Globalization and......soccer?

Overall, I don’t know how much I agree with the premise that soccer explains the world in the first example Foer uses of Serbia. Just because the fair play is not so much part of the athletic culture does not really correlate with the other ethnic cleansing going on. There was other ethnic cleaning going on in the world, like in Rwanda, which has a soccer team that is neither much to talk about nor malefic.

Also, I feel that soccer and politics exist on separate levels, especially organized sport that is recorded and visible to scholars who search for its prevalence. If there were tiers of concerns for a country as a whole I would say that government and politics (and their respective stability) is the most basic concern and the foundation for everything else. They take care of health and sanitation, education, and all that citizens would and should expect regulation of. Then above that you have things like economy and trade. People have been working and now want to spend on things and invest in things and lo and behold an economy is born. A byproduct of economy is social status which is only important when things like what kind of government and economy and its strength is determined. Then at the very top (the last to form in a country, and the least important) is recreation. These are luxuries, these recreational sports. They fill the time when citizens no longer have to work 16 hour days to feed their families or when they don’t have to spend all of their time in a bomb shelter because it is a time of war. This only happens when times are fairly stable and people are fairly happy and can afford to think about things other than how they will make it to the next day, week, or month. Foer also uses the Red Star Belgrade as the keystone for his Serbian example. The idea that when the country was falling apart, it was the Red Star Belgrade fans and associated gangs which became violent. While it was most likely the country as a whole which was reacting to the widespread unrest and it perhaps overlapped with fans of a prominent soccer team, I doubt that fans got together to tailgate and ended up trashing buildings.

All this aside, the premise of the book is the power of globalization is not nearly what we are making it out to be with our pros and cons and fervent analysis. I disagree with this for the simple reason that I see it and can quite obviously see the changes it brings. Besides the call-centers, social media, and other general outsourcing which provide corridors for communication between cultures, stores like Van Heusen, Domino’s, Burberry, are all impinging (fabulously of course) on local cultures. Symbols of luxury have become international, certain items and cars are things that not only Americans aspire to have, but many people. Conspicuous consumption has grown up and flown to countries all over the world and it means that cultural symbols are of less importance because the race is now for international recognition, to be a big fish in a big pond because modern technology and globalization have made that a possibility.