Out of Left Field: Social Inequality and Sports

Using high-performance sport as its focus, this study explores the nature of historical and contemporary social inequality in sports on both a local and global level. Several sports movies are analyzed to show how they also perpetuate race and gender inequality, and the history of cricket is reviewed, demonstrating how the activity was used as a way to organize against British colonialism. High-performance athletes are interviewed—from the Olympics to professional football—revealing the pressure they experienced to play through injuries or otherwise risk being labeled as incompetent or weak. Examining the enduring appeal of high-performance sport and its role in the formation of identity, this consideration also analyzes it as a site for resisting the forces of capitalism.