Sport in the context of globalization

Abstract

This chapter offers an insight into the role of modern sport as one of the driving forces of cultural globalization. The modern model of sport, formed in Western societies, embodies the features characteristic for modern Western societies. They are, above all, individualism, secularism, competition, ethics of success and achievement, the cult of health and physical beauty, professionalism, specialization, rationalism, etc. Getting the global spread of sport, for example, with the help of modern media, it not only involves thousands of people in specific behavioral practices that subordinate rationalized universal norms, but also changes the values, standards of conduct and way of life outside the proper sphere of professional sport. In the chapter, this modernizing impact of sport in the era of globalization is considered on the example of Islamic societies.