared. Academic and journalistic commentators identified a number of obstacles—historical, socioeconomic and ideological—that have prevented soccer from gaining a foothold in the United States sporting market and therein becoming a credible adversary to the holy trinity of Gridiron Football, Baseball, and Basketball. This article, drawing upon Ian Hacking's prescriptions for Historical Ontology (2002) and thereby foregrounding issues of identity and power, seeks to analyse the impediments that have marked soccer's development in the United States and that led to the recruitment of Beckham as the sporting celebrity-cum-commercial juggernaut intended to bring MLS to the attention of a mass audience—variegated in terms of class, ‘race,’ and gender—so coveted by leaders of the organisation.View full textDownload full textKey WordsSoccer, identity, power, historical ontology, gender, ethnicity, immigrationRelated var addthis_config = { ui_cobrand: "Taylor & Francis Online", services_compact: "citeulike,netvibes,twitter,technorati,delicious,linkedin,facebook,stumbleupon,digg,google,more", pubid: "ra-4dff56cd6bb1830b" }; Add to shortlist Link Permalink http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2010.492295