Dr Thomas Carter

Dr Thomas F. Carter leads the Centre of Sport, Tourism and Leisure Studies within the University and also directs the Masters degree on Sport and International Development. Prior to becoming an anthropologist, he worked as a medical and educational interpreter. His work as an anthropologist and ethnographer engages the ways people make sense of their own lives, worlds and selves.

Thomas-Carter

Dr Thomas F. Carter

Principal Lecturer in Anthropology and Sport

Head of Centre of Sport, Tourism, and Leisure Studies

Course leader of MA Sport and International Development

How I like to teach

The subject matter of what I teach is not that important, what matters is the process by which students educate themselves. I do not teach students what to think, I teach them how to think critically. I combine an Aristotlean method of enquiry with anthropological holism to encourage students to consider the underpinnings of their basic assumptions about the way the world is and works and what they might consider doing to change their world if they find it not to their liking.

This happens through an active engagement, often in a conversational style, between my students and myself and amongst students in seminars and on the web. I do this by getting them to engage with their world, their interests, and their core beliefs and encouraging them to consistently ask what is actually going on around them. Students pursue their interests making their education more vibrant and taking me on a journey with them where I learn from them as well.

Students’ success after they graduate is the proof of how well this works as numerous students have gone on to do fully-funded research degrees, had successful early careers in their chosen fields, and completely reassessed their life goals and pursued what truly is important to them rather than what they have been told is important.

I succeed when I see students addressing their own previously unchallenged presumptions about the world and confirm or change their beliefs based on solid self-formed knowledge developed through skillful self-directed research.

My research interests

My research interests are informed by a strong sense of ethical social justice that focuses on the human body, human movement and the control of space. The topics in which I am interested in are all informed by an anthropological sensibility centred upon what it means to be human. I principally do this through conducting intensive long-term ethnographic fieldwork, having done so in Cuba, Northern Ireland, Ecuador, the USA, and Wales. I research on the relationships between the individual and the state, the movement, migrations, and mobilities of various peoples, the politics of spectacle, and the dialectic relations spatialized embodiment.

Research activity

Current research projects

Football4Peace

Previous research projects

Migratory labour of New Economic Order sport (NEOsport)

Research centres and groups

Social media

Academia

Contact me

Sport and Service Management
Gaudick Road
Eastbourne
BN20 7SR

Telephone: +441273641852

Email: T.F.Carter@brighton.ac.uk

Biography

I have taken the long way round to come to Brighton. I came from the frozen lakes and pines of North America, lived in the arid, mountains of the Desert Southwest of the United States only to move to the tropics along the equator and then the glorious Caribbean coast before finally landing the green and verdant land of England, by way of Ulster and Cymru.

Output

Number of items: 41.

Carter, Thomas (2018) On Running and Becoming Human: An Anthropological Perspective Palgrave Pivot, New York. ISBN 9783319748436

Burdsey, Daniel, Carter, Thomas and Doidge, Mark (2018) Something has got to be done about this: Transforming Sport, Selves, and Scholarship In: Carter, Thomas, Burdsey, Daniel and Doidge, Mark, eds. Transforming Sport: Knowledges, Practices and Structures. Routledge, Abingdon. ISBN 9781138052246

Carter, Thomas, Burdsey, Daniel and Doidge, Mark (2018) Transforming Sport: Knowledges, Practices, Structures [Edited Collections]

Carter, Thomas (2018) In Whose Humanity? In: Burdsey, Daniel, Carter, Thomas and Doidge, Mark, eds. Transforming Sport: Knowledges, Practices and Structures. Routledge, Abingdon, pp. 107-120. ISBN 9781138052246

Carter, Thomas (2017) Disciplinary (Per)Mutations of Ethnography Cultural Studies - Critical Methodologies. ISSN 1532-7086

Bensier, Niko, Brownell, Susan and Carter, Thomas (2017) The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics University of California Press, California. ISBN 9780520289017

Talbot, Adam and Carter, Thomas (2017) Human rights abuses at the Rio 2016 Olympics: activism and the media Leisure Studies, 37 (1). pp. 77-88. ISSN 0261-4367

Carter, Thomas (2017) Sport, migration, and space In: Andrews, D., Silk, M. and Thorpe, H., eds. Routledge handbook of physical cultural studies. Routledge International Handbooks . Routledge, Abingdon, UK. ISBN 9781138817210

Carter, Thomas (2016) Pulling back the curtain on mobility and labour migration in the production of mega-events In: Salazar, N.A., Timmerman, C., Wets, J. and Van den Brouke, S., eds. Mega-event mobilities: a critical analysis. Routledge Critical Studies in Urbanism and the City . Routledge, Abingdon. ISBN 9781138217539

Carter, Thomas and Eaves, Craig (2016) From veldt to village green: South African cricketers on English grounds Studi Emigrazione, 203. pp. 441-454. ISSN 0039-2936

Carter, Thomas (2016) Labor migration, international politics and the governance of Latin Amercan sport In: Bravo, G., Lopez de D'Amico, R. and Parrish, C., eds. Sport in Latin America: Policy, Organization, Management. Routledge Research in Sport Business and Management . Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 135-147. ISBN 9780415745895

Carter, Thomas (2016) Cuba’s challenges hosting the 1991 Pan American Games and the spectacle of the revolution’s “soft” power International Journal of the History of Sport, 33 (1-2). pp. 186-202. ISSN 0952-3367

Carter, Thomas (2014) On mobility and visibility in women’s soccer: theorizing an alternative approach to sport migration In: Agergaard, S. and Tiesler, N.C., eds. Women, soccer and transnational migration. Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 161-174. ISBN 0415824591

Carter, Thomas (2014) Game changer: the role of sport in revolution International Journal of the History of Sport, 31 (7). pp. 735-746. ISSN 0952-3367

Gilchrist, Paul, Carter, Thomas and Burdsey, Daniel (2013) Coastal cultures: liminality and leisure [Edited Collections]

Carter, Thomas (2013) The World Baseball Classic: the production and politics of a new global sports spectacle In: Merkel, U., ed. Power, politics and international events: socio-cultural analyses of festivals and spectacles. Routledge Advances in Event Research Series . Routledge, Abingdon, UK, pp. 158-173. ISBN 9780415624466

Carter, Thomas (2013) Re-placing sport migrants: moving beyond the institutional structures informing international sport migration International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 48 (1). pp. 66-82. ISSN 1012-6902

Huish, Robert, Carter, Thomas and Darnell, Simon (2013) The (soft) power of sport: The comprehensive and contradictory strategies of Cuba's sport-based internationalism International Journal of Cuban Studies, 5 (1). pp. 26-40. ISSN 1756-3461

Carter, Thomas and Sugden, John (2012) The USA and sporting diplomacy: comparing and contrasting the cases of table tennis with China and baseball with Cuba in the 1970s International Relations, 26 (1). pp. 101-121. ISSN 0047-1178

Carter, Thomas (2012) God does not play dice with the Universe, or does He? Anthropological interlocutions of sport and religion Religion and Society, 3 (1). pp. 142-162. ISSN 2150-9298

Carter, Thomas (2011) Absence Makes the State Grow Stronger: Preliminary Thoughts on Revolutionary Space, Spectacle, and State Legitimacy In: Riob, Carlos, ed. Cuban Intersections of Literary and Urban Spaces. State University of New York Press, Albany, pp. 49-64. ISBN 9781438442570

Carter, Thomas (2011) The Olympics as sovereign subject maker In: Sugden, John and Tomlinson, Alan, eds. Watching the Olympics. Routledge, London, pp. 55-68. ISBN 0415578337

Carter, Thomas (2011) In Foreign Fields: The Politics and Experiences of Transnational Sport Migration Pluto Press, London. ISBN 0745330142

Carter, Thomas (2011) Interrogating athletic urbanism: on examining the politics of the city underpinning the production of the spectacle International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 46 (2). pp. 131-139. ISSN 1461-7218

Carter, Thomas (2011) Considering the Field in and of Play: Using Sport to Reconceptualize an Anthropological Given In: Collins, Peter and Coleman, Simon, eds. Dislocating Anthropology?: Bases of Longing and Belonging in the Analysis of Contemporary Societies. Cambridge Scholars Publishing , Newcastle upon Tyne , pp. 63-80. ISBN 1443828955

Carter, Thomas (2011) What happens while the official looks the other way? Citizenship, transnational sports migrants and the circumvention of the state Sport in Society, 14 (2). pp. 223-240. ISSN 1743-0437

Carter, Thomas (2009) ¿Hasta La Victoria Siempre? The Evolution and Future of Revolutionary Sport’ Journal of Iberian & Latin American Studies, 15 (2). pp. 25-43. ISSN 1470-1847

Carter, Thomas (2008) The quality of home runs: the passion, politics, and language of Cuban baseball Duke University Press, Durham, USA. ISBN 0822342766

Carter, Thomas (2008) Of spectacular phantasmal desire: tourism and the Cuban state's complicity in the commodification of its citizens Leisure Studies, 27 (3). pp. 241-257. ISSN 1466-4496

Carter, Thomas (2008) New Rules to the old game: Cuban sport and state legitimacy in the post-Soviet era Identities-Global Studies in Culture and Power, 15 (2). pp. 194-215. ISSN 1070-289X

Carter, Thomas (2007) Family Networks, State Interventions and the Experiences of Cuban Transnational Sport Migration International Review of the Sociology of Sport, 42 (4). pp. 371-389. ISSN 1461-7218

Carter, Thomas (2007) A Relaxed State of Affairs: On Leisure, Tourism, and Cuban Identity In: Coleman, S. and Kohn, T., eds. The Discipline of Leisure: Embodying Cultures of "Recreation". Berghahn Books, Oxford, pp. 127-145. ISBN 978-1-84545-372-5

Carter, Thomas (2007) Pitén en la Plaza: Some preliminary considerations on spatializing culture in Cuba In: Tomlinson, A. and Woodham, J., eds. Image, Power, and Space: Studies in Consumption and Identity. Image, Power, and Space: Studies in Consumption and Identity, Aachen, pp. 97-112. ISBN 978-1-84126-244-4

Carter, Thomas (2006) Cuba: Community, Fans, and Ballplayers In: Gmelch, George, ed. Baseball without borders: the international pastime. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, USA, pp. 147-159. ISBN 0803271255

Carter, Thomas (2006) The Sport of Cities: Spectacle and the Economy of Appearances City & Society, 18 (2). pp. 255-281. ISSN 1548-744X

Carter, Thomas (2005) The Manifesto of a Baseball-playing Country: Cuba, Baseball, and Poetry in the Late Nineteenth Century. International Journal of the History of Sport, 22 (2). pp. 246-265. ISSN 1743-9035

Carter, Thomas (2004) The Migration of Sporting Labour into Ireland In: Sport and the Irish: Histories, Identities, Issues. University College Dublin Press, Dublin, pp. 191-205. ISBN 190455833X

Carter, Thomas (2003) In the spirit of the game? Cricket and changing notions of being British in Northern Ireland. Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Europe, 3 (1). pp. 14-26. ISSN 1556-5823

Carter, Thomas (2003) Violent Pastime(s): On the Commendation and Condemnation of Violence in Belfast City and Society, 15 (2). pp. 255-281. ISSN 1548744X

Carter, Thomas (2002) On the Need for an Anthropological Approach to Sport Identities: Global Studies on Culture and Power, 9 (3). pp. 405-422. ISSN 1547-3384

Carter, Thomas (2001) Baseball arguments: aficionismo and masculinity at the core of Cubanidad The International Journal of the History of Sport, 18 (3). pp. 117-138. ISSN 0952-3367

This list was generated on Sat Sep 22 04:01:30 2018 BST.

PhD students

Name	Thesis
Claire Collison (2016–present)	Yoga for refugees: Recovery, embodiment, and international development
Andrea Garcia Gonzalez (2015–present)	Women’s memories of the Basque conflict
Struan Gray (2014–present)	Understanding conflict project: The Pinochet regime in Chilean cinema: dealing with memory, trauma, and haunting
Adam Talbot (2014–present)	Social movements against sport mega-events, with a focus on Brazil
Benjamin Powis (2013–present)	Disability sport as embodied resistance: experiences of blind and partially-sighted cricket players
Claudia Dolezal (2012–2015)	Questioning empowerment in community-based tourism in Bali
Katherine A. Riley (2007–2009)	An ethnography of community development in a neighbourhood in Havana, Cuba

Roles

Editorial Board, International Review for the Sociology of Sport
Head of Research, Executive Committee Member, Football4Peace International
Anthropology of Tourism Committee, Royal Anthropological Institute

Awards

North American Society for the Sociology of Sport's Outstanding Book of the Year award (2009) for The Quality of Home Runs, an ethnography on Cuban baseball.