Review: Kaufman, J. and Patterson, O. (2005). Cross-National Cultural Diffusion: The Global Spread of Cricket.

Kaufman, J. and Patterson, O. (2005). Cross-National Cultural Diffusion: The Global Spread of Cricket. American Sociological Review, 70(1), pp.82-110.

The article is concerned principally with cricket but baseball is discussed at length to highlight relevant issues of cultural diffusion.  For 25-30 years until about 1880, baseball and cricket enjoyed near equal popularity in North America.  Cricket quickly lost ground and is now nearly forgotten in the US and Canada, while maintaining immense popularity in many commonwealth nations.  The authors, two Harvard sociologists, argue the key factor in cricket’s NA decline was equality of economic opportunity.  Faced with a loss in economic prestige, social elites limited equality of cultural opportunity.  Where baseball was available to all in NA (and cricket was similarly available in other colonies), cricket was protected in NA as a sign of cultural primacy.  Baseball's diffusion was greatly accelerated by commercial interests that never coalesced around cricket.

Photo:  Penn State University Archives Digital Image Collection, 1879 Sports goods advertisement

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