Rethinking Masculinity through Sport: Cameroonian Footballers, Senegalese Wrestlers, and Fijian Rugby Boys

The radical transformations that global sports industries have undergone in recent decades, whereby professional sport has become a capitalist world characterized by cutthroat competition, have encouraged clubs and teams to seek sporting talent more and more afield in countries of the global South. The possibility of making it in the sports industries has had a transformative effect on the lives of young men in many countries of the global South, despite the extremely limited probability of success. In particular, this possibility has transformed the stakes of masculinity, but these transformations have been taken different configurations in different national contexts, as demonstrated by a comparison of the cases of Cameroonian footballers, Senegalese wrestlers and Fijian rugby players. This presentation brings together some of the results of the ERC GLOBALSPORT program (www.global-sport.eu), now in its final year.