Mickenzi Schank Journal #3

Giulianotti, Richard, and Roland Robertson. "The Globalization of Football: A Study in the Glocalization of the ‘Serious Life’." The British Journal of Sociology 55.4 (2004): 545-68. Print. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/doi/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00037.x/full

I learned several new things after reading this article such as the fact that since soccer (football) is such a widespread sport that it is sometimes used as a baseline in some sociological studies and analyses, especially pertaining to globalization.  I also learned that the widespread popularity of soccer was not only a result of globalization, but also is a reciprocator of this process.  Finally I learned about the phenomena of “glocalization” which is essentially the bridge between globalization and local communities, where local communities pick and choose which general ideas and practices best apply to the particular community and then adapt these ideas and practices to best fit their needs and wants.  This article definitely reinforced many of my views about how widespread soccer is in the world and how it involved in with a large percentage of the world population.  But I was surprised how complex and intricate this involvement is; whether it is economics, culture, recreation, ect.,the interaction depends on so many things that outcomes are not uniform globally or even locally for that matter.  I do not think that this article has challenged my topic rather it has it has challenged my preconception of what I would find, because I figured that if soccer rose to popularity that it has in Europe the soccer would play a similar role in American culture, but according to this article, the correlation of cultural impact is linked to much more than popularity.  This has given me more to explore because I have more root causes to look for.  The authors are speaking from an informative and objective point of view.  I believe that his intended audience is for people who plan on doing sociological research about globalization and culture because they provide a new perspective to globalization through soccer.  Also there is the use of the word glocalization which, apparently, is well known in the field of global sociology.  One bias that I noted was that the article chose globalization as the key reason that soccer has been spread throughout the world, but places like central Africa where there is minimal use of cell phones, computers, the internet or the things normally associated with globalization, yet soccer is very popular in Africa so other reason must be used to explain this fact.

Carter, Kelly. "A New World Order on the Soccer Field." Emerge 1996: 72-72. Print.

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.lib.vt.edu:8080/docview/230831650#

I learned that race played a very different role in soccer before I started playing.  This article was published in 1996, just before I started playing.  The article focuses on displaying the great leaps and bounds that soccer in America has taken to be fair to all races.  I never experienced this issue or felt race was a means for exclusion in my soccer career.  But apparently if I had grown up playing in the 1970’s things would have been much different.  This raises the question what else has soccer done as a sport to not only to be diverse but to promote equality.  This article reinforced my views about soccer as a progressive sport and its ability to be a platform of equality.  The author speaks from a point of view that seen the progress of soccer to become racially indifferent and she thinks highly of this progress.  Whereas I had never given it much thought because I experienced this issue first hand.  This article is intended for a much more broad audience than the other article.  This one is much shorter, it uses quotes from well-known players, it does not include technical terms and it is not structured like a research paper.  In the indexing detail the journal subject is tagged under general interest periodicals.  A bias that this article could have is that it only focuses on top level soccer in the U.S. for example the men’s and women’s national team, L.A. Galaxy a MLS (Major League Soccer) team and the Cosmos (another MLS team).  It does not address the youth and high school programs which are a large part of soccer in America.  I am considering looking into the history of soccer in the U.S. to see what other information I can discover.