Abstract: By interpreting typical ethnographic cases such as "Trobriand cricket", "Soccer madness: Brazil's passion for the world's most popular sport" and "An ethnography of English football fans: cans, cops, and carnivals" this article discuss the function and significance of competitive sports in both social context and cultural practice, and the reconstruction of competitive sports in the process of local transformation and globalization. It is pointed out that anthropological methods which focus on empirical, comparative and field experiences can help to promote academic research on contemporary Chinese sports practices; and through the scopes of competitive sports, anthropologists can observe the drive of interactive relationships between individuals and communities; society and countries; and the domestic and the world.

Key words: competitive sports, ethnography, anthropology, society, culture