Alan M. Klein (born 1946) is an American anthropologist known for his research on the cultural, economic, and political dimensions of sport. He is professor emeritus of Sociology-Anthropology at Northeastern University. He was the finalist of Seymour Medal from Society for American Baseball Research in 1997. His research examines baseball in the Caribbean and along the United StatesâÂÂMexico border, the globalization of Major League Baseball, bodybuilding and constructions of masculinity, and basketball within a Native American community.
Klein received his B.A. from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1970, his M.A. in cultural anthropology from the same institution in 1973, and his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1977.
Klein joined the faculty of Northeastern University in 1979, promoting to the rank of Professor of Sociology and Anthropology before retiring in 2020. During his career he has carried out ethnographic fieldwork in Dominican Republic, South Africa, Japan, Italy, Germany, England, and in the US. He was active in the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport and served a term as its president, 1998âÂÂ1999.
Alan Klein's scholarly work uses sport to examine culture, politics, and economics, with particular attention to the role of power in globalization, nationalism, and resistance to dominance as well as cultural reproduction and identity. In addition to four books on baseball, Dominican Baseball: New Pride, Old Prejudice, In Dominican Baseball: New Pride, Old Prejudice, Klein analyzes the historical development of baseball training and recruitment systems in the Dominican Republic, the role of buscones as independent player developers, and the evolving relationship between Major League Baseball organizations and local sporting institutions. His other books include Sugarball: The American Game, the Dominican Dream (1991), one of the earliest ethnographic studies of baseball in the Dominican Republic; Baseball on the Border: A Tale of Two Laredos (1999), an interdisciplinary analysis of baseball and national identity in a U.S.âÂÂMexico border context; Growing the Game: The Globalization of Major League Baseball (2006), which investigates the international expansion strategies of Major League Baseball.
Klein has published Little Big Men: Bodybuilding Subculture and Gender Construction (1993), a critique of masculinity through bodybuilding, American Sport: An Anthropological Perspective (2008),a collection of his works looking at sport through an anthropological lens; and Lakota Hoops: Life and Basketball on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (2020), an ethnographic study of basketball and community life in a Lakota reservation setting. Across these works, Klein applies theoretical perspectives such as gender, cultural reproduction to show how international sport systems reflect broader patterns of power, inequality, resistance, and identity formation.