Word: symbolics
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...Soccer has, as long as anyone can remember, served as a form of ritual combat onto which neighborhoods, tribes and even nations could project their most passionate enmities. When Real Sociedad, the pride of the Basque country, comes up against Real Madrid, the soccer symbol of the Spanish crown, it's more than simply an athletic spectacle involving 22 men and a ball. And when a Republic of Ireland striker puts one past the England goalkeeper in an international fixture, the roar heard across the Irish Diaspora expresses a passion that long predates the game of soccer itself. But just...
...Jacques sees the increasingly diverse national teams as a powerful symbol of soccer's liberal and progressive potential, but he envisages growing competition between club and nation as the organizing principle of the game. Just as corporations today stain against national boundaries and their attendant responsibilities as they drive towards a supranational existence that transcends national borders in pursuit of markets, skills, cheaper inputs and tax relief, so are the top tier of soccer teams increasingly straining against the nation state (or more specifically, the national football federation). For fans, there's no question that representing one's country...
...been traveling throughout Beirut and Lebanon for about two weeks now, but I can think of no better symbol for this strange country than a defunct hotel. It stands right next to the most expensive hotel in the city: the Hotel Intercontinental Phoenicia. Throughout Beirut, you can find groupings like this. An old hotel swimming pool—its walls riddled with bullet holes—sits next to a new luxury hotel along the waterfront. A shelled French Mandate-era apartment complex crumbles next to a modern office building outside of Beirut’s rebuilt downtown...
...blackouts plaguing China are a rude awakening for those who consider the brightly lit skylines of the country's eastern seaboard a symbol of national progress and prosperity. "China has fallen in love with electricity," says Christopher Choa, an architect who heads the Shanghai branch of American firm HLW. "Blazing lighting and abundantly available power are considered almost sensual experiences, more than just metaphors for modernity." But the affection for dazzling lights has not translated into a commensurate investment in energy infrastructure, notwithstanding China's showpiece $25 billion Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydropower project. In 1993, amid...
...playing it carefully. "I think we have to allow historians and others with some thought to consider how we might best remember President Reagan officially," says Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. But even Republicans like Senator John Warner are chary of renaming the Pentagon, which has been considered a symbol of bipartisanship, after a political figure. Some Republicans also believe that their party and Bush need to focus for now on what will be a difficult campaign and not continue to feed off Reagan nostalgia. President Bush clearly benefits by tying himself closely to Reagan's memory, which fires...