Playing the world

Abstract

Hockey equipment is designed in Sweden, financed from Canada, manufactured in Denmark, Japan, and the U.S., and distributed across North America and northern Europe. Nike has transformed itself from an Oregon distributor of Japanese shoes, and then an offshore manufacturer in Taiwan, the People's Republic of China, and Korea for shoes sold in the U.S., into a company with vast international sales and half a million workers earning under U.S.$1.50 a day.

Phil Knight's mavins have sought to stem a backlash at home by encouraging U.S. runners to see themselves as consumers rather than citizens. The firm's desire to buy all conceivable social relations of use to it took a new turn at the 1999 Australian Open tennis competition, where college students were paid to occupy key seats in view of television cameras while dressed up as clones of Nike‐sponsored players and act out between points. It is hardly surprising then that the company's 1997 annual report boasts that “The ‘swooshification of the world’ should more appropriately be deemed the Sportsification of the world. ... We will mature in tandem with the inexorable penetration of sports into the global psyche.”