Nike Culture
The Sign of the Swoosh
- Robert Goldman - Lewis & Clark College
- Stephen Papson - St Lawrence University, USA
Nike Culture describes and deconstructs the themes and structures of Nike's advertising, outlines the contradictions between image and practice, and explores the logic of the sign economy. In addition, by focusing on issues revolving around representations of race, class and gender, the desire for both community and recognition, and the construction of sport as a spiritual enterprise, the book offers insights into the cultural contradictions embedded in sports culture.
`This book is likely to be useful for a range of undergraduate courses, particularly related to sport or the media. It holds the promise of illustrating some key aspects of social and cultural theory in a familiar, even infamous, context: Nike' - Sport, Education and Society
"The book is likely to stimulate a wide range of classroom discussions about the impact, both positive and negative, of advertising in our society."
"In ‘Nike Culture,’ part of the Sage ‘Core Cultural Icons’ series, Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson provide a fascinating deconstructive take on the television advertising strategies of that most successful of sportswear brands, Nike. The book ‘Nike Culture’ is packed fullof textual analysis. Paga after page is saturated with the pursuit of discursive regimes as the authors admirably struggle throughout complex praxes of Nike’s intertextuality. This book’s drive, its strength, comes from the identification of ‘the swoosh’ as the constant—that which can be printed down of Nike’s complex and transforming advertising approach."
