Mapping the Mythical: A Geopolitics of National Sporting Stereotypes

Abstract

This article examines a number of stereotypes of national character which appear regularly in the sports reporting of 15 European countries. Having documented the major stereotypes, it argues that, though apparently independent, they should be seen as local entry-points into a much larger discursive network. This network constitutes a macrodiscourse which is geopolitical in scope, its ideological function being to further local elite interests by placing responsibility for existing coreperiphery imbalances on the periphery itself. The article investigates the possible origin of such a macro-discourse, as well as its links with racist discourse in general. Lastly, it examines the ways in which more recent reworkings in the form of local discourses have emerged, on the one hand, to account for imbalances operating within individual countries, and, on the other, to present certain advanced-peripheral nations as the bearers of alternative cultural values to those of the historic centre.