![]() This conference is convened on the occasion of the 50 th anniversary of the publication of Beyond a Boundary, with the intention of both celebrating and questioning, drawing out the book’s intellectual legacies and identifying the issues it leaves unanswered. Much loved, and widely read, James’ study has also been the subject of searching criticism: he has been accused, among other things, of a failure of critical judgement in relation to cricket’s role in the moral framework of empire, of a lack of attentiveness to gendered inequalities, and of a naïve faith in the spontaneity of popular political resistance. Crucially, James insisted that such questions were not simply of concern to academics or to experts, but were also a central part of what drew ordinary men and women to sport. His reflections thus reach out into a critical account of racism and imperialism, into wider questions of aesthetics and popular culture, and into the struggle for revolutionary social change which was the enduring concern of his life. Developing a concern to understand sport as part of a much wider social and political context (a concern first articulated in his earlier writings for the Glasgow Herald), James’ study is part-autobiography, part-historical study and part-political-call-to-arms written against the backdrop of the decolonisation struggles. ![]() James’ Beyond a Boundary (1963) is, by his own famous definition, about far more than cricket. ![]() Regularly cited as one of the great sports books of the twentieth century, C.L.R. ![]()
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