Just Doing It

The globalization (and Americanization) of sports has transformed professional athletes into international figures. Today, as Walter LaFeber, a distinguished diplomatic historian at Cornell University, argues in “Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism,” athletes are at the center of controversies surrounding the growing intersection of culture and capital.

LaFeber, who has written a number of widely read books emphasizing the economic roots of American foreign policy, recounts the well-known story of how a kid from rural North Carolina ended up as a household name in places as remote as west Sichuan in China, and, in the process, helped Nike sell shoes and other merchandise to the world. For the author, the Michael Jordan saga is merely the latest stage in a 500-year-old contest in which “capital has broken down political, economic, social and geographic boundaries.” The only difference is that now, thanks to the end of the Cold War and new information technologies, concerns about military security--the Cox Report notwithstanding--no longer hinder the search for “vast, fresh markets” and the “pivotal role” in amassing capital and creating markets is “played by transnationals and elite individuals (not nation-states or military alliances).” But, in his single-minded focus on the triumph of capitalism, which he views as inevitable but regrettable, LaFeber vastly oversimplifies the story.

Globalization is fundamentally changing society and politics. It is changing society by creating group identities and human connections that transcend national boundaries. A prime example of the new political forces created by globalization is the emergence of a worldwide alliance of human rights groups, trade unions and students focused on improving working conditions for the workers in underdeveloped countries who make athletic shoes, soccer balls, baseball caps and other goods for Nike and its competitors. Paradoxically, it is the creation of a common global media, the integration of global markets and the growing importance of the image of product endorsers such as Jordan that gives leverage to such independent sector alliances as the one that brought about the Apparel Industry Partnership in 1996. Though LaFeber is right to emphasize the fact that the balance of power in this struggle is still weighted in favor of capital, he is wrong to fail to consider the possibility that it will shift over time. Whether it shifts or not will ultimately depend on the ability of the independent sector to play the new media game as well as on advertising agencies such as Wieden & Kennedy, which was responsible for the Nike ads that made Jordan a media star, have played it.

In choosing to focus on the globalization of Jordan, LaFeber also misses an opportunity to examine the way in which the globalization (and Americanization) of sports is helping to reinforce the formation of powerful new global identities and values. The author briefly mentions that the passing of Title IX of the 1972 Federal Education Act that prohibited federally funded educational institutions from discriminating against women in providing funds for sports and other programs, caused the number of women’s basketball teams on college campuses to grow from 242 in 1974 to more than 1,500 in 1980. But he fails to explore the ways in which, as a result of the new global capitalism, the effects of this U.S. law are being felt all around the world. The most recent evidence of this is the newfound respect that women’s soccer is receiving as a result of the World Cup triumphs of the U.S. team and individual stars like Mia Hamm and Brandy Chastain.

In the case of women’s sports, the new global media--and companies such as Nike--have inadvertently become important agents of the international women’s movement. Although the goal of the companies may be to increase profits, their activities are helping to spread a value--equal rights for women--that is widely viewed as progressive. The real clash with regard to the globalization of women’s sports is not between capital and culture but between a global culture that favors equal rights and local cultures that traditionally discriminate against women.

All this seems to elude LaFeber and enfeebles an otherwise useful book.