NEGOTIATING THE FOLK HIGHWAY OF THE NATION - SPORT, PUBLIC CULTURE AND AMERICAN IDENTITY, 1870-1940

For nearly seven decades, a liberal-modernist paradigm explained the h istory of American sport as a 'rational' adaptation to the ''modern fo rces'' of industrialization, urbanization, and the maturation of democ ratic institutions. Sport historians have noticed class, gender, race, and regional variations, but have not adequately problematized those issues within their larger linear, institutional narratives. This arti cle points toward an evolving, new paradigm. Recently published work c ollectively suggests that sports as social practices play a critical r ole in reproducing dominant social relationships. Moreover, sports hav e always been objects of struggle among classes and groups vying for c ultural power. The concepts ''cultural hegemony'' and ''public culture '' provide nuance, conceptual rigor, and ''clarity to the sport-power historical relationship. The article surveys the recent literature per taining to American sport history, and suggests some clues as to how a more critical paradigm-representative of the ''new'' social and cultu ral history-might be constructed.