Responder or promoter? Investigating the role of nation-state in globalization: The case of China's strategies in the global wushu movement
This study examines how wushu, as a folk sport in China, has been promoted globally by a nation-state. Identifying the Global Wushu Movement (GWM) as an East-to-West diffusion and a political and cultural phenomenon, our analytical framework is based on that of globalization as proposed by Houlihan (1994, 2016) and Held et al. (1999). Our particular focus is on the ‘nation-state’, notably its role in activating the GWM and whether it is a responder to or a promoter of global sporting culture. Data was collected from both documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews involving a total of twenty key stakeholders. Findings reveal that some of China's strategies prove that it is a responder to the Olympic Movement. Other strategies demonstrate that China, as the promoter of the GWM, has its own agenda to influence the international sporting realm. More specifically, the state is indeed affected by globalization which can also be managed by the state. This is because, to some extent, while China accepted the Olympic value, it has also transformed a part of its own traditional culture (wushu) and exported it via the International Wushu Federation (IWUF) as the façade. Conceptually, the duality of China's strategies in the case of GWM implies the emergence of reverse globalization.
Funding
Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan (Grant Number MOST 105-2410-H-003-045-)
History
School
- Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences
Published in
International Review for the Sociology of SportVolume
58Issue
2Pages
308-327Publisher
SAGE PublicationsVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Rights holder
© The AuthorsPublisher statement
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal International Review for the Sociology of Sport and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/10126902221096947. Users who receive access to an article through a repository are reminded that the article is protected by copyright and reuse is restricted to non-commercial and no derivative uses. Users may also download and save a local copy of an article accessed in an institutional repository for the user's personal reference. For permission to reuse an article, please follow our Process for Requesting Permission: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/process-for-requesting-permissionPublication date
2022-05-17Copyright date
2022ISSN
1012-6902eISSN
1461-7218Publisher version
Language
- en