Growing Global Awareness of Sports Participation

conscientious approach that they should not appear in competitive sports there. Some feel this was an effective contribution to the eventual demolition of the policy of apartheid, others feel that it may have prolonged and reinforced its worst effects.The 1936 Summer Olympics held in Berlin was an illustration, perhaps best recognised in retrospect, where an ideology was developing which used the event to strengthen its spread through propaganda.In the history of Ireland, Gaelic sports were connected with cultural nationalism. Until the mid 20th century a person could have been banned from playing Gaelic football, hurling, or other sports administered by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) if she/he played or supported soccer, or other games seen to be of British origin. Until recently the GAA continued to ban the playing of soccer and rugby union at Gaelic venues.

This ban is still enforced, but has been modified to allow football and rugby be played in Croke Park while Lansdowne Road is being redeveloped. Until recently, under Rule 21, the GAA also banned members of the British security forces and members of the RUC from playing Gaelic games, but the advent of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 led to the eventual removal of the ban.Nationalism in general is often evident in the pursuit of sports, or in its reporting: people compete in national teams, or commentators and audiences can adopt a partisan view. These trends are seen by some as contrary to the fundamental ethos of sports being carried on for its own sake, for the enjoyment of its participants.

According to Wladimir Andreff: “There are a number of economic concerns as regards to sport (under) development

in developing countries, although most issues have remained unheeded until now in the economic literature. The most investigated topic is about the correlation between the level of economic development and sport performance in major events such as the Olympics. However, this is only the top of the iceberg, since the examined correlation is just one piece of the puzzling overall relationship between sport and economic underdevelopment.”Another concern has urgently drawn the attention in the past recent years, which is the expansion of player (athlete) moves from the Third World to the European and North American labor markets for talent.

Finally, while a hot debate is running about the pros and cons of the American and European economic models of sport organization, one can wonder of a specific sport model in developing countries. The issue has recently been raised regarding African countries.Burbach et.al (as cited in Miller et.al, 2001, p. 129) said that sports assuredly a source of pleasure to many of us.

Contemporary technology increase the availability of this pleasure in ways that we can all enjoy, and it is possible to see commodification and govermentalization as adding to the quality of athletic performance and its artistry, not to mention breaking down the pre existing social relation.Sports facilities are one of the major concerns of our athletes today. This is an important factor in producing an athlete. Good facilities can produce a good players and competitors. Sports facilities and politics are interrelated concerning the development of sports. How do the government and globalization influence sports facilities? Sport is a reflection of what is the status and what kind of government we have.

It reflects the

economic stability of the country and the cultural background of the country. Different system of government gives different kind of sports that we have.When it comes to the facilities of sports the government has its responsibility to provide the needs of the player like food, shelter, home and equipment in order to craft their talent and skills. The government must provide something for the development of sports.

To have a successful sports development, the country must have a good government to have a stable economy. They stated that the sport is an integral part of the government especially the political culture. Some of the priority that takes place is to create an opportunity for the people to take part in sports particularly those people who participate less than others. One of these is to increase the physical activity for the young people, redressing the difference between male and female participation, creating new opportunities for the people with disabilities and the deprivation or removing the barriers to take part in the sports.If the government failed to established a good condition in the economy.

There will be chaos in providing sports facilities. The tendency of this is it will not produce a great player because of lack of support coming from the government. There is not enough facilities that they could use. Another is that they cannot compete with the other countries due to lack of funds and lack of support from the government.

If we will try to look at the condition of other countries, they only send a small number of players because of lack of specialization, skills and talents. One reason behind this is they

do not have enough budgets to buy new equipment for the development in sports. Because sports can capture the attention and emotions of millions of people, corporations need symbols of success, excellence, and productivity that they can use to create marketing handles for their products and services and to create public goodwill for their policies and practices.  This is why corporations have invested so much money into associating their names and logos with athletes, teams, and sport facilities.  The dominant images and messages are consistent with the interests of the major corporate sponsors, and they tend to promote an ideology infused with capitalist themes of individualism, competition, productivity and consumption.

  In nations with market economies, sports are often associated with Competition in sports promotes camaraderie among the different country. It also provides a new idea in sports. Sports can help in the economic growth of a country by helping each other especially that country that are in need. Competitiveness is not necessarily evil, for competitiveness does bring improvement.  It is unimaginable that there could be a society without a sense of competitiveness.  But under the domination of the market economy, the culture generated by competitiveness seems more threatening than motivating, because competitiveness is not simply about a description of what is going on, but also becomes an ideology in a very business sense.

  This is successfully reinforced by sports.From the most recent World Cup Soccer (2002) held in Korea and Japan, sports are one of the most successful globalize industries.  Ideally, sports bring nations together in contexts supportive of peace and friendship.  Although this does occur, the reality is that powerful transnational corporations have joined nation-states

as major participants in global politics.  Sports have been increasingly used for economic as well as political purposes.A country with a strong and direct jurisdiction of the government, a good and stable economy and further compete globally based on the standards of other country will have a good sense when it comes to the sports development.

Globalization is the most important and meaningful term of our decade; it is the central symbol in order to describe the far-reaching changes in modern societies. Globalization not only indicates the increasing international competition, the openness and transparency of international markets, the permeability of political and cultural borders for capital, products and ideas. Sport seems to be in an obvious way a global phenomenon and influenced by these tendencies of globalization: (1) Sport is practiced all over the world with the same rules. (2) Sport itself has an important function in the processes of international social integration and penetration. (3) International sport associations unify sport.

(4) Sport is influenced by the general, already mentioned tendencies of globalization in modern society. The world wide transmission of sport events by the mass media, the unlimited possibility to travel and to visit sport events and to practice sport in all part of the world, the production and distribution of uniform sport equipment’s and sport facilities, at least the international labor market for professional sport. (5) All these might have as a result a standardization of sport, the development of sport to global phenomena; and if there might still exist cultural differences in sport in the different countries, they will diminish or even disappear in the near future.