Overview

The 1904 Olympic Games and Anthropology Days were a pivotal point in the history of American anthropology and of the Olympic Games. This is because they were anchored within larger transformations in global culture - namely, the decline of empire, the rise of the nation-state, and the ensuing decline of the Victorian evolutionary racial schemes. Anthropology Days reflected the notion of `culture'; whilst the Olympic events and other sports reflected nation-building. But Anthropology Days were considered an embarrassment by Pierre de Coubertin - the founder of the modern Olympics. Because of their association with them, today's sport historians often regard the St. Louis Olympics as a shameful event which almost killed the Olympic Movement. St. Louis 1904 became a counter-model that sent the Olympic Games off onto another trajectory that emphasized a global sports mono-culture contested by athletes representing nations, and discouraged the cultural diversity of indigenous sports. As part of this shift, international sport was transformed from a carnivalistic spectacle into a serious ritual. The laughter of the pygmies would no longer find a space in sport, which became a ritual of records. This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the History of Sport

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9780415439824

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University of Missouri-St Louis, USA

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