Sports in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation ed. by Saheed Aderinto, and Michael J. Gennaro (review)

Often sport is depicted as a microcosmic avenue to examine other elements of society—nation-building, transnational relationships, forms of governmentality, gendered norms, and the like. While sport indeed is sometimes a reflection of society, studying it as a separate institution does a disservice to understandings of the world. Sport is more than merely symbolic; it is embedded in the contested terrains of culture, labor, colonial legacies, and global capitalism. The new edited volume Sports in African History, Politics, and Identity Formation takes this dynamic notion as its starting premise, and, in focusing on the centrality of sport in Africa, it is a valuable contribution to an array of interdisciplinary literature on sport, African history, and African studies.

The edited collection is a versatile text, arranged in such a way that it can be read sequentially, with a continuity edited volumes often fail to substantiate. However, the chapters as standalone materials will also be useful interdisciplinary pedagogical tools. For example, Michael Gennaro's opening chapter on ping-pong and youth identity in post–World War II Nigeria sheds light on West African history while engaging generational notions of masculinity and maleness. Through astutely researched and analyzed sections, he details how ping-pong was a source of identity formation for youth in opposition to dominant forms of hegemonic masculinity in previous generations.

Joanne Clarke's chapter historicizes the triple heritage colonialism in Cameroon and how it played out from the perspectives of anglophone Cameroonians in attempts to reimagine English heritage in a francophone-dominant society. Drawing on West African colonial history, and postcolonial theory and ideology, Clarke's insights give way to a set of unexpected questions. By engaging ideas about colonial legacy and nation formation through sport, she not only historicizes the often brushed-over complexities of West African colonial history but also uses sport to understand and explain these historical relationships to current conceptions of national identity formation. These chapters, among others that use sport as a central object to explore questions about gender, sexuality, history, and postcolonial discourse, offer new pedagogical and research tools. As a result, they live up to a central impetus of the book: "to encourage scholarship on of all parts of Africa to consider African sports studies as a viable subfield of African studies" (2).

In the introduction, the editors also note that a contingent reading of these histories is crucial. Thus, by reading the text sequentially, opportunities arise not only to think about history but also historicity. For instance, several consecutive chapters focus on sport in South Africa, thereby bringing about new questions about historical focus, research styles, and writing scope.

Cody S. Perkins's chapter situates broader historiographies of global race and gender by exploring how colored South Africans would demonstrate affinities to African American icons like Jesse Owens. The following chapter by Gustav Venter thinks through the nature of club integration of the National Professional Soccer League (NPSL) in South Africa from the perspective of former white South African National Football League (NFL) teams between 1978 and 1984. Venter analyzes how fan-related incidents contributed to white-audience decline. While Venter focuses his analysis on white South African perception, in the following chapter François Cleophas introduces a study about the sociopolitical context of bodies, movements, discipline, and freedom—physical culture more broadly—by black South Africans. Cleophas's survey of pre–and post–World War II history temporally spans the realm of the previous two chapters while simultaneously integrating new research methodologies and analytical starting points.

The above three consecutive chapters are a mere example of the analytical potential the book offers. Indeed, an assemblage of any sampling of chapters could provide unique research inquiries about methodological, historical, temporal, and empirical perspectives. However, the three mentioned above, as well as another four that focus explicitly on South Africa, provide rich comparative potential.

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