Hartmann, in this outstanding work of scholarship, unearths the significance of midnight basketball, not merely as a racially coded sporting activity addressing social intervention, risk management, and crime intervention issues in impoverished urban communities, but also as a subject of neoliberal policy that has effected, and will continue to effect, millions of disadvantaged people in America. Through his thorough analysis ... Read moreof politics, history, race, and culture in sports, Hartmann demonstrates how an interdisciplinary approach can provide unparalleled insights about the deeply-rooted relationship between sports and society in America.
Reuben A. Buford May author of Living Through the Hoop: High School Basketball, Race, and the American Dream In Midnight Basketball, Hartmann deftly exposes the ideological import of crime prevention basketball programs popular in the 1980s and 1990s. While offering opportunities for pleasure and comradery, Hartmann's insightful analysis reveals how these policy interventions offered very little in the way of meaningful educational opportunities or social services. Thus, rather than addressing inequalities that limit life chances these basketball programs sought to police and control poor inner-city black men's behaviors. Hartmann's investigation is additionally important in exposing the limitations of similar neoliberal sport based policy initiatives that continue to proliferate globally.
Mary G. McDonald director, Sports, Society, and Technology Program, Georgia Institute of Technology Show Less