INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC ACADEMY 7th JOINT - IOA

GLOBALIZATION AND INTERNATIONALIZATION
OF SPORT
Introduction
Ms Mayumi Ya-Ya YAMAMOTO (JPN)
The concept of globalization has been argued in myriads of ways
and the relations between international relations and sport can be
argued in terms of political relations through sport or global economic
and political impact by hosting the Olympic Games or the soccer
World Cup. The concept of globalization has attracted a great deal of
attention in social sciences as a reference point for understanding the
complex changes in interaction within the international community.
Unfortunately or interestingly, there is no single understanding of its
context and there are different schools of thought with different
perspectives in different disciplines. Although there is much literature
on globalization, it is difficult to theorize every phenomenon in
economics, politics, technology, telecommunications, migrations and
so on as theorization is vast and varied. Woods defines globalization
as ‘a combination of internationalization, political and economic
liberalization, and a technological revolution’ (2002: 25). While it is
plausible to suggest that globalization embraces political, social,
economic, technological, and cultural change, categorizing the effects
of globalization in a clear-cut way may lead to the over-simplification
of the complex, interrelated and multi-dimensional processes of
globalization phenomena. As Held (2002) rightly acknowledges even
though globalization is not a recent phenomenon, if one can formulate
the ‘globalization’ term, it can capture important elements of change
in the contemporary world. The intention of this paper, therefore, is to
identify, first, the different perspectives in globalization debate and,
second, to utilize its concept in order to understand the changing
nature of sport by paying attention to economic, cultural and
organizational aspects, especially the transforming meaning of sport in
relation to nation-state.
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