Sport Sociology

Sport Sociology
Active Learning in Sport titles in the series

Coaching Science
Personal Training
Researching Sport and Exercise
Sport Sociology
ISBN-13 978 1 84445 165 4

ISBN-13 978 1 84445 163 0
ISBN-13 978 1 84445 164 7
ISBN-13 978 1 84445 166 1
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Sport Sociology
Edited by Peter Craig and Paul Beedie
First published in 2008 by Learning Matters Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from
Learning Matters.
2008 Peter Craig, Paul Beedie, Gordon Mellor, Ping Wu, Amanda Jones.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978 1 84445 166 1
The right of Peter Craig, Paul Beedie, Gordon Mellor, Ping Wu and Amanda Jones
to be identified as the authors of this Work has been asserted by them in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Cover design by Toucan Design
Text design by Code 5 Design Associates Ltd
Project Management by Diana Chambers
Typeset by Kelly Gray
Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Learning Matters Ltd
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Exeter EX1 1NX
Tel: 01392 215560
E-mail: info@learningmatters.co.uk
www.learningmatters.co.uk
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Contents
Part 1 On your marks: understanding sport and modern society
1 An introduction to sport sociology
2 Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport
3 Sport, modernity and the Olympics: a case study of the London Olympiads
27
4 Introduction to sociological theories of sport in modern society
43
Part 2 Getting set: key debates in the sociological analysis of modern sport
53
5 Sports organisation and governance
55
6 Sport, physical education and socialisation
73
7 Class and gender differentiation in sport
92
8 Sport and diversity: issues of race, ethnicity and disability
110
Part 3 Go: analysing contemporary issues and themes the changing

world of sport
9 Sport and consumer society
127
129
10 Sport and the media
148
11 Sport in a global world
164
Part 4 New games: emergent and transformative forms of sport?
181
12 Sport and the body
183
13 Sport and adventure
202
References
Index
220
230
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PART 1
On your marks:
understanding sport
and modern society
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Chapter 1
An introduction to sport sociology

Peter Craig
Our passion
There are few nations where sport is such an important part of the national
culture as it is in the UK. Sport unites us. In offices and factories, shops and
homes, Monday morning conversation invariably revolves around the great
sporting contests of the weekend. Whether its the one-on-one drama of
Wimbledon fortnight or the mass participation of the London Marathon, title
races in national team games football, rugby or cricket or the bravery of
individuals in world-title boxing bouts, all are analysed, argued over and
admired . . . we are a nation of players as well as supporters. Around 20 million
people half of all the adults in the UK take part in sporting activities each
week. A total of 420,000 people are also employed directly or indirectly in
sport. And, in London alone, sport generates 4.7 billion each year.
(London 2012 website, www.london2012.com)
When the British government announced support for a bid to host the 2012 Olympic
Games, its rationale for doing so drew on a number of complex social, cultural, economic
and political considerations. When some time later the announcement of the winning
bid was screened live on television, millions around the world watched and those in the
UK waited in nervous expectation. Whatever the political motivations behind the
decision to support the bid, when the name London was read out as the winner, the
nation collectively rejoiced and celebrated. In those few moments of euphoria it was
clear to all that sport matters and that while we might not always agree about it, its
national and international importance means that it is much more than a game.
The hosting of sports events that have a global importance such as the Olympics or
the football World Cup is now widely expected to bring significant benefits. The named
city, and by implication the host country, enjoy an enhanced international profile. The
global media coverage of the Olympics provides an unparalleled opportunity for the
host city (and country) to showcase its culture to the rest of the world. The economy is
boosted by tourism and other business opportunities, and there are real opportunities
to address home-grown economic and social necessities, such as urban regeneration.
Possibly even more significantly, the emphasis that the organising committee places
on the legacy of the Games also evidences a commitment that they should bring a series
of social and cultural benefits that will extend way beyond the actual period of the
3
1 / An introduction to sport sociology
Games. The Games and the process of preparing athletes and facilities provide a fertile
arena for the development of disabled sport and sports programmes designed to
promote social cohesion and integration. Schools can develop project work based on
Olympic issues. Moreover, the enhanced profile that sport enjoys can be utilised
to address key lifestyle issues such as diet and regular exercise, and thereby contribute
to national agendas of health and well being.
But the importance of the Olympics or the World Cup or sport more generally reaches
out far beyond the boundaries of any nation and far beyond the timeframe of any specific
sporting event. Sport today is one of the most important points of global interconnection between nations and their governments, national and international sports
organisations, for example, British Olympic Committee, International Olympic Committee,
the Football Association, Fdration Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), and
between the billions of people from around the world who love to play and watch sport.
Consider the following statements:
We see it as our mission to contribute towards building a better future for the
world by using the power and popularity of football. This mission gives meaning
and direction to each and every activity that FIFA is involved in football being an
integrated part of our society. (www.fifa.com/aboutfifa/federation/mission.html)
A Games for the youth of the world
London 2012 Organising Committee for the Olympic Games and Paralympic
Games Chair Sebastian Coe has confirmed its vision to stage inspirational
Games that capture the imagination of young people around the world and leave
a lasting legacy. (www.london2012.com/en/ourvision/)
If the claims and commitments made in these statements are serious and acted on,
then sport really does matter, socially, economically and culturally. Once we realise this,
it is also clear that there is a need to develop an informed and critical understanding of
sport and its connections to these complex processes and claims. This is the task of
sport sociology and it requires us to enter into a series of debates about the
interconnections between sport, modern society and how that society is itself changing
in quite radical ways. Sport may be a commonplace part of our lives and our social world,
but its everyday familiarity begs a number of questions with regard to the part played by
sport in the production and reproduction of our modern world, and how that world is
itself being transformed.
In order to develop these sorts of insights we need to examine the importance of
the institutional structures that characterise all modern societies and explore how sport
is linked to them. How we socially experience and understand sport is not a simple
process and can be based on complex interplay between the objective, biographical
and subjective dimensions of everyday life (Bilton, Bonnett, Jones, Skinner, Stanworth
and Webster, 1996). Our understanding of sport, sports organisations and sporting
behaviour therefore needs to move beyond a reliance on our everyday experiences of
doing it, reading about it or watching it.
One requirement needed for this to happen is the development of an understanding of how sport has been influenced and patterned by social structures and pro4
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cesses that may at first glance be seen to have relatively little to do with sport.
While we might not always be aware of them, our experience of sport whether it
be as an active participant, spectator, administrator, fan or just a casual armchair
viewer is nonetheless fundamentally interconnected to the social structures of
our modern society. These structures act in ways that both enable and constrain, disadvantage and advantage, people in sport. The world we live in is subject to powerful
and sometimes disturbing processes of change. The task before us is therefore
to create an understanding of how sport has been structured by modernity and also
to look critically at these processes of change and what they might mean for the future
of sport.
As you will discover, the immense significance of sport within todays world
has produced a wide-ranging, diverse and at times challenging body of sociological
research and analysis. In undertaking this journey into this exciting and challenging
field, you should have a clear sense of where we intend to go and why we want to take
you there.
Aims
The aims of this book are fourfold:
1
Through a detailed analysis of sporting examples, to develop your awareness and

critical understanding of the complex and dynamic interrelationship between
sport and society.
As a demonstration of this the Olympic Games will be used as a recurrent
sporting theme as it is both a high-profile reference point and a contemporary
area of significant importance for the UK.
To develop a sociological analysis of sport that demonstrates that sport is much
more than a game.
Sport today has a significant role in shaping how a society operates. The values
that most of us would see as characterising sport are not merely a reflection of
the world of sport; they are also the same ones that influence the structure of
society more generally. Thus, sport and society have a symbiotic relationship that
can bring benefits and detriments to both.
To engage you with a critical introduction to a series of sociological themes and
issues that are fundamental to an understanding of the social and cultural
construction of sport.
These are:
the institutional and organisational structure of modern society;
the interconnections between the social and cultural structure of society and
the everyday actions and intentions of people;
the importance of power relations connected to these structures and how they
act in ways that both enable and constrain, and provide opportunities for some
and disadvantages for others;
the importance of the media and consumerism;
the importance of globalisation and processes of social and cultural change
that it brings.
5
To develop your critical understanding of the various sociological theories and

concepts that have been applied to sport.
While we will always attempt to develop your understanding of these sociological
concepts and theories through grounded sporting examples, your critical
assessment will not be successful unless you actively spend time reading some of
the recommended additional texts and, through discussion with your tutors and
peers, think about and apply these concepts and theories for yourself.
Structure
To help organise your introduction to the sociology of sport the book has four sections.
Part 1 On your marks: understanding sport and modern society
Chapter 1 An introduction to sport sociology
Chapter 2 Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport
In this chapter we will examine the structure of modern society and its impact on the
formation of modern sport. The chapter also introduces you to the ways in which
sociology seeks to analyse and understand sport in the context of a world that is
undergoing rapid change.
Chapter 3 Sport, modernity and the Olympics: a case study of the London Olympiads
In this chapter we will ground some of the major sociological themes identified in the
preceding chapter by exploring an extended case study of the London Olympiads.
Chapter 4 Introduction to sociological theories of sport in modern society
This chapter will provide a brief overview of the major sociological theories and concepts
that will be explored at greater length and detail in the subsequent chapters of the book.
Part 2 Getting set: key debates in the sociological analysis of modern sport
Chapter 5 Sports organisation and governance
This chapter provides an examination of the organisational structure of modern sport
and the influence of the processes of rationalisation and bureaucratic control on the
experience and structure of modern sport.
Chapter 6 Sport, physical education and socialisation
In this chapter we introduce structuralist and functionalist theories of sport, and explore
how sport and physical education are connected to the processes of socialisation.
Chapter 7 Class and gender differentiation in sport
Here we continue to explore how social and economic structures impact sport. Through
the application of Marxist sociological theory we examine how capitalism underpins
some of the most influential structures of power and control within sport. The specific
issue that this will lead us into examining is social class. From this the chapter then turns
to explore how gender and sport interact to produce complex patterns of social
differentiation.
Chapter 8 Sport and diversity: issues of race, ethnicity and disability
This chapter extends some of the sociological themes of power and control established
in the previous chapter by exploring how culture and cultural practices are connected
to the experience of race, ethnicity and disability in sport.
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Part 3 Go: analysing contemporary issues and themes the changing world of sport
Chapter 9 Sport and consumer society
Sport today has moved far beyond its modest recreational and amateur beginnings: it
has become big business. This chapter explores the major elements of this transformation and how sport is now intimately connected to the complex benefits and
problems of consumer culture.
Chapter 10 Sport and the media
In our contemporary world sport and the media have become completely intertwined.
In this chapter we examine this relationship and identify how sport, the media
and popular culture influence each other, and what this might mean for the future
of sport.
Chapter 11 Sport in a global world
In this chapter we turn our attention to how the processes of globalisation are transforming the modern world and examine how sport and, more specifically, global sports
events such as the Olympics and the World Cup are linked to these processes.
Part 4 New games: emergent and transformative forms of sport?
Chapter 12 Sport and the body
Our society today evidences a whole range of concerns around the body. Whether it be
in terms of health and well-being or as a way of representing our sense of identity, the
body has never had a more prominent place in our society. In this chapter we examine
how the body is socially and culturally constructed and the role that sport plays in
establishing dominant images of the body.
Chapter 13 Sport and adventure
The age we live in has become heavily influenced by concepts of risk. Many young people
are now seeking new ways of expressing themselves in sport through their development
of new and sometimes quite radical sporting activities. In recognising both these trends
this chapter examines the link between sport, risk and adventure.
Our world and the world of sport is a dynamic and changing one full of potential
successes and problems. We hope that this text will stimulate you to develop
your sociological imagination in ways that will help you understand more deeply
these interconnected worlds and the potential that sport has to be a positive
influence within them.
Chapter 2
Sport and modernity: an introduction

to the sociology of sport
Peter Craig
Minds are of three kinds: one is capable of thinking for itself; another is able to
understand the thinking of others; and a third can neither think for itself nor
understand the thinkings of others. The first is of the highest excellence, the
second is excellent, and the third is worthless.
(Niccol Machiavelli, The Prince)
This chapter provides you with an introduction to the ways in which sociology seeks to
analyse and understand sport in the context of a world that is undergoing rapid change.
To achieve this, the discussion that follows is designed to:
introduce you to sociology and explain how it can play an important role in the
understanding of sport in contemporary British society;
encourage your development of a sociological imagination;
introduce you to a number of sociological concepts that will aid your
understanding of the social processes that have had a pivotal role in the formation
of modern British society;
develop your understanding of how these processes have deeply influenced the
character of modern sport.
Learning outcomes
On completing this chapter you should be able to:
give sociological explanations of the following terms: society; social
reproduction; modernity; division of labour; bureaucracy;
identify and explain the primary institutional characteristics of modernity;
explain with clear and appropriate sport examples why sport must be
understood as the product of modern society;
describe and give a brief explanation of the five characteristics of modern
sport identified in the discussion of Guttmanns (1978) analysis of modern
sport;
explain how the Olympic Movement and Olympism provide good examples
of these five characteristics.
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2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport
Introduction
Almost everybody reading this book will have an active working knowledge of sport.
Indeed, in our increasingly globalised world, it can be fairly convincingly argued that
sport is one of the common elements of peoples lives across the globe. In whatever
country we might choose to look at, people are born into a world where a wide variety of
sports that are played competitively or recreationally within the nations of the world
are well known and understood. It doesnt matter if you live in London, New York, Madrid,
Beijing or Jakarta: if we want to play a game of football or badminton, people dont have
to think too hard about it they know what to do, where to go and how to play. Whats
also clear is that success in sport, particularly in global sports events such the Olympic
Games, brings with it a high status and, more often than not, financial rewards.
In common with our other everyday routines and behaviours, on the surface sport
seems relatively simple. However, once we take a closer look, we begin to see that it is
actually very complex. So, if you stand and think for a moment about sport you can
quickly begin to understand why sociologists have over the last few decades started to
take a very keen and active interest in sport.
Reflection
Here are some issues and questions that might help you think about this.
1. To an important extent all sports are defined by their rules and fields of
play, but can you explain why they developed as they did?
2. Do sports have an important social purpose or are they just simple,
relatively unimportant recreational activities?
3. Other than the basic biological and sexual differences between men and
women, can you explain why your gender has such an important impact on
your experience of sport?
4. All sports are controlled by a complex structure of national and
international governing bodies, but other organisations such as the media
and large transnational sport companies (such as Nike) also have a huge
influence. What are the roles of these different organisations, and who has
the most power to affect the way we play and how we think about sport?
Activity 2.1
Thinking about sport in everyday life

As one of Britains most important sociologists Anthony Giddens (2001, p2) has
observed, the ability to develop a sociological understanding of the world around
us requires us to think ourselves away from the familiar routines of our daily
lives in order to look at them anew. So if we adopt a sociological perspective,
what might we begin to observe if we consider the mundane act of wearing sports
clothes and shoes?
The first thing we might observe is that many people now wear sport shoes
when they are not playing sport. Indeed, if you go into any of the big sports
9
Activity 2.1 continued

retailers and ask them about who they sell sport shoes (and a vast array of
other sportswear) to, they will quickly tell you that between 70 per cent and
80 per cent of the shoes they sell are primarily being bought as fashion items.
Sportswear therefore possesses a symbolic value. Brand names and looks are
often seen as far more important than the functional purpose of the clothes
or the shoes. For some people, brands reflect their choices about lifestyle and a
sense of individuality. To be an effective consumer requires us to spend a
significant amount of time developing knowledge and understanding of products,
styles and brands.
The second thing we might notice is that an individuals choice of sportswear
often indicates membership of different social groups. In recent years
there has been a very significant trend for people to wear replica team kits to
demonstrate their allegiance to a particular sports team, even though they may
not live anywhere near where the team plays. The most obvious example of this is
the wearing of the team strips of premiership football teams, but there is also
evidence from other sports, such as basketball, which do not have such a direct
and powerful presence in the sporting life of the country. Others find that the
wearing of the national team strip (while football is again probably the best
illustration, other sports such as rugby and cricket also provide significant
examples) provides one of the few opportunities for them to express a common
bond with, and allegiance to, the other members of their nation. In an evermore
globalised world, sport provides one of the few opportunities for people to
celebrate having a distinctive national identity. This is particularly true if their
national team is playing in a major championship.
The third thing we might observe is that the ability to wear sports clothes and
shoes only happens because of a complex chain of economic and social relationships. Most of the sports clothes and shoes that we wear are not produced in
this country; they are produced in countries where the price of labour is cheaper
and often exploitative. While we might consider the conditions of work in these
factories to be problematic, the workers themselves rely on these wages and the
countries benefit by having access to international trade. Designs and brands are
controlled by hugely influential transnational business corporations such as Nike,
Adidas and Reebok. Sports clothes and shoes are transported from these
countries by large shipping firms. They are sold to us by chains of retailers from
supermarkets to sports stores and Internet sources. In order to buy them we need
money. For most of us, access to money or credit is dependent on our being
involved in paid employment and having bank accounts.
A fourth observation might be that, as we travel around the world on holidays
or for work, many people seem to be adopting similar habits and patterns of
consumption relating to sportswear. Around the world, young people in particular
are beginning to dress alike and sportswear is one of the most common elements
of this. If this trend is as powerful as some suggest, we are then faced with two
questions. Are cultural traditions around the world beginning to merge into one
globalised consumer culture? What role does sport play in these processes?
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None of these reflections have touched upon sport in the way that most
people tend to think about it or experience it as a fairly simple, enjoyable and
exciting physical and competitive set of activities. What it does show is that sport
is deeply connected to the world that we live in and to the processes of change
that are impacting and transforming that world.
Go into a large sports store and walk around, taking note of how the store
sells its sports clothes and shoes. Talk to some of the staff about the
technical benefits of one shoe over another and see if they have the
knowledge to help a dedicated sports person make a well-informed
choice.
Think about how you wear sports clothes. Do you recognise any of the
above observations as providing an explanation for your behaviour?
Are there other explanations that you think should be included in these
reflections?
Understanding the social and cultural production of sport

Definition: culture
Sociologists use the term culture to refer to the patterns of human activity and
their symbolic meaning that can be seen to characterise a specific society or
group within that society.
Reflection
If we look at contemporary British culture we will probably quickly conclude that
sport is an important part of the culture. In other words, it is something that many
people in the society share and value. In addition, we would also probably
conclude that the most important sport within British culture is football. We
would know this from the evidence that on a daily basis there is a significant
amount of cultural activity all focused on football in terms of the amount of
people who play it, watch it, read about it and talk about it. However, within
British society not everybody would see football as their game. It could be
argued from looking at their cultural activities and habits, that people from
a middle-class background seem to prefer rugby over football, or that more
women play netball than football. Equally, if you went to the USA and were
talking about football, most people would assume you were talking about
American football rather than soccer. From this we can conclude that different
cultures produce different ways of understanding, or evaluating, human activities
such as sport.
11
As your reflections on the above issues and questions plus the learning activity
should have made clear, the ways in which a society is organised and structured have a
profound impact on sport. Moreover, as you should now also recognise, none of the
processes and structures impacting on the social and cultural production of sport are
simple and unchanging. Indeed, as your own experience of life probably demonstrates,
these processes and structures are becoming ever more complex and problematic. We
all now live in a world that is information rich (especially through the huge flow of
information brought about by the Internet), but our ability to make sense of this
information is often very limited. Yet, making sense of the changing, often exciting and
inspiring, but also sometimes troubling and problematic world of sport is exactly the
task that lies before us. An understanding of how these processes, structures and
changes are socially produced is the major concern of sociology. It is also probably
worth recognising at this stage that the journey into a sociological understanding of
sport this book will take you on may provide some personal but very worthwhile
challenges. As Giddens (1989, p17) states:
Sociological findings both disturb and contribute to our common-sense beliefs
about ourselves and others . . . sociological findings do not always contradict
common-sense views. Common-sense ideas often provide sources of insight
about social behaviour. What needs emphasizing, however, is that the sociologist
must be prepared to ask about any of our beliefs about ourselves no matter
how cherished.
As these observations suggest, sociology cannot be just a routine process of
acquiring knowledge. Many sociologists therefore stress that the development of the
ability to think sociologically requires the development and cultivation of powers of the
imagination.
Reflection
The idea of the sociological imagination was first developed by the sociologist
C Wright Mills (1970). As we noted in the above learning activity, the development
of a sociological imagination requires you to place yourself outside the familiar
and commonplace routines and practices that you normally do in sport and to
look at them with a new, more inquiring and questioning mind. As we have noted
already, this might well be a rather disturbing process and require you to regard
cherished beliefs with a more critical attitude.
Sociology: some key terms

Sociology, like all of the sciences, has developed its own very specific range of theories
and concepts. It is therefore very important that you begin to engage with these ideas
and develop a familiarity with them.
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Definition: sociology
Sociology is the study of human social life, groups and societies. It is a dazzling
and compelling enterprise, having as its subject-matter our own behaviour as
social beings. (Giddens, 2001, p2)
As we can see from this definition, the concept of society is fundamental to sociology.
Definition: society
A society is a system of structured social relationships connecting people
together according to a shared culture. (Giddens, 2001, p669)
While the societies that people live within are very real, it should be clear from this
quote that from a sociological perspective the term society needs to be regarded as an
abstract concept in that what it is referring to is something that does not have a fixed or
unchanging form.
Reflection
Although modern society has become globally familiar, you should remember that
even today there are many different types of society. Societies and the types of
sport that they played are not and have not always been the same. Although to a
large degree these earlier forms of social organisation have disappeared their
legacy can still be seen and experienced through our sporting traditions and
beliefs. For instance, many of our ideas about sport in terms of fortitude, honour
and fair play plus the exclusion of women from sporting activities can be traced to
ideas about sport that first developed in ancient Greece.
As our initial discussion demonstrates, the language used by sociologists to describe

and analyse society often draws on words such as structure, impact, influence, and
the way we use these words can convey a perception that societies are autonomous
entities that somehow act on their own behalf. These terms can also create a perception
that, because our lives are clearly structured by the social and cultural environment,
this somehow means that this structure completely determines our behaviour. While this
is a use of language that is relatively easy to fall into, it is nonetheless a mistake. An
important starting point in thinking about sport is to recognise that though all sports are
highly patterned and structured sets of activities, the outcome and the meaning
generated by the sport may often be highly uncertain (and this is often one of its main
attractions).
The rules, codes, regulation and fixed environments of sport mean that sport and our
sporting behaviour have very consistent regularities. While our sporting activities have
transformed, and continue to transform, the physical environment (e.g. through the
creation of physical structures such as sport stadia), stating that sport has a recognisable
social structure does not mean that sport has the same character of a physical structure,
whose existence is independent of human actions. Sport does not exist other than
through its active production and reproduction through peoples everyday actions.
13
Reflection
In thinking about this complex process you should consider how sport as you
experience it is created by a whole range of different people doing diverse and
often intricate arrays of behaviour. Some examples are: learning the physical
skills required by the sport; obeying rules; playing in organised sports leagues;
supporting local and national teams; watching sport on TV and reading about it in
our daily newspapers. Without our reproduction of this complex array of actions
sport as we know and understand, it would cease to exist.
Sporting example
Cricket has a number of ritualised actions that most players unconsciously
adhere to as they are an inherent and accepted part of playing the game. Some
of the most familiar of these are wearing cricket whites, walking to the crease
and accepting the umpires decisions without argument.
The same processes that we observe in the social and cultural production of sport
are also true for our society. It is people who produce and reproduce society and sport
in all its diverse forms, through their everyday routines and actions repeated in very
consistent ways over significant periods of time. The structured social relationships,
which we develop through these processes, are themselves powerful constituents of
what we perceive as the commonplace realities of social life. However, it is important to
stress that no matter how enduring this reality might seem at a particular time and in a
particular place, this reality is socially and culturally constructed (Berger and Luckmann,
1966).
Definition: social reproduction
Social reproduction refers to the concept that over time social groups, such as
those constructed around social class and gender, act in ways that help reproduce
the social and cultural structures that characterise the specific society.
Although we have only sketched out some of these important sociological ideas,
they should help you identify two important starting points. On the one hand, it is
important to recognise that people are born into a society and, as they grow and learn
to be a member of that society, the social structures and the cultural norms of the
society have significant influence on the way people live and interact. Clearly, sport is
one of these social structures. On the other hand, people do not merely play sport
because they have been socialised into doing so. However powerful and influential the
social structure might appear to be, people engaged in sport are conscious and reflexive
individuals who can and do make choices about the sports they take part in and they can
attach quite different meanings to their sporting experiences.
Although it might seem a rather daunting prospect, it should now be evident to you
that our journey into the sociological analysis of sport requires you to develop a critical
understanding of a fairly extensive body of sociological theories and concepts. The aim
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is to engage you with these theories and concepts in ways that permit you to examine
and analyse the relationship between the power of social structures to pattern how we
behave and ways that people act as conscious agents purposefully directing the course
of their lives.
There are some important points you need to remember from this opening
discussion.
Within any society there are recognisable regularities and patterns in how
people behave. Sport is an excellent example of this.
It is these regularities to which the concept of social structure refers. The
term social institution is often used to denote these specific structural
regularities. In this sense, sport can be termed a social institution (other
typical social institutions are family, industry, government, the military
establishment, the church, etc.).
What we perceive to be the relatively fixed and enduring reality of sport
(and society) is, in fact, a social and cultural construction.
Significant development or transformation of any of the underlying social
conditions, such as those caused by new technologies (e.g. computer
technology), can have a profound impact on the overall structure of the
society.
Individuals and groups may be born into a society with a well-established
social structure that will be a significant influence on the way they live
their lives, but they are nonetheless conscious and reflexive agents who
can, and often do, have a dramatic effect on the way the social structure
operates.
Sport and the formation and structure of modern society

The way in which sport has come to be organised and structured is fundamentally a
product of the modern world. When sociologists use the term modern they are using it
to denote a specific conceptualisation of our contemporary social world and not
the more common everyday usage meaning most recent or up to date. To understand
modern sport, we must therefore start with an understanding of the nature of modern
society and how its specific social structure has helped form sport as we recognise it
today. In a general sense, one of the major tasks undertaken by sociology has been to
identify and explain the character and development of modern society. One of the most
important concepts that you need to become familiar with, and which is often used
interchangeably with the term modern society, is modernity.
Definition: modernity
. . . the institutions and modes of behaviour established first of all in post-feudal
Europe, but which in the twentieth century increasingly have become worldhistorical in their impact. Modernity can be understood as roughly equivalent to
15
the industrialised world, so long as it be recognised that industrialism is not its

only institutional dimension. (Giddens, 1991, pp1415)
A term designed to encapsulate the distinctiveness, complexity and dynamism of
social processes unleashed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
which mark a distinctive break from traditional ways of living. (Bilton, Bonnett,
Jones, Skinner, Stanworth and Webster, 1996, p18)
As an outcome of these social processes, a widespread belief grew up that the
process of modernisation reflected a powerful and dramatic break with the past. One
of the most important tenets of this new era, that was to have a powerful impact on
the development of sport, was a commitment to the idea that rational control and
organisation would create a world where humans could begin to actively control, direct
and improve the conditions of human existence (Bilton et al., 1996, p18). Linked to this
perspective Giddens (1990) argues that modernity has four defining institutional
formations that have had a fundamental impact on all aspects of life within modernity:
industrialisation;
capitalism;
state control of everyday life;
military power and the institutionalised control of violence.
From a sociological perspective, industrialisation refers to the process whereby

complex systems of organised production have been developed. As this system
increased in scale and sophistication (especially through its application of science
and technology), it transformed our physical and social environment. Work for the
vast majority became dominated by the regularities of the working week and the
highly rationalised and controlled conditions of industrial labour. Although many
experienced this work as depersonalising, alienating and exploitative, the mass
production it created of a whole new array of affordable goods brought opportunities of
increased standards of living and the possibility of new and exciting lifestyles based on
consumption.
Definition: mass consumption
Mass consumption refers to the process whereby the consumption of a vast array
of manufactured products and services becomes an accepted, expected and
necessary part of everyday life for the majority of the population. Some common
examples relating to the consumption of sport are equipment and clothing,
programmes on television, DVDs and sports services (e.g. coaching, physiotherapy).
The issue of consumer culture is now a major theme within the sociology of sport and we
will examine this in Chapter 9.
Capitalism is an economic system in which most of the ownership of capital wealth
is privately owned and invested by those who own it to create profit. To work effectively,
capitalism requires relatively free product and labour markets. For some social
theorists such as Karl Marx, capitalism is the primary source of the economic
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inequalities and class divisions that dominate many aspects of modern life. Understood
in this way capitalism is much more than just an economic system it is actually the
defining characteristic of the whole social system. The influence of capitalism on the
formation of modern sport has been a major theme of a number of influential sport
sociologists such as John Hargreaves. We will examine this work and its analysis of the
economic, social and cultural divisions created by capitalism in Chapter 7.
Particularly through the course of the twentieth century, the power and scope of
the state to control the conditions of everyday life was established at an unprecedented
level. Today, a taken-for-granted fact of modern life is that we live in a nation-state that
has an elected system of government that operates at both national and local levels, a
judiciary and police force, armed forces, a health service, a system of education and
a collection of semi-official bodies such as UK Sport and Sport England that can assert
a great deal of influence on sports policy. In Chapter 5 we will examine this issue in more
depth as we consider the complex structure of sports governance and administration.
One of the most visible manifestations of the power of the modern state is its
institutionalised control of violence. As is all too evident in our world today governments have the power to send significant numbers of its citizens to fight wars against
other nations. On occasion, it will also grant its police force the right to use extreme
forms of violence to protect its citizens. However, for the most part citizens are
themselves prohibited from using violence and we often assess governments on how
well they maintain a very low level of violence within our everyday world.
Sport provides a number of very interesting issues in respect to this. There are a
number of sports where people can be actively aggressive and violent, albeit under
highly controlled circumstances boxing and rugby are two good examples. Equally,
where violent conduct by those involved in sport, either as players or as fans, impacts
the general public (football hooliganism is probably the best-known example), the
government is very quick to step in and create legislation, systems of surveillance and
punishment that are designed to re-establish the social order. Although we will not be
looking at violence in sport as a specific theme, we will return to this issue in a number
of chapters, most notably in Chapter 12 when we will examine sport and the body.
Other related and important characteristics of life in modernity that have had a
defining impact on sport are:
Urbanisation This is the process through which the majority of people ceased
to live in the countryside and moved into the towns and cities. Because of the
availability of facilities, coaching and systems of transport, most sport is played in
an urban context.
Science and technological innovation Science and technology has had a
dramatic impact on most aspects of modern life and sport is constantly being
changed by them. Modern sports equipment is often a complex technology
designed to help us perform our sports more effectively and safely.
Distinctive modern forms of social stratification Although we have already
identified the important issue of social class, there are other important forms of
social stratification that can be seen to impact on sport. These are gender, race,
ethnicity, disability and age.
An interconnected system of nation-states allied to the promotion of national
identity As we have already evidenced in the opening chapter and the discussion
17
of the London Olympiads, sport, especially in terms of competitions between

national teams, is an important contemporary cultural, political marker of
(national) boundaries, identities and markets (Boyle and Hayes, 2000, p164).
Within most societies the success or failure of the national sports teams provide
a constant source for debates about the current state of the society.
Globalisation Although a number of influential sociologists, such as Anthony
Giddens (1991), have convincingly argued that globalisation has always been an
inherent element of modernity, the last two decades have seen a massive global
expansion and integration of commercially organised sport (Coakley and Donnelly,
2004, p330).
Mass media The development and spread of modern sport across significant
parts of the world pre-dates the technological development of electronic massmedia forms, such as radio and television. Nonetheless, once these media
technologies became widespread, the connections between the mass media and
sport became so deeply intertwined that, as Rowe argues (2004b, pp14), they are
now in effect indistinguishable from each other.
Consumer culture Debates about consumer culture and its impact on society
have over the last few decades moved from being a relatively minor sociological
issue to one of its most pressing. Recently, the advent of serious concerns
regarding climate change has promoted an even more heightened level of interest
in the processes of mass production and mass consumption. As Horne (2006) has
recently detailed, sport is now a very significant part of global economic activity
and for many people it is an important and integral component of their lifestyle
and patterns of consumption.
While it can be argued that sport was and is universal, part of all human societies of
which we have some record . . . (Blake, 1996, p43), as we have identified above, the
development of modern sport cannot be separated from the broader processes of
modernity. Because of its historical relationship to pagan religious festivals, violence as
an element of public entertainment and amusement, social disorder and drunkenness, it
is not surprising that the emergence of the modern era brought with it pressures to
develop new, more civilised (Elias and Dunning, 1986), ordered and rationalised forms
of social existence and organisation (Rojek, 2000). Holts (1989) study of sport and the
British evidences from the mid-Victorian period onwards that sport became an issue
of political and moral concern. The social and cultural impact of British modernity on
sport (Blake, 1996, p45) was not only important for the British, but through the impact of
its global empire and its influence on organisations such as the International Olympic
Committee, it was to influence sport profoundly throughout the modern world.
These brief comments have highlighted that modern societies and modern sport
are not the outcome of a single evolutionary process, but the complex interaction of a
number of different economic, political, social and cultural processes and national
histories. While most people who are involved with sport are unlikely to think about it in
this way, there is no doubt that modernity has a profound influence on the way we
experience sport today.
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Activity 2.2
While we will be developing our sociological exploration of these issues in more
depth in later chapters, now is a good time to start putting your sociological
imagination to work. One of the assumptions made in the above discussion is that
your sporting habits, how you perceive and understand sport and your aspirations
have all in some way been shaped by the social processes we have been
discussing.
Based on the above discussion of sport and modernity, together with your
current knowledge and experience of sport, take 20 minutes to:
1.
identify how the processes discussed above are evidenced in your own
experience of how sport is played and organised;
2. identify any problems within sport that may be directly linked to any of
these processes.
The organisational structure of modern sport

As you might now recognise, the organisational nature of modern society is one of the
most crucial characteristics impacting on sport. Indeed, as Giddens (1991) forcefully
argues, modernity is not just about the development of organisations; it is also about
the process of organisation and its regularised control over human behaviour. Guttmann
(1978) in his influential examination of sports transformation into its modern forms
identifies several characteristics of modernisation that are fundamental to the
emergence and social organisation of modern sport. These are:
secularisation;
equality of opportunity (to compete and in the conditions of competition);
specialization of roles;
rationalization process;
bureaucratic organization;
quantification;
the quest for records.
(Guttmann, 1978, p16)
While all of these have had a significant impact on the nature of modern sport, it is the
initial five that have a specific relevance to this chapters examination of the impact
that modernity has had on both the structure and character of modern society, and on
modern sport more specifically.
Secularisation
Secularisation refers to an historical process through which religious ideas begin to
lose their power and influence. Theorists such as Ernest Gellner (1974) have argued that
secularisation does not suggest that religious beliefs are no longer important to a great
19
number of people, but that for many they have been replaced by other forms of
knowledge such as those produced by science. As Guttmann (1978) details, prior to
modernity many sporting forms were embedded in religious or quasi-religious festivals
and rituals (a good example of this is the ancient Olympics in Greece). For Guttmann
(1978), the primary characteristics of modern sports are, as we shall discuss in more
detail below, that they are rationalised, open to scientific and quantifiable evaluation
and, most importantly of all, are pursued by individuals for their own sake and not for
any defining spiritual or mystical purposes.
While the process of secularisation has undoubtedly had a profound impact on
modern society, and that this is reflected in sport is evident, there are a number of
significant problems with an uncritical acceptance of this perspective. As numerous
influential sociologists (Berger, 1973; Gellner, 1974, 1992; Bauman, 2001) have identified,
religion retains for many a powerful defining reality. The process of secularisation has
become increasingly contested as the utopian promises of rationalised modernity have
failed to be delivered. Moreover, as sport sociologists such as Blake (1996) also point
out, the modern history of sport in most countries shows clear connections to religion.
For example, in England many of the Christian churches had an important role in
the spread of team games (which they saw as an antidote to excessive drinking
and gambling). Even up to the present day, in Ireland the Gaelic Athletic Association
organises its clubs based on the parish boundaries of Catholic churches. Possibly even
more interesting is the view that, for many, sport itself has become a form of religion
(Jarvie, 2006). Sports stars are now worshipped, people pray for their teams and around
the world sports stadia have become the new cathedrals of worship.
Equality of opportunity
For Guttmann, as sport became progressively modernised it created for many an
increased level of opportunity to compete and take part in sport. As numerous histories
of sport (Holt, 1989; Struna, 2000; Guttmann, 2000) demonstrate, in pre-modern times
and in the early modern period, sport was often exclusive, with only members of certain
social groups within the society having the right to take part. For instance, in Britain
during the nineteenth century many amateur sports such as athletics and tennis had rules
that were quite clearly designed to prevent members of the working classes applying for
membership. Throughout the nineteenth century and up to the latter part of the twentieth
century, women faced many restrictions on their ability to compete in sports. With regard
to race, it was not until the latter part of the twentieth century that the last vestiges
of racial inequality and segregation in sport were formally challenged through the
introduction by the British government of laws prohibiting racial discrimination. As a
result of these legal requirements, all sports organisations in the UK must have policies
that are intended to address the problems of racial inequality and prejudice.
However, according to Guttmanns analysis, progressive modernisation has continued
to erode these restrictions and inequalities. In support of this view, a brief trip to the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) website (www.olympic.org/uk/index_uk.asp) will
make abundantly clear that, in organisational terms at least, today the situation has
clearly changed. In most sports and in most parts of the world, athletes from any
background (whether this is based on nationality, race, social class, gender, sexuality or
disability) are actively being encouraged to take part. That accepted, it is also abundantly
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clear that the ideals of the inclusivity and equity of sport remain for many just that, an
ideal, rather than a reality. We shall return to some of the important sociological debates
surrounding the inequalities that impact on sport in Chapters 7 and 8.
Specialisation of roles
Two hugely influential social theorists who were responsible for some of the most
important analyses of the impact of modernity on the nature and structure of society
were Karl Marx and Max Weber. Although there will be a more detailed overview of
their work in the latter part of this chapter, it is important to note that one of the
characteristics of modern society that both philosophers stress is how the complexity
of modern society requires an ever increasing division of labour and specialisation of
roles.
Definition: division of labour
A social process related to processes of rationalisation that leads to a
progressive and inevitable specialisation of roles. This specialisation leads to
boundaries between roles that can restrict the opportunities to move between
roles.
Guttmanns (1978) analysis also details how, as sport modernised, it was inevitable
that the processes that rationalised other parts of social life into ever increasing levels
of role specialisation also began to deeply influence the organisational and playing
characteristics of many modern sports. Although there still exist some sports that
require an athlete to be multi-skilled across a number of distinct sporting disciplines
(e.g. decathlon, octathlon, modern pentathlon, the all-rounder in cricket), for the most
part sport has become dominated by a highly segmented range of roles whose names we
all recognise. For instance, in football there are goalkeepers, right backs, centre backs,
midfield players, strikers, coaches, managers, chairmen, fans, stewards, and so on.
Rationalisation process
Blake (1996, p77) stresses that it is the link between the processes of rationalisation
and modernisation of sport that lies at the heart of Guttmanns argument, which claims
that:
Modern societies have designed new sports, or redesigned existing ones, along
rational lines, with both the rule-bound sports themselves and the preparation
of them susceptible to rational organisation. Rationalisation is present at almost
every level of sport . . . Training for sports is increasingly rationalised, seen as
sports science, with sub-areas of diet, physiology and medicine and psychology,
contributing to the preparation of both athlete and coach . . .
This concept is closely associated with the work of Max Weber who suggested that
rationalisation was a process where beliefs, social institutions (such as sport) and
individual actors (players, officials, administrators) all become more logical, orderly,
and to some degree predictable and controllable. While the complexity of the modern
21
world, and high level sport specifically, is highly reliant on this process, it is equally
evident that it is a process that is also often resisted. The downside of the process is
that other aspects of life that many people hold very dear begin to receive less attention
or are deemed to be unimportant. The sensual, creative, spiritual and traditional aspects
of social life can all decline. As will be discussed in the next section, the significance of
the process lies in how it has determined the organisational structure of modern sport.
However, how far the process of rationalisation actually determines our experience of
sport is open to some debate. Indeed, there is ample evidence that for many the
significance of sport in their lives stems not from the nature of its structure or its rules
and regulations, but from its unpredictability, sensuality, vitality and the often irrational
passions it produces.
Bureaucratic organisation
Of all the characteristics of modern sport identified by Guttmann, bureaucratic
organisation is without doubt the most important. Modern sports are organised and run
by a complex array of interconnecting bureaucratic structures. From the IOC to the
international federations, from the national Sports Councils to the national governing
bodies, and onward into the regional organisations and locally organised clubs and their
committees, sport operates within a bewildering set of bureaucratic structures and
regulations.
Definition: bureaucracy
A form of organisational structure that is operated by officials who work within a
hierarchical structure of authority. The purpose of the bureaucracy and those
who work within it is to make sure that the organisation effectively achieves its
aims and goals.
Sports bureaucracies determine all the formal aspects of the sport, from the size of
the playing field to the types of surface to the numbers of players, the rules and any
fines or penalties that may be imposed for an infringement of these rules. Because of
the global nature of modern sport, the organisational structure has to operate on a local,
national and international level. Without this level of complex organisation and control,
sport as we know it today could not exist. However, sports bureaucracies are not always
completely benign. As the work of numerous sport sociologists such as John Hoberman
(1984), and Alan Tomlinson and John Sugden (2002) clearly evidences, these sports
bureaucracies can be self-interested, unrepresentative and, in some cases, corrupt
(Simpson and Jennings, 1992; Jennings, 1996). Relatively few of them have clear democratic processes or external systems of oversight and accountability. The outcome is
that those in charge can surround themselves with carefully chosen supporters who are
not necessarily there on merit. As Blake correctly summarises, Bureaucratisation
without democratic representation is dangerous and not in the interests of performers
or public (1996, p81).
Although Guttmanns view of sports modernisation is overly rationalistic and prone to
some rather naive views about the nature of progress, it helps us make important
connections to the view that the economic and rationalised spheres of modern life are
its defining characteristics. This perspective is important because it draws attention to
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the fact that within modern society and sport, control and power were firmly located in
those who owned and controlled the economic and industrial spheres of life. The outcome
of these processes was that the culture of modern sport and its modes of organisation
emphasised a number of characteristics that came to dominate how we understand sport.
Typifying these are sports rational control, rules, order and moral purpose.
Activity 2.3
The IOC and the philosophy of Olympism

Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced
whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and
education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in
effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal
fundamental ethical principles.
(Olympic Charter: Fundamental principles, paragraph 2)
This task requires you to use the Olympic movement as a practical case study on
which to base your applied understanding of the sociological issues and concepts
we have introduced in the preceding sections.
The first part of the task requires access to a computer with web connection.
Using the main websites for the Olympic Movement (www.olympic.org/uk/
index_uk.asp) and those for the London 2012 Games (www.london2012.com),
explore the sites and become familiar with the wide range of information and
issues that they present.
Once you have familiarised yourself with the sites, we want you to undertake
a more reflective sociological examination of them. If, as we hope, we have
sparked your sociological imagination, you might discover that as you do the first
part of the task you are already identifying a wide range of issues that might be of
interest to a sport sociologist. However, in case we havent, the second part of the
task has a specific requirement linked to the discussion we have just undertaken
regarding the nature of modern sport. This part of the task requires you to see if
these sites provide evidence to support Guttmanns conceptualisation of modern
sport (hopefully, you can remember that these were: secularisation; equality of
opportunity (to compete and in the conditions of competition); specialisation of
roles; rationalisation process; bureaucratic organisation; quantification; the quest
for records).
Some questions to guide your investigations:
1.
Do the IOCs or London 2012s discussions of the concept of Olympism

demonstrate the process of secularisation? What points do you think are
most important?
2. Do the IOC Missions and the 2012 website make clear statements about the
importance of equality? Can you identify some clear policies being put
forward that demonstrate this commitment?
3. How do the IOC and the structure of the 2012 Organising Committee
demonstrate the specialisation of roles?
23

4. Using the issue of drugs cheats, can you identify how the IOC is rationalising
the process of protecting sport from this sort of abuse?
5. Is the IOC a bureaucratic structure? If so, can you write out a map of its
organisational structure? Looking at the 2012 site, can you map out the
planning structure for the organisation and the delivery of the London
Games?
6. Based on the IOC site, can you identify an emphasis on results and records?
Do you think that this might be a contradiction in terms of some of the core
values of Olympism and the philosophy of the games?
Some additional issues you might explore:
1.
How does sport help people (and groups) differentiate themselves from
each other? Is sport an important social arena for the development of a
sense of national identity?
2. Could the IOC and the Games exist without the support of commercial
sponsors and the media?
3. Why would large global companies want to provide the London Games with
millions of pounds of sponsorship?
Review
As we hope this introduction has highlighted and the subsequent chapters will more
comprehensively detail, sociology has now established a very important interest in the
world of sport. Modern sport is socially constructed. In its modern form, sport also has
a dual structure. On the one hand, it promotes ideals such as freedom, equality, diversity,
experimentation and escapism. On the other, it is also based on control, discipline,
and the passive acceptance of authority, tradition and constraint. Thinking about
sport sociologically shows that whatever your level of involvement, it is important to
realise that sport is a significant part of the modern world. As that modern world has
developed, its institutional structures and cultural traditions have deeply influenced
how sport developed and evolved. Sport is an integral part of modernity and modernity
is an integral part of sport. Hence, our examination of sport reaches far beyond the
confines of sport itself and will, we hope, provide you with a rich and exciting arena
for the development of your sociological imagination and an understanding of our
contemporary world.
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Review of learning outcomes

Before you move on to the following chapters, spend some time carefully reviewing what you have learned from this discussion of sport and modern society.
Review tasks
1.
Write out a short definition of the following key sociological concepts:

sociology; modern society; modernity; social reproduction; division of
labour.
2. Based on your reading of the discussion of Alan Guttmanns analysis of
modern sport, provide a clear statement on how the following processes are
embedded in the way we socially organise modern sport: secularisation;
equality of opportunity (to compete and in the conditions of competition);
specialisation of roles; rationalisation process; bureaucratic organisation.
3. Give a brief explanation of the primary institutional characteristics of
modernity identified by Giddens and why they are relevant to a sociological
analysis of sport.
Finally, as a way of guiding your sociological development, the chapter has also
introduced a number of important sociological ideas or premises that underpin many
of the sport sociology debates that will be explored in the subsequent chapters.
However, because we have only given you a brief introduction to them, you should not as
yet expect to fully understand them or their application to sport. Read the following
premises carefully and then, as you address some of the more challenging debates in
the next chapters, return to them to act as a useful starting point for your further work.
Premise 1 All human experience is socially influenced. Because this is the case, as
Giddens (1989, p 11) suggests, an understanding of the subtle, yet complex and profound
ways in which our lives reflect the context of our social experiences is basic to the
sociological outlook. As this chapter explained, one of the main tasks of sport sociology
is to describe and explain these differing contexts and how they impact on the
experience of sport.
Premise 2 The world we live in is not simple, but complex and subject to dramatic
change. Living in this world demands that we learn to behave appropriately in a variety
of social contexts and also adapt to new forms of knowledge.
Premise 3 To some degree, everybody seeks to understand the world they live in. The
success or failure of this process depends on knowledge. This includes having access
to it and the ability to put this knowledge into action. Understood in this way, knowledge
is an important component of how power operates.
Premise 4 In attempting to construct an objective and systematic understanding of
the modern social world, sociologists are forced to develop theoretical models.
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Further study
For a general introduction to sociology read:
Chapter 1: Introduction, in Bilton, et al. (2002) Introductory sociology. 4th edition.
London: Macmillan.
Alternatively, read:
Chapter 1: What is sociology? in Giddens, A (2006) Sociology. 5th edition. London: Polity
Press.
To extend your understanding of the impact of modernity on the social construction of
sport read:
Guttmann, A (2004) Rules of the game, in Tomlinson, A (ed) The sports studies reader.
London: Routledge.
Struna, NL (2000) Social history and sport, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook
of sports studies. London: Sage.
Chapter 2: Sport, history and social change, in Jarvie, G (2006) Sport, culture and society:
an introduction. London: Routledge.
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Chapter 3
Sport, modernity and the Olympics:

a case study of the London Olympiads
Gordon T Mellor
In this chapter we will ground some of the major sociological themes identified in the
discussion of sport and modern society by exploring an extended case study of the
London Olympiads. In identifying social and cultural reproduction, the dimensions of
modernity, the influence of sports bureaucracy and the role of politics, this chapter aims
to set the scene for a more detailed discussion of the importance of sport in
contemporary British society by using the Olympic Games as a starting point. What
follows is the story of the modern Olympics, but told with a focus on the London Games
of 1908, 1948 and 2012. The narrative is inevitably partial, but this chapter can be used
like a road map for the rest of the book: the issues raised will signpost some of the
important sociological debates that the text will require you to engage with.
Learning outcomes
understand the Olympics as a modern social narrative;
understand how a critical evaluation of the Olympics illuminates key
themes within the sociological analysis of modern sport;
detail how these themes have developed over time as illustrated by the
London Olympic Games;
outline through Olympic-based examples the social and cultural meanings
attached to modern sport.
Introduction
The overarching ambition of the book is to encourage a sociological understanding of
sport in modern society. The Olympic Games is a convenient and high-profile starting
point for such a critique, but the themes we develop here are more broadly applicable to
the relationship between sport and society. We endeavour to show that sport has a
significant role in shaping how our society operates, but that the values that guide such
a construction are a reflection of those that influence society more generally. Thus,
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3 / Sport, modernity and the Olympics: a case study of the London Olympiads
sport and society have a symbiotic relationship that brings benefits and detriments to
both. It is not our purpose to be judgemental about what these benefits or detriments
are, but rather to raise awareness by knowledge and understanding that these exist. We
also contend that, as members of the society we are describing, we are all responsible
for the way things are, but also have the potential to shape the future. Understanding
and illumination are crucial, and we begin with the story of the London Olympics.
London 1908: the Games of the IV Olympiad

Historical circumstance
The founder of the modern Olympics was Pierre de Coubertin. His desire to revive the
Games stemmed from his conviction that sport was the springboard for moral
development and that a large international sports competition would help promote
peaceful co-existence among the nations of the world. To organise and promote the
games, de Coubertin campaigned for the formation of the International Olympic
Committee (IOC). The first of the modern Olympiads took place in Athens in 1896.
Stepping up to the mark in November 1906, London formally accepted the IOCs
invitation to host the fourth Olympic Games, to be held in 1908. De Coubertin had
intended the 1908 Olympiad to have been in Rome, a city that he felt was replete with
the symbolism of antiquity that had inspired the Games. It would indeed have been an
Italian affair but for the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the resulting financial
hardship experienced in Italy. Negotiations with the British had begun during the interim
Games in Athens in 1906 after the Italian authorities had announced their withdrawal.
Known as the Intercalated Games, the 1906 event highlighted the emerging political
dimension of the Olympics. Even at this early stage in the development of the modern
Olympics, national interests (and rivalries) were evident. What is clear is that sport in
general and the modern Olympic Games in particular are already established as a tool of
social reproduction within industrial societies.
It is evident that de Coubertins modern Olympic Games is essentially a celebration
of modernity. The global spread of modernity was already strongly developed even in
the late nineteeth century and the sense that the world and everyday life was becoming
increasingly globalised was already well established.
Early developments
The Athens Games of 1906, only recently acknowledged as a Games proper, had been an
attempt to revive the modern Games after the very limited success of Paris in 1900 and
the debacle of St Louis in 1904. It signalled the high point of Greek aspirations to have
the Games held permanently in Athens, the city the Greeks believed to be the spiritual
home of the modern Olympic movement. De Coubertin, holding on to his original concept
for the modern Games, consistently stood against a permanent site. However, always
the pragmatist, he recognised that if they were to continue, the Games needed a success
to rival the inauguration in 1896: expectations had increased, yet the experience had
fallen well short of them. The Greeks would certainly provide a successful Games, even
if their motivation was somewhat at odds with his own. The idea accepted by the
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Olympic bureaucracy, the IOC, was that an Athens Games would be held midway through
every four-year cycle or Olympiad. In the event, this was the only intercalated or interim
Games ever held and, despite being out of sequence with the other Games, its status
as a full Olympics is undoubted.
Organisation
With less than two years in which to prepare for the 1908 Games, Lord Desborough, the
first Chairman of the British Olympic Association, harnessed the expertise in sports
organisations born out of the tradition of the Victorian codified games. A stadium with a
capacity of something in the region of 70,000 people was built at Shepherds Bush in West
London. The running track was one-third of a mile in length and surrounded by a concrete
cycle track, while in the centre was a 100m (330ft) swimming pool. Existing facilities and
venues were used for other events, such as tennis at the All England Club at Wimbledon
and rowing at Henley-on-Thames. Sailing was held at Ryde on the Isle of Wight and on the
River Clyde in Scotland. It is to be noted that prominent sports such as these had (and
arguably still have) a strong class orientation. While being linked with an international
trade fair running in London, the Games were not subsumed in, nor overawed by, an event
being held concurrently. However, the proximity of commercial interests is noteworthy.
International issues
The London Games began on 27 April 1908 and lasted until 31 October, although the main
competitions were held during July. For the first time individual entry was not permitted;
the Games were truly an international sporting competition competition between
nations, where the nation had become elevated over the individual competitor. Despite
fulfilling part of de Coubertins concept in mobilising and empowering nations through
sport, national competition in the Olympic context was immediately fraught. In the
opening parade at the new White City stadium, the United States and Swedish flags
were not flown with the flags of the other competing nations. What was an administrative bungle became an international incident.
The prominence of the sportsman as a national representative was immediately
apparent and international tensions were inevitably imported into Olympic sport. The
American shot-putter Ralph Rose was the bearer of the US standard. However, being
of Irish descent and angered by the British governments refusal to grant Irish independence, he refused to dip the flag in salute as he passed King Edward VII and Queen
Alexandra. This insult set the tone for the conduct of both the British and US athletes
and officials throughout.
Other international issues surfaced. The Finnish team objected to having to march
behind the flag of Tsarist Russia, as they considered Russia to be an aggressor towards
their homeland. In turn the Russians refused to recognise Finland as an independent
nation, with the result that the Finns marched into the stadium with no flag at all.
Sporting cultures
It was, however, the tension between the host nation and the United States that was to
result in an incident that was ultimately to lead to an important change in Olympic
29
protocol. The US team were, as they had been since the Paris Games, pre-eminent in the
sprinting events. However, Britain put up a Scottish sprinter, Lt Wyndham Halswelle,
who had taken second place in the 400m and third in the 800m at the Intercalated
Games in Athens two years previously. Having set the fastest time in qualifying,
Halswelle faced three American sprinters in the final Taylor, Robbins and Carpenter.
The British feared that the Americans would run as a team and that underhand tactics
would be used against the flying Scot.
Track athletics in the US was at the time rather less formalised with regard to
conduct during races, with pushing (boring), jostling and blocking acceptable practices.
Under the auspices of the Amateur Athletic Association in Britain, such behaviour was
deemed to be unsporting. The 400m was not run in lanes at this time and a clash of both
athletes and athletic cultures was almost inevitable. Since 1900 all track umpires and
organising officials were provided by the host nation, although in Athens in 1896 some of
this expertise was invited from Britain and France. Thus, in the London Games, with their
heightened tensions and overt national rivalries, all British officialdom was certainly
perceived to be partial and indeed was very likely to be so.
The 400m final on 23 July saw the competitors warned about foul play prior to the
race. An extra precaution saw trackside officials placed at 20m intervals in order to
ensure no jostling or blocking was attempted. Clearly, the pre-race tensions and rivalries
were not lost on the media of the day. The enhanced profile of this clash not only raised
the audiences anticipation (the excitement of entertainment), but also elevated the
competitors social standing (emergent celebrities). The race lived up to expectations
with the American Carpenter blocking Halswelle as he attempted to take the lead. It
was reported by The Times that the Scot was forced from a position close to the inside
bend to within inches of being forced off the outside of the track in the space of
20 yards. An official called foul and a judge broke the tape before any of the runners
could cross the finish line. No race was called and, amid confusion and protests,
Carpenter was disqualified.
The race was re-run two days later with the lanes demarcated by cord to ensure
there was no contact between the sprinters. However, the American athletes would not
compete without their disqualified team-mate and Halswelle himself did not wish to
run without the US competitors. After considerable debate, he bowed to pressure and
ran the race alone, taking the gold medal. With the American press calling the British
bad losers and The Times maintaining the race was run in England, where tactics of this
kind are contrary alike to the rules that govern sport and to our notions of what is fair
play, the committee had no option but to punish the offender, the friction was set to
continue.
The American sprinter Taylor, who was forcibly removed from the track during the
furore over the disqualification of Carpenter in the first running of the 400m final, later
became the first black athlete to win a gold medal at a modern Games, running as part of
a victorious relay team.
The furore over the 400m final is a fine example of how the differing cultures of
sport the British and the North American in this instance led to conflict. Despite the
globalising tendencies evident in modernity and manifest in the Games, little could
mollify the deeply held convictions that each nation had been wronged by the other.
Though it can be claimed that sport has a number of values that transcend national and
cultural differences, social reproduction tends to work on a far more local level and re30
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affirms commonplace beliefs and realities consistent with national concerns. The IOC,
the bureaucracy with overarching responsibility here, recognised and acted on the core
of the dispute. While supporting the British hosts in this particular context, they enacted
profound protocol changes for future Games.
Amateurism
This was a key component of the Victorian/Edwardian British sporting ideal. This is not
to say that amateur status went uncontested soccer (Association Football), rugby
football and cricket all struggled to resolve the debate between the amateur and
professional.
The amateur ethic was, of course, far more than an innocent tag indicating a love of
the sport or game: it illustrated a middle-class aspiration. Furthermore, it was a mark of
demarcation, a tool in the social divisions within the British class system. The amateur
ethic was closely allied to British ideals of sportsmanship, fair play and gentlemanly
conduct.
Further conflict
Perhaps the abiding image of the 1908 Games in London, and one that well illustrates
how powerful cultures of sport are, is that of Dorando Pietri, the Italian marathon runner,
in a state of collapse, being half-dragged, half-carried over the finish line by the clerk of
the course. Having entered the stadium in the lead, Pietri fell twice in the closing
straight; both times he was helped to his feet by officials. The Italian was pronounced
victor and the Italian flag was raised. However, this was followed by a protest from the
American team whose runner Hayes had come in a strong second place. The IOC panel
upheld the protest and the Irish-American Hayes was presented with the gold medal.
Such was the outpouring of sympathy for gallant Pietri that Queen Alexandra presented
him with a gold cup in honour of his courage, while the animosity towards the Americans
reached new heights. De Coubertins sympathies were with the British who were
apparently concerned with the spirit of sportsmanship, while the Americans focused on
victory.
Standardisation?
The marathon had been run over a distance of approximately 25 miles (40km) at the
previous Games, but due to a quirk of geography and British deference to the Royal
Family, it became 26 miles and 385 yards in 1908. This was the precise distance from
below the royal nursery windows at Windsor Castle to the stadium at the White City.
This became the internationally recognised distance for the marathon in 1924.
Sports bureaucracy and resolution

The Americans led numerous protests about official bias, the rigging of heats, starting
irregularities, illegal coaching, rule breaking and unfair judging. Such was the disquiet
about the allegations that the British Olympic Association and the IOC produced a
booklet entitled Replies to Criticism of the Olympic Games. However, the positive
legacy of these disputes was that by the following Games in 1912, all judges were drawn
from a pool supplied by the competing nations, and that control of events and rules
governing competition were placed in the hands of newly established international
governing bodies.
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Codification
The internationalisation of sporting governance was, of course, only a further step in
the process that is referred to as codification (the rationalisation of competition),
whereby competition becomes possible through a mutually beneficial recognition of
recorded rules, conditions and dimensions of the sports, together with an agreed,
although often unspoken, way of playing. It was codification that took the athletic
games of the English public school into the realm of what we call modern sports, enabled
fair and entertaining competition, and ultimately implanted these sports in the
consciousness of the British and then the civilised world. We return to this process and
its significance in Chapter 5.
1908: a retrospective
Despite the considerable animosity between some competing nations and the tangible
damage to British sporting self-esteem and international standing, the 1908 Games
were successful. London became the best British performance, before or since, if overall
position on the medal table is such a measure. Beyond the domestic scene, however,
further measures of the growing significance of sport can be seen: 22 countries were
represented; 1999 male competitors attended; 36 women athletes and competitors took
part. The London Games established the modern Olympics in a way that the previous
Games had not: they were organisationally competent; they were popular and well
attended by the public; they brought into focus some serious issues that needed to be
confronted by the IOC; and they forged the template for international sport that would
serve for the foreseeable future.
The British sporting establishment, just over a decade before, had doubted the
wisdom of an idea promoted by a French aristocrat for an international sporting competition under the name of an ancient Greek religious festival. Having been represented
at each of the four previous modern Games Athens 1896, Paris 1900, St Louis 1904
and Athens 1906 the British had engaged with the Olympic concept and contributed
substantially to ensuring that it continued. The legacy of the public school games
that had given birth to the codified sports that de Coubertin had used to shape his idea
had been added to in practical terms. The IV Olympics in London in 1908, for all its
shortcomings, stood as the Games that showed beyond doubt that great things lay
ahead for this modern sporting phenomenon.
Summer Games venues

1896 Athens; 1900 Paris; 1904 St Louis; 1906 Athens; 1908 London; 1912
Stockholm; 1920 Antwerp; 1924 Paris; 1928 Amsterdam; 1932 Los Angeles; 1936
Berlin; 1948 London; 1952 Helsinki; 1956 Melbourne; 1960 Rome; 1964 Tokyo;
1968 Mexico City; 1972 Munich; 1976 Montreal; 1980 Moscow; 1984 Los Angeles;
1988 Seoul; 1992 Barcelona; 1996 Atlanta; 2000 Sydney; 2004 Athens; 2008
Beijing; 2012 London.
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Activity 3.1
Identify the important differences that led Britain and the United States into
dispute over the 1908 Olympic competition. How do these illustrate the cultures
of sport and how did the Olympic bureaucracy act to minimise the risk of similar
disputes occurring again?
London 1948: the Games of the XIV Olympiad

In the grips of Britains post-war austerity, the XIV Games returned to London. With no
Olympics having been staged since 1936, there was a real possibility that they would
not be resurrected at all. There had been some protest both prior to and at the time of
the Games in Berlin that had been so successfully yet predictably used by the Nazis. It
was nonetheless with the benefit of hindsight that the Olympic world looked back with
a mixture of shame and horror to the overtly fascist Nazi agenda of Berlin 1936. The
Second World War had seen civilisations break new ground in industrial warfare with
the large-scale bombing of civilian targets, the Holocaust and ultimately the atomic
bomb. The association of the Games with Hitlers Nazi propaganda in Berlin could well
have resulted in the modern Olympics being consigned to history.
World events
Tokyo was to have hosted the XII Games but the Sino-Japanese war caused them to be
transferred to Helsinki. When the Russians invaded Finland, however, all plans to hold an
Olympics in 1940 were cancelled. Just months before Europe plunged into the second
major conflict of the century, the IOC awarded the XIII Games to London, to be held in
1944. In the event, this was also an impossibility, and with Japan and the United States
entering the conflict, de Coubertins dream appeared to have died. Indeed, it may have
done so had not Avery Brundage (from the United States and future IOC President) been
so committed to maintaining it.
Organisation
After a postal ballot of IOC members in 1946, the then President, Sigfrid Edstrom,
awarded the Games to London, some of which was still in ruins after the Blitz. In the
context of the times, with Britain still rationing both food and clothing, this would not be
an extravagant celebration. The 600,000 budget was tight and few new facilities
could be built. Male competitors were accommodated in military barracks and female
competitors housed in colleges and schools. A temporary running track was put down
in Wembley stadium, rowing returned to Henley, sailing was held at Torbay in Devon,
shooting took place at Bisley and swimming at Aldershot. Although Germany and Japan
were not invited to attend, 4099 competitors from 59 nations made the 1948 Games
the largest yet staged.
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Naive idealism
The success of the 1948 Games was a triumph for Western populist naivety: the belief
that sport was above politics. The English-speaking world the victors of the Second
World War articulated considerable distaste for the overt politicisation of international sport and particularly the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.
In many ways, this was a rehearsal for what was to come during the Cold War, when
Soviet use of sport to promote and demonstrate political superiority was resisted and
belittled. The modern Olympic Games (as all sport) is inherently political in constitution.
Its very existence was, and its continuation is, a political statement in itself.
Personalities
The 1948 Olympics are remembered for two remarkable athletes: the Czech distance
runner, Emile Zatopek, and the Dutch jumper and sprinter, Fanny Blankers-Koen.
Emile Zatopek, the metronome

Although not untutored, Zatopek came almost intuitively to a training regime that would
become validated by later physiological and sports science research. Showing an
application to athletic training that bordered on the obsessive, the Czech trained for
pace in addition to distance. He knew he could run middle and longer distances steadily,
so he focused on speed and strength. Repeated extended sprinting interspersed with a
rolling or running recovery, together with work on breathing control, helped to condition
Zatopek in a manner that was well ahead of his time. Winning the 10,000m by threequarters of a lap, he narrowly failed to take Gold in the 5,000m.
Fanny Blankers-Koen, the flying housewife

A remarkable talent, Blankers-Koen was denied the ability to defend her world high and
long jump records by the restriction of women track and field athletes to three individual
events. The restrictions placed upon her capacity to enter all the events she was capable
of doing well in is indicative of the male-dominated sporting world of the time. Winning
four gold medals, she equalled the mark set by Jessie Owen in 1936, by taking the 100m,
200m, the 80m hurdles and the 4x100m relay. Consistent with the media appreciation of
women athletes of the time, the media reports focused not on her precocious abilities
but rather on the fact that she was a 30-year-old housewife and mother of two. Rarely
have such profound athletic achievements been so trivialised.
The Olympic ideal

While Britains international standing was certainly high, her days of Empire and
global influence were almost over. The first Games after the Second World War are
remembered not for aggressive nationalistic jingoism or victory-fuelled celebration,
but for the rebirth of something that would prove far more enduring despite its
intangibility; the Olympic ideal. During the Second World War, Western civilisation had
descended to the depths of human depravity, yet the Olympics, in the form of the
London Games, was one of the first international events to rise out of the ashes, not
quite phoenix-like but certainly in the belief that youthful endeavour in sports could
offer more than conflict and misery.
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Sporting cultures
Post-war Britain was less obsessed with amateurism than had been the case in the early
years of the twentieth century. This is not to say that the issue had played itself out
completely this would take another 30 years or more. However, the more egalitarian
realities of post-war Britain did much to erode the worth of, or indeed the need for,
idealist amateurism.
The British model of sport around which de Coubertin had constructed the modern
Games had been replaced by the North American one. The cultural dominance that the
United States exerted upon the West, and ultimately the entire globe, ensured that ways
of playing altered gentlemanly conduct and fair play were of less concern, while
personal endeavour, responsibility and winning became paramount.
1948: a retrospective
With the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to see how important the London Games of
1948 were for the Olympic movement and beyond: a bowed but unbroken host nation that
needed to renegotiate its place in the order of nations; a Western Europe that would have
to unite in order to regenerate; and a world facing a distinctly new power struggle
between the USA and the Communist regimes of the Eastern bloc. If de Coubertins
inception of the modern Olympics in 1896 had been the result of a coalescence of ideas,
then 1948 was the result of a coalescence of national and geopolitical need. What was
all the more remarkable was that from the jaws of irrelevance, Edstrom and Brundage
had seized the moment and resurrected the modern Olympics. Speaking of the London
Games, Zatopek said: After all those dark days of the war, the bombing, the killing, the
starvation, the revival of the Olympics was as if the sun had come out.
Activity 3.2
Select three famous Olympic athletes (you might like to choose historical figures
like Zatopek and Blankers-Koen or more recent examples such as Carl Lewis,
Steve Redgrave, Paula Radcliffe). Briefly summarise the sporting characteristics
that they share and those that are different. Then consider the following:
How important is it for the Olympic Movement to have world-famous

sporting personalities taking part?
What do you conclude about the social importance of sport having
examined their sporting characteristics?
London 2012: the Games of the XXX Olympiad

At the 2005 Congress in Singapore when IOC President Jacques Rogges announced
that the Games would return to London, national euphoria and enthusiasm was tinged
with both reticence and self-doubt. Britain has a fine Olympic heritage: it was the
35
nineteenth-century British model of sport that de Coubertin had taken as the template
upon which to build the international festival; Britain has been represented at every
modern Games both summer and winter; London in 1908 and again in 1948 was of
particular importance for the Olympic movement, and the success of both Olympics
established the Games at times when their continuation was clearly questionable.
Londons credentials
Britains passion for sport.

Commitment to the Olympics attended every modern Games.
Hosted the 1908 and 1948 Games.
Cultural diversity 300 languages, 200 nationalities.
London is one of the worlds most vibrant cities.
Huge range of accommodation to suit all tastes and pockets.
Britains historic record of being able to deliver.
Britains security credentials.
Combination of iconic and new venues.
Comprehensive transport system.
Internationally accessible Games (European rail links, budget airlines, multiple
airports).
Requirements
The growth of the modern Games has amplified the contributions of nationalism and
commerce to the event, but has also opened up a range of new dimensions. Two very
obvious examples are the increasing participation by female athletes and the
emergence of the Paralympics as a way of showcasing sport through disability. Gender
and disability are two social dimensions that have enjoyed elevated acknowledgement
and empowerment as the twentieth century has progressed. Here is evidence that more
broadly based social concerns over access and equality are being mirrored in sport.
To be awarded the 2012 Games required more than an impressive Olympic tradition.
Success in this regard was due to an opportune coalition between some very effective
players, led by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone,
and the Chairman of the London Organising Committee, Lord Coe. As a track athlete,
Sebastian Coe had won the 1500m gold and the 800m silver medal at the 1980 Olympics
in Moscow, and then repeated the performance at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
The Olympic brand

It is claimed by many (IOC, national governments, host cities, big business, broadcast
media) that the Olympic brand has no negative connotations, but rather an association
with such words as competitive, peaceful, multi-cultural, honourable and dynamic. But
what about performance-enhancing drug use, commercialisation, overt media control,
political hijacking and jingoistic nationalism?
A rational project
The demands in hosting the modern Olympics have changed markedly since Londons
last experience. Today, in recognition of the massive financial responsibility involved in
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staging them and in keeping with the notion of accountability to those who pay, a legacy
is required. The Games have become a vehicle through which cities regenerate housing,
transport and commercial infrastructure. An equally important aspect of legacy is the
cultural one: the Olympics aspire to reach well beyond sport alone.
The intended consequences of hosting the 2012 Games in a domestic context are to
have sports profile raised on the broader political and social agenda, recognising its
importance in helping cultural integration. Understanding the increasingly secular and
fragmented nature of modern society, politicians see sport as a rational means of
working towards social cohesion and integration. With this increased use of sport to
achieve political objectives (which, of course, is nothing new), the 2012 Games have
become a tool in the development of a modernist liberal/centre-left agenda. While
increased funding is an undoubted benefit for those interested in, or involved with sport,
it is also the case that there is no such thing as a free lunch: sport has both to deliver the
broader objectives and conform to the intended stereotype.
More practically, the 2012 benefits for governing bodies are increased mass
participation at grassroots level; the development of talent identification systems; the
development of high-performance models; and influence and a profile for these
bureaucracies. In terms of sporting benefits, there will doubtless be an improved sports
infrastructure together with increased funding for elite sport that, alongside the
advantages of competing in ones home country, ought to lead to improved results for
the British teams.
The intended legacy of the 2012 London Games
Improved government relations for sports organisations.

Facility infrastructure.
Governing body infrastructure.
Financial dividend.
Increased brand value for British sports.
Living the dream

Hosting a world celebration such as a modern Olympic Games is without doubt a risk
for any city and the nation that it represents. Failure to deliver anything other than a
truly excellent Games would mean a loss of face that would be a national disgrace.
However, the benefits of success are also enormous: for a short time London will be the
focus of the entire worlds media. Britain will project its own cultural message, define its
own aspirations, perform on its own stage (or in its own sports stadium). The feel good
factor in terms of domestic political gain is well understood, while the extensive
regeneration and smartening up of some of London should have an enduring effect.
Although there is something of the celebrate now and pay later mentality involved
(going well beyond sport itself), Britain is deeply committed to the Olympic ideal.
Whatever the risks, the costs and the work ahead, the potential gains, both national and
political, are tantalising.
London 2012 estimates

More than 200 nations.
10,500 athletes.
37
6,000 coaches and officials.

2,000 judges and referees.
5,000 Olympic family members ( e.g. IOC members ).
20,000 media representatives.
7,000 official sponsor representatives.
Over nine million tickets will be sold, equivalent to around 500,000 spectators
per day.
4,000 athletes and 2,500 officials in the Paralympic Games.
Activity 3.3
The London Olympics of 2012 will be the biggest and best ever. Prepare a minipresentation that is a critical evaluation of this statement. Useful websites are:
www.olympic.org The start for comprehensive links into the Olympic movement.
www.london2012.org The focus on London with details of the bid, the plans and
the progress.
www.perseus.tufts.edu/olympics Useful history, particularly on the ancient
Games.
www.nbcsports.com/olympics Insights into the Americanisation of the
Olympics with video clips and a commentary of commercial expediency.
Important social themes in the representation of the

modern Olympics
The influence of the ancient Games
Many claims have been made, not least by de Coubertin himself, that the modern Games
were a revival of those ancient festivities at Olympia in Greece. The ancient Games were,
however, a religious festival in honour of Zeus. The Hellenic religion would seem very
alien to a modern eye, being predicated on the notion that the gods had a physical
manifestation and walked among humans, interfering in peoples lives as they saw fit.
While many of the ancient contests bear a similarity with those we recognise as athletic
sports, the meanings and values attached to them are likely to be so distinct from those
that we share, that it is questionable if we can call the ancient Games a sporting
celebration in anything but the broadest sense.
While much was made of the supposed amateur status of the ancient competitors,
it remains the case that neither the notion of amateur nor professional would have been
explicable to them. These terms have only become meaningful to us through the
concerns of the British (and subsequently European) middle and upper classes in the
late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Using the symbolism of the ancient Games was beneficial for de Coubertin in
establishing his modern Olympics, and we still willingly engage in this project. However,
to claim that we are involved in the same endeavour as were the ancient Greeks is
dubious at best.
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Cultural currency
De Coubertin was not the first to use the name Olympics in relation to a festival of
athletic activities. Robert Dovers Olympiks held in the Cotswolds between 1612 and
1850 featured physical contests; the Liverpool Olympics (18621867) was a modern
athletic festival; and the Much Wenlock Olympian Games (18501895) founded by
Dr William Penny Brookes, so influential in relation to de Coubertins ideas, are merely
the British examples of this phenomenon.
Fascination with the lost cultures of ancient Greece had been evident in Britain since
at least the 1500s. There were rumours of a great festival where the Greeks showed
their physical prowess in contests watched over by their gods. Much of the substance of
these tales came from the Latin texts of Pindar.
Olympism: the ethical basis of the modern Games

Pierre Frdy, Baron de Coubertin, was a French aristocrat who hoped through pedagogy
to invigorate the youth of his country. He was something of an historian and an anglophile
influenced by the ideas of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School. The notion of
athletic games as formulated in the English public schools in the mid-nineteenth century
appealed to de Coubertin, as did the code of the amateur sportsman. On seeing a
dramatic re-enactment of the ancient Olympics on a visit to an American university, he
brought the ideas, together with the aspirations of the aforementioned Penny Brookes,
and created the concept of what we now recognise as the modern Olympic Games.
De Coubertin, together with Carl Diem, were responsible for articulating a philosophy relating to the Games. This has become known as Olympism and is a collection of
quite complex ideas that underpin the greater claims of the modern Olympic movement.
Formulated around equity, friendship, freedom and peace, they articulate the belief that
the Olympics is much more than a mere sports festival.
Politics and the modern Games

There is no sanctity in sport and the inevitable demands of conflicting national interests
have bedevilled the Games to a far greater extent than de Coubertin envisioned. Making
political statements on a world stage is too good an opportunity to miss for those with
a grievance. As such, the IOC has had to deal with politically motivated posturing,
boycotts and terrorism at the Games themselves, while beyond these confines it has
had to initiate exclusions in order to reflect opinion well beyond sport. The conflicting
demands faced in such circumstances are well illustrated by the IOC response to the
terrorist outrage at the Munich Games in 1972. Castigated by many for undue haste in
restarting the Games after 11 Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage and killed
together with some of the terrorists, the IOC had sought to continue only after a
consensus had been sought among competing nations.
The problems and demands of staging a successful Olympics

The demands of success have been considerable for the greatest cultural festival of
modern times. The seemingly endless desire for sports both traditional and novel to
become part of the Olympic family has resulted in a phenomenon that is now recognised
39
as gigantism, where the games become too large to be affordable to stage, to manage
and to maintain the necessary media interest. Abandoning the amateur code was also
painful and protracted, but to maintain the focus as the premier festival for elite
sportsmen and women in the modern world, it was a necessity to allow professionalism
into the Games. Likewise, sponsorship of the Games, teams and athletes is a reality,
overturning many of the long- and dearly held maxims of the Olympic ideal.
Such is the cache of an Olympic medal that the ethics of sport are constantly
challenged through cheating and performance-enhancing drug use. That this appears to
be a feature of all elite sports, both within and beyond the Olympics, does not lessen
the profound difficulties faced by the Games authorities and sports governing bodies in
this regard.
Women
The journey made by women throughout the development of the modern Games is one
that illustrates both the strengths and the weaknesses of organised sports. Initially
denied access to the Games (attributed to de Coubertins reservations about the
suitability of competitive sports for women), pressure and the tide of the times resulted
in a strictly limited and somewhat begrudging inclusion of women in tennis, golf and
yachting at the Paris Games in 1900. Womens swimming events were introduced in 1912
and athletics in 1928. The programme of events for women is now extensive, although it
still has some way to go before it matches that available to men. The notion that sport
was a genre created by men for men has been successfully challenged by sporting
women throughout the twentieth century; this is reflected in the composition of the
modern Olympics in the early years of the new century.
The Paralympics
At Stoke Mandeville in 1948, Sir Ludwig Guttmann put together a sports competition
for veterans of the Second World War who had suffered spinal cord injuries. Joined four
years later by similarly injured athletes from the Netherlands, an international
movement began. Following the Olympic template, games for athletes with disability
were first held in Rome in 1960. Under the banner of the Paralympics, the movement
came of age in Toronto in 1976.
The Paralympics are sports events for athletes from six designated disability
groups. Emphasising athletic achievements rather than the disability, the event is truly
elite in nature. Participants in the Paralympic Games have increased from 400 athletes
from 23 countries in Rome in 1960 to 3,800 athletes from 136 countries in Athens in
2004. The Paralympic Games are held in the same year as the Olympic Games. Since
1988s Seoul Paralympic Games, they have taken place at the same venues as the
Olympics. In June 2001, an agreement was made between the IOC and the International
Paralympic Committee (IPC) enshrining this practice. After 2012, the city chosen to host
the Olympic Games will also host the Paralympics.
Since the Second World War, sporting bureaucracies have reacted to the growing
awareness of and inclusion in Western societies of those with disability by making
efforts to include them. The IOC, after some initial reservations, has moved to bring the
IPC into the Olympic family. The ultimate merger of the Olympics with the Paralympics
is still some way off.
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Activity 3.4
Who was Pierre de Coubertin? Write an entry for an imaginary book of Significant
Sporting People.
In this account you will need to locate factual information about the man;
indicate something of his motivations and the source(s) of his inspiration and key
influences; make some comment on the importance of his legacy for the social
formation of modern sport.
Review
The modern Olympics has emerged from a complex synthesis of historical circumstances, idealism and the use of sport as a vehicle for economic investment, cultural
education and social development. The political dimension of Olympic sport was already
visible in 1908 with the evident Anglo-American tensions. As the twentieth century
progressed, new challenges to the established order of sport also became ever more
prominent. Three of the most significant were the emergence of powerful social
agendas reflecting political and social demands for greater equality based on race,
gender and (dis)ability.
The outcome of these social dynamics can be seen in the planning for the 2012
Games and the structural changes to sport, such as the emergence of equity and the
diversity of policies within the governing bodies of sport. London has established a preeminent Olympic tradition that helped propel the city towards winning the 2012 bidding
process. The Olympics has become an important sporting event that embraces a host
of meanings and agendas that this book sets out to illuminate.
In particular, we will show how sport is an outcome of the modern age (it embraces
value systems concerned with competition, discipline and productivity, for example);
how sport is structured and organised in specific ways (that facilitate international
sporting events, for example); how sport reflects stratification in society (certain sports
have a clear class bias among participants, for example, while sport more generally
favours male propensity over female); how sport is a vehicle for social development
(physical education in schools, for example, and recreational activities that may include
engaging risk as in adventure sports); how sport has a role to play in shaping and
maintaining our most obvious source of identity the body. Moreover, it is the pictures,
words and other images prevalent in the media that set the agenda of the idealised
human body (here, the athletic body is the ideal to aspire towards). Finally, we will
address the area of sport and commodification, and discuss how sport has become more
like a business, with participants and spectators engaged in a series of exchange
systems.
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3 / Sport, modernity and the Olympics

Now that you have worked through the chapter, you will understand the Olympics
in terms of a modern social narrative. In order to ensure that you have met the
learning outcomes of the chapter, you should now write a short paragraph on each
of the following topics, making sure that you clearly relate your work back to
specifics in the chapter:
1.
How does a critical evaluation of the Olympics illuminate the sociological

analysis of modern sport?
2. Based on your understanding of the London Olympic Games of 1908, 1948
and 2012, detail how the social themes inherent in the Olympics have
developed and changed over time.
3. Using Olympic-based examples, identify the social and cultural meanings
attached to modern sport.
Further study
There are many excellent books on the Olympics. One of the best to extend your
understanding of the Olympic movement is:
Guttmann, A (2002) The Olympics: a history of the modern Games. Urbana: University of
Illinois Press.
To review further the London Olympiads, you are advised to read the following:
Holt, R (1989) Sport and the British: a modern history. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
For an more sociologically focused analysis read:
Toohey, K and Veal, AJ (2000) The Olympic Games: a social science perspective. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Young, DC (1996) The modern Olympics: a struggle for revival. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press.
If you want to further enhance your academic understanding of the Games, some of the
best sources of information are in academic journals which can be accessed through
your college or public library, for example:
Brown, G (2000) Emerging issues in Olympic sponsorship: implications for host cities,
Sport Management Review.
Guttmann, A (2003) Sport, politics and the engaged historian, Journal of Contemporary
History.
Hong, F (1998) The Olympic movement in China: ideals, realities and ambitions, Culture,
Sport and Society.
Loland, S (1995) Coubertins ideology of Olympism from the perspective of the history
of ideas, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies.
Murray, B (1992) Berlin in 1936: old and new work on the Nazi Olympics, The International
Journal of the History of Sport.
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Chapter 4
Introduction to sociological theories

of sport in modern society
Paul Beedie
The modern world is a complicated place to grow up in. Sport is an important component
of this world in lots of ways, many of which (for example, how the media promotes sport,
how we consume sport and how we invest physical capital in our bodies) will be explored
in much more depth in later chapters. This chapter has a number of specific aims. The
first is concerned with understanding the importance of theory within the sociological
analysis of sport. The second is to provide you with an explanation of theory and its
usefulness. The third is to set out the main points of the major sociological theories that
inform the subsequent chapters. The fourth is to provide some guidance on how
sociological theories and concepts might be usefully applied to an understanding of
sport.
Learning outcomes
provide a brief outline explaining what sociological theory is;
explain the role of sociological theories within the analysis of sport in
modern society;
explain the major characteristics of the dominant sociological theories;
summarise how they can be applied to an understanding of modern sport;
detail how sociological theories address the issue of agency and structure;
explain why all theoretical analyses of sport are limited by their own
specific focus.
Introduction: what is theory?

Social theory is an explanation of a relationship or relationships in the real world.
Houlihan (2003, p12) suggests that theory is the best currently accepted explanation
of the available evidence of a relationship or a natural phenomenon. Miles (2001, p1)
goes further than this when he suggests: effective social theory is capable of having a
real impact on how we perceive our own individual place in that world and how our own
experiences actively reflect broader processes of social change.
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4 / Introduction to sociological theories of sport in modern society
Theory is important, then, because although we are all educated and may feel we
know about how the real world operates because of the way we interact with people in
different places on a day-to-day basis, we rarely, if ever, see the complete picture. There
are a number of reasons for this. First, there are all sorts of power relationships and
structural constraints which for most of us are invisible and yet which have major
impacts upon our social activities. The idea of the hidden curriculum in schools
illustrates this point well. Pupils attend lessons in maths, English, PE, geography and
others to gain specific subject knowledge, but by doing so they are learning other
things, such as boys are segregated from girls at certain times; the teacher is a figure of
authority; to be in a certain place at a certain time; work can be monotonous, but
dedication to a task will bring its own rewards; personal organisation (books, kit, lunch)
is required; passing exams leads to better employment opportunities; academic
knowledge is valued as superior to vocational expertise, and so forth. In sport more
specifically, to be ignorant of the latest exploits of the top football teams or the winners
of Olympic medals risks being socially side-lined as out of touch with the zeitgeist.
Second, society is not a fixed social circumstance, but rather it is dynamic and
evolutionary. As it is generally accepted that the pace of life and therefore the rate of
change is speeding up, it becomes even more important to have theoretical tools to
help understand these changes.
Why do we need theory?

It provides a framework for asking questions about the social world.
It provides a toolbox of concepts and ideas for understanding the social world
(e.g. capital).
It helps us predict and explain what is happening in the world.
It helps us make informed decisions and choices.
There is, however, some resistance to the idea of theory, and there are a number of
reasons for this. In particular, there is the idea that theory is the preserve of academics
who write in ways that are inaccessible to the general population. Related to this is the
question that, as the world is changing so rapidly, how can theoretical frameworks
developed many years ago be relevant today? With reference to sport, this chapter is a
response to such criticisms and will show that theories are themselves sets of ideas
that contain a certain fluidity (and can thus respond to social dynamics), and where
rigidity becomes an issue other theories emerge to accommodate more recent social
conditions. It will also endorse the position championed by Miles (2001, p2) who
advocates social theory that operates from grounded contexts in the real world and in
doing so reminds us that social reality is indeed a social and cultural construction:
Broad patterns of social change have actively altered our everyday experiences
of social life. Social change is not remote in any sense of the word. It actively
impinges on who and what we are. It manifests itself in how we relate to each
other as human beings and in how we construct our individual and social
identities. Social change is the very stuff of social life. We are indeed the actors
in the play of social change.
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Social theory therefore has an important role to play in understanding the modern
world. It has many applications from the everyday common-sense understanding of
why we do things in certain ways (for the individual) to the more specifically applied
possibilities of social policy development (for the government). This leads the discussion
back to the creative tensions in sociology between structure and agency the
institutional constraints of daily life (structure) set against the empowerment of
individuals to behave in a manner of their own choosing (agency).
Social theory and its usefulness in the study of sport

There are two broadly defined groups of theory. Those that align themselves with a
structural view of society (sometimes known as macro theories) can be subdivided into
Functionalist and Conflict theory. Theories that draw upon an individualist perspective
(sometimes known as micro theories) can be subdivided into Interactionist, Critical and
Feminist theory.
Structural approaches are concerned with processes of socialisation and stratification. These two central ideas are developed in Chapters 6, 7 and 8. Socialisation is
concerned with how we learn to play our role in the social drama of everyday life. A good
example here is that sport is important because being physically active and fit means
our contribution to society can be positive so traditionally boys play football and girls
play netball, except that this is changing because, despite structural guidance about
gender-specific games, these ideas can be and are challenged (girls football is one of
the fastest-growing sports). Stratification is concerned with the strata or layers in
society that create social boundaries; here, the chapters concerned with class, gender,
race, ethnicity and (dis)ability extend the discussion. Age is a good example of how
society is stratified we attend school between the years of 518, we can vote and drink
alcohol aged 18, we retire at 65. All these conventions create social groups, which
disguises the heterogeneous characteristics of people who might, for example, choose
to go on working into their 80s. Nevertheless, structures such as these underpin both
functionalism and conflict theory.
Functionalist theory
Definition: functionalist theory
A sociological perspective that emphasises the need to identify and study the
function of a social practice or institution and from this to determine the
contribution which the practice or institution makes to the effective running of
the society as a whole.
Functionalism is a theoretical perspective that is based on the premise that social
events can best be understood in terms of the function that they perform, that is, the
contribution they make to the continuation of society. In this view, society is seen as a
number of interrelated parts that share common values and thereby transcend the
differences between people the whole is greater than the individual. Functionalists
see society as corporate, that is, a body, with bodily parts that need to operate together
45
to make society continue. Functionalism assumes that there are scientific truths about
how the body works and these, when understood, can be set down as laws.
This is a useful theoretical perspective as it enables us to see sport as a social
institution that is a reflection of society as a whole. This institution can then be
compared to and understood in relation to other bodily parts in society. Sport is studied
in relation to the contribution that it makes to the bodily system as a whole, for example,
a physically fit population can form a productive workforce in the economy. Research
that informs this theoretical position explores sport participation and its positive
outcomes for society (e.g. improved health and well being through sport tackling
obesity).
There are, however, problems with this theoretical position. General criticisms point
out that functionalism lacks the capacity to adapt over time as social circumstances
evolve. Additionally, it overemphasises consensus while hiding potential conflicts and
it ignores agency. Regarding sport, functionalism assumes that all social groups benefit
equally from sports and it does not recognise that sports are social constructions that
privilege or disadvantage certain groups over others. Lastly, it overemphasises the
positive consequences of sport for society (Bilton et al., 2002).
Functionalist theory will help us understand:
the promotion, development and growth of organised sport;

how sport plays a vital part in the processes of socialisation;
the increase in sport participation opportunities;
the increasing amounts of supervision and control of athletes;
the importance of compulsory physical education and coaching education
programmes;
the success of elite programmes.
Conflict theory
Definition: conflict theory
A sociological perspective that emphasises that modern society is characterised
by social divisions that are based on an unequal distribution of economic, social
and cultural resources and this inevitably leads to a conflict of interests between
those who benefit from this distribution and those who do not.
Conflict theory has emerged from the theoretical framework set out by Karl Marx and is
often, therefore, known as Marxism, with its more recent developments (Marx was
writing in the nineteenth century) often referred to as neo-Marxism (Giddens, 2001).
Conflict theory recognises that resources in society are finite and not equitably
distributed. When resources are scarce, groups struggle to gain access to and control of
these. Here, the emphasis is upon socio-economic and political relationships. In
particular, conflict theory unites resources and power, arguing that, when resources are
scarce, those groups who have access to them acquire a form of power (economic,
political and social) over those groups who do not.
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Activity 4.1
Once you have grasped the basic theoretical ideas encompassed by conflict
theory, think through how this might apply to sport.
Who are the groups/people who control sport?
Think about club chairpersons, managers, chief executives, TV moguls,
coaches . . . do these all have equal power?
Think about how many professional footballers become coaches and why?
Are the powerful people in sport black? White? Male? Female?
How many sports clubs are actually run by the fans?
Conflict theorists study sports in terms of how they promote economic exploitation
and capitalist expansion. Research to support this theoretical position is therefore
concerned with how sports operate to perpetuate the power and privilege of elite
groups in society. There are limitations to this theoretical position. By using economy as
the baseline, there is an assumption that all social life is economically determined.
Similarly, the emphasis upon wealth-specific resources ignores the importance of other
structuring dimensions of society such as gender, race, ethnicity and age, which appear
to be important to the world of sport in particular. Lastly, this theory ignores the
possibilities that participating in sport can be a personally and socially empowering
experience.
Conflict theory will help us understand:
the significance of class inequality and how it might be reduced or even
eliminated through sport;
how athletes and spectators are used for the profit and personal gain of the
economic elite;
that, by emphasising play and recreation above commercial spectator sports,
participation may be more productive for the individual.
So, although far from being a theoretical panacea, structural theories do give us
some conceptual tools to work with so that we can make sense of sport in society.
Functionalism introduces the idea of the body and how sport can make a contribution to
this corporeal operation of society. Conflict theory draws our attention to notions of
economy, resources and power the concept of capital is particularly useful to
understand sport because it can take a number of transferable forms such as physical
(investment in the body), economic (sport and money), social (who one knows) and
cultural (what one knows about sport) capital.
Interactionist theory
Definition: interactionist theory
A sociological perspective that usually emphasises the need to interpret social
behaviour by examining everyday social actions so that our perceptions of social
47
reality can be demonstrated as constructed out of the complex interactions

between individuals and the social world they inhabit.
Whereas functionalism and conflict theory are concerned with the structures of
society, interactionist theory focuses on the individual. The base assumptions here are
that society is created and maintained by social interaction: we are all actors on a stage
who generate meaning through what we do, where we do it and who we do it with.
Interactionism draws upon the micro-social investigations of Erving Goffman (see, for
example, The presentation of self in everyday life, 1969). Goffman developed a number
of useful concepts that theorise social activity at the level of the individual. These
include the metaphor of stage (the place where social activity happens), front and back
regions (the locations where we are either on social display or resting), actors, scripts,
directors (encompassing the performance of everyday life we act out a script,
drawing on negotiated or common language that may have been written by people who
have been there before us) and face (the negotiation of social encounters in ways that
enable both parties to retain their social decorum).
Interactionists who are interested in sport use interpretive and qualitative research
methods that endeavour to present the views of the people being investigated. The
interest here is to uncover the social processes associated with becoming involved and
staying involved in sports, and in particular how people negotiate a sense of identity
through sport. An additional concern for this theoretical position is the creation of subcultures, that is, how they emerge and how a person becomes in or out of such a socially
defined group. This theoretical approach can help us understand a number of different
relationships, for example, between Olympic sport achievement and ideas of
nationalism and patriotism. Equally, it can be useful in illuminating how a skateboarding
subculture operates where inclusion and exclusion might be much more than ones ability
to follow a dress code.
While providing a useful alternative theoretical position to structuralist theories,
interactionism can be criticised for overemphasising the individual and failing to
recognise adequately the role that differences in power have to play, particularly with
regard to structural inequalities. More generally, the social world becomes relative
so that nothing can be wholly false or wholly true. Lastly, interactionism does not
adequately address social change.
Interactionist theory will help us understand that:
sports might need to change to match the perspectives and identities of those
who play them (e.g. touch rugby, mixed junior football, special schools athletic
events such as the 300m);
sports organisations need to become more democratic, less autocratic and less
hierarchically organised (e.g. the real Manchester United FC after the US-driven
Glazer take-over of that club);
identity formation processes that normalise pain, injury and substance use in
sport need to change.
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Critical theory
Definition: critical theory
A series of sociological perspectives that emphasise the complex interrelationships between modern social structures and institutions, the impact of
systematic power inequalities, culture and social groups.
Critical theory is not a single theory but, even more so than structural theories and
interactionism, one that embraces a whole raft of theoretical ideas. For some theorists,
for example, feminism is under the umbrella of critical theory, but such is its importance
to the understanding of sport (because of the gendered aspect of sport participation)
that it is considered separately here. Critical theory uses ideas from other theoretical
strands, for example, it is interested in power and the distribution of resources in the
same way that Marxism is and thus might be thought of as Neo-Marxism, but it is
essentially concerned with more than economics. Critical theory has an ambition to get
under the surface of the social world to uncover the assumptions, values, positions and
ideas that form our culture, that is, how culture is produced and reproduced. It is also
concerned with power relations, that is, how these operate in cultural production and
reproduction. Lastly, it is concerned with ideological struggles. Ideologies are literally
the organisation of ideas into systems that determine a way of thinking about the
world. To this way of thinking sports are social constructions that change as power
relations change and as narratives and discourses change that is, the stories, pictures,
news items and advertising images through which we construct our understanding of
the world. This constantly moving social landscape can be illustrated in sport by the
example of marathon running; originally the preserve of elite male athletes, running a
marathon has now become an important sporting aspiration (socially and physically) for
a much greater range of ordinary people (old and young, male and female, casual joggers
and club runners).
Critical theorys key insight, beyond the obvious point that sport is too diverse
to include as a single function of society, is that sports are much more than a reflection of society. Instead, sports are about people and places or sites where
there are ongoing struggles over the organisation and meaning of sports. An example
called Drawing Lines, is set out by Jeff Howe (2003). He discusses in a narrative
form the artistic merits of skateboarding. The group he was involved with skate
for pleasure at a wasteland they have taken ownership of and where they have built
their own topography of jumps, ramps and runs. The group skate for the intrinsic
aesthetics of participation as a form of deep play and actively resist subscribing
to commercial pressures within skateboarding to further their sporting careers
by accepting sponsorship and by taking part in competitions they take pride in
resisting the structuring propensity of sporting interests that some skateboarders
have subscribed to. This group is an example of resistance to the mainstream, a position predicated on an ambition to remain true to skateboarding as a form of selfexpression.
Academics who are interested in research using critical theory are interested in
the narratives and images people use to give meaning to their sport. They are also
interested in how dominant narratives, images and power relations can be disrupted to
49
promote progressive changes. The limitations of this approach can be seen in the
complexity and diversity of theoretical ideas encompassed. For example, there are no
clear guidelines for identifying and assessing forms of resistance and strategies for
producing transformation. Similarly, there are no unified strategies for dealing with
social problems, conflicts and injustice. Lastly, the emphasis upon resistance ignores
instances when dominant norms are good, for example, as in the Olympic social legacy
of urban regeneration.
Critical theory will help us understand that:
sport can be a way of challenging and transforming exploitive and oppressive
practices;
sports are diverse and provide a range of participation opportunities across all
social groups;
the ideological implications of sport can be challenged and redefined;
people are more empowered than they think to make these changes, and
alternative positions of power and of ideas can be promoted by fanzines, blogs
and enlightened journalism.
Feminist theory
Definition: feminist theory
A sociological perspective that emphasises the centrality of gender in analysing
the social world, and particularly the uniqueness of the experience of women.
(Giddens, 2001, p689)
Feminism is particularly relevant to understand sport because sports are generally
gendered activities grounded primarily in the values and experiences of men with
power and influence (Bilton et al., 2002). Research using feminist theory is interested
in how sports reproduce gendered ideas and practices related to physicality, sexuality
and the body. Of particular interest here is how sports are involved in the production
of ideas about masculinity and femininity. For example, more people are now participating in running and jogging, and therefore consume, that is, buy and wear, a range of
footwear, shorts, leggings and tops to do so. A visit to a sports shop will demonstrate
how this equipment and clothing reinforce ideas of masculinity and femininity. Typically,
female running shoes are in pink and pastel colours, while mens items are in dark and
strong colours; womens clothing offers more choice in terms of quantity and
emphasises clinging designs that accentuate female bodily curves whereas mens
clothing is loose and free-flowing. Feminist theory, therefore, is especially useful to
understand sport because gender is such an important structuring dimension of the
organisation of sports today.
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Activity 4.2
Buy one or more magazines focused on sport. Look carefully through the text and
critically examine its displays of physical activity, clothing and footwear. Pay
particular attention to colours, shapes and visual displays, such as pictures of
athletes and presentation generally (such as advertisements and the models used).
Using ideas drawn from feminist theory, try to explain the ways that men and
women are portrayed differently in that sport.
Once you have undertaken this brief piece of research, take some time to talk
over your findings with some of your peers. Were your findings broadly similar?
What do you conclude? Should the differences we see in sport across the
gender divide be explained as merely a reflection of biological differences? Or
are there other, more socially focused, explanations available?
There are limitations to feminist theories, for example, as with other forms of critical
theory, there is a lack of clear guidelines for assessing forms of resistance. Similarly,
feminism does not give enough attention to the relationship between gender and other
categories of experience. Lastly, feminist theories often lead to victimising and overgeneralisation or over-compensation.
Feminist theory will help us understand:
that sport can become a site to challenge aspects of society that systematically
privilege men over women;
how to expose and transform oppressive forms of sexism and homophobia in
sports;
how sports can empower women to promote notions of partnership and
competition with others.
Review
No one theoretical position offers a straightforward way of understanding sport.
Instead, each has a series of strengths and weaknesses. The key here is to recognise
these and to apply them with ones investigative hat on so that certain theoretical
positions and/or certain conceptual ideas are used when they are useful to the ambition
of explaining sport in society. What one is trying to understand will be determined
by ones interest so that, for example, when an academic gets a research grant to
investigate a certain aspect of sport s/he needs to use theoretical ideas that most
closely match his/her research question. For example, research on behalf of Sport
England to establish the health benefits of regular sport participation is likely to use a
functionalist approach, whereas an investigation of how identity construction through
sport (or not) operates among British Pakistani populations is more likely to use an
interactionist perspective. Appropriate research designs will follow from the theoretical
ideas that best inform the question, that is, what one wants to find out about sport.
51

Before you move on to the next section of the book, you should spend some time
carefully reviewing what you have learned from this discussion of sociological
theory and its application to the study of sport in modern society. Based on your
understanding of the chapter and the undertaking of the learning tasks, answer
the following questions:
1. What are the main purposes of a social theory?
2. What are the four theoretical perspectives highlighted by the above
discussion?
3. Can you briefly describe the main characteristics of each perspective?
4. Which of the perspectives emphasise the need to address the ways
individual agency and the social structure interact in the social construction
of sport?
5. Can you explain why all theoretical analyses of sport are limited by their
own specific focus?
If you found any of the answers to the above review questions difficult, there are
a number of ways to increase your confidence within this complex terrain of
theories and concepts. The first is to use the questions to focus your re-reading
of the relevant sections of the chapter. The second is to proceed to the next
section of the book where you will find that each of these perspectives will be
re-examined through a more detailed and applied discussion of sport.
Further study
There are a number of excellent introductions to sociology that cover all the main
theoretical positions and illustrate these with examples, such as:
Bilton, T; Bonnett, K; Jones, P; Lawson T. (2002) Introductory sociology. 4th edition.
Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.
Giddens, A (2006) Sociology. 5th edition. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Within sport sociology there are numerous texts that provide a more extended overview
of the importance of sociological theories. Two highly recommended ones are:
Chapter 2: Using social theories: how can they help us study sports in society, in Coakley, J
(2003) Sports in society: issues and controversies. 8th edition. New York: McGrawHill.
Chapter 1: Sport, theory and the problem of values, in Jarvie, G (2006) Sport, culture and
society: an introduction. London: Routledge.
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PART 2
Getting set:
key debates in the
sociological analysis of
modern sport
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Chapter 5
Sports organisation and governance

Peter Craig and Gordon T Mellor
This chapter examines the structure and on-going development of modern sport. The
chapter will further extend your understanding of some of the important social
processes that have helped structure modern sport introduced in Chapter 2. Here we
will be concerned with developing your understanding of the ways in which modern
forms of sport have become rationalised and bureaucratically controlled; the complex nature of sports organisation structure and governance; and how on-going political,
social and economic changes are transforming sports organisational structure and
its processes of governance. When considering sports social role and its modes of
organisation, we need to recognise the importance of developing a sociological perspective. As the issues discussed in the chapter will demonstrate, the policies and
strategies adopted by the various elements of sports organisational network are
not always adequately integrated and sometimes focused on conflicting interests.
Collectively, however, they have a far-reaching impact on the future of sport.
While the focus of the discussion is orientated towards sport in a British context,
where the analysis can usefully extend into wider political, economic, social and cultural
contexts, the mode of sports organisation and governance within international sport
will also be considered.
Learning outcomes
give examples of the historical development of modern sports codification

and organisation;
detail the major components of the sports organisational structure in

Britain;
identify and explain the six areas of government intervention in sport

identified by Houlihan (1997);
explain the work of sport quangos within the development of British sport;
outline some of the major influences that are influencing the changes that
are impacting the organisation and governance of sport in Britain.
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5 / Sports organisation and governance
Introduction
One of the most persistent issues that sociology has sought to understand is how the
way in which we organise our social institutions dovetails with the requirements of
social control. Underpinning this is a desire to identify the processes that give our
society its structure and sense of order (Eitzen, 2000). As you should remember from
your reading of Chapter 4, for some sociologists (Durkheim and Parsons are two good
examples), the ordering of our complex modern world is evident in the way the social
institutions (such as sport) are structured and organised. Because most of us tend to
believe that we should attempt to act in the best interests of our society, we mostly
accept, albeit sometimes reluctantly (e.g. the paying of taxes or the acceptance of an
umpires decision), the requirements of British legal order and its bureaucratic controls.
It is a normal state of affairs and a sign of a healthy society when most of us are
reasonably content to accept some level of social control on our lives. Other social
theorists, most notably Marx, reject this analysis and suggest that the maintenance of
social order emerges out of the ways that those who have economic wealth and power
control the social system so that it always acts in their best interests and not in the
interests of everyone. More recently, a growing body of influential social theorists
(Giddens, 1990; Featherstone, 1991) have argued that social processes, such as
globalisation, the feminist critique of male power, the mass migration of peoples and
cultures, and the rise of consumer society, have meant that many of our traditional
assumptions about the order of the modern world need to be radically revisited. The
point to be drawn from this work is that there is a need to question how best to organise,
control and manage our social world and the world of sport, which is now such an
important part of it.
One of the most important contemporary social theorists who has set out to
examine how these changes have impacted on modes of social organisation within our
contemporary world are Castells (1996, 1997, 1998). For Castells, society and its modes
of organisation are shaped by its system of values and institutions. Power within the
society (to maintain the existing social order or to effect change) is determined by the
structural capacity to impose ones will, and politics is the process of determining where
power lies and governs its exercise.
Definition: power
Power has many sources but can be understood as the ability of individuals, or
members of a group, to achieve aims and further the interests they hold.
(Giddens, 2001, p696)
However, power and politics (which is closely associated with the use of power to
achieve specific social aims) need to be understood as being historically and culturally
specific. They are deeply affected by social changes in traditions and conventions, new
media and computing technologies, and the globalisation of economic systems. Castells
thesis revolves around the effect of these changes and the rise of what he terms the
network society (Castells, 1996). The network as a mode of organising our social world
was primarily driven by economic activity, but it is now extending its logic to other
domains and organisations such as those that characterise sport. As we will examine
later, in sport the network is made up of international, national and local sport
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organisations, governments, transnational corporations and other social institutions

that have little option but to work collectively in strategic alliances. Because of this,
the ways in which we understand the processes of governance and the uses of power
and social control need to be redefined.
The emergence and codification of modern sport

While the process of development or evolution in modern sport was undoubtedly
underway before the start of the nineteenth century, it was Victorian modernity that saw
the development of modern organised and codified sports. The very tenor of the modern
times facilitated the growth of the new sports. The increasingly industrial, urban,
organised and outward-looking world power of Victorian Britain was built on rationality
and, unsurprisingly, its recreations and entertainments reflected this (Blake, 1996).
At this time athletic games (as opposed to the older field sports such as hunting,
etc.) were made up in the main by the football sports that were to become soccer and
the codes of rugby-football; a modernised cricket that had left behind the excesses of
the eighteenth-century versions of the game; and the family of athletic activities that
we would now include under the title of track and field. Such was the growing power of
these sporting forms that in an almost unquestioned process, the belief in the moral
virtues and social benefits apparently attainable from such manly sports became
ingrained in the structure of modern British society.
The public schools had channelled and then promoted codified games, in the first
instance to manage the boys who were in their charge. So extensive were the benefits
both for the schools and the boys themselves, that these proto sports were almost
guaranteed a wider success. By 1864, the Clarendon Commission that was set up to
examine and report on the major public schools, commended them for instilling in the
boys their love of healthy sports and exercise. Conforming as the sports did to an
understanding of muscular Christianity, and with the boys from the schools going on to
university, the army and navy, into the civil service, into business and the professions at
home, as well as serving throughout the Empire, the Victorian model of modern athletic
sports was popularised both quickly and effectively.
Of course, some sportive games had undergone organisation prior to this period,
but the motivation here was somewhat different. The aristocratic sports, such as horse
racing, cricket and golf, were governed by well-established and exclusive clubs. Here we
see control and ownership as the prime concerns in activities that were considered to be
the province of the upper classes. Because racing and cricket were vehicles for
gambling, and with the wealthy willing to wager large sums, there was a need to assure
that the outcomes were fair.
A further impulse that facilitated the growth, organisation and standardisation
of sports was, of course, commercialisation. The growing middle classes were entrepreneurially capitalistic, and it became evident that there were money-making
opportunities inherent in the provision, organisation and promotion of the increasingly
popular sports.
What you need to note from this was that the organisation, bureaucratic control and
codification of modern sport was never a simple developmental social process. It was
and remains a complex process in which agreed rules, a participation ethic, established
57
authority, clear identity and popular support combined to produce an activity that
conforms to the dominant ideology. Through the processes inherent in its modernisation, sports were both a product of modern society and an essential institution in the
reproduction of the modern social order across the classes and generations.
The organisation of modern sport: some historical

landmarks
The impulse to formalise and organise the activities swept through British society in the
mid to late nineteenth century in a wave: the Football Association in 1863; the Amateur
Athletic Club in 1866; the Bicycle Union in 1866; the Amateur Swimming Association in
1869. The handling game became organised under the Rugby Football Union in 1871.
Major Wingfield published and subsequently marketed the rules of lawn tennis in 1874 (he
also sold the equipment). There followed the Hockey Association in 1876 and the
Amateur Rowing Association in 1882. Governing bodies were set up to regulate and
organise play, venue, duration, players, spectators and commercial aspects.
Some major competitions pre-date this drive for formalisation, but organising or
governing bodies were essential to controlled and regular fixtures. Henley Regatta was
begun in 1839, the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race in 1849, the Amateur, Professional
and Open Golf Championships were set up in 18581861, the FA Cup in 1871. County
Cricket began in 1873, the All England Croquet Club (Wimbledon) in 1877, England versus
Australia Test Matches in the 1880s, while the Football League was started in 1885.
These sports had joined the rational recreations and were justified on many counts.
It was in keeping with the spirit of the time that the athletic sports began to become
another recreational option for many men regardless of class; if they were good enough
to shape the public schoolboy, why not the rest of society? In an age dominated by selfimprovement, the sports were codified in order to facilitate competition and this
enabled, perhaps even demanded, popular access (Holt, 1989; Birley, 1993). By the start
of the twentieth century, sport became more and more part of British popular culture
and a modern imagination. These new forms of sport opened up increased levels of
participation and fanship based on the facts that sports were now regarded as:
godly and moral (through muscular Christianity);
healthy through their promotion of physical exercise;
socially important as they taught important virtues such as discipline, courage,
selflessness, self-reliance, aspiration to excellence, and so forth;
economically important;
a widely admired part of British cultural life that was starting to be emulated by
many countries around an increasingly interconnected world.
Conforming to the world-view of Victorian modernity, organised sport captured the
imagination of the modern age. It was this template, forged in the mid to late nineteenth
century that set the course that British, and indeed world, sport followed well into the
twentieth century. As has been articulated earlier in this book, the founder of the
modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, used it to fashion what was to become the
largest, most impressive and influential cultural festival that the modern world has seen.
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Until the 1960s and 1970s, the aspirations, expectations and concerns of the Olympics
were discernibly recognisable as those appropriated from how Victorian modernity
shaped and defined the organisation of modern sport.
One of the defining legacies of this process was that most sports were run as
independent, self-directing bureaucratic organisations that had little or no direct
connection to the broader processes of democratic organisation, governance and public
accountability that underpinned most of the other significant aspects of British society.
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s, and only after a number of disturbing sporting
failures, that public concerns about the lack of any co-ordinated national structure for
the development of sport became a matter of political concern. One important outcome
of this concern was the formation of the national Sports Council. The initial development
of the Council in 1965 largely kept it within the control of the government. This was
altered in 1971 when it was decided to insulate the Council from political control (Henry,
1993). Although this meant that the Council had a significant degree of political
autonomy, because the government remained in control of its funding, how far this
independence extended has remained open to question (Henry, 1993). By the mid-1970s,
the Council had become an integral element of the organisational structure of sport in
Britain and, under its Sport for All banner, was supporting a vast variety of participant
sports.
Definition: QUANGO
This term stands for quasi-autonomous non-governmental organisation.
The government sets up a quango when it is clear that, while it is in the national
interest that it promotes certain activities (e.g. sport, the arts) at the same time
it does not want to have the direct responsibility for its organisation and
administration: e.g. CCPR (Central Council for Physical Recreation).
As Houlihan (1997, p61) details, government intervention in sport tends to be a reaction
to specific social problems. These governmental concerns about sport generally fall into
six main policy concerns, to which we now turn.
The protection of the interests of powerful social groups

A good example of how powerful social groups were protected was the introduction of
laws protecting landowners from unauthorised use of their land for various sporting
and recreational purposes. A succession of game acts safeguarded landed hunting and
shooting interests in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this is a
continuation of a long-established appropriation of animals of the chase by the elite. In
a different guise, restriction of access to land for non-hunting purposes, such as
recreational walking, picnicking and the like, led to the mass trespass on Kinder Scout in
the Peak District in 1932. The more recent Right to Roam legislation illustrates a
modern hegemony in a different light: access to all non-proscribed and non-cultivated
areas has now been permitted, despite opposition from land-owning interests, farming
and indeed conservation bodies. As the recent banning of hunting with dogs highlights,
the traditionally powerful sections of British society are no longer able to use
governmental controls to guarantee their own interests in the face of the democratic
might of the massed population.
59
Health promotion and benefits

These are often targeted at low income (lower class) families and as a result of
the problems associated with industrialisation and urbanisation. From early in the
process of popularisation, the health benefits of sports and exercise have been claimed.
Often contrasted with poor diet, housing and access to medical care, the locus of
responsibility sits firmly with the individual. This is seen clearly in recent initiatives on
obesity.
Social integration
An example of this was how the doctrines of muscular Christianity and selfimprovement were used to instil discipline within the urban working classes in British
cities (the education acts of 1870 and 1902) (Houlihan 1997, p62, or Hargreaves, 1985).
Furthermore, there is a wider dimension in play here, where the recognition of, and
involvement in, common activities enables and promotes social cohesion. However,
Integration at this level may remain entirely tokenistic, with sections of British society
playing the same sports, but doing so separately: municipal tennis (working class) and
club tennis (middle class); Asian soccer teams and leagues.
Military preparedness
The introduction of physical training in elementary schools across Britain (classes often
instructed by ex-army, non-commissioned officers) came as a response to the perceived
poor performance of the British Army during the Crimean War of 185356. In fact, poor
nutrition, illness and disease were far more detrimental to the war effort than was the
physical preparedness of the soldiers who embarked for the Crimea. Archibald Maclaren
(181894) was charged with introducing a system of physical training for the military
and this was subsequently introduced into elementary schools for working-class
children. The middle- and upper-class boys in the public school system had an extensive
games culture already established by this time. Collectively, these became the
antecedents of our system of physical education that is now a compulsory element of
the national curriculum (see Chapter 6).
Promotion of international prestige and nationalism

While the popular appeal of sport always meant that it has had close associations
with expressions of nationalism and patriotic sentiments (Edensor, 2002), the celebration of, and investment of public money in, elite athletes and national teams was,
until relatively recently, distinctly limited. Today, massive public celebrations of sporting
victories an open-top bus tour for the England Rugby Union World Cup winning team
in 2003 and the Ashes-winning England cricket team of 2005 are well established.
Though almost unheard of until the 1970s, today we expectantly look forward to
the announcement of the governments New Year Honours List to see which of our
successful sports stars will receive national awards. In recent times, some of the
more notable ones have been Dame Kelly Holmes, Jonny Wilkinson, MBE and Paula
Radcliffe, MBE.
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Sport and economic regeneration

Although we will discuss this issue in a more detailed way in Chapter 9, it is important to
recognise that the economic significance of sport is such that no government can easily
ignore it. The London Olympic Games in 2012 and the Glasgow Commonwealth Games
in 2014 are subject to the expectation that major sports festivals will provide tangible
economic regeneration and leave a beneficial and lasting legacy. Indeed, in the British
context the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002 proved a considerable success
in this respect.
Time, however, does not stand still and, as Giddens (1990) notes, one of the defining
characteristics of the modern world is its restlessness and constant change. Over the
past few decades there have been a number of major political, economic, social, cultural
and organisational changes that have dramatically altered some of the fundamental
elements of modern society (Henry and Theodoraki, 2000). Some examples that you will
be familiar with from your own lives and sporting experiences are globalisation; the
seemingly endless growth of mass consumption; and the diverse ways that computermediated technologies have become an integral element of everyday life. While
these changes have created a great deal of debate within sociology (Giddens, 1990;
Featherstone, 1991) and within sport sociology (Andrews, 2000; Giulianotti, 2005), the
focus here is not to explore these often dense and highly abstract arguments, but to
examine how the changes have impacted (and are continuing to impact) the
organisational structure of sport in contemporary Britain.
The structure and organisation of British sport

Not surprisingly, given the processes identified above, within the UK the governance
and organisation of sport is full of complex and at times confusing relationships.
Governance in sport can be broadly understood as consisting of self-organising interorganisational frameworks (Jarvie, 2006, p154). In this next section we will briefly map
out some of the major structural characteristics of the network of sport governance in
impacting British sport. As the diagram below shows, when we take a national governing
body of sport (NGB) as a starting point, a variety of private, public, political and
commercial organisations can influence how the NGB organises and controls its specific
sport. There are a number of important points to note from this diagram. All sports in
Britain are organised and controlled through a complex web of national, international
and supranational interests. There is the wide range of governmental organisations
that, while exerting a powerful influence on sports policy, have no direct responsibility
for the actual organisation of sport. Indirectly linked to these, we can identify three
other organisational groupings (media companies, commercial transnational sport
companies and event management agencies) that can have an important commercial
influence on sport, but whose businesses are not directly linked to sport. An example
here is how companies such as Walkers Crisps whose products have almost no
connection with the playing of sport sponsor sports teams and use sport celebrities
like Gary Lineker to promote and sell crisps. The deepening influence of commercial and
media companies on all aspects of modern sport will be discussed more fully in Chapters
9 and 10. Lastly, what is presented only reflects some parts of the network; the choice of
the NGBs as the starting point is just one of a multitude of possibilities.
61
Figure 1: The organisational network of British sport

National Lottery
Department of Culture, Media and Sport
Department for Children, Schools and Families

UK Government
Has a direct influence on the legal

frameworks covering employment
within the web of sport industries
in the UK
European Union
Local Government
Under the provision for good

causes the national lottery
is now the main funding
stream for the development
of sport.
UK Sport
Sport England
Sport Scotland
Sports Councillor Northern Ireland
Sports Council for Wales
While autonomous
the Government has
a significant influence
UK Sports Councils
CCPR
National Lottery Funding
International Olympic Committee
Sport quangos
National Governing
Body of Sport
British Olympic Association,

British Paralympic Association
International sports federations
Amateur/voluntary sector
Professional
Public Service Broadcasters
(e.g. the BBC)
Sports clubs
Media companies
Commercial media companies

Commercial transnational
sport companies
Event marketing agencies
Sport and central government: Department for Culture, Media

and Sport (DCMS)
The following statement by Tessa Jowell (Secretary of State for Culture, Media and
Sport) captures the British Governments commitment to the development of sport:
My ambition for sport in the UK is to start a 20-year process of re-establishing this
country as a powerhouse in the sporting world (from Game Plan: a strategy for
delivering the Governments sport and physical activity objectives).
At present, the Government has a number of strategic aims for the development
of sport and these are supported by significant levels of investment of public money.
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According to the Governments own assessments, by 2006 2 billion of public

and National Lottery money had been invested in sport. This investment includes
459 million for a variety of school sports; 62 million in the development of grassroots football, plus community and education initiatives through the Football
Foundation.
The recognition of the importance of success in international sports competitions
has also meant that each year approximately 60 million is being awarded under the
World Class Programme, which has developed even more national significance due to
the 2012 London Olympics. A significant reason that enabled the United Kingdom to win
the right to host the 2012 Olympic Games and Paralympic Games was the guarantee that
the costs of the Games were underwritten by the Government. The production of the
Games is not, however, the direct responsibility of the Government but of specific
organisations such as the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games
(LOCOG). Currently, the estimated costs have risen from an initial estimate of 6 billion,
to an estimated 12 billion. Much of this massive expenditure is expected to come from
the National Lottery and from community and business taxes in London and the Home
Counties.
The cost means that the decision to bid for the Games is inevitably a politically
contentious one. As Roche (2000) outlines, there is a range of arguments, some
supporting the Games because of the benefits that such mega events bring and others
stressing the negative effects that such enterprises can incur. As with all political
decisions, the Government faces a complicated task of weighing the interests of those
groups that will directly benefit from the hosting of the Games against the interests of
other groups that lose out because of them.
In recent years worries about the health of the UK population, and especially that of
young people, has led to an increased focus on the levels of exercise (or lack of it) that
the countrys increasingly sedentary population is engaged in. Sport Englands Active
People Survey conducted in 2005 produced the following findings:
21 per cent of the adult population (8.5 million people) take part regularly in sport
and active recreation. Regular participation in sport and recreation is defined as
taking part, on at least three days a week, in moderate-intensity sport and active
recreation (at least 12 days in the last four weeks) for at least 30 minutes
continuously in any one session.
Regionally, regular participation ranged from a high of 22.6 per cent in the South
East to a low of 19.3 per cent in the West Midlands.
Walking is the most popular recreational activity for people in England. Over eight
million adults aged 16 and over (20 per cent) did a recreational walk for at least
30 minutes in the last four weeks. 5.6 million people (13.8 per cent) swim at least
once a month, while 4.2 million people (10.5 per cent) go to the gym.
Over 2.7 million people put some voluntary time into sport with an estimated
1.8 million hours unpaid support every week of the year. This equates to over
54,000 full- time equivalent jobs.
4.7 per cent of the adult population (1.9 million) contribute at least one hour a
week to sport volunteering.
25.1 per cent of the adult population (10.2 million) are members of a club where
they take part in sport an increase from 17 per cent in 2002.
63
Regular participation in sport and active recreation varies across different sociodemographic groups for example, male participation is 23.7 per cent and female
participation is 18.3 per cent.
Other research (Sport England, 2005) suggests that many of those surveyed
recognised that there were health benefits associated with physical activity and that
71 per cent of those researched stated that they would like to do more sport and active
recreation, but do not normally get round to it. However, some of the findings painted a
more worrying picture, in that as many as 21 per cent of women spend more time doing
their hair than exercising and around 41 per cent spend more time in the shower or bath
than they do taking exercise. As for the men surveyed, 31 per cent spend more time
playing computer games than undertaking sport or active recreation.
Activity 5.1
Find out more about the Governments support for sport by going to the DCMS
website (www.culture.gov.uk). Once there, follow the links to What we do for sport,
select three of the following categories and carefully examine what is presented:
Sport England;
UK Sport;
equality in sport;
community sport;
funding sources for talented athletes;
professional sport;
sports facilities;
world-class competitors.
Based on what you have found out and the issues identified in the above discussion, carefully answer the following question.
If the government had to limit its expenditure on sport, should it prioritise
the promotion of exercise and a healthy lifestyle or the development of elite
athletes who can compete effectively in world sport?
Local government and the provision of sport

In terms of the provision of many of our sport facilities, it is local government policy
and strategy rather than those of central government that are vital for the promotion
of sport (Henry, 1993). However, as a recent report from the Audit Commission (2006)
in association with Sport England identifies, the quality and accessibility of local
public sports and recreation facilities may not match the publics current expectations on health and fitness or offer the best value for money. The report suggests
that across England the strategic planning of provision is underdeveloped. Owing
to local political considerations, local councils are often focused on maintaining an
historic pattern of sports and recreation service provision and rarely form strategic
partnerships with other councils, private leisure providers, sport organisations or
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other cross-sector partners such as health and education departments, to improve and
develop facilities.
Activity 5.2
Go to your local council and find out about the range of sporting facilities they
provide. In addition, see what you can find out about their plans for sport and how
they view the importance of sport for your community. You will also be able to
find this information online.
From what you can find out consider the following:
Does their plan for the development of sport include working with other
interested agencies?
Do they identify specific target groups within their development plan? If so,
who are they and how is this targeting of resources explained and justified?
UK Sport quangos
UK Sport
Established by Royal Charter in 1996, UK Sport is responsible for managing and
distributing public investment in sport and is the statutory distributor of the sports
funds raised by the National Lottery. In this role it is accountable to Parliament through
the DCMS. Its stated mission is to work in partnership to lead sport in the UK to
world-class success and its principal goal is to direct investment in sport that will
underpin the development of world-class sporting performances by UK athletes
(www.uksport.gov.uk).
The Central Council for Physical Training and Recreation (CCPR)

As the independent voice of UK sport, the CCPR is the umbrella organisation for the
national governing and representative bodies of sport and recreation in the UK. Its
general role is to act on behalf of its members to promote, protect and develop the
interests of sport and physical recreation at all levels. This means that it is one of
Britains sports lobbying agencies, providing support and services to those who
participate in and administer sport and recreation. Unlike UK Sport, it is completely
independent of any form of Government control and has no responsibility for allocating
funds (www.ccpr.org.uk/).
While UK Sport and the CCPR act as umbrella organisations many of the major
responsibilities for the development of sport have been devolved to the regional sports
councils. This enables these sports councils to set their own priorities in terms of the
development of sport within England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Although it
is not the purpose of this discussion to provide a detailed examination of the similarities
and differences that exist between of each of these devolved bodies, a short overview
of their principal aims is useful in order to highlight how the impact of political
devolution in the UK is impacting on the governance of sport.
65
Sport England
The role of Sport England is to promote and invest in community sport within England.
Its aim is to encourage people of all ages to start, stay and succeed in sport at
every level and make England the most active and successful sporting nation. Sport
England has nine Regional Sports Boards (RSBs), each made up of appointed experts
from areas such as business, local government, sport, health and education. The RSBs
provide the strategic lead for sport in their regions and distribute investment for
grassroots sport (www.sportengland.org). Sport England has the stated aim to create
opportunities for people to start sport, to enable them to stay in sport and to succeed.
It provides the strategic lead for sport in England and is responsible for delivering
the Governments sporting objectives. Since 1994, it has invested some 2 billion in
sport in England.
At a time when the eyes of the nation will soon be firmly fixed on preparing for the
2012 Olympics, it is hardly surprising that one of Sport Englands strategic concerns is
the importance of developing elite, successful athletes. To justify this there is often an
assumption that there are clear benefits for a society to be derived from having worldclass sports performers that represent it in international competition. These elite
athletes can act as role models for the young, help foster national pride and aid the
external validation of the nations global status. As the sporting successes of countries
such as Australia indicate, if adequate levels of resources are channelled from the
support of mass participation into the development and support of elite performance,
all of the above aims have the potential to be attained.
Once identified, sportsmen and women who have the potential to succeed at the
highest levels of world sport need to be carefully nurtured. This is the role of the English
Institute of Sport, which is at the forefront of the transformation of sport development
in England: The English Institute of Sport seeks to operate on world pace, to excel in a
rapidly evolving, constantly challenging environment. Its task to provide world class
services to athletes supported by world class performance programme, requires
breadth of vision and clarity of purpose. (www.eis2win.co.uk)
Sport Scotland
Sport Scotland is directly responsible to the Scottish Parliament for the delivery of the
Scottish Governments national strategy for sport and the investment of Scottish
Executive and National Lottery funds. The major aims of Scotlands national strategy
for sport are:
a country where sport is available to all;
a country where sporting talent is recognised and nurtured; and
a country achieving and sustaining world-class performance in sport.
To achieve these aims, it has set four national priorities for the development of sport in
Scotland that aim to deliver well-trained coaches, administrators and athletes; strong
national sports organisations; quality sporting facilities throughout Scotland; and the
provision of clear organisational structures designed to establish the pathways needed
to achieve all its aims (www.sportscotland.org.uk). The major goals for the development
of sport are laid out in Sport 21 20032007: The National Strategy for Sport. Sport
21 produces a vision of sport in Scotland (that is in some ways quite distinctive from
that proposed for England by Sport England) that emphasises widespread community
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involvement in sport (rather than the development of elite sport) through its overarching
goal to get 60 per cent of Scots taking part in sport at least once a week by 2020.
Sports Council for Wales

The Sports Council for Wales is the national organisation responsible for developing
and promoting sport and active lifestyles within Wales. It is directly responsible to the
Welsh Assembly Government for the distribution of the National Lottery funds for
sport. It also acts as the main adviser to the Welsh Assembly Government on sporting
matters. One of its primary objectives is to help the delivery of the Assemblys vision
for a physically active and sporting nation. In its implementation of these policy
objectives, its main focus has been to increase the frequency of participation;
persuade those who are currently sedentary to become more active; and to encourage
people, young and old, to develop a portfolio of activities through which to achieve
healthy levels of activity (www.sports-council-wales.org.uk).
Sport Northern Ireland (SportNI)

Given the historical problems of community division in Northern Ireland and the
potential of sport to act as a catalyst for community integration, it is unsurprising
to see that inclusivity is one of the principal aims of Sport NI (www.sportni.net). As it
notes in its corporate plan, its vision is through sport, to contribute to an inclusive,
creative, competent, informed and physically active community (SportNI, 2007, p6).
Underpinning this it has established ten values that govern the way in which Sport
Northern Ireland operates: belief in sport; social inclusion; new targeting social need;
partnership; consultation; sustainable development; respecting difference; innovation;
valuing people; public service.
SportNI is responsible to the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) which
is a governmental department within the Northern Ireland Assembly. From a sociological
perspective, the relationship between the two is one of the most interesting within all
sections of sport governance in the UK. They have directly set out a social agenda that
includes the concept of cultural capital, which has recently become a significant
analytical concept within sport sociology (Giulianotti, 2005; Jarvie, 2006).
DCAL, in conjunction with SportNI, are committed to the development of policies
and resources that will protect, nurture and grow our cultural capital for today and
tomorrow (SportNI 2007, p10). For DCAL and SportNI, the cultural capital of sport is
manifested in three ways:
people the creators and consumers of cultural capital, including sportswomen
and sportsmen;
infrastructure the physical spaces within which culture is created and enjoyed,
including sports grounds;
products and services cultural output, including sporting success.
Activity 5.3
Go online and visit the websites of all the home nation sports quangos. Your task
is to find out how they are planning for the 2012 Olympics. What are their
strategies and their priorities? Do you note any significant differences between
the four councils and, if so, how might you explain these differences?
67
International sport federations

International Federations (IFs) are international non-governmental organisations
recognised by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and their national members as
administering their sport (or in some cases sports) at world level. While they have
independence and autonomy from other global sports organisations in respect of the
administration of their sports, the reality is that these external bodies can and do have
a major influence on the way in which sport is organised nationally. International sports
federations seeking IOC recognition must ensure that their statutes, practice and
activities conform with the Olympic Charter.
The IFs have the responsibility and duty to manage and monitor the everyday
running of the worlds various sports disciplines. This includes the practical supervision
of the development of athletes practising these sports at every level; the sports
promotion and development; the everyday administration of their sports and guarantee
of the regular organisation of competitions as well as respect for the rules of fair play.
The IFs also formulate proposals addressed to the IOC concerning the Olympic Charter
and the Olympic Movement in general. These include the organising and holding of the
Olympic Games, such as expressing opinions concerning the candidatures for organising
the Olympic Games, particularly the technical capabilities of the candidate cities. IFs
also collaborate in the preparation of the Olympic Congresses and participate in the
activities of the IOC commissions.
Recognised IFs whose sports appear on the Olympic programme have the status of
International Olympic Federations. As such, they participate in annual meetings of the
IOC Executive Board with the International Olympic Summer Federations and with their
winter Games counterparts. In order to discuss common problems and decide on their
events calendars, the summer Olympic federations, the winter Olympic federations and
the recognised federations have formed associations: the Association of Summer
Olympic International Federations (ASOIF), the Association of International Winter
Sports Federations (AIOWF), the Association of IOC Recognised International Sports
Federations (ARISF) and the General Association of International Sports Federations
(GAISF), which also includes other sports federations.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC)

The Olympic Movement encompasses organisations, athletes and other persons who
agree to be guided by the Olympic Charter. The Olympic Movement groups together
all those who agree to be guided by the Olympic Charter and who recognise the authority
of the IOC, namely, the IFs of sports on the programme of the Olympic Games;
the National Olympic Committees (NOCs), the Organising Committees of the Olympic
Games (OCOGs), athletes, judges and referees, associations and clubs, as well as all the
organisations and institutions recognised by the IOC.
The IOC is the supreme authority of the Olympic Movement. It is an international
non-governmental, non-profit organisation and the creator of the Olympic Movement.
The IOC exists to serve as an umbrella organisation of the Olympic Movement. It owns
all rights to the Olympic symbols, flag, motto, anthem and Olympic Games. Its primary
responsibility is to supervise the organisation of the summer and winter Olympics.
The purpose of IOC Commissions is actively to contribute to promoting the ideals of
the Olympic spirit (Olympism) in their specific domains. In order to study certain
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subjects and make recommendations to the Executive Board, the President of the IOC
sets up specialised commissions. Some of these include IOC members, representatives
of the International Olympic Sports Federations and the National Olympic Committees,
athletes, technical experts, advisers and sports specialists.
There are currently 203 NOCs and they cover all five continents. The NOCs
propagate the fundamental principles of Olympism at a national level within the
framework of sports activity. The NOCs come together at least once every two years in
the form of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) to exchange
information and experiences in order to consolidate their role within the Olympic
Movement. ANOC also makes recommendations to the IOC regarding the use of funds
derived from the television rights intended for the NOCs. These recommendations focus
on the implementation of the Olympic programmes. The 203 NOCs are split among five
continental associations, which have a powerful influence on the selection of sites for
the summer and winter Olympiads:
Africa: ANOCA (Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa)

America: PASO (Pan American Sports Organization)
Asia: OCA (Olympic Council of Asia)
Europe: EOC (European Olympic Committees)
Oceania: ONOC (Oceania National Olympic Committees)
British Olympic Association (BOA)

The BOA was formed at a meeting at the House of Commons on 24 May 1905. The
Association then included representatives of the following sports: fencing, life-saving,
cycling, skating, rowing, athletics, rugby, football and archery. All these sports had
governing bodies or clubs at the time. Great Britain is one of only five countries that
have never failed to be represented at the Olympic Games since 1896, Australia, France,
Greece and Switzerland being the others (www.olympics.org.uk).
Reflection
Developing the network of British sport

Although the discussion presented in this section of the chapter has concentrated
on providing a brief overview of the major elements, relationships and principal
policies and responsibilities of the various segments of the network, a number of
points of concern are emerging. In terms of the effective control and development
of sport in Britain (and more especially internationally), the network is too large,
too complex and too full of competing interests to be easily managed, transformed and made publicly accountable. On this last point, as Sugden (2002) has
argued through his analysis of how this global and national network operates
within the context of professional football, this does not mean that a serious and
sustained attempt should not be made to reform the way in which sport, especially
international sport, is governed and controlled. Over the next few years changes
are almost inevitable and this begs the question as to whether these changes will
be driven by powerful commercial interests, national governments seeking to
69
Reflection continued
maximise the social and health benefits of sport, or other as yet unforeseen
combination of political, social, economic and cultural forces.
As for how Britain will address the challenges posed by the social changes it
now faces in terms of the powerful equity and diversity agendas that are now
impacting on all sport organisations (see Chapter 8), the framework for the
organisation and development of sport being developed in Northern Ireland
offers some interesting signposts. While Northern Ireland has a number of
characteristics that make its circumstances very different from those of the
other areas of the UK, if UK sports organisations are to meet their own targets
for social inclusion, they will need to make a sustained critical evaluation of their
current planning. If some of the problems of social exclusion and alienation that
have until recently been a characteristic of life in Northern Ireland are to be
avoided, sports organisations will need to make significant efforts to explore
how their organisational processes can address the problems of social need and
the development of effective partnerships, based on consultation, that are
committed to sustainable developments that respect our growing cultural
diversity.
Social change and the organisational structure of

contemporary British sport
The politics that shape the agendas of the government and therefore how politicians
might desire to influence the governance of sport have, over the past few decades,
changed in a number of important ways. International relations have changed
dramatically with the fall of communism and the ending of the Cold War. International
sport is no longer subject to the cynical control of governments and their desire to
promote their own ideologies (Hargreaves, 2002). In addition, processes of globalisation
(see Chapter 11) allied to technological changes, have led to the freer movement of
people, greater levels of international connections based on globalised capital, an
international system of production and the global flow of information. Today,
international sport all too clearly shows the irony of the global age, in which countries
and their sports teams are becoming ever more interdependent, while at the same time
evidencing the growth of nationalism with rival nations competing wealth and status.
Definition: nationalism
A set of political beliefs, cultural practices and symbols that are designed to
create a strong identification with a specific national community.
In recent decades some profound changes have taken place within the politics of
most Western societies and specifically within British politics. Since the election
of Margaret Thatchers Conservative Government in 1979, there has been a significant
shift away from the politics and social organisation of state-welfarism towards those
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of liberal individualism (Henry, 1993). Whether these changes represent a fundamental shift in the structure of modern society remains a matter of intense sociological
debate (Henry and Theodoraki, 2000). What is undeniable is that these changes are
real and are having a dramatic impact on all aspects of the sporting network identified
above.
This noted, as Henry and Theodoraki (2000) stress, it is also inevitable that there
has been, and will continue to be, significant variations in how the various sectors of the
British sport network respond to these changes. As processes of political devolution
take hold within Britain, it is likely that governmental structures that are in place for
each of the four home countries, will continue to drive further development of their
own separate agendas for sport. What this will mean for the governing bodies of sport
whose responsibilities (nationally and internationally) cover all of the UK (e.g. UK Sport,
the British Olympic Association and the British Paralympic Association) or whose
organisational structures are a federated union of the specific sports home nation
associations (e.g. British Athletic Federation), only time will tell.
Review
This chapter has overviewed the creation of codified sports and their associated forms
of national and international organisation. It has also examined how the organisation of
sport has become an important arena of governmental interest. This has become even
more complex with the devolved control of sport to the governmental structures of the
home nations. We have argued that it is important to understand that sport organisations and the governance of British sport operate within an historically complex,
dynamic and changing network. How this network operates is also subject to three
very different sets of pressures: national political concerns and issues that are often
subject to democratic accountability; the concerns and issues of international sports
federations which have significantly reduced levels of public accountability; and
the commercial pressures that transnational corporations and media companies
can exert through their huge financial investments in sport. The complex relationships
between the sporting organisations within the network and their competition to achieve
their own aims and objectives, while protecting the vested interests of their sport(s),
mean that the sociological analysis of sport needs to start with the clear recognition that sport is not governed by a single set of codes, organisational structures or
strategies.
Through reading the chapter and doing the various learning tasks, you ought to
be able to answer the following:
1.
When did the codification of games change them into the modern sports
that we take part in today?
2. What were the social dimensions of Victorian modernity that drove
governing bodies to be established?
71
Review of learning outcomes continued

3. Identify and briefly explain the major components of the organisational
network that impacts on the ways national governing bodies of sport
organise and control their specific sports.
4. Sport is a very important element of British public life. How is this reflected
in terms of the governments involvement with sport?
5. What is the role of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport within the
governance of sport in Britain?
6. Identify some of the major similarities and differences that exist between
the home nation sport councils.
7. The levels of investment (financial and social) in sport mean that there has
to be some form of public accountability. Do you think these arrangements
are adequate?
8. What are the organisations with specific responsibility for elite performers,
and what are their aims?
9. Detail how the British Olympic Association is structured and explain its role
in the organisation of the 2012 London Games.
Further study
For an excellent historical overview of the development of modern sport in Britain read:
Holt, R (1989) Sport and the British: a modern history. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
For a recent assessment of the impact of political and governmental interests on sport
read:
Houlihan, B (2000) Politics and sport, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook of
sports studies. London: Sage.
To further extend your understanding of the concept of social control read:
Eitzen, DS (2000) Social control and sport, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook
To develop your understanding of the policies and strategies of the UK sports quangos,
it is best to visit their websites and read their strategy documents, all of which are easily
downloadable.
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Chapter 6
Sport, physical education and

socialisation
Peter Craig and Gordon T Mellor
This chapter looks at the dimensions of sport and physical education in terms of their
role in socialisation. It will now be clear to readers that a dynamic society both creates,
and is created by the activities of the social institutions. These social institutions
promote the norms and values of the overarching society. By reviewing how sociologists
explain sport and physical education as working components of the social process, it is
hoped that the important role that social theories play in our understanding of society
will be made clear. In terms of physical education, it will be seen that the development of
our contemporary model arose from diverse roots and the differing motivations that
existed in the mid-nineteenth century; how women battled for a physical education of
their own, and how the social concerns of the twentieth century have shaped what we
currently teach in our schools.
Learning outcomes
explain through clear sport and physical education examples what is meant
by:
social institution;
primary and secondary socialisation;
social norms and values;
how you yourself have experienced processes of socialisation;
functionalist social theory;
functional prerequisites;
interactionist perspectives of socialisation;
gender socialisation;
provide a context for the development of physical education in our schools
and justify its current place in the national curriculum;
demonstrate a good understanding of how, in a dynamic and changing world,
sport helps society adapt.
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6 / Sport, physical education and socialisation
Introduction
When we think about sport, why some people take part and others dont, why some
succeed and others dont, we are often confronted by two very different sets of
questions and possible explanations. Is our involvement and behaviour in sport governed
by what we have learned, or is it determined by the physical and psychological capacities
that we were born with? This is known as the naturenurture debate.
Nature (socio-biology)
Nurture (sociology)
Our capacity for sporting action is

inborn.
Our capacity for sporting action is

learned.
Competition, between humans or

between humans and the circumstances
of their physical world, is a natural
condition of life.
The natural condition of modern life is

that it is socially and culturally
constructed. All aspects of sport and
its meaning, such as the meaning of
competition, are learned and taught.
Human instincts and needs have

shaped sport.
Sport is learned and is part of the

culture of the society. As societies and
their cultures change, so do how we
take part in and understand sport.
Much of how we behave in sport is

pre-programmed (e.g. fight or flight
instincts).
Sporting behaviours have to be learned

and this socialisation process starts as
soon as a child is born.
To some degree this debate lies at the heart of all sociology. Even if sport
sociologists disagree about how they understand the way the modern world is
structured or to what extent these structures determine our sporting behaviour, they all
agree that the modern world provides a powerful influence on how we understand our
lives and the possibilities they hold. As we look around our world, it is also obvious that
the diverse ways in which different countries and cultures condition that understanding
is a vital part of how children grow up. Because of its importance within our modern
world, an understanding of the roles played by sport and physical education in this
process has been an important area of interest.
Sport, physical education and socialisation

When a child is born, s/he has no social or cultural knowledge. Children need to become
productive and confident members of their society. They have to learn how to be part of
this world. More specifically, they have to learn its culture and traditions.
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Definition: socialisation
The on-going process whereby individuals learn and/or are taught to conform to
the existing system of norms and values.
Definition: sport socialisation
A process that, through an individuals involvement in sport, teaches and
reinforces knowledge, values and norms that are essential to participate in social
life.
One important approach to understand modern society is to see it as a complex and
dynamic social system. As we discussed in Chapter 2, our everyday experience of our
social world suggests that it has a fairly consistent structure (such as its various
component parts: families, schools, sport. etc.) that endures over many generations.
Within the family, various members can recount sporting events whose memory
becomes part of the shared identity of the family. In this way, many families develop a
long-lasting relationship with a particular sport. The same is also true for our experience
of schools. As we walk into many schools, we can see on the walls pictures of the school
teams going back many generations, that celebrate the schools sporting traditions and
successes. No doubt, when you were in school you became aware of these traditions
and that often these meant that certain sports were given status within the school while
others were not.
Every society is characterised by a set of relatively stable and interrelated social
structures that give the particular society its unique character. Some examples of these,
which you should already be familiar with, are how families are organised; its forms of
government; its economy and system of production; the education system; and sport.
The term that sociologists have developed to describe these social structures is social
institution. Social institutions can be regarded as the cement of social life. They provide
the basic living arrangements that human beings work out in their interaction with one
another and by means of which continuity is achieved across the generations (Giddens,
1989, p381).
Definition: social institutions
Social practices that are regularly and continuously repeated, legitimised and
maintained by social-norms.
As this definition details, one of the most important roles performed by a social
institution is the maintenance of patterns of behaviour. In sociology these are called
social-norms.
Definition: social-norms
Forms of behaviour that are usually accepted as correct and proper by the
majority of the members of a society.
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Activity 6.1
Based on your experiences of sport as part of the PE curriculum and/or as part of
a team, make a list of five social-norms that would be considered to be accepted
and proper behaviour in sport. Then, by thinking back over your experience of
sport, see if you can identify how you became socialised into perceiving sport as
having these norms of behaviour. Use the following column headings.
Sporting social-norm
When, where and from whom did you first learn

that this behaviour was part of playing sport?
Reflection
Sporting beliefs and our assumptions about everyday life

Please make sure you attempt the above exercise before reading this!
Some examples you have identified may be directly related to the playing of
sport: a serious sports person must make sacrifices and be dedicated; dedicated
sportsmen and women always seek competition in order to test their abilities;
athletes accept risk and pain as a possible consequence of their sport. Others
may be to do with the social side of sport: sport helps people to make friends;
sport helps people develop self-confidence; getting fit for sport helps you keep
healthy. Yet others may be linked to the realisation that sport seems to mirror
some of the divisions we also can see in our society in that different social
classes, males or females and racial groups play different sports. Clearly, all
these observations can be challenged as being stereotypes, but they are
nonetheless reflective of the common everyday experience of sport in Britain.
Of course, the other interesting questions that sociologists are very interested in
are where, when and through whom you learned these beliefs about sport. The
fact is that once we have learned them these beliefs become largely part of our
unconscious interpretation of the world that is, until we are asked to do an
exercise like this or we see something that disturbs our set of comfortable
assumptions.
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Competing sociological perspectives of sport and

socialisation
As we explained in Chapter 4, sociology has developed a number of competing
perspectives in respect of how we interpret sport and the structure of the modern
world. These equally apply to how we interpret the role of socialisation. Some start with
a system orientation in that they look first and foremost at the structure of the social
system and how the society reproduces itself over time and across different
generations; some have developed a more critical examination of the structure of
modern society; while others are concerned to emphasise how the individual reflexively
engages with these social structures.
Learning review
Consider the following statements and match the correct theoretical perspectives that
were outlined in Chapter 4.
Statement
Theoretical perspective
Sport is created by people who are consciously

acting on their own behalf, yet the historical
social structure of sport also constrains them.
Sporting norms and values inform us how to
behave. Sportsmen and sportswomen do not
decide what these formal and informal rules
are and are aware that if they break them they
will be punished.
All humans who take part in sport are conscious
and reflexive agents who decide what they will
do or not do. They are not just passive recipients
of culture.
Sport is an important part of our culture as it
helps create a social structure that patterns how
we behave and interact with others.
Sport is part of our culture and was designed and
shaped by powerful members of the society in
order to protect their dominant position.
Processes of socialisation are important
elements of this process.
Sporting norms and values are created through a
process of negotiation and agreement.
Socialisation into the norms and values of sport
provides an important way for the individual
members of modern society to bond together.
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The study of socialisation in sport sociology has been heavily influenced by

structural-functional perspectives (Nixon and Frey, 1996; Loy and Booth, 2000). While
this theoretical perspective has been somewhat sidelined due to a series of serious
criticisms regarding its failure to adequately account for processes of change and the
distribution of power within society, it can be argued that the study of socialising
processes in sport and society remain important. It is therefore important for
sociologists to extend their analysis to understand how individuals act within the social
and cultural constraints of their own personal circumstances and the prevailing social
structures.
Within sociology the functionalist perspective sets out to define the role and
importance of social institutions and to detail how these institutions interact in such a
way as to ensure the continuation of the society. What this permits sport sociologists
to understand is the social function that sport plays within the maintenance of
contemporary British society. As Giddens (1989, p696) notes: To study the function of a
social practice or institution is to analyse the contribution which the practice or
institution makes to the continuation of the society as a whole. It is clear that sport can
be regarded as a (modern) social institution with a number of definable social norms
that to some degree are maintained across successive generations. When sociologists
such as Luschen (1981) developed a functional analysis of sport, one of their primary
concerns was to identify how sport is not only a product of that social world, but also
how it helps reproduce it. For Luschen (1981, p209) the modern system of sport reflects
a fundamental structural pattern of human and social existence.
While the basics of functionalism can be identified as originating in the late
nineteenth century from the work of Durkheim, in the twentieth century this tradition
has become most clearly associated with the work of Talcott Parsons who suggested
that all societies need to achieve four specific outcomes in order to survive. He termed
these as the functional prerequisites or functional imperatives (Craib, 1984).
Pattern maintenance all societies must develop effective cultural processes
that help maintain and reproduce the existing social order across succeeding
generations.
Integration all societies, but especially complex modern societies, must create
social systems that can deal with deviance, maintain the existing social order and
discipline people into working effectively within the social system. Because of the
nature of modern society, these systems must be highly organised and
bureaucratic.
Goal attainment all societies must develop effective political and educational
systems that enable the society and a majority of its members to achieve their
goals. In much of the modern world, belief in the equality of opportunity and a
sense of what ones goals in life are, become tied to complex concerns about
lifestyle and identity.
Adaptation all societies face changing circumstances. In order to survive they
must adapt/evolve. This means that social institutions such as sport must also
adapt to the changing needs of the society.
For sport sociologists such as Loy and Booth (2000), the enduring and highly
successful development of sport within modern society can be explained in part by the
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fact that the functional imperatives of modern society are inherent in most sports.
Sports systems of rules both define the goals of the sport and also provide a means
through which individuals can attain these goals. The structure of sporting competitions
such as the FA cup is an excellent example of this, and the ways in which sporting
successes and failures become ingrained in the publics consciousness (often via the
media), act to reinforce and reproduce existing cultural understandings of sport. Sports
bureaucratic structure and those charged with making sure that the rules are
understood and obeyed (club officials, referees, etc.) are examples of how sport assists
social integration: those who do not conform are routinely identified and punished
and those who do conform are rewarded. Our constant desire for higher levels of
achievement that we see in our public celebration of world records, the winning of
Olympic medals and at major championships requires constant adaptation of coaching
and training methods so that teams and individual athletes remain competitive.
Activity 6.2
The problems posed by the introduction of new performance-enhancing drugs
means that our sporting institutions such as the Sports Council have to constantly
adapt to control how new drugs and their misuse can be controlled.
Find out more about how sport in the UK is doing this by visiting the following
website: www.uksport.gov.uk/pages/drug_free_sport/
Within each society the collective combination of roles, norms, values and
institutional characteristics is distinctive. In general terms, this is what sociologists are
referring to when they use the term culture. For example, while we might say that British
society has deep concerns over the use of drugs in sport, what we are actually saying is
that the majority of people in the society share this concern and that their views are
part of our sporting culture and the institutionalised framework that we have developed
to organise and regulate our sport.
Case study: sport, competition and co-operation

Two of the characteristics of modern sport that most children come to understand as
essential are competition and co-operation. Yet being successfully socialised into this
recognition does not by itself mean that everybody agrees what these concepts actually
mean. Both can be understood in a variety of ways that not only influence how we
understand sport, but also how we understand the nature of the social world.
Competition:
is a process through which success is measured;
sets the rules for distributing rewards and influences relationships between
people;
is usually understood as a zero-sum process that means that only some can win
and this will be at the expense of those who lose. At its most extreme, for some
this means that winning isnt everything, its the only thing.
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Sport also has a non-competitive reward structure that emphasises co-operation.

In team sports co-operation is a process through which success is measured by
the collective achievements of a group of people working together to reach a
particular goal.
Although in individual and team sports individual standards of performance can be
used to measure success, at the same time there is a recognition that without the
essential co-operation of others the sport is not possible.
Sport also emphasises the need for groups to co-operate within the competitive
context of sport (and modern life).
Sport relies on inter-group co-operation to create competitions and leagues.
At the heart of the process is the assumption that all players and teams will play
within the rules.
Intra-group co-operation within sports teams requires that individual players
repress their own needs to those of the team and its attempts to win.
Activity 6.3
Take a few moments either to discuss with a peer and/or note your thoughts on
the following questions:
1. Is the competitive nature of sport a good or a bad thing?
2. Is sport merely an extension of the way the world works or is it a separate
and distinctive area of life where different rules apply?
3. When you play sport, do you think it is better to play well and lose, or play
badly and win?
4. Would you cheat if you thought that:
the other team was cheating?
it could help you win the game?
5. Thinking back, can you remember when and where you learned to think
about sport in these ways?
As we will examine in much more detail over the subsequent chapters, many sport
sociologists accept that while functionalism has usefully identified how sport can
be understood as an important social phenomenon within the structure of modern
society, it has a number of significant limitations that reduce its ability to explain
the social and cultural construction of sport. Of particular concern is the tendency
within this perspective to view socialisation as unproblematic and that the values
systems into which we are socialised are not contested or conflictual. Moreover,
functionalisms emphasis on how the social world shapes the individual overlooks
how individuals and groups reflexively monitor their lives. In response to this, many
sociologists have now adopted more critical and interactionist perspectives of the
socialisation processes. In the chapters that follow these perspectives will be examined
in more detail.
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From the preceding discussion it should be clear that processes of socialisation

are essential for all societies. There are, however, a number of additional questions that
we need to consider. In particular, we need to explore more closely how socialisation
within sport is part of our everyday life and some of the important outcomes of the
process.
Entering the world of sport

The way we become socialised into sport is significantly influenced by three factors:
a persons abilities and characteristics;
the influence of significant others, including parents, siblings, teachers and
peers;
the availability of opportunities to play and experience success in sports.
(Coakley, 2003, p100)
It is the second of these factors that we will primarily address in the remainder of this
chapter.
One of the primary social institutions responsible for young people taking up sport,
and then sustaining their involvement in it, is the family. In general, families have a
significant social responsibility for the reinforcement of the existing patterns of social
stratification and status, and the reproduction of the normative structures of order and
control that characterise the society. The family is a major site of play, recreation and
leisure, and deeply influences childrens socialisation into sport and the types of leisure
that they will experience.
Although all this may to some degree seem fairly obvious, we must also stress that
the family, often founded on inherited blood ties, is itself a social construction. Social
change has, and continues to have, a major impact on the structure of families in Britain.
Today, it is wrong to assume that what people call their family refers to what
sociologists term the nuclear family. The conventional nuclear family of a married male
and female couple with a number of dependent children is no longer the dominant family
setting. Unmarried couples, single-parent families, reconstituted families (divorced and
remarried), and gay and lesbian family units all make up a complex and diverse set of
family settings for the rearing of children. To this can also be added the often profound
influences that different cultural groupings can have on family roles. These points noted,
in recent years relatively little attention has been paid by sport sociologists with regard
to how this diversity of family units impacts on how children become engaged with sport.
The research that has been done documents a fairly consistent set of family
influences on how children engage with sport. They are:
emotional support and encouragement (how to deal with success and failure);
encouragement, monitoring and facilitation of participation (setting up contact
with clubs and coaches, driving to training and competitions, etc.). A number of
sociological studies have concluded that individuals who achieve in sport had
often begun their participation by ages 56 and only rarely did they begin later
than age 10;
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financial support (payment of fees and for equipment, etc.);

regulation and control of interactions with others (how to be a team member);
that parents, older siblings and members of the extended family often serve as
role models and provide clear ideas about sporting aspirations, status and values.
Children often draw on family experience to base their judgements about the
perceived importance/appropriateness of particular sports;
that parents who have participated in sport are more likely to encourage their
children into sport than those who do not;
that families are often a primary source of sport knowledge, values and
engagement with exercise regimes;
that the family is a major focal point for the consumption of media sport;
that although we will not examine these in any detail at this point, there is ample
evidence that the family also has a profound impact on how social class, gender,
race and ethnicity impact on the childs perceptions of themselves and what they
consider to be appropriate sporting choices. The social class, racial and ethnic
characteristics of the family are all important determinants in the social
reproduction of class, racial and ethnic divisions within sport.
The family is also an important site of gender socialisation. As Hargreaves (1994)
has explained, socialisation into sport has been viewed as a social learning process
through which significant others in the family context teach, demonstrate and reinforce
gender roles and behaviours. While the socialisation of gender roles through sport
appears to be highly consistent within most modern societies for males, the same is not
true for females (Greendorfer, 1981). Greendorfer suggests that female socialisation
into sport is a volatile, inconsistent, selective and extremely complex process which
needs more research. The outcome of these processes means that from an early age
boys are encouraged to explore the environment and be active in physical activity,
whereas girls are more restricted and protected from the environment.
Differing participation patterns become ingrained even before children go to school.
Within sport, girls and boys show quite different preferences, with girls tending to
participate in far fewer numbers. Surveys also suggest that many parents rate a
daughters talent for sport substantially lower than a sons. They also provide sons with
more opportunities to participate in sport activities than they provide daughters.
Once they are in school, teachers rate boys higher in sport ability than girls, although
they do not rate the genders differently for mathematical and reading abilities. Boys
perceive a greater importance to their parents that they do well in sports than girls
perceive.
Sport, physical education and the national curriculum:

processes of secondary socialisation
Physical education
Historically often known as physical training, what we now refer to as physical education
(PE) has become a core component of the curriculum in British education. The aims of PE
are frequently addressed through participation at a practical level rather than studying
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the discipline itself. As will be seen in the following section, PE has developed from
specific roots to meet specific perceived needs some national, some social, others
individual. Our modern understanding of physical education is orientated to provide
pupils with the capabilities (skills), knowledge and values that will enable them to create
and maintain an active, healthy lifestyle into and throughout adulthood. Schools have
also been tasked in some instances to address obesity among pupils.
Sports, often still referred to as games in an educational setting, are a key component of physical education. However, the discipline is much broader and contemporarily, at least, its aims go much further. It uses sporting activities and opportunities
to promote physical fitness, to develop motor ability, to provide practical experience
of team work and/or individual motivation, and, of course, competition. It also provides
a route into sport, into the world of athletic games.
From the preceding study it should be clear that in our modern world the process of becoming a sports person or athlete is deeply intertwined with the process
of becoming an adult. One of the most important social institutions that is tasked
with this process is our system of education. Within our schools, extracurricular sport
and PE have often been seen as the essential educational link between these two
processes. For over a century, sport in schools has been associated with teaching
children a range of socially beneficial values, such as sportsmanship, fair play, morality
and a work ethic to name but a few of the most obvious. In the last few decades,
extracurricular sport and the physical curriculum have also become associated with
a number of social goals in terms of developing social integration and the acceptance
of cultural diversity; the reduction of educational dropout and the promotion of
educational aspirations; increasing access to all levels of education for the poor and
minority groups (Rees and Miracle, 2000).
The next section of the chapter will detail how the British education system has
been essential to the way in which sport has become deeply ingrained in our culture.
While families are one of the primary institutions of socialisation into sport, for the vast
majority of British children it is school, PE and the playing of extracurricular sport that
are vital to the process.
Sport and physical education in Britain

As we established in the previous chapter, modern sports can be considered as a group
of socially constructed activities that are rationalised, codified, rule-bound and
bureaucratic. In the British context, these activities took their modern form in the
nineteenth century and predominantly through the workings of the English public
schools. The rationale that underpinned the development of these sports also saw the
promotion of physical education throughout elementary education (the state education
of the day).
The constituents of modern sport

If the context was the society of newly industrialised and urbanised Britain, and the
vehicle was the public school, then the components that infused games with their central
values were amateurism, the gentleman and the muscular Christian. These projected an
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emerging and powerful morality that reflected the aspirations and concerns of the
middle classes. The result of this mix was what we now recognise as sport. For the
Victorians, ideas about competition and survival of the fittest (justified by using the
work of Darwin in a social context) all became unquestioned characteristics of sport.
The expectations regarding how the different genders were to engage with these
sporting characteristics were profoundly different. Gender socialisation for males
worked through a powerful set of public and private social institutions such as the
family, the school, the church, the military, the civil service, business and, of course,
sport and athletic games. For women, access to these public institutions (including
sport) was far more limited and hence the processes of socialisation were more often
than not directed at the reproduction of the family and domestic spheres of life.
Social status in Britain in the nineteenth century was founded on old wealth and
the traditional aristocratic power that accompanied it, bolstered by new wealth and
the entrepreneurial and organisational energy of the middle classes. Their growing influence as the administrators and managers of the industrial project and the
increasingly powerful Empire, enabled them to assert a moral, social and political
ideology that quickly extended into physical education and sport.
The school
Public school education and the authority that it asserted was a development that
coincided with the growth of middle-class influence. While a number of public schools
had been in existence for many years prior to the industrial period (Winchester being
the oldest, founded in 1382), they had not catered specifically for the male children of
the increasingly wealthy middle class. Defined as places for the education of the sons of
gentlemen, public schools such as Charterhouse, Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Shrewsbury,
Westminster and Winchester became established as the benchmark for the public
school system that survives even today.
The duration of the schooling was important to the processes of socialisation that
the boys experienced. Being boarding establishments, the boys were away from home
for most of their formative years. The schools thus became the families to which the
boys showed loyalty and affection throughout their lives. School life was certainly hard
and, in some respects brutal, but the boys had autonomy unlike any experienced during
home tutoring or day schooling, which were the alternatives available at the time.
Outside the formal delivery of the classics, which formed a large part of the curriculum
of the day, authority in the public schools was largely devolved to the boys themselves.
The schools imposed an acceptance of social order based on seniority and social rank.
Senior boys ruled in accordance with the schools traditions, organised the domestic
lives of the pupils, adjudicated in disputes and dispensed punishment. As younger boys
became seniors in turn, so they took on the governance of the inner school. Critically,
the boys organised their games and amusements.
While the games were no more civilised than those seen elsewhere in British society
at the time, boys undertook cricket, rowing and football often despite the disapproval
of headmasters and masters alike. The established autonomy that the boys enjoyed
made it very difficult, however, for the censorious to effect much change. Games
became tolerated and endured by school authorities, but were certainly not encouraged,
at least in these early years. The critical aspect was that the boys, or at least most of the
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boys, loved the games. Indeed, it might be asserted that they became obsessed with
game playing.
The schools were, however, ripe for reform, as was British society as a whole. Part of
the Victorian character was a strong desire to improve on what had gone before. Thomas
Arnold, as headmaster of Rugby from 1828 to 1841, in instructing his prefects, said: You
should feel like officers in the army or navy where want of moral courage would, indeed,
be thought cowardice (Armytage, 1955). Here he betrays both a desire to inculcate his
understanding of morality, but also the need to do so through the authority of the boys
themselves. He also wrote: What we must look for here is, First, religious and moral
principles; Secondly, gentlemanly conduct; Thirdly, intellectual ability (Arnold, 1889).
By the middle of the century the role that the public schools played in an increasingly self-confident, and indeed self-aware, Britain was well recognised. The Earl of
Clarendon, as chairman for the Royal Commission on Public Schools in 1864, was able to
report that:
The bodily training which gives health and activity to the frame is imparted at
English schools, not by gymnastic exercises which are employed for that end on
the continent exercises which are undoubtedly very valuable and which we
would be glad to see introduced more widely in England but by athletic games
which, whilst they serve this purpose well, serve other purposes besides . . . the
cricket and football fields . . . are not merely places of exercise or amusement;
they help to form some of the most valuable social qualities and manly virtues,
and they hold, like the classroom and the boarding house, a distinct and important
part in Public School education.
(Report of the Royal Commission on Public Schools, 1864)
The social dissemination of athleticism

The network of athletic games (sports) spread from the public schools to grammar
schools, to universities and beyond. The military embraced the new sport for the
officers while maintaining drill for the other ranks. The civil service accommodated
sports and then promoted the genre. It can be seen in the foregoing that the games in
the English public school illustrate pattern maintenance, integration, goal attainment
and adaptation. They established social norms and promoted values in a very effective
manner.
Schools and the exporting of sport to the Empire

Games had become important in the schools because they were considered to be an aid
to discipline; they helped to keep order, they were thought to channel violence, they
were considered healthy forms of exercise. In a wider context, however, as the Clarendon
Commission had reported, the English people were indebted to the schools for the
qualities they instilled: for their (the boys) capacity to govern others and control
themselves, their aptitude for combining freedom with order, their public spirit, their
vigour and manliness of character, their strong but not slavish respect for public
opinion, their love of healthy sports and exercise (Report of the Royal Commission on
Public Schools, 1864).
85
The dimensions of courage, loyalty, bravery, discipline and honour deemed to be

inherent in the athletic games became central to British imperialist ambitions: sport,
militarism and the public school ethos were fused in popular literature, poetry, art and
song. This is well illustrated in Thomas Newbolts poem Vitai Lampada, written in 1897:
Theres a breathless hush in the Close to-night.
Ten to make and the match to win.
A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And its not for the sake of a ribbonned coat
Or the selfish hope of a seasons fame,
But his Captains hand on his shoulder smote
Play up! play up! and play the game!
The sand of the desert is sodden red,
Red with the wreck of the square that broke;
The Gatlings jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks
And Englands far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
This is the word that year by year,
While in her place the School is set,
Everyone of her sons must hear,
And none that hears it dare forget.
This they all with a joyful mind,
Bear through life like a torch in flame
And falling, fling to the host behind
Activity 6.4
Write a short paragraph answering the following questions:
1. What are the themes that underpin the poem?
2. Why did the public schools become such an important part of the boys
lives?
3. What are the characteristics thought to be learned from athletic games?
Reflective activity
Consider your own experience in PE and identify how it differs from the English
public school approach in the late nineteenth century. Apply some of the
sociological theories identified earlier on to the experience of the public
schoolboys and to your experience. What does this tell you?
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The notion of fair play and sportsmanship result from the amateur code and class
system of the nineteenth century. It might be argued that amateurism was the driving morality that in a secular sense matched what muscular Christianity was contributing
in a religious one to athletic practice. Played in the public schools, the codified games
that became the sports we recognise today were the vehicles that carried these values.
The reinforcing of social position and role is central to the process of socialisation.
It is clear that the expectations of officers and other ranks (soldiers and seamen), and
practices used in military training reflect this process in action. Public and elementary
schools were equally important in this dynamic. As we have seen, the athletic games
that we now consider our sports were developed in the elite education system and
played an important part in the lives of the boys who undertook their schooling in that
system during the nineteenth century. Physical training, or what we now know as
physical education, is rather more than the playing of these athletic games, however,
and it is to its introduction and development that we now turn.
Outside the public schools there was no comprehensive system of education in
Britain. Provision was patchy: many societies were set up with the aim of providing
affordable education to the children of working people. Much of the effort was
organised through the church, with some parishes providing schools while others failed
to see that it was their responsibility. Very little attention was paid to the physical in
the fragmented and inconsistent elementary school system of the time, but it had been
noted that in many settings physical training was the least of the concerns for the
poverty-stricken and half-starved children who occasionally attended.
Compulsory elementary education was eventually provided as a result of the 1876
and 1880 Education Acts. Initially, physical training was taken care of by retired army
non-commissioned officers, who instructed the pupils in the rudiments of drill. There is
little evidence that this teaching was informed by the work of Archibald Maclaren, or
any of the insights from the Swedish or German systems of gymnastics. The instructors
were paid on the basis of six old pence a day (2.5 pence in todays decimal currency) with
the addition of a penny per mile marching money. McIntosh (1957, p194) states that it
was hoped that the exercises would be sufficient to teach boys habits of sharp
obedience, smartness and cleanliness. This approach was the only officially sanctioned
form of physical education in the elementary schools until 1890.
Physical education, sport and women

The contested area of games, sport and physical activity was just one area of life
where changes were occurring for women. Modern Britain would provide a platform
upon which the status of women would be challenged. Two powerful cultural forces
clashed with regard to the involvement of women in physical activity and sport.
The Victorian stereotype of the female, with much stress on bodily weakness,
medical vulnerability, emotional nature and social limitations, was countered by
the values of the culture of games, health through physical activity and fair play.
In this era, appropriate gender socialisation and their processes of reinforcement
were seen to be an essential component of a stable and well-ordered society, albeit
that it was an order created by men and designed to benefit them. While this can be
considered a powerful example of how socialisation reinforces pattern maintenance
and processes of social integration, as will be illustrated, the capacity for adaptation is
87
equally powerful, and in the area of female emancipation (in its broadest sense), physical
education, games and sports became an important site of contestation.
The male ideology of athletic games was adopted by a new breed of female
educationalists: what was good for sons and brothers was good for daughters and
sisters. In a me too feminism, girls and young women of the upper and middle classes
became enamoured with games and sport, just as their brothers and fathers had done.
To the Victorian male the spectre of women undertaking competitive athletic games
was difficult to accept. Men developed stamina, perseverance, teamwork and competitiveness through their sports and then used those qualities during their work, when
they were re-created once again through their sports. Thus, work and sport were
mutually re-enforcing. In the context of the middle-class female, this was seen to be
quite alien. The widely held notion that man does, woman is illustrated well one of the
major difficulties that men faced with women taking up sports. Man believed he was
active and woman passive; man was culture (civilisation), woman was nature; man would
aspire, woman would accept.
By the close of the century it had become established, at least in liberal and
progressive circles, that fitness and femininity were not opposed; they were both
required to create healthy, moral, middle-class families. By blending games, hitherto the
province of boys, with a carefully graded set of exercises to promote suppleness, balance
and agility, many of the medical professions reservations about female physical activity
were overcome. Educated young women were forging a different life for themselves,
given the obvious constraints of the times. These women expected more freedom and
often linked educational, political and professional aspirations with the right to use their
own bodies as they wished, be it to play lawn tennis or ride their bicycles.
Despite the obvious emancipatory aspects that these upper- and middle-class
young women were bringing to the lives of late Victorian women, it often re-affirmed
the established stereotype. Despite new opportunities in education, and physical
education in particular, these privileged women became boxed into the confines of
physical activity within the environs of the girls public school, the family garden and
the private club.
Class distinctions
Womens sport had struck a balance between physical emancipation and social
respectability. In the late Victorian period there was a re-definition of the female body
that allowed a more active physical life, but the distinction between the capacities and
character of men and women was rigidly maintained. Female sport in this period was
predominantly the preoccupation of privately educated young women. Working-class
girls undertook little in the way of recreational exercise.
The year 1878 saw the London School Board introduce therapeutic gymnastics into
girls elementary education. By 1885, over 700 teachers had been trained to supervise
simple remedial exercises for girls. By the end of the nineteenth century, gym classes
for girls were being encouraged in cities such as Liverpool as part of the national drive
for efficiency. Games or sport was rarely included for the working-class girls, however:
games for the classes, gym for the masses was the mantra.
During the First World War, young women working in munitions factories were
encouraged to take part in games and it was found that they had little experience, or
understanding, of team games or indeed any form of exercise for pleasure.
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Activity 6.5
Think back over your experience of PE and write a short reflection on the
following questions:
1.
What differences can you identify between the PE experiences of boy and
girl pupils in schools?
2. How is this manifested in the curriculum?
3. How might some of the issues discussed above explain your own
experience?
Twentieth-century changes
By early in the twentieth century, while some games were included, the majority of the
programme was based on the Swedish system of gymnastic exercises. Physical training
was considered to be beneficial in two distinct areas: positive physical, health and
maturational effects; positive educational effects focused on mental wellbeing,
alertness, memory, learning, self-control, self-restraint, fostering a public spirit, etc.
Kirk (2003) correctly identifies that physical education, like sport, is a highly
contested social construction. He sees the evolving of educational gymnastics in British
schools as a positive, though much resisted process. For the first half of the twentieth
century women had dominated the PE profession. By the 1950s men were entering the
profession and the balance shifted away from educational and creative gymnastics
towards physical education programmes built on sports, athletic games and fitness
training regimes. Kirk concludes that by the 1960s the male influence had prevailed and
become dominant.
The evidence presented in the preceding historical discussion demonstrates a
number of important points. The first is that sports did not just drift into the educational
setting. They were included because of the way they aided the process of socialisation
into the demands of modern life. Sociological analysis of school sport and physical
education, while supporting some of these assumptions, also clearly shows that there is
a need for a more critical understanding of the process.
Sport, physical education and socialisation: some closing

questions
The view that sport builds character has been extensively examined both here and
elsewhere (Rees and Miracle, 2000). Contemporary thinking suggests that there
appears to be no significant difference between the moral attitude and the adherence to
positive social values, between groups who play and who do not play sport. Indeed, some
research (Bredemeier et al., 1987) suggests that the longer young people are involved
in contact team sports the lower the level of moral reasoning. This may be due to
students becoming aware of game play the winning is not everything, its the only
thing! It is obvious that sport is not always played fully within the constraints of the
rules and that to some degree the bending of the rules to the advantage of the team is
89
either encouraged or expected. Football provides many examples of this from the
professional foul to the vehement claiming of the ball when it has gone out of play, even
when it is patently obvious that your team was responsible for the ball going out. As
Hughes and Coakley (1991) note, sport, rather than socialising people into appropriate
forms of moral behaviour, can often be seen as a special area of life where the normal
rules and codes of moral conduct are suspended.
The claim that sports are a vehicle through which positive moral character can be
developed nonetheless persists, despite some clear indication to the contrary and with
little empirical evidence to support it. From the inception of athletic games and sports
in the English public school, to the development and inclusion of physical education in
our national curriculum, part of the rationale has been the importance of building
character in our young people. While frequently stated overtly, but far more regularly
tacitly assumed, the belief in the moral benefits accrued through sports and games is
clearly something that we need to be very careful about.
As Coakley (2003, p124) has recognised: Efforts to understand what happens to
people when they play sports have been sidetracked by the popular belief that sports
build character. This belief is grounded in the oversimplified conception of sports,
sports experiences and socialization.
Review
Sport is a social institution, one that is made up of a series of legally and formally
constituted organisations (sporting, local, regional, national, international). It is used
extensively to confirm elements of modern identity (gender, racial; local/regional;
national/cultural). More than this, it is a concept that even today is invested with norms
and values whose origins lie in the social and cultural conditions of nineteenth-century
Britain. Since this time, sport and physical education have played an important role in
the processes of socialisation and have acted in influential ways shaping how people
have engaged with society. While involvement with sport has largely remained a
voluntary activity, the significance of physical education as a powerful educational and
socialising medium has been recognised, with it becoming a compulsory element of the
national curriculum.
Explained primarily by a functionalist theoretical approach, socialisation through
sport and physical education has been considered and illustrated. A sociological
counterpoint of the interactionist perspective has also been included and used to
demonstrate the importance of creating a sociological analysis of sport that effectively
explains how conscious individuals reflexively engage with sport.
Processes of gender socialisation were also discussed and highlighted as a major
issue within both sport and physical education. The gender divisions that can still be
observed in sport and physical education have well-established roots within the moral
framework of Victorian society. These values have, however, not gone unchallenged within
sport and physical education. Indeed, though often overshadowed by the prominence of
males in sport, historically the roles that women have played in the development of
physical education have been a vital part of its success and development. While this can
be seen as an example of the struggle for female emancipation, it also helps to
demonstrate that one of the characteristics of modern society has been its capacity to
accommodate internal pressures for change (in this case by women), while also
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attempting to produce and maintain social stability. As we shall see in the next chapter,
not all sport sociologists have followed this line of analysis and they have set out to argue
that, at its heart, modern society produced a social system that privileged some while
marginalising and repressing others. In directly challenging some of the assumptions
within the functionalist perspective, they argue that change is not evolutionary but occurs
through confrontation and conflict. As we shall see, sport was, and is, deeply embedded
in these processes.
Having worked through this chapter, you should now take some time to carefully
answer the following questions:
1.
Why are processes of socialisation so important to an understanding of

sports social importance?
2. When we learn about sport through being part of a family, would a sport
sociologist describe this as an example of primary or secondary
socialisation?
3. Can you identify at least three examples of the character-building
processes that are normatively associated with sport?
4. How do functionalist and interactionist perspectives of sport and
socialisation differ? Have the gender differences within sport evident in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries significantly changed?
Further study
To extend your understanding of the functionalist analysis of sport read:
Loy, J and Booth, D (2000) Functionalism, sport and society, in Coakley, J and Dunning,
E (eds) Handbook of sports studies. London: Sage.
To explore further how sport is linked to socialisation processes (primarily from an
American perspective) read:
Chapter 4: Sports and socialisation, in Coakley, J (2003) Sports in society: issues and
controversies. 8th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
To examine how sport can be argued to be connected to processes of social control read:
To extend your understanding of the historical and sociological issues impacting the
development of physical education read:
Birley, D (1993) Sport and the making of Britain. Manchester: Manchester University
Press.
Kirk, D (2003) Sport, physical education and schools, in Houlihan B (ed) Sport and
society: a student introduction. London: Sage.
91
Chapter 7
Class and gender differentiation

in sport
Peter Craig and Paul Beedie
In this chapter we will introduce you to the important sociological concepts of social
stratification, differentiation, power and inequality. Specifically, we will explore how
these concepts help our understanding of how social class and gender impact on the
experience of sport in the modern world. In undertaking this brief overview, it is not our
intention to engage you with a detailed exploration of the complex array of theories on
class and gender differentiation, rather the chapter will introduce you to a number of
important sociological theories and concepts that will help you begin the process of
critically thinking about the ways these two important areas of social differentiation
impact on the experience and structure of modern sport.
Learning outcomes
give sociological explanations of the following terms: social stratification;
social class; inequality; gender; ideology; hegemony; patriarchy;
describe how these terms can be applied to the analysis of modern sport;
detail how functionalist, conflict and neo-Marxist theories provide
distinctive insights into the influence of social class and participation in
sport;
explain the main sociological premises underpinning a feminist analysis of
sport;
outline how social differentiation is related to the distribution of power
relations within a variety of sporting contexts.
Introduction
If you take even a few moments to look carefully at people passing by on any street in
any town in Britain, you will quickly spot differences. Judged by their behaviour and the
style of their clothes, some will appear to be more or less the same as you, others may
appear more wealthy and others less well off. Look again and you will see distinct
differences based on gender, race, ethnicity and age. A major question that sociology
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7 / Class and gender differentiation in sport
poses is whether these differences can be understood as socially produced. Sociologists are generally in agreement that the modern world has developed complex
mechanisms of social differentiation.
The analysis of inequality has always been a central interest of sport sociologists.
As Coakley (2003, p326) correctly notes, this interest is partly sparked by the fact that
People like to think that sports transcend issues of money, power and economic
inequalities. At the heart of many of our most cherished ideas about sports lies our
belief that sport is open to everyone and that the sports field is one where people, no
matter what their social class, gender, race, ethnicity, age, sexuality or disability,
compete fairly and the outcomes are mostly determined by those who have the most
talent, skill, strength and fitness. However, even a cursory glance at sport shows this to
be, at best, a rather naive viewpoint.
Reflection
Consider equestrian sports. Horse racing seems at one level to be fairly
egalitarian, at least when it comes to attending the race meetings and enjoying
a flutter. But when you look a little more deeply, you will see numerous class
and gender divisions. The working classes are heavily involved, but as sports
workers, not as owners. They are the stable hands, and a few are jockeys, and
all make their living out of the sport. While this may be also true for the trainers,
it is usually not the case for the actual owners of the horses, most of whom are
independently wealthy and enjoy their often very costly involvement in the sport
as part of their leisure. Look again and you will also see that while there are a lot
of female stable hands and grooms, there are relatively few who are jockeys and
even fewer who are trainers and owners.
If we look at another equestrian sport show jumping then we see a
completely different set of divisions. Young women have a much greater
presence and many of the elite performers are women. Riders often own their
horses directly or have ones that are sponsored by companies. In terms of social
class, there is little evidence that the working classes are significantly involved or
even interested in the sport. Middle classes therefore can be seen to have a
powerful and dominating influence on the sport. Given this reality, what do you
think the experience of a young working-class girl would be if she decided that
she would like to join a pony club? You might also like to think about examples
such as this once you have completed the section on gender and sport in order
to consider the ways that class and gender intersect in creating processes of
social differentiation within sport.
Activity 7.1
This activity is about exploring popular culture and the everyday representations
of sport, social class and gender.
Over a number of days collect one of the most popular tabloid newspapers (e.g. the Sun or the Mirror) and one of the most popular broadsheets (e.g.
93

The Times, the Guardian or the Telegraph). Make a careful list of what sports
are discussed in which newspapers and then group these by 1. class divisions and
2. gender representation.
What do you conclude from your findings?
After completing this task, make sure you retain the newspapers as you will
use them in a later activity.
Sport, modern society and the problem of social

stratification
As you should recall from the opening chapter, the modern age has been deeply
patterned by a number of distinctive processes. Industrial capitalism itself has created
new and distinctive patterns of inequality and differentiation. The term that sociologists
have developed to describe these is social stratification.
Definition: social stratification
The way in which all societies develop unequal layers (or strata) based on income,
wealth, status and power. In the modern age, these have led to distinctive
systems of differentiation based on social class, gender, age, race, ethnicity,
religion, disability and sexuality.
Sport and social class

The social and cultural formation and reproduction of social class today is fundamentally a reflection of the way modern society has structured its economy around
capitalism and industrialism.
Definition: social class
A term widely used in sociology to identify specific groups of people through
economic considerations that emphasise groups differences on the grounds of
wealth, income and status.
As Sugden and Tomlinsons (2000) discussion of sport, social class and status
details, within sport there are multiple and easily identifiable markers of the relationship between sport and social class. Sports such as boxing always draw from those
social groups who are at the bottom end of the social order. The same is also true for
sport for those who are higher up the social order or who are privileged to belong to the
small elite at the top. They state (2000, p309):
For instance, in the context of British society, involvement in a polo match in the
grounds of Windsor Castle, participation in Henleys boating regatta or a trip to
the grouse moors of Scotland can be clear signals of high social status. Similarly
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playing golf [and] attending Twickenham for a rugby international. . .all convey
messages about the social location of the participants.
Class, then, has a number of characteristics that in turn contribute to who does what
sport, where and with whom. Class is not based on division by religion or legal provision
and is therefore a social construction. Because it is more than an accident of birth, it is
possible to move up or down a class. Economic conditions provide the commonest
criteria by which classes are distinguished. However, because class divisions exist over
generations, there are more complex indirect indicators including education, location,
culture and social capital that shape and reinforce these divisions and their commensurate ramifications for sport. A number of social theories, including functionalism,
conflict theory, neo-Marxism and feminism, help us to understand how issues of class
and gender are part of sport in modern society.
Functionalist perspectives of sport and social class

In the twentieth century the major proponent of a functionalist perspective (see Chapter
4) was Talcott Parsons (Bilton et al., 2002). While Parsons agreed with Marx that class
was fundamentally the product of the economic system, unlike Marx he argued that the
hierarchical divisions between social classes were a necessity. All societies need to
create a system that allocates people to different social positions and then produces
appropriate incentives to encourage them to perform the duties required by those
positions. Although in principle this perspective takes the view that modern society is
essentially meritocratic (i.e. the best get to the top), this also suggests that inequality is
a necessity as it creates the incentive for work. The explanation for class position is
often directed at the individual and their talents, and how they actively develop and
nurture those talents. In simple terms, society needs to provide social outcomes that
demonstrate that hard work is worth it and that everyone can be successful. The belief
is that even children born into poor working-class families can succeed, as modern
education systems should give all children the opportunity to recognise and develop
their productive potential.
As Sugden and Tomlinson (2000, pp312313) have detailed, much of the early
sociology literature that took an interest in sport was American and adopted aspects of
the functionalist perspective in the attempt to explain how sport worked within society.
This analysis included explanations for the linkages between different social classes and
various sports, how sport reflected the inherent structures of the modern social system,
and whether sport could act as a vehicle for social mobility. Sugden and Tomlinson (2000)
also highlight that this type of sociological scholarship has been heavily criticised for
being uncritical, rather naive and unrealistic in its understanding of the inherent and
deeply ingrained inequalities and disadvantages that social class creates.
Reflection
The Sutton Report on Social Mobility 2007, a long-term study, drew a number of
important conclusions. Taking all the reports results together suggests that the
sharp decline in intergenerational mobility that occurred between the 1958 and
95
Reflection continued
1970 cohorts has not continued for more recent generations of children. However,
at the same time, mobility levels have not reversed or started to improve, and
remain very low. The fall in intergenerational mobility between the 1958 and 1970
cohorts appears to have been an episode. Social mobility worsened and took
a step change downwards, leaving the UK close to the bottom of the intergenerational league table of mobility. Parental background continues to exert a
significant influence on the academic progress of recent generations of children.
Stark inequalities are emerging for todays children in early cognitive test scores
mirroring the gaps that existed and widened with age for children born 30 years
previously. Inequalities in degree acquisition meanwhile persist across different
income groups, with those from high income groups still over four times as likely
to graduate as those from low income groups (Blandon and Machen, 2007).
Conflict theory, sport and social class

Probably the most important aspect of Marxs work is that, as Elias (1977 cited in Rigaur,
2000, p28) notes: Marx was undoubtedly the first person who succeeded in creating a
comprehensive and coherent theoretical model of human society and its development
based on the perspective of the less powerful and the poorer groups of people.
The focus of Marxs work cannot be separated from the context of his social
world. His was a time of deep social and political unrest, allied to a rapidly expanding
system of industrial capitalism and its ingrained political and economic differences
and contradictions. These were most acutely felt in the growing rivalries and conflicts between the old elites (the aristocracy), the emerging elite (the bourgeoisie/
middle classes) and the working classes. Nineteenth-century modernity laid the
foundation of modern sport and therefore it is not surprising that sport came to reflect
these same fractures.
The central elements of Marxs analysis focus on socio-economic and political
relations, interdependencies and power imbalances: Society does not consist of
individuals but expresses the sum of relations and conditions in which these individuals
stand by one another (Marx, 1939, p41 cited in Rigaur, 2000, p30).
Sport is impacted by the realities of economic conditions, but is fundamentally part
of the superstructure of capitalist society. A key function of the superstructure is the
production, reproduction and circulation of ideologies. Cultural practices such as sport
are fully integrated into these processes. As Brohm (1978, p117) states:
Thus the world economic hierarchy has direct consequences on a nations
level of competitiveness in sport. Today only the top nations can take on the
organisation of major international competitions like the Olympics. This hierarchy
naturally reasserts itself when it comes to choosing the country and city to
organise the Olympic Games.
Much has been made of the spiritual values of the Games and their cultural legacy.
However, the motto that de Coubertin indelibly impressed on the Games cistius, altius,
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fortius (faster, higher, stronger) is embedded in one of the central tenets of modernity;
the belief in social progress grounded in the forming institutions of modernity (see
Chapter 2). The emphasis on never-ending achievement mirrors and reciprocates the
tenets of the global capitalist system and its ceaseless expansion. It also brings with it
inevitable disappointment when these ideals are not maintained. Most recent world
records now rely on ever more sophisticated systems of recording and measurement
to detect and measure even the slightest improvement. Today, world records are ever
harder to achieve and in many sports the outer limits of performance are now being
approached. Indeed, many recent records have been tainted by the spectre of drug use
as athletes and coaches are forced to seek ever more extreme measures to achieve the
impossible. The financial rewards make it almost inevitable that some athletes will
continue to make this rational choice.
Today, the Olympics in particular, but also sport more generally, have to respond to
a complex but familiar set of interconnected interests. These include nationalism,
commercial interests such as sport companies, property and infrastructure development and media concerns. Therefore, Brohms (1978) pronouncement that sport is
alienating and that it will disappear in a universal communist society has proved to be
false on a number of counts. The first is that to date nearly all of the societies that
adopted forms of Communist governance and economic organisation chose to incorporate sport within their social system. Second, it was the Communist system that has
almost completely disappeared while sport has continued to flourish. Indeed, sport has
become one of the worlds universalising systems.
The meaning and organisation of sports are heavily influenced by money and
economic power. Class relations in most societies are based on an ideology (the
systematic organisation of ideas) in which economic success is equated with individual
ability, worth and character competitive power and performance sports reinforce and
reaffirm this ideology. The most powerful people in sport are white men who control
the resources of major organisations that sponsor sports or present them in the media.
Power resides in clubs and sports authorities, and the people who control these
organisations, so that the reality is that athletes and spectators have little or no power
in sports.
Social class and class relations influence who plays, who watches, who consumes
information about sports and the kinds of information that are available. In general, the
higher a persons social class, the more likely they are to be involved in sport and the
more influence (and power) they are likely to have over the forms that sport takes and
the way(s) sport develops. Thought about in this way, it becomes clear that sport can
become an important determinant of class-related lifestyles so that, for example,
despite efforts to make rowing more egalitarian in its appeal across all classes, it
remains a bastion of the upper-middle classes. This is certainly the case in Bedford, a
town with a longstanding rowing tradition based on Victorian engineering of the River
Ouse around the Embankment, where the grassroots entry points to this sport are
dominated by the towns fee-paying schools. Without a genuine opportunity for
youngsters at state schools in Bedford to become involved in rowing, the clubs remain
the preserve of the higher classes: rowing, does not reflect the cosmopolitan diversity
of social groups living in Bedford, but instead remains populated by those privileged
educationally and who will, in turn, be more likely to be involved in the Henley Regatta (as
participants or spectators) and other socially specific rowing events.
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Neo-Marxist perspectives of sport and social class

One of the key critical positions on conflict theory recognises that it is overdependent
on an assessment of class and its economic indicators at the expense of other social
categories the idea of economic determinism. The Marxist view of social class
has often, mistakenly, been reduced to the recognition of two class groupings the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Class conflict is much easier to predict in the context of
two groupings whose interests are so widely separated. The reality of the capitalist
system is that there are at least four separate groupings, all of which Marx recognised
to some degree. These are the bourgeoisie, the petite bourgeoisie, the proletariat and
the lumpenproletariat. These more easily translate to a small and very wealthy upper
class, the middle class, the working class and an underclass. All have their own separate
interests and concerns, and all, to varying degrees of intensity, are interconnected and
interdependent. The problem with allocating class (and therefore how people recognise
themselves and are recognised by others) is that the class labels are highly elastic.
There is a strong case that Marxs emphasis on economic power and the unequal
distribution of resources was actually fairly close to that evidenced in the work of
another major sociological theorist of social class and inequality, Max Weber.
Weber argued that all forms of inequality are based on some form of power. For
Weber, a group that shares an identity and therefore acts in community (a recognisable
collective) is better understood as a status group. People need more than abstract
economic labels to form a common identity (this is why workers unions have clearly
demarcated lines of identification). In simple terms, what this means is that classes are
composed of people with similar levels of income, skills and qualifications, and relatively
similar ranges of life experiences and lifestyles. Clearly, sport could be directly relevant
here. Bourdieu (1984) in his theory of Distinction applied a similar way of thinking. He
argued that different classes accumulated and used capital in a number of ways to
position themselves in a social context. Groups with the greatest cultural capital were
able to distinguish themselves from other groups by establishing socially determined
boundaries that operate with a degree of elasticity and permeability just as class/status
boundaries do. The hub of Bourdieus thesis is a structural explanation of forms of
behaviour, including a propensity for sporting activity, commensurate with a class
system. Rather like Wilson (2002), Bourdieu presented a lot of evidence to suggest that
the middle class were the most likely to be involved with sports but only those sports
that were consistent with middle-class status.
The key idea here is than class and differing class interests exist, but they are much
more diverse and fragmented than the original Marxist framework would suggest. Power
has a number of forms and draws its capacities from a variety of different sources.
Economic power is just one form of power, but, it was and remains a very influential
one. Neo-Marxist ideas accept this up to a point but recognise that other forms of
power are apparent in class formation and the way people continue to construct
representative social identities. Today, these are more loosely formed than in previous
generations where class and other social categories were deepened so as to be very
powerful determinants of social status and opportunity. Now, a plurality of social
groupings impact on the formation of identity, including nationality, race and ethnicity,
regional and local groupings, gender, the lads, the team, the family, hunt protesters,
Countryside Alliance, Greenpeace eco-warrior and many others. To be a group member
requires some commitment to an acceptance of common styles, behaviours and
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attitudes for Bourdieu this was cultural capital. Group membership(s) remain very
important as they help to develop perceptions of self-worth and confirm status and,
inevitably, sports have become an important focal point of these identities which might
be thought of as a team or tribal affiliation.
Ideology
In order to more fully understand ideas of power implicit in the neo-Marxist position
outlined above, it is necessary to explore ideology.
Definition: ideology
Ideology is the shared ideas or beliefs which serve to justify the interests of
dominant groups. (Giddens, 2001, p691)
Ideologies are found in all societies in which there are systematic and ingrained
inequalities between groups. So, the concept of ideology connects closely to that of
power: since ideological systems serve to legitimise the differential power which groups
hold (Giddens, 2001, p691).
Exploring ideology
Ideology is a crucial concept in the study of sport and contemporary (popular) culture. If
Marxs critique of the power relations endemic in modern capitalist society is correct,
then these same power relations must have patterned the structure of social life and
how it continues to reproduce itself. In particular, our focus on sport must be directed
not just at economic inequalities, but also at the structures of control and dominance
that direct us to act in particular ways. Neo-Marxist theorists stress that this structure
has two component parts:
class control based on ideology;
class control based on culture.
Capitalist (class) ideology

Marx suggests that the ruling elite in a capitalist society controls the means of mental
production. What this means is that, without the material capacity to challenge the
ruling intellectual force, subordinate classes are subjected to the ideas of the elite. In
this way ideology operates in the interests of the powerful, but is invisible in everyday
life by using processes of:
masking, distortion [and] concealment. Ideology is used here to indicate how
some cultural texts and practices present distorted images of reality. They
produce what is called false consciousness. Such distortion, it is argued, works in
the interests of the powerful against the interests of the powerless. Using this
definition we might speak of capitalist ideology.
(Storey, 1993, p4)
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Class ideology in sport as discourse

Within the sociological analysis of sport and popular culture, the concept of discourse
has become a very important term. Its usefulness lies in how the way we talk and provide
images that represent sport need to be understood as texts, that not only permeate all
aspects of our everyday life, but also impose how we interpret these sporting texts. In
this sense, discourse is related to the way that ideology helps produce and reproduce
systems of power and control.
Definition: discourse
A discourse is a set of textual arrangements which organises and co-ordinates
the actions, positions and identities of the people who produce it. (Thwaites
et al., 1994, p135)
In terms of our current interest, these textual arrangements often frame our understanding of class relations in sport.
Activity 7.2
Look back over the newspapers you collected for learning task 7.1 and pay
particular attention to any photographs that were published that involved sports
people or sporting action shots.
Do you think that these show more than just the sport? Do they show some
of the expected class characteristics that may be associated with different
sports? What sports are present and what sports are absent?
Comment: The way some newspapers make some sports visible to their
readers and others not can be a powerful way in which class discourse operates.
These discursive practices also frame how various sports organisations, communities
and groups seek to represent their vision of sport. The IOC Sport for All Commission is
an example. Its mission statement suggests a uniformity which, though it might be
desirable, does not exist in practice because of the unequal distribution of material and
other resources.
Sport for All is a movement promoting the Olympic ideal that sport is a human
right for all individuals regardless of race, social class and sex. The movement
encourages sports activities that can be exercised by people of all ages, both
sexes, and different social and economic conditions.
Sport and ideology: Barthes and mythologies

This particular use of the concept of ideology stems from the work of the French
cultural theorist Roland Barthes (1973). Barthes argues that ideology works in subtle (in
his terms, mythic) ways to fix the meanings of language and signs. For example, in all
holiday brochures we see happy people having fun, looking healthy (slim and fit) and
enjoying the sun (with allied images of beaches, swimming pools and palm trees). Some
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of the messages this presentation fixes in our minds are: a) that sun equals fun and
happiness; b) that happy people go on holiday; c) that we will be slim and fit if we go on
holiday, and so forth. For Barthes, this is a clear attempt to make universal and natural
what is actually partial and contested.
Ideology: neo-Marxist perspectives

In pointing out the reductionist problems of Marxist analyses, neo-Marxist analysis
stresses how ideology becomes represented and is often hidden within everyday cultural
practices and forms. Even everyday, commonplace cultural activities and practices such
as sport (either engaged physically or just by watching it on TV) or taking part in PE,
ultimately have an inherent set of meanings that inform how we should understand the
world. Seen in this light, all these activities are, therefore, to some degree ideological in
nature. In this sense, ideology is the most subtle and essential feature aiding the reproduction of modern society, for the very reason that it is largely hidden from view.
Hegemony
Connected to the discussion of ideology above is the concept of hegemony. Here the
main theorists are Antonio Gramsci and Raymond Williams.
Definition: hegemony
Hegemony describes the social and cultural processes of domination of one class
or gender over another.
While somewhat complex, the following quote elaborates why hegemony is such an
important sociological concept:
It sees the relations of domination and subordination, in their forms as practical
consciousness, as in effect a saturation of the whole process of living not only
of political and economic activity, nor only of manifest social activity, but of the
whole substance of lived identities and relationships, to such a depth that the
pressures and limits of what can ultimately be seen as a specific economic,
political and cultural system seem to most of us the pressures and limits of
simple experience and common sense. Hegemony is not then only the articulate
upper level of ideology, nor are its forms of control only those ordinarily seen as
manipulation or indoctrination. It is a whole body of practices and expectations,
over the whole of living: our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world.
(Williams, 1977, p110, cited in Clarke and Critcher, 1985, p228)
A number of key ideas about power, the distribution of resources and socially
defined boundaries such as those of class relations are emerging in the discussion this
far. It becomes clear that the modern world has become increasingly complex and a good
example of this complexity is evident in the concept of hegemony. It is clear that a
capitalist society has strata indicative of dominant groups and that these groups have
ideological control over subordinate groups. It is not just the richest groups that are the
most powerful in this respect; dominant groups maintain their position by securing the
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spontaneous consent (Strinati, 1995, p165) of subordinate groups through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus. In simple terms, hegemony
refers to the way discourse and ideology operate to position social groups, yet
that positioning is facilitated to a considerable degree (though never completely so)
by the groups themselves, even when a subordinate group clearly has an inferior social
status.
Cultural studies and the concept of hegemony

Hegemony has become a significant concept for the analysis of sport, leisure and
popular culture in that it condenses a number of major themes stemming from
neo-Marxist social theory, feminism and the analysis of race and ethnic relations
regarding processes of cultural domination and conflict. It recognises conflict between
cultural groups as a process that not only occurs at the level of political or economic
relations, but also within the everyday lived practices of people (what Gramsci refers
to as Civil Society). These practices and their meaning are often ignored as part of
this process because they are just that commonplace and uncontroversial aspects
of daily life.
Hegemony also recognises that the process of domination (i.e. the establishment
and reproduction of hegemony) is never complete. Rather, it is always contested and
resisted to some extent by those who inevitably find themselves marginalised and
subordinate. This means that hegemony can change over time, as it is readjusted and
re-negotiated constantly. For Gramsci, modernity evidences two different modes of
social control:
coercive control, manifested through direct force or its threat (needed by a state
when its degree of hegemonic leadership is low or fractured);
consensual control, which arises when individuals voluntarily assimilate the
worldview of the dominant group.
Sport and other arenas of popular culture are fundamental to the struggle for hegemony
within modern societies.
Activity 7.3
Over a few days (the weekend is probably best), take the opportunity to watch
some news broadcasts on TV and pay particular attention to their discussion of
sport.
From your observations, use the ideas of ideology, discourse and mythologies
to show how certain messages are connected to sport participation. Arrange your
notes so that you show how the natural (e.g. that sport is healthy) is not a
universal truism.
This task can be used in a variety of other contexts. You could listen to how
people such as PE teachers, coaches or parents talk about sport.
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Sport and gender divisions: feminist perspectives

The second significant element of stratification to inform this chapter is that of gender
the fulcrum of feminist theories (and other elements of critical theory). To state the
obvious, males and females have different physical constitutions, which are essentially
biological. However, most social theorists suggest that gender differences are only
marginally biological; more important are the social and cultural environment in which
we grow up. Nevertheless, it is biological characteristics that are most often used to
explain male dominance in sport.
Definition: sex
The anatomical and physiological differences that define male and female
bodies. (Giddens, 2001, p107)
Definition: gender
The psychological, social and cultural differences between males and females.
(Giddens, 2001, p107)
Feminist analysis of sport is not a unified field of sociological theory. Birrell (2000,
p62) believes that feminist theory is a dynamic, continually evolving complex of theories
or theoretical traditions that take as their point of departure the analysis of gender as
a category of experience in society. Through the range of feminist perspectives, many of
the differences of experience in sport are identified as quite distinct concerns about
the nature of human (gendered) rights and needs. These include equality of opportunity,
separatism, positive action, unnecessary divisions (e.g. biology) and capitalist power
relations.
Definition: heterosexuality
Man and woman as the norm in sexual relationships. This is aligned with the
assumption that a womans sexual body will attract the mans gaze. (Hargreaves,
1994)
As Hargreaves (1994) suggests, women who play mens sports have constantly to
negotiate their status in traditional cultural contexts of mens power and privilege, and
in a general discourse of femininity, patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality.
Definition: patriarchy
A system of power relations by which men dominate women.
(History evidences that patriarchy is the most basic form of oppression within
human society in that it emerges out of the essential physiological and psychological differences between the genders.)
Gender has emerged as an ideology sustained, in sport, by a male hegemony. Gender
is crucial to how we think of ourselves and define ourselves in relation to others, and
how we present ourselves in social settings. Gender ideology is based on a two-category
classification system that assumes mutually exclusive categories of heterosexual male
and heterosexual female; moreover, these are seen as opposites. This leaves no space
for those who do not fit into these categories and it also leads to inequities about power
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and access to power. Society has therefore determined gender roles; these are a set
of characteristics, attitudes and behaviours defined as appropriate to each gender.
It follows that our gender orientation is our degree of identification with those
characteristics, attitudes and behaviours.
Such an ideology leads to a process of stereotyping so that females are seen as
nurturing wives and mothers, organisers and, in sporting terms, spectators and
cheerleaders. Males, conversely, are seen as breadwinners, leaders and, in sporting
terms, players and even warriors. It follows that each stereotype has a set of characteristics which sees females as dependent, weak, emotional, non-rational, graceful,
co-operative and fluid, while males are seen as independent, strong or powerful,
assertive, rational, unemotional, competitive, instrumental and rough. These ideologically determined characteristics and behaviours are sustained by the processes of
socialisation. However, because they are socially determined, they are neither inevitable
nor unmodifiable in other words, they are the outcomes of cultural discourse rather
than personality traits.
Gender is not fixed in nature and therefore social institutions (such as sport) provide locations or sites (physical and social) for the creation and maintenance
of dominant definitions. In this critical theory way of thinking, sport becomes a
battleground where gender stereotypes can be shaped and reaffirmed, or contested
and challenged. Sports are often sites for celebrating traditional ideas about masculinity so that sports images and language commonly glorify a heroic manhood based
on being a warrior.
Activity 7.4
Undertake an Internet search for images and pictures of a specific sport
basketball would be an example played by both males and females. What do the
action shots tell us about gendered discourse in this sport?
When sports celebrate masculinity, female athletes are often defined as invaders.
Girls and women in sport increasingly threaten the preservation of traditional ideas
about gender the film Bend it like Beckham is a good example of the way that the
popularity of female football has been increased through a higher media profile.
However, for every such stride forward there is resistance, such as the one time Luton
Town FCs manager Mike Newell used a perceived poor decision by a female lineswoman
in a vital championship game as an opportunity to reassert the view that women have no
place in serious football. This is clear evidence of male sporting hegemony in action,
and is nothing more than a recent example of a discourse that can be traced back to the
nineteenth century when female participation in sport was extremely rare (e.g. exclusion
from running middle- and long-distance athletic races such as the marathon until well
into the twentieth century). The stereotypes do allow greater participation in certain
forms of sport for females, particularly those such as gymnastics and dance that
emphasise grace, fluidity and artistic interpretation. Conversely, females who want to
participate in rough power sports such as rugby, football and hockey are likely to be
labelled tomboys.
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Reflection
Here is an example of the logic of gender stereotyping in sport from mountaineering, a sport historically steeped in the celebration of maleness through
bravery, judgement, physicality and endurance. Joe Simpson and Alison
Hargreaves have been two of the pre-eminent British mountaineers of recent
times. Simpson achieved far fewer significant groundbreaking ascents than
Hargreaves, yet shot to fame in the mid 1980s when the story of his epic descent
from Siule Grande in Peru was made public through his book Touching the Void.
The book and subsequent film documented how his climbing partner was forced
to cut the rope, leaving Joe to die in a huge crevasse on the glacier below. That
he did not die, but was able to crawl to safety is now the stuff of mountaineering legend: he was the hero that overcame insurmountable odds to survive.
Hargreaves had a different press. Following a successful career of mountaineering achievement, including the first female British oxygen-free ascent of
Everest, she was tragically killed on K2 the second highest mountain in the
world while descending (following a successful ascent) towards safety. When
news of her death became public knowledge, it was the inappropriateness of
leaving her two children motherless that was the hub of the resultant reporting
rather than her mountaineering achievements.
One consequence of this gendered ideology in sport is a heightened awareness of

homophobia the irrational fear and/or intolerance of homosexuality. Because sport
adheres for the most part to gender stereotypes and because it takes place in very
public domains, it tends to emphasise compulsory heterosexuality, sometimes known
as heterosexism. Homophobia negatively affects all athletes, coaches and administrators regardless of their sexual orientation. Some hypothetical examples include a
straight athlete avoiding joining a club with a reputation for being gay, regardless of the
standard of coaching s/he might receive; a gay athlete hiding his/her sexual orientation
to avoid ostracism; and a female coach dressing in a skirt and high heels at a sports
match to appear more acceptably feminine. There are real difficulties for gay athletes
who publicly come out and therefore challenge or contest dominant ideologies: females
risk losing social acceptance as do men, but males might also risk physical safety. Both
genders risk putting commercial interests at stake (via sponsorship deals, for example),
itself indicative of the way that commercial and business interests operate to sustain
the gendered discourse in sports.
Feminist cultural studies and sport

Feminist theories in sport are essentially concerned with how ideologies of masculinity
and male power are produced and reproduced through the participation in, and the
spectating of, sports. This perspective aims to uncover how ideology and discourse
operate to reinforce a male hegemony. The ambition here is to initiate change, particularly for females, to realign ideas about sport in the modern world. In order to achieve
this, several related foci have been identified.
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First, investigation has focused on popular culture, especially the media and how
this is used to produce dominant conceptions of women and femininity. By identifying
how stereotyped characteristics are represented within TV programmes, films,
magazines, the Internet and other media outlets, awareness is raised and the potential
for contested views developed. For example, Ellen MacArthur, the record-breaking solo
round-the-world yachtswoman, was photographed with her manager (a man) on her
successful return to Britain.
Second, investigation has focused on the body and body cultures as a site of
gendered relations (see Chapter 12). Here, the ambition is to expose the hidden ways
that we assimilate established ideas about male and female bodies. In a further example
from adventure (see Chapter 13 for more detailed discussion), analysis of the front
covers of the popular rock-climbing magazine Climb shows at least as many female
climbers as males, but there are subtle differences, such as the steepness of the rock
being climbed, the aggressiveness of the pose, the amount of bare skin that is visible
and the prominence of the musculature on display.
Third, this perspective focuses on how women (and other groups who are repressed)
can resist the processes of domination and subordination. There are many examples
from sport to illustrate this focus, such as the emergence of Paula Radcliffe as a role
model for female runners. Indeed, popular culture, and the media in particular, can be
seen as a site where meanings are contested and dominant ideologies are disturbed.
So, if an enlightened scriptwriter for EastEnders introduced a character who saw herself
as an athlete, this could have a profound effect on popular consciousness. The question
is, how likely is this to happen?
Activity 7.4
In small groups, by drawing on the foci of feminist investigation into sport
outlined above, list examples of the gendered dimensions of sport and PE. You
might like to think about:
the PE curriculum;
films and literature;
print media;
TV;
the Internet;
sport activities and/or organisations.
Feminism has raised the profile of gendered discourse in sport and as such has led
to changes. Sports participation by girls and women has increased dramatically since
the early 1980s because of new sports opportunities, equal rights legislation, globally
based womens rights movements, a raised profile of health and fitness issues and some
increased media coverage of womens sport, such as the BBCs coverage of the 2007
Womens World Cup for football. However, there is still resistance to such developments
and the future trajectory for women in sport is not necessarily clear. There are budget
issues and resistance to government initiatives as well as a backlash among those who
resent or feel threatened by strong women. This is not just a position taken by men but,
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true to the principles of hegemony, there are many females who support the the position
that women should be submissive and unthreatening.
There are further reasons for caution in overstating the feminist case for sporting
equality. These include a media that have the power to trivialise, or at least underrepresent female sports; a continued emphasis on cosmetic fitness for women,
suggesting that it is more important to use fitness for aesthetic attraction rather
than to build muscles for athletic achievement. Lastly, females are still significantly
under-represented in positions of power in sports institutions. Among the reasons for
this under-representation are the fact that women have fewer established connections
and networks in sport; support systems for professional development for women have
been scarce; sport organisations are not always sensitive to family responsibilities; and
women may anticipate sexual harassment and more demanding standards than those
used to judge men.
Reflection
Pierre de Coubertin, referring to womens participation in the Olympics, said: It is
indecent to expect that spectators should be exposed to the risk of seeing the
female body being smashed before their eyes. No matter how toughened a
sportswoman may be, her nerves rule her muscles; nature wanted it that way. She
cant sustain the shock of competition. De Coubertins argument appears to be
that men and women are complementary opposites and, so long as women are
unlike men in the primary sexual characteristics and in reproductive function,
they can never be absolutely alike (to men) in the highest psychic processes. Here,
the implication is that reproductive function and biology impel men and women
inevitably to think and act differently. Hence, if logical reasoning, violence and
competition are the natural conditions of human society, then men must always
be dominant as women are by the necessity of biology tied to a more emotional
(illogical) life.
Modernity and gender: issues of control and power

Foucault, in trying to theorise the impact of modernity on the individual, identified three
types of power:
institutional power: which refers to gender, ethnic, social and religious forms of
domination;
economic power: which refers to the operation of the capitalist system;
subjective power: which refers to personal struggles against the suppression of
ones individual desires/potentials and passive submission to the pervasive social
order.
These forms of power interplay in defining the realms of control exercised within the
experience and practice of social groups and their sports. Within modern sport
important elements of these dimensions of power are directed at men and women and
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their bodies, so the embodiment of sport becomes a major focus of attention. This also
draws attention forcefully to the issue of agency. As Birrell (2000) points out, this has
led to a number of feminist theorists arguing that the analysis of sport must proceed
from a more synthetic stance that is, a synthesis of class, gender, race and ethnicity.
However, this synthetic approach makes it difficult to identify which (if any) of these
conditioning or structuring factors is the major determinant. Feminist theorising is
complex, dynamic and unsettling (Birrell, 2000, pp6162, cited in Hargreaves, 2004).
Review
Modern society is socially stratified and this stratification underpins forms of inequality
that are evident in sport. The influence of social class on sport can be understood
through Marxist concepts of economic inequalities and capitalist systems of production, neo-Marxist concepts of power and Weberian concepts of status systems.
Disadvantage in sport due to class can be explained in both structural and cultural
terms. The way that occupational class structure influences the life chances of the poor,
the working class, and the middle and upper classes appears to be highly resilient.
Feminist sociology challenges the assumption that class stratification is the primary
basis of social inequality. Explanations about the gender differences within sport range
from those focused on biology to those that stress the social and cultural construction
of gender. The persistence of patriarchal power structures sustaining a male hegemony
in society and within sport continue to significantly disadvantage women. Sporting
bodies are moulded into highly persistent gendered patterns.
Having worked through this chapter, you should now take some time to carefully
answer the following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
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Why does sociology suggest that all societies have systems of social
stratification?
How is inequality in modern society explained and how does it impact on
sport?
In their attempts to understand the impact of social class on sport, identify
the major distinctions between a functionalist, conflict and neo-Marxist
analysis. Which of these perspectives do you find explains your own
experience of social class within sport?
Drawing on your understanding of the terms ideology, discourse and
hegemony, justify why it is important to consider sports role within
popular culture.
Name the principal positions within feminism and detail how they can be
used to understand gender divisions within sport.
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Further study
For a general sociological introduction to the processes of social stratification and the
impact on social class read:
Chapters 6 and 7 of Bilton et al. (2002) Introductory sociology. London: Macmillan.
For gender read:
Chapter 8: Gender relations, in Bilton et al. (2002).
For a detailed overview of sport and social class read:
Sugden, J and Tomlinson, A (2000) Theorizing sport, social class and status, in Coakley,
J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook of sports studies. London: Sage.
Chapter 15: Sport and social divisions, in Jarvie, G (2006) Sport and culture. London:
Routledge.
For a detailed overview of sport and gender from a feminist perspective read:
Birrell, S (2000) Feminist theories of sport, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook
109
Chapter 8
Sport and diversity: issues of race,

ethnicity and disability
Peter Craig and Paul Beedie
In this chapter we will introduce you to the issue of cultural diversity and how it has
influenced, and continues to influence in seemingly ever more direct ways, the social
construction of sport. We will be specifically concerned to develop your understanding
of how race, ethnicity and disability can be understood as social constructions, and why
they have become vital concepts within the sociological study of sport. As with the
previous chapter, one of the underpinning themes will be the issue of inequality and its
impact on sporting experience.
Learning outcomes
show an understanding of the problems, challenges and potentials that the
increasing diversity of British society creates;
identify some of the sociological problems involved in defining terms such
as race, ethnicity and disability;
demonstrate how race, ethnicity and disability need to be understood as
social and cultural constructions that have produced inequalities of
opportunity and experience within sport;
identify how these processes have impacted on sport within your own
everyday experience.
Introduction
As we established in the previous chapter, processes of social differentiation are a
fundamental component of all societies. Modernity has produced its own distinctive systems of differentiation and inequality. Two of the main processes driving
differentiation are those of capitalism and industrialisation. The rationality of capitalist
economic relations has dominated how these processes have developed and had a
dramatic and long-lasting influence on society and thus on participation in sport.
Alongside gender and sexuality, the contemporary debates about mass migration and
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8 / Sport and diversity: issues of race, ethnicity and disability
the increasing levels of ethnic diversity in Britain highlight race, ethnicity and disability.
The rise of the Paralympics, and disabled sport generally, demonstrate that the issue
of equity in sport is also of paramount importance. Framing some of the central
concerns of this chapter are the claims of politicians, community leaders and sport
organisations that sport has an important role in addressing a range of social issues
arising from inequality and social exclusion.
Thinking about diversity

One of the common terms used to reflect the changes we are experiencing in contemporary British society is that of diversity.
Reflection
The term diversity is capable of many interpretations. In the context of equality
in sport, it is often taken to mean that there is a need for sport organisations to
recognise the differences in the values, attitudes, cultural perspective, beliefs,
ethnic background, sexual orientation, ability or disability, skills, knowledge, age
and life experiences of each individual in any group of people (www.diversity
toolkit.org.uk) taking part in sport. In this sense it should not be understood as
the same as equal opportunities. In sport the recognition and valuing of diversity
puts a requirement on sport organisations to have policies and procedures that
take the diverse needs and preferences of these groupings into account.
Sport is built on all those mechanisms and structures that the modern social
world has designed to translate and transmit how it wishes to order itself. If our
sport organisations (see Chapter 5), their policies, strategies and working practices
are to successfully address the challenges posed by the increasing diversity of our
social world, then it is likely that they will have to commit to a prolonged and critical
assessment of their own structures and practices. This chapter will examine the
changing social landscape of sport in Britain and aim to demonstrate that diversity
is a significant issue for sport. However, as with any process of social change, there
are advances, retreats and plateaus as carceral networks of power (Foucault, 1981)
operate.
As well as the classic sociological writings of Marx and Weber, contemporary
social theorists such as Anthony Giddens have placed the need to understand power
at the heart of their work. For Giddens (1984), it is not enough to understand the
sources of power (e.g. Marxs concerns with economic power). The ways in which
power is used, negotiated and resisted are also vitally important considerations
(Foucault, 1981). The way in which power permeates the cultural aspects of everyday
life means that they are a vital expression of power relations. Popular cultural activities such as sport are not superficial pastimes of little or no sociological note. Rather,
they are the sites where this struggle for and against a culture of the powerful is
engaged (Hall, 1992, p239).
This emphasises that our sense of community and our identities are inevitably linked
to the forms of culture we encounter. In an age where concerns over diversity and equity
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are an ever-present part of our (sporting) world, there is a need to explore how power
and culture operate in ways that reproduce, resist or potentially transform the existing
relations between groups.
Multi-racial, multicultural Britain

Activity 8.1
Before reading the following section, take a few moments to estimate what you
consider to be the percentage of ethnic minority groups within British society. If
there is time, also ask your friends and family to do the same estimate and see
how close it is to your estimate and to the actual figures given below. If your
estimates differ, why do you think this is?
The terms multiracial and multicultural society are relatively new, although the
historical realities of Britains past demonstrate that racial and ethnic differences
have always been present (though not always remembered). The term multiculturalism
is usually used to identify how Britain is now a state characterised by cultural and
ethnic diversity. For some of those advocating a policy of multiculturalism the
main concern is to create a society in which all cultural and religious groups are
treated equitably. At its most ideal this presents an image of a society in which no
one culture is dominant. However, many use the term in a much less idealistic way
and their intention is to describe how our society is changing to include an increasing
number of minority immigrant cultures existing alongside (and within) indigenous British
culture.
Part of the problem is a tendency to homogenise what is culturally diverse. There
is a difference between society as multicultural and multiculturalism as policy. To
describe British society today as multicultural is quite clearly just a statement of fact.
The change has been rapid and its pace has been for many deeply disturbing.
Multiculturalism can be understood as generated by social and cultural interactions
that are seen both as two-way (majorityminority) and as working differently for
different groups. As a way of organising our society multiculturalism positions each
cultural group as distinctive, and thus simple assimilation or integration processes do
not proceed without significant resistance.
Assimilation is where the processes affecting the relationship between social
groups are seen as one-way, and where the desired outcome for society as a whole is
seen as involving least change in the ways of doing things of the majority of the country
and its institutional policies.
Integration is where processes of social interaction are seen as two-way, and where
members of the majority community as well as immigrants and ethnic minorities are
required to make contributions; so the latter alone cannot be blamed for failing, or not
trying, to integrate.
In the 1950s and 1960s the expanding British economy required the recruitment of
labour from the former colonies that had been part of the Empire. This influx created a
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series of powerful dislocations that had significant political and cultural repercussions.
Race and ethnicity become powerful markers of separation and distinction. These racial
and ethnic distinctions were often used to mark out differences between the immigrant
groups and mainstream white British (Donald and Rattansi, 1992). These processes
produced a series of inequalities based on education, (un)employment, sport and
attitudes to physical activity, food culture and health. During this period, these minority
racial and ethnic groups became largely confined to the inner-city areas of Britains large
metropolitan areas.
Some facts and figures relating to the racial and ethnic diversity
of the UK
The results of the national census in 2001 (this is the most recent) estimated
the size of the minority ethnic population to be 4.6 million or 7.9 per cent of the
total population of the United Kingdom. Indians were the largest minority group,
followed by Pakistanis, those of mixed ethnic backgrounds, Black Caribbeans,
Black Africans and Bangladeshis. The remaining minority ethnic groups each
accounted for less than 0.5 per cent, but together accounted for a further
1.4 per cent of the UK population.
In Great Britain the minority ethnic population grew from 3.0 million in 1991
to 4.6 million in 2001, a rise of 53 per cent. Half of the total minority ethnic
population were Asians of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or other Asian origin.
A quarter of minority ethnic people described themselves as Black (Black
Caribbean, Black African or Other Black). 15 per cent of the minority ethnic
population described their ethnic group as Mixed. About one-third of this group
were from White and Black Caribbean backgrounds.
Britains ethnic minority population is predominantly a young one: while 20
per cent of the white British population is under 16, the figure rises to 38 per
cent for those of Bangladeshi origin, 35 per cent for those of Pakistani origin
and 50 per cent for those of mixed race. While children from ethnic minority
groups make up 12 per cent of the total child population, they are disproportionately more likely to be poor. Rates of child poverty are particularly high
among children of African (56 per cent), Pakistani (60 per cent) and Bangladeshi
(72 per cent) origin, compared with a rate of 25 per cent for white children
(www.statistics.gov.uk).
In common with many other liberal democracies, the UK is now in a process

of producing legislative and policy frameworks that are designed to address the
increasing diversity of its population. Typical of the governments commitment to a
diversity mandate is the promotion of ideas of equity regardless of race, religion,
gender and (dis)ability, published on the UK Governments Home Office website
(www.homeoffice.gov.uk).
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Sociological theories of racial and ethnic inequality

Within sociology the term race is a complex and often contradictory concept because of
disagreements regarding its precise meaning (Giddens, 2001). Ethnicity is often the
preferred term of sociologists as it avoids the fixed and dubious categorisations that
are associated with race. In their use of the term, sociologists attempt to draw attention
to a series of social and cultural practices that can be used to distinguish a particular
group, community or nation from others.
Definition: race
Refers to a set of social relationships that permit individuals and groups to be
assigned various capacities and competencies on the basis of a number of
biologically identified features.
Definition: ethnicity
Refers to a socially and culturally defined social group based on their sharing of
a common language, cultural values and traditions and religion.
As with the term race, references to ethnicity must also be treated with caution.
Through the use of ethnic markers such as Asian or Islamic, it is all too easy to fall into a
false ethnic universalism (Fleming, 1994) which can lead to the damaging and dangerous
processes of stereotyping.
Sociological concern with race and ethnicity and other social group categorisations
(e.g. disability) focuses on how they are used to give meanings to experience and to
categorise others. The dominant meanings that are given to racial or ethnic groupings
help to support a social-economic and cultural hierarchy in which being perceived as
white and Anglo-Saxon is generally rated more positively than being black and non
Anglo-Saxon (Kidd, 2002).
Activity 8.2
Personal reflection: think carefully how you might respond to the following
questions:
Why do you, or some people that you know, consider race to be an

important way of distinguishing different groups of people?
What does race tell us about the nature of different human populations,
their societies and cultures?
Why do we hear comments in sport that place significant emphasis on the
corporeality (the physical manifestations of bodies in terms of skin
pigment, body hair, facial and skeletal characteristics) of race?
Having thought about these questions, consider whether your views or what you
might be willing to say on these issues might change when you are in different
groups. Why might this be?
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Today, the presence of racially and ethnically distinct groups is increasing and racial
categorisations are often habitually used to resolve the problems of social identification, that is, our sense of sameness and difference. Race is most often understood
as being based on some sort of recognisable biological difference (skin colour, shape
of eyes, etc.). Yet it only takes a brief reflection to realise that many of these racial
categorisations are essentially meaningless. In sociological terms, the concept of race
becomes reified by the processes of racialisation that are often hidden from view
because of their institutionalisation.
Definition: reification
The treatment of a socially constructed category or phenomenon as if it exists as
an independent or autonomous entity.
Definition: racism
A set of socially, culturally and politically constructed ideas/attitudes that
deterministically associates (pre-judges) inherited biological differences with
representations of physical, psychological, social and moral attributes.
Definition: institutional racism
The collective failure of an organisation to challenge the actions of its
employees/members (e.g. professional actions, advice, etc.) where the
employees comments and/or actions are deemed to be manifestly (overtly
or covertly) based on racist perceptions. In a school, for example, all teachers
have a responsibility to deal with incidents of racial prejudice, not just the
head teacher and the board of governors.
Jarvie (2000, p334) suggests that there are contradictory characteristics in race
and ethnic relationships. Summarising these views, he states that sport:
1. is inherently conservative and helps to consolidate patriotism, nationalism
and racism;
2. has some inherent property that makes it a possible instrument of integration
and harmonious race relations;
3. as a form of cultural politics has been central to the processes of colonialism
and imperialism in different parts of the world;
4. has contributed to unique political struggles which have involved black and
ethnic political mobilization, and the struggle for equality of and for black
peoples and other ethnic minority groups;
5. has produced stereotypes, prejudices and myths about ethnic minority
groups which have contributed both to discrimination against and an underrepresentation of ethnic minority peoples within certain sports; and
6. is a vehicle for displays of black prowess, masculinity and forms of identity.
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The social construction of race in sport

The ideological discourses that position race in sport as a significant classification of
people tend to fall into four categories:
the naming of race;

the assumed physical capacities of race;
the economic conditions of race;
the assumed mental capacities of race.
The first element of the discourse is the identification or naming of race. This makes
race for the white athlete invisible, as it is never mentioned. Of course, the counterpoint
is also true: by naming an athlete as black, the issue of race is placed as a central part of
the presented explanation of their athletic ability. This ideological representation of
athletes denoted by colour reinforces the more general representations of race that
circulate within most Western societies. The perception of having a racialised identity is
rarely seen as an issue for those who are white. However, for non-whites it is seen as an
issue by both whites and non-whites. The use of these representations by sports
journalists, editors and owners of the media is hardly surprising given that, in general,
they are all white males. These ideas and images are discursively reproduced through a
range of media. The discourses also suggest that white athletes have a greater mental
capacity than black athletes, leading to a positioning of black and white athletes often
referred to as stacking.
Explanations regarding why white soccer players tend to be found more often in
central positions on the field still tend to emphasise that they have more organisational
capabilities than black players. In this discourse, the over-representation of black
athletes within boxing is due to the lower level of thinking/education necessary for
success in boxing: in managing their professional affairs, its recognised that someone
else (the white manager) has to do the thinking for the boxer. In terms of the dangerous
nature of the sport, its an obvious benefit if the person in the ring does not think too
much beyond the objective of the contest.
Natural physicality and mental discourses are intertwined in the argument that
short/powerful sport events require a different attitude from long-distance/endurance
events. Sprinting events are assumed to require natural physical power allied to the
ability to relax and not think too much. (Those who think too much become stressed and
do not relax.) Long-distance runners are assumed to require a specific type of mental
approach, such as planning a good or strategic race.
There are further hurdles in place for marginal groups in society. Ethnic communities
can often be found in socially and economically deprived areas of our cities a place to
escape from. The perception exists that more blacks than whites excel in sport because
sport is the only way out of the ghetto for blacks. Therefore, they are more ambitious in
sport than white athletes. This way of thinking further reinforces the superiority of the
white, male, middle-class hegemony explained elsewhere in this book. Thus, although it
could be argued that race is a meaningless concept, this is not going to happen until
there are significant changes to deeply entrenched views: race still remains a
significant part of the lived experience of many people in sport. Although there is no
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doubt that since the 1970s sport has proved a very successful route to fame and fortune
for a significant number of black sportsmen and women, it also needs to be stressed
that countless thousands have not achieved these levels of material wealth. For them,
sport can still prove to conceal deep inequalities, racist beliefs, and to be a path to
failure and disappointment (Jarvie, 2000, p336).
At an everyday level people habitually use terms such as Black, White and Asian.
These terms are essentially meaningless in their ability to accurately define a specific
racial group our categorisation is a cultural construction. The identification of someone
as a black athlete merely identifies someone with a particular tone of skin who is
involved in athletic activity. It does not define by itself any potential athletic ability on the
part of the individual. Skin colour has become attached (mostly by white people) to
explanations of athletic ability. We never hear people offering a racial explanation for
the dominance of white people in sports such as skiing, ice hockey or golf.
Sport and ethnicity

The social construction of ethnicity has three defining characteristics:
perceptions by other members of the society or by members of other
societies/nations that a defined group of people are different (external
identification);
perceptions by the members of the same group that they are different from these
others;
perceptions by those within the ethnic group that their lifestyle should habitually
adopt a range of distinct activities (these can include religion, dress codes, food,
music and sport) that actively help to reinforce their sense of having a distinct
ethnic identity.
When ethnic groups seek to represent themselves actively, or have identity thrust upon
them by dominant cultural groups, the label is no longer neutral but it becomes a marker
of difference and in some case rivalry, marginalisation and oppression. Ethnicity is
therefore about identity and sets of cultural activities and behaviours. Once established, ethnic identities become a socially recognisable system of group classifications.
Sometimes the label of ethnic identity (as with those concerned with race) is essentially
meaningless as it collapses a multitude of ethnicities into one category such as the term
Asian.
In sport, ethnic identification can be used to stereotypically ascribe patterns of
behaviour (real and mythic) and their meaning. These stereotypes may have a special
function when used by dominant groups. Dominant groups need to stereotype subordinate groups because of the risks associated with the possible loss of power and
privilege to the subordinate groups. Dominant groups manipulate the publics perceptions of threat to reinforce their own positions of privilege and power. Racial and
ethnic markers such as dress codes provide easy ideological markers for the threatening
alien (immigrant/invader). The dominant group becomes the protector of nation,
tradition and cultural identity.
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The social and cultural construction of ethnic identity means that it is not
permanently fixed but open to change. Ethnicity is therefore reflexively monitored and
socially organised. Ethnic communities use of sport and other physical recreation
activities can validate membership of an ethnic community, and how this ascribes
opportunities and social status is often deeply embedded in the power structures
of the society. Sport can do more than ascribe status within an ethnic community; it
can also build bridges across to other social groups. The multi-faceted identity of
British boxer Amir Khan is an example. In a poll conducted for the BBC in 2005, the
overwhelming majority of Muslims 89 per cent said they feel proud when British
teams do well in international competitions, a similar figure to the national population
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4137990.stm).
CASE STUDY
AMIR KHAN: BRITISH-BORN BOXER OF PAKISTANI DESCENT
Amir Khan was born on 8 December 1986 in Bolton. His father suggests that his
hyperactive son, who went through a conventional education in the state system,
was a born fighter. He first came to fame in the 2004 Athens Olympics when he
won a silver medal in the lightweight division, aged 17. He lost the final to a much
older and more experienced Cuban (Mario Kinderlan, whom AK beat in 2005 in
his last fight as an amateur). His 14 fights as a professional have all been won, 11
by KO decisions. He is an avid supporter of Bolton Wanderers FC and often uses
the training facilities at the Reebok stadium. He is part of an athletic extended
family that includes his first cousin, Sajid Mahmood the England cricketer, and
his brother, the boxer Haroon Khan, together with a second cousin, Wadhah
Saleh, who is a world champion in karate, aged 14. AKs high profile has been used
to support a range of causes linked to issues of race, religion and ethnicity. He
has travelled to Pakistan to help earthquake victims, and has also made a series
of TV programmes for Channel Four called Amir Khans Angry Young Men in which
he promotes boxing, faith and family values as a focus for young men distracted
into anti-social behaviour.
The changing context of race and ethnicity in sport

The political and social context of the diversity mandate and the requirements of the
Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 mean that all public authorities in the UK,
including all of those concerned with sport, are now subject to a series of antidiscrimination provisions and their implementation (www.uksport.gov.uk).
While the legal context may have changed, there are still widespread concerns that
although many sport organisations maintain that they have an open door policy, this
has not necessarily changed the traditional levels of participation and involvement in
sport. Research shows that many sports have low participation levels by women and
girls, ethnic minority groups, disabled people and, in some cases, young people, and
these groups are therefore under-represented (www.uksport.gov.uk).
It is unlikely that many sporting clubs have actively sought a membership base
outside of their usual population groups. Keogh (2002) argues that the approach of many
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clubs neglects the benefits of a more diverse membership that include a greater range
of sports, more financial income, an understanding of other cultures and greater participation. So, why have ethnic minority groups and the disabled been overlooked by
sporting organisations for so long? Keogh (2002) identifies a number of possible
explanations.
If clubs are doing well and have a strong membership base, they may not see
the need to diversify further.
Developing new networks, programmes and procedures may be seen as too
difficult, too expensive or too time-consuming for already over-stretched
volunteers/staff.
A lack of knowledge about the benefits associated with diversification.
A lack of knowledge about the needs and backgrounds of specific cultural
groups.
A lack of knowledge about where to source assistance and support.
A lack of awareness about available support options.
Unwillingness to become culturally inclusive.
It is evident that implementing the new diversity standard may well prove to be a
significant challenge for most sports. UK Sport suggests that concerns regarding sports
failure to address diversity adequately and the requirements of the Race Relations Act
(2000) will require all UK sport organisations to spend a considerable amount of time
focusing on policy formulation and implementation to improve equality. Authorities such
as UK Sport and Sport England can offer a leadership role here, for example, by
disseminating good practice and facilitating grant applications.
If sport is to deal with the challenges of ethnicity effectively, then it needs to
critically assess the challenges posed by the problems of racism and cultural discrimination. Sport has allowed racism and other forms of discrimination to become
structurally embedded through its history into the institutions of sport and thereby to
inform or shape the views of those individuals who participate in sport.
Sport and disability

The questions of the definition of disability and how persons with disabilities perceive
themselves are knotty and complex. It is no accident that these questions are emerging
at the same time as the status of persons with disabilities in society is changing
dramatically.
Definition: impairment
Any loss of normal psychological or anatomical structure, or function.
Definition: disability
Any restriction or lack (resulting from an impairment) of ability to perform
an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human
being.
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Definition: handicap
A disadvantage for a given individual, resulting from an impairment or disability,
that limits or prevents the fulfilment of a role that is normal, depending on age,
sex, social and cultural factors, for that individual.
These definitions reflect the idea that disability is a social construct. Most people
believe they know what is and is not a disability. If you imagine the disabled at one end
of a spectrum and people who are physically and mentally capable at the other, the
distinction appears to be clear. However, there is considerable middle ground in this
construct, and it is in the middle that the scheme falls apart. What distinguishes a
socially invisible impairment, such as the need for corrective eyeglasses, from a less
acceptable one, such as the need for a corrective hearing aid or for a walking frame?
Functionally, there may be little difference. Socially, some impairments create great
disadvantage or social stigma for the individual, while others do not. Some are
considered disabilities and some are not.
A disability implies a problem or a disadvantage that requires compensatory or
ameliorative action. The concept does not seek to specify whether the problem is
located in the individual or in the environment, nor does it attempt to identify the
rationale for measures that are taken in reaction to the perceived disadvantage.
Nonetheless, such policies represent an official belief that a disability constitutes a
disadvantageous circumstance that obliges a public or a private agency to offer some
type of response (Hahn, 1984, p294).
The idea of dependency has been used socially to produce and reproduce disability
as a problem. This has implications for sport as Brittain (2004) shows. Drawing on his
research at the Sydney Paralympic Games 2000, he sets out the two theoretical
positions of disability. In the medical model doctors, consultants and health experts
combine to sustain discourses about the body and mind that are grounded in scientific
knowledge and perpetuate the view that the problems that face people with disabilities are the result of their physical and/or mental impairments and are independent
of the wider socio-cultural, physical and political environments (Brittain, 2004, p430).
This model of disability in the individual is dominant in modern-day Western societies.
Conversely, the social model positions disability as a social construction: disabled
people can only make a limited contribution to society and this lack of worth
contributes to this groups marginalisation. It is argued that, because this view is
subordinate to the medical model, it is necessary to change peoples attitudes to
disability. However, making physical changes to the environment (such as wheelchair
access to buildings) will change the life experiences of disabled people, but is unlikely in
itself to change the values deeply embedded in a society essentially supportive of the
medical model. The Disability Discrimination Act of 1996 aimed to achieve equal access
to public places for all, but only reinforced the recognition of disabled people as a
distinct social group. The ambition of pressure groups who lobby on behalf of disabled
groups is, therefore, to advance understanding and change attitudes. Sport has the
potential to become a vehicle for such social advancement and the Paralympics is an
example of a raised profile for disabled sport. Brittains detailed research shows that
both able-bodied and disabled people appear to support a medical model of disability
that essentially means that disability becomes a dominant identity feature through
perceptions and self-image. Tanni Grey-Thompson (see the case study on p122) resisted
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attending her local special school while growing up in Cardiff because she didnt want to
be set apart from mainstream society. Here is evidence of some resistance to the
predominant able-bodied hegemony.
Some of the common social and cultural factors that mitigate against disabled
people in sport are:
poor motivation and confidence;

negative school experiences;
lack of support from family and friends;
lack of information about opportunities;
lack of disability-friendly facilities;
transport problems;
lack of time, money and other resources;
poor access.
Disability sport, rather like the concept of physical and mental impairment, exists on a
continuum without clear boundaries. For purposes of discussion here it is useful,
however, to think about access to sport generally (e.g. physical education in schools) at
one end and elite performance (e.g. the Paralympics) at the other. Across the continuum
there has been a gradual evolution such that the place of disabled groups in society has
moved towards a more equitable circumstance. For example, following the 1944
Education Act pupils with disabilities were assigned to medically defined categories
(such as handicapped or educationally subnormal) and segregated to special schools
without consideration of their abilities. The 1981 Education Act recognised that special
educational needs (SEN) covered a range of conditions that, for the most part, were not
best served by segregation and therefore endorsed re-integration into mainstream
education. In Physical Education this helped all but the most severely physically
disabled, a situation extended by the introduction of the Physical Education National
Curriculum (PENC) in 1992 which established the entitlement of all pupils to a broad
and balanced curriculum (Thomas 2004). In practice, however, although some progress
has been made, Sport England has identified that 53 per cent of primary aged disabled
children and 41 per cent of 1116-year-old disabled children spend less than one hour a
week doing PE and that only 20 per cent of disabled pupils spend two hours per week in
PE lessons compared to 33 per cent of the overall school population. Additionally, only
40 per cent of disabled school children undertook extra-curricular sport compared to 79
per cent of the general school population (Thomas, 2004).
The Paralympics
The Paralympic Games are a multi-sport event for athletes with physical, mental and
sensorial disabilities. The name fuses the Greek para, meaning beside or alongside,
with the word olympic. Paralympic has shifted its meaning since the 1950s when the
term was first coined to indicate a union of paraplegic and olympic. The history
of disabled sporting competition can be traced to Ludwig Guttmann who, in 1948,
organised the Stoke Mandeville Games for war veterans with spinal injuries. Interest
from countries such as Holland expanded the idea and in 1960 the ninth Annual Stoke
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Mandeville Games took place in Rome. Because these Games paralleled the Olympic
Games, the event is considered to be the first Paralympic Games. Winter Paralympics
followed in Ornskoldsvik, Sweden, in 1976, and since 1988 the summer Paralympics
have been held in conjunction with the Olympic Games in the same host city. Today,
any city bidding to host the Games has to include the Paralympics in its bid and
both Games are now run by a single organising committee. Just as the format of the two
events has come together, so too have cheating issues emerged. Whereas in mainstream
sport these commonly involve performance-enhancing drugs, in the Paralympics
scandals often arise as teams enter individuals to inappropriate categories for
example, in Sydney 2000 non-disabled athletes were entered in the Spanish basketball
team. The six recognised categories for competition are amputee; cerebral palsy;
intellectual disability; wheelchair; vision impaired and les autres a category to sweep
up disabilities that dont obviously fit elsewhere. These categories are under constant
review.
A pattern of first recognising disabled needs and second an evolution of these
needs into the mainstream is therefore identifiable in physical education. This
sequence has parallel developments in sport more generally and has been particularly
evident since the 1990s when, via the Sports Council publication People with disabilities
and sport in 1993, a climate of integration between the National Disability Sport
Organisations (NDSOs) and mainstream National Governing Bodies (NGBs) was
established. Initially, this integration failed to make progress, but in 1998 an English
Federation of Disability Sports (EFDS) was established with a mission of sporting
inclusion for disabled groups via better choices for sport, professional services and
improved disability sport structures. Thus, progress has been made, but as Thomas
(2004) shows, able-bodied administrators working for mainstream NGBs and those
working with elite disabled athletes have often (for different reasons) slowed down the
integration of disabled sport into mainstream participation.
CASE STUDY
TANNI GREY-THOMPSON: PARALYMPIAN WHEELCHAIR ATHLETE
Born on 26 July 1969 with spina bifida, Tanni Grey-Thompsons disability made
her more determined to succeed in the world, hence her resistance to attending
a special school for the physically handicapped. She recognised that this
appeared to diminish drive and ambition rather than increase commitment to
succeed. Her first competition was 100m at the Welsh National Games in 1984.
Racing over a range of distances from track sprints to road marathons, Tanni
Grey-Thompson has accumulated 16 Paralympic medals (including 11 golds). She
has held 30 world records and won the London marathon six times between 1997
and 2002. TGT was voted BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year in 1992, 2000
and 2004; she was made a Dame in 2005. Married, with one daughter, she retired
from athletics following appearances in the Paralympic World Cup in
Manchester, May 2007. The accolades that followed from significant others in
sport (e.g. Richard Caborn, Minister for Sport, and Mike Brace, President of the
British Paralympic Association) emphasise her track record, her longevity, her
dedication to sport and her ambassadorial role for disabled sport.
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Review
The discussion of race, ethnicity and (dis)ability should have indicated to you the
importance of cultural diversity within sport today. Each is representative of the way
that sport is part of a social landscape characterised by an unequal distribution of
resources and therefore power. As has been demonstrated elsewhere in this book, sport
in Britain today is a product of the socio-cultural, economic and historical circumstances
that preceded it. The sociological analyses presented suggest that dominant groups
(mainly drawn from those who are white European, educated, middle class and male),
often use sport as a way of retaining a dominant perspective that reflects their
hegemonic power. Thus, any groups that are not able bodied or white European or male
often have to struggle to change the established order of things. While drawing heavily
on this perspective, the chapter has also attempted to document processes of change.
As we enter the twenty-first century, there is within sport an organisational evolution
through which athletes belonging to these often disadvantaged groups (NB we accept
that the use of the term group within this discussion assumes a homogeneity within
such categories that almost certainly does not exist) are gaining improved integration
and equity within their chosen sports.
However, a closer examination reveals the overall picture to be more complex. Just
as the growth in womens sport participation is not reflected by a comparable change
in the number of female sports administrators, so too with race and ethnicity e.g.
despite the significant profile attained by the British Muslim boxer Amir Khan, boxing
remains in the control of a minority of non-Muslim, white males. Moreover, although the
achievements of elite disabled athletes such as Tanni Grey-Thompson are to be
applauded, they are achieved through an extraordinary dedication to rigorous training as
a professional sportsperson, similar to sports preparation by elite able-bodied athletes.
The Paralympics have clearly raised the profile of disabled sport, but have done so in a
context that celebrates competition and reinforces an understanding of sport as
reflecting a value system privileging the able bodied. Thus, the Paralympics is an adjunct
to the main event. Paradoxically, while striving for the integration of diverse groups
into mainstream sports, by failing to address the commensurate inequalities in the
distribution of resources, the required standards will be harder to achieve for those
groups for whom access to sport is already an issue. Racial and ethnic groups and the
disabled therefore have to make disproportionate efforts and have all manner of
additional costs and hurdles to clear before genuine equality in sport can be achieved.
The sociological analysis of race, ethnicity and disability can therefore be seen to
raise a number of important issues about sport in Britain. Although problematic to
define, it is clear that these categories are social constructions that account for
different patterns of sport participation. Sport in Britain is still measured in relation to
a white, male middle-class understanding of those sports and their participants that
are mainstream. Thus, although great strides have been made in changing the sporting
landscape to accommodate diversity, there is a gap between the rhetoric and the reality
for the peripheral groups discussed here that reflects the power of the sporting
hegemony evidenced by this chapter.
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To aid your assessment of whether you have achieved the learning outcomes that
we stated at the beginning of the chapter, please do the following activities:
1.
Write a short paragraph detailing the differences between the concepts of

race and ethnicity.
2. Reflect on your own experience of sport. Do you think that some sports are
dominated by one specific race or ethnic group? Why do you think this is?
How might a sport sociologist seek to explain it?
3. Take part in the following group workshop activity exploring the social
experience of race and ethnicity.
The purpose of the activity is to explore the position of certain racial and ethnic
groups in the race to sporting success. You will need to revisit the key points
from this chapter, but you may also want to refer to other chapters, particularly
those that deal with the processes of socialisation and stratification. You will
need to work in small groups in the first instance but to feed back into general
discussion at certain times in the activity. Each group should nominate a
different spokesperson at each feedback point. It will be useful to use a teaching
space that has the capacity to cluster tables so that each group can operate its
own discussion.
Group brainstorming stage In your group write down on a piece of paper
the characteristics of growing up in Britain that appear to determine success in
life.
Class feedback 1 Feed back your findings by each group taking it in turns
to summarise their discussion. Listen carefully to all the feedback and add to
your own group list if other groups have come up with ideas that you have
not considered.
Group work Each group now needs to organise the list of characteristics
that determine success into a table. The exact form of this table may well vary
from group to group, but it needs to have at least three columns: 1 =
Characteristics of success, 2 = White, 3 = Non-white/Ethnic. Your group will write
short notes to fill in the table you have created that relate to your understanding
of the relationship between the characteristics of success and each column,
heeled white and non-white. For example, if geographic location is a
characteristic of success, you might want to note that ethnic communities are
often found in poorer parts of towns and cities. The task is to produce one table
per group but with notes that are a contribution from all group members.
Class feedback 2 Each group, in turn, explains their findings which at this
stage are concerned with opportunities to be successful in life generally.
Group work This stage is a return to group discussion to establish the
extent to which the generalised findings above might be applied specifically to
sport.
Class feedback 3 The intention here is for each group to summarise in turn
the outcomes of their discussions about the application of these success
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characteristics to involvement with sport for white and non-white people. There
might be some discussion at this point about the type of sport that different ethnic
groups may be involved with and the form of this involvement, that is, as
participant or spectator. At this stage the ensuing general class discussion might
expand to include other elements of social stratification such as gender, age and
disability. The final stage of the exercise is to draw up a set of conclusions about
racial and ethnic groups, and their involvement in sport in Britain today.
4. Show your understanding of the social construction of disability within
sport. Based on your reading of this section of the chapter, write two short
paragraphs describing the medical model of disability and why so many
sport sociologists think it needs to be challenged.
Further study
To extend your understanding of sport, race and ethnicity read:
Jarvie, G (2000) Sport, racism and ethnicity, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook
To explore real-life accounts of disability in sport start by reading:
Andrew, J (2003) Life and limb: a true story of tragedy and survival against the odds.
London: Portrait.
The drama lies in the tragedy that led Jamie Andrew to lose his lower arms and legs, but
the interest lies in the way abled becomes disabled, and the social inclusion and
exclusion this circumstance creates.
Because issues of diversity are such an active area of change within sport today, some
of the best additional reading is available through websites:
www.sportdevelopment.org.uk/html/ethnicity2000 A downloadable PDF file is
available here which shows the published results of the 19992000 national survey
of sport in ethnic communities.
www.efds.net This is the English Federation of Disability Sport. Good links to the BBC
(who have gained awards for their TV and journalistic coverage of disability sport)
and Sport England (a major conduit for funding).
www.londonsportsforum.org.uk This charitable body has an ambition to increase
disability sport and recreation participation in greater London by 1 per cent each
year.
www.fdso.co.uk The Federation of Disability Sports Organisations based in Wakefield
is a benevolent organisation run by volunteers that aims to increase disability sport
and recreation opportunities in Yorkshire and Humberside.
www.sportengland.org/sport_england_the_magazine__annual_review_2005 This
document is a contextual report demonstrating advances in sport in the community
and healthy lifestyles.
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PART 3
Go: analysing
contemporary issues
and themes the
changing world of sport
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Chapter 9
Sport and consumer society

Peter Craig
I Shop, Therefore I Am. (Kruger, 2000)

This is the first of three chapters that will examine some of the ways that sport and
modern society have been impacted and transformed by the rise of mass consumption,
the mass media and an increasingly interconnected global world. This chapter provides
you with an introduction to the ways in which sociology seeks to analyse and understand
the ways that the rise of consumer society and its inherent processes of commodification and consumption have played an integral and increasingly significant part in the
construction of sport. Therefore this chapter aims to:
introduce you to how sociology has sought to explain the rise of the consumer
society;
detail how the media have been crucial to the integration of sport within this
process;
introduce you to a number of sociological theories and concepts that will extend
your understanding of consumer society and the associated processes of
consumption and commodification;
develop your understanding of how important the consumption of sport is to
British society and particularly the British economy.
Learning outcomes
give sociological explanations of consumer society, commodification and
media sport;
detail how modern sport has been impacted by the processes of
consumption and commodification;
detail the diverse ways in which sport is a vital element of the British
economy;
provide an informed discussion regarding how the development of the mass
media has transformed sport.
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9 / Sport and consumer society
Introduction
Over the past few decades sociology has developed a considerable interest in the
process of consumption. Central to this development has been an awareness of two
interconnected processes. First, the period since the late 1950s has seen a vast increase
in mass consumption that has not only impacted the UK but, as the massive changes
currently occurring in China and India indicate, is global in its scope and reach. Second,
this development has occurred concurrently with what appears to be a weakening of
some of the organisational modes of modernity, especially those focused on the
processes of production. During the twentieth century the growing affluence of the
working class (Goldthorpe et al., 19681969) helped the establishment of mass markets
based on consumer products that were largely undifferentiated by nation, class, gender
or race (Smart, 2003). Partly as a result of these processes, the power of modern social
structures (we have already explored some of the major arguments here through our
examination of class, gender, race and ethnicity) to significantly influence our identity
(i.e. how we and others think about who we are) has diminished. In his examination of
these issues Bauman (2000) argues that our contemporary world, its structures and
cultural relations have become much more pluralised and flexible, or, as he puts it, fluid.
Because of its significance within these transforming processes, a number of
influential social theorists (Bauman, 1998, 2000; Smart, 2003, 2005) contend that
consumption needs to be a central concern of the sociological analysis of contemporary
life. As Bocock observes, we need to recognise that although Consumption appears
to be rooted in the satisfaction of purely natural, biological or physical needs . . . there
is nothing natural about the ways in which millions of people now shop for consumer
good (1992, p121). Other theorists take this even further and have suggested that
consumption is not only an important dimension of modern life, it is a defining element
of it that is driving our very history (Miller, 1995a, p50).
Not surprisingly, given the multitude of ways that sport is connected to the
processes of consumption, a number of sport sociologists, such as John Horne (2006),
have argued that a sociological understanding of sport in the twenty-first century must
begin to systematically locate its analysis within consumer culture, consumer society
and consumption (p1).
Towards a sociological understanding of sport and

consumption
These important developments, demonstrably evident across modern society, are of
particular importance to an understanding of contemporary sports.
Living, playing and consuming in modernity

The modern age has created a number of interconnections between sport, the media
and advertising that have helped to create the impression that the pivotal social and
personal experience of the modern age is to be a consumer. Within this ideology,
shopping and consumption lie at the very heart of modern life. Because of this, the
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processes and meaning of consumption have become an important topic for sociological
investigation.
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the growing significance of
consumption on modern life had attracted the interest of a number of social theorists.
The work of Simmel (Bocock, 1992) did much to sociologically establish how the rise of
a new, essentially modern urban culture was linked to new patterns of consumption.
The complexities of modern city life also gave rise to concerns about identity. As
mass production makes consumer products more widely available and economically
affordable, problems of status and distinction become more problematic for the higher
social status groups. For Veblen (1953), the expanding group of wealthy individuals
whose wealth stemmed from their entrepreneurial success (rather than being inherited
and connected to the land-based wealth of the aristocracy) faced a specific set of
problems. To help establish their social status they engaged in a process of conspicuous
consumption designed to demonstrate not only their wealth, good taste and good
background (Bocock, 1992, p128), but also the cultural advantages and social power of
their class. During this time, their impact on sport was quite profound as they sought
to establish domains of sport and sporting behavior that reflected their bourgeois
credentials (Hargreaves, 1986a).
When we get into the latter half of the twentieth century, Marxist and neo-Marxist
sociologists (Marcuse 1964; Adorno and Horkheimer, 1977) refocus attention on the
realities of working-class life within capitalist society. Their main concern was to
emphasise the hidden costs of the inequalities of power within the capitalist class
system. The more recent work of Bourdieu has once again drawn attention to the
intersection of social class and processes of distinction (Bourdieu, 1984).
Theoretical approaches to sport and consumption

In drawing on the work of these influential theorists, Horne (2006, p7) identifies a
number of useful categories that can help us to understand the many-faceted debates
that the sociological analysis of consumption has developed. These are:
the production of consumption approach;
the modes of consumption approach;
the pleasures of consumption approach.
Although each has developed a sophisticated and detailed body of academic debate and
analysis to support it, the limited space of this book means that it will only be possible
to examine the principal debates generated within each approach.
The production of consumption approach

This approach is typified by the work of a number of critical social theorists who draw on
a Marxist critique of capitalist society. Although they emphasise the significance of
class relations, one of their main concerns is to stress how ever more aspects of culture
became commodified (Horne, 2006, p7).
Definition: commodification
The process by which goods and services (aspects of our social and cultural world,
such as sport) that were previously outside the control of capitalist interests,
131
systems of mass production and market forces are drawn into their webs of
control, production and distribution.
Clarke and Critcher (1985), in drawing on the ideas of Adorno and Horkheimer
(1977), argue that the interests of capital permeate all aspects of life, albeit that for
the most part they remain mostly invisible. The process has two interconnected
dimensions. First, what people do in their leisure, recreation and sport becomes
co-opted by entrepreneurs into processes designed to create profits. Second, leisure
(of which sport is a major component) no longer represents an escape from the
boring and routinised world of work. Rather, it is either just an extension of it, in that
it is merely a preparation for the inevitable return to work, or an essentially unsatisfying process that is inevitably short-lived, lacking in challenge and therefore ultimately
disappointing (Horne, 2006, p7). Consumption is no longer a process of material
consumption driven by the requirements of real human needs. The power of advertising
and the media saturates our perceptions of need until we can no longer determine
true and false needs (Marcuse, 1964).
The rather depressing outcome of this argument is that, driven by the interests
of capitalism, the processes of commodification have created a consumer culture
that dominates all of our lives. It controls and dominates our involvement with work,
and it controls and dominates what we do outside of work. Even in areas such as our
involvement with sport, which we perceive to be freely chosen and self-directed,
the processes of commodification have saturated all aspects of it. Our lives are
inescapably caught up in visible and hidden webs of production, consumption and
commodification.
Reflection
Thinking about consumption in sport the hidden costs

When we consume various sports products, do we actually take any time to
consider how they were made or do we merely focus on our desire for the
product? Consider the following: in 1995 a Christian Aid report on Nike and
Reebok found that the mostly female workers involved in the production of the
shoes were paid less than 10 pence an hour and worked ten-and-a-half hour
days for six days a week. The outcome was massive profits for the sport shoe
companies who could charge 50 and upwards for shoes that had only incurred
labour costs of 1.
Although this perspective offers a powerful critique, there are a number of problems
with this approach. It establishes a fairly deterministic analysis of the processes of
consumption and commodification that leaves little or no alternative ways of
understanding how individuals or groups interpret or challenge these processes. In
terms of how we consume sport, it largely ignores how we can act creatively and actively
to engage critically with and transform the way we consume. Hence, although aspects of
this approach are plausible, overall, it does not adequately account for the complex ways
that we reflexively reproduce the social world.
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The modes of consumption approach

The focus of this approach is to engage with the concerns highlighted in the above
observation. One of its main intentions is to illuminate how consumers see and
understand their consumption not as a process of alienation and exploitation, but as a
means of personal empowerment, subversion or resistance, that is . . . mediated by
active consumers/audiences (Horne, 2006, p8). Although one way of expressing the
adequacy and power of our social knowledge is to make it visible through consumption,
there are a number of significant tensions within the process. The knowledge that we
bring to how we consume in sport is deeply influenced by our membership of class,
racial, ethnic and gender groupings. If we consider an activity closely, but not directly,
connected with sport the consumption of alcohol we can quickly identify that there
are potentially many different forms of meaning that can be applied to the how, why,
what and where we decide to drink.
Within sport and popular culture consumption is not, therefore, only about
an unreflexive use of finished products (Fiske, 1989). Class, gender, race and ethnicity all transform both what we consume in sport and the meanings we attach to
the process. As the processes of liberalisation have eroded the divisions that used to
exist between these social categories, the use of consumer products has begun to
lose its distinctiveness as the process has been democratised (Warde, 2002). From
this sociological perspective, consumption in the twenty-first century, therefore,
needs to be understood as an exploration of meaning within which people have
the capacity to challenge old forms of social identity (based on assumptions about
social class, gender, etc.) and to seek the development of new lifestyles and forms
of identity. Skateboarding, snowboarding and surfing cultures are all interesting and
fairly recent examples of these innovative forms of consumer culture in sport in terms
of how they integrate, new sports (which themselves are often a challenge to the old
assumptions about sport), music, clothes, hairstyles, magazines, the Internet and
lifestyle aspirations.
The pleasure of consumption approach

This approach emphasises that consumption is also a process that is sensual and
connected to the satisfaction of a range of pleasures and desires. It is not something
that is merely done as a physical act; it is also a complex and shifting abstract process.
Moreover, as we struggle with the demands of modern life and develop a lifestyle that
reflects our desires and aspirations, consumption is no longer an option. It is a necessity
that in profound ways defines what our sense of being is. For social theorists such as
Baudrillard (1998) this means that we need to begin to think about consumption as an
uncertain and dynamic social act.
One reason for this is that The technology of everyday life in advanced societies
has reached a point where essential improvements are hard to envisage (Sulkunen,
1997, p5). The key word here is essential. Until recently (i.e. the advent of concerns over
the efficiency of products in terms of their carbon footprint), the technological base-line
for most of our necessary everyday technologies (transport, housing, food production
and distribution, entertainment) has been well established with little room for any
further substantive improvements or changes. The concern has therefore shifted to how
we use these products.
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The act of consumption and the meaning put on the process by the person engaging
in it (and others who might comment on it parents and friends, for example) becomes
assigned through the process of doing it (Baudrillard, 1998). The meaning, therefore, is
not fixed. Consider the simple act of buying a pair of football boots. The first thing we
realise is that there is a wide range of boots, different styles, brands and prices. Thus,
(returning to a point made earlier) for Baudrillard, sociologists cannot critique the
process by trying to assign true or false need. Consumption is ultimately a highly
individualised act based on perceptions of need and/or desire and their satisfaction.
This accepted, because value becomes attached to goods and behaviours, they are
also inevitably expressions of power and capital, albeit that in this case the capital is
often symbolic rather than economic. Consumption is not just our accumulation of goods
(e.g. iPods, Nike trainers and club membership fees), it plays an important role in
defining our level of social prestige. What is also vitally important is our knowledge
about these goods, how to use them appropriately and how to discriminate (the good
and the fashionable from the bad and the unfashionable) within the complex array of
consumer choice that confronts us. Moreover, while it doubtlessly brings feelings of
satisfaction and pleasure, there is a price to pay for our consumer behaviour.
This success of our consumption is necessarily dependent on whether or not others
affirm and reassure us that our choices were appropriate and valued. Even if they are,
these affirmations and achievements can only be temporary, as the symbolic value of
our choices inevitably fade and become outdated and unfashionable. For Baudrillard
(1998), the world of the consumer is one that is also inherently neurotic. Consumers are
under the constant threat of change and the disappointment of unvalidated consumer
choices. However, while Baudrillard is clearly raising an important point, some serious
questions can be directed at this perspective. When we act as consumers of sport, are
all our behaviours and the meanings we assign to them as transitory, depthless and
dislocated as he suggests?
In summary, these sociological approaches detail that sport consumption needs to
be understood as much more than the selection, purchase and use of sports products.
These are obviously real factors, but we must also sociologically take into consideration
how consumption in sport is about the seeking of identity and lifestyle, and a process
that is creative, imaginative and pleasurable.
Sport and the birth of modern consumer culture

You might recall from the opening chapters that the nineteenth-century development of
modern sport occurred at a point of time when a number of other social changes were
also occurring that were to have a massive influence on sport. One of these was that
cities had established themselves as the dominant public spaces of modern life. Within
these cities new forms of democratic space or sites began to emerge where the
meaning of group and individual life in the modern era could be debated.
One of these was the mass media in the form of newspapers. Once newspapers
became widely available, many of those in power became concerned over the freedom
of the press and its ability to engage large numbers of the working class in political
debates. As Goldlust (1987) identifies, newspapers were essential to the construction of
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class consciousness in the nineteenth century. In Britain, the last remaining controls
over the press were removed by the 1850s. The freedom of expression that this created,
allied to the increasing levels of suffrage (the right to vote), helped to lay out the familiar
landscape of British politics.
Newspapers, however, also quickly became dependent on advertising as a major
source of revenue. By the end of the nineteenth century newspapers had not only
become a significant consumer commodity in their own right, but they were also the
main vehicle for the selling of an ever-expanding range of consumer items. By the
1880s newspapers had developed a significant interest in sport and specialist sports
journalists and writers had become a well-established feature of British popular culture.
While the material for their vivid descriptions of sporting action was dependent on the
quickly expanding world of professional and semi-professional sports teams, through
their reporting they also helped to fuel its development and the massive rise in fans
and spectators. The growth of spectator sport at sports grounds and the vicarious
enjoyment of games through newspaper reports created new understandings of sport
sport as a commodity and sport as entertainment for the rapidly expanding urbanised
masses.
Activity 9.1
Based on your experience of sports stadia, read the following quote from John
Goldlusts (1987) book and see if you can identify the different ways that sport
stadia act as an important site of sport consumption:
The successful growth of spectator sport was premised on a set of wellestablished entrepreneurial principles that applied throughout the
entertainment industry. As determined by the organisers, a price, or a
range of prices was fixed, the payment of which entitled any member of
the public to be admitted to a venue in which the performance or event
would take place. The venue, be it a . . . cinema or stadium, was physically
constructed in a manner that limited the potential audience to a finite
number of paying customers who, from variably privileged vantage points
depending on the price they were prepared to pay could experience
that performance or event.
(Goldlust, 1987, pp7374)
An important element of this new modern urban space was consumption (Miller, 1995b).
To cater for the needs of the urban masses, new forms of consumer retailing came into
being. Cities and towns all developed new types of shops and new shopping areas where
people could easily assess their rapidly expanding ranges of consumer items (Bocock,
1992). Within these spaces, increasingly large numbers of the British population could
not only access the goods they needed for everyday life, they could also engage with
the processes of consumption creatively focused on the establishment of social
difference and distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). While it certainly did not happen
immediately, over the course of the twentieth century the ability to make consumer
choices (to buy or not to buy) helped to create an impression of a new sense of freedom,
135
albeit, for the most part, dependent (though not entirely) on the ability to pay. For the
vast majority the ability to consume was dependent on gaining employment within the
modern worlds industrialised systems of production. Ironically, this was a world
characterised not by freedom, but by limited opportunity, frustration, boredom and
routine.
As an exciting antidote to this world of work, leisure and recreational activities such
as sport quickly became an integral and important part of this consumer market (Clarke
and Critcher, 1985). The emergence of the governing bodies of sport discussed in
Chapter 5 not only reflected a desire to create more rationalised and regulated forms of
sport, but also a more rationalised and regulated market for sport as an important
commodity within modern urban consumer culture. By the end of the nineteenth century,
many of the major football clubs had been formed and were playing in national competitions. The FA Cup Final was attracting more than 50,000 spectators. As a market
this offers entrepreneurs a wide range of possibilities. Fans need transport to and from
the matches; they need food and drink; for those who could not get to the matches
reports in magazines and newspapers were an essential part of being connected to the
game and the team; scarves and other symbols denoting team allegiance could be sold
(but the familiar replica shirts worn by fans today did not exist at this time).
Like all markets, once established, growth and diversification was a necessity for
those wishing to make a profit. The outcome of these processes was that by the 1930s
sport had developed into a distinct and successful sector of the British economy. Rowe
(2004b, p21) has identified its main characteristics:
sporting clubs and associations formed by subscribing members;
competitions with attractive prize money;
a labour market to handle the transfer and valuation of professional and semiprofessional sport-workers;
state funds donated to the development of sport;
sportswear and fan merchandise manufactured and sold;
newspapers, magazines, newsreels, films, radio (and, later, television) programmes
devoted to sport.
However, the way that this sport market grew is not a story of uncontested growth and
development; the legacy of this development has a far-reaching social and economic
significance that extends far beyond sport itself.
Economic significance of sport in the UK

According to most of the available statistical evidence, UK sport-related economic
activity has continued to increase year on year. It has been estimated that in 1985
expenditure was in excess of 3.3 billion and that by 2003 this had increased to
13.5 billion (based on current prices). Taking inflation into account, this represents
a real increase of 107 per cent over the period (Sport England, 2007). In the same
period (1985 to 2003) it has also been estimated that the UK economy grew by
59 per cent in real terms. When compared the figures highlight a number of important
facts. The first is that the UKs sport economy is a large and vital element of our
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economy. The second demonstrates just how attractive the sports market is to potential
investors as the growth of the sport economy easily outstripped that of the UK economy
as a whole. The third is that by 2003, across its diverse sectors sport was generating
economic value greater than the combined output of radio and TV, music and the visual
and performing arts, video, film and photography, designer fashion, and arts and
antiques sectors.
Consumer expenditure
According to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS, www.culture.gov.uk)
in 2003 consumer expenditure on sport in England was estimated to be 13,969 million.
There was a 30 per cent increase in consumer spending on sports equipment during the
period 20002003 (these figures are based on constant prices i.e. price increases over
and above any increase due to inflation). In England in 2003 the estimated breakdown of
consumer expenditure on sport was: subscriptions and fees, 21 per cent; clothing and
footwear, 21 per cent; sport gambling, 18 per cent; TV, 10 per cent; sports equipment,
7 per cent; other, 23 per cent.
A number of factors have promoted these significant increases. Since the 1990s
there has been a boom in house prices and many people have used this wealth to support
an increase in their consumer expenditure. A more controversial factor has been the
influence of expenditure based on gambling.
Activity 9.2
Here are some facts and issues concerning gambling and sport.
Gambling is one of the largest elements of sport-related expenditure and
this expenditure is many times larger than the amount spent playing sport
and watching it (Benson, 1994).
Government estimates that approximately 70 per cent of the adult
population in the UK gambles tends to support the view that the UK is, as
Horne (2006, p25) comments, a nation of gamblers.
In its recent amendments to the UK gambling bill it was noted that the UK has
between 185,000 and 460,000 problem gamblers (which is rather worrying).
Employment in the gambling industry is about 100,000 full-time
equivalents.
The abolition of direct tax on gambling had a significant effect on the sport
economy. It considerably expanded the size of gambling within the sport
market. In 2003, expenditure on sport gambling was 2,477 million.
In 2004, gambling was estimated to provide almost 8.9 billion expenditure (or
0.8 per cent of the entire UK GDP), of which 1.3 billion was paid directly to the UK
government in gambling-related duties (approximately 0.3 per cent of total
government revenues). Since its launch in 1994, the impact of the UK National
Lottery on sport has been dramatic. About 1.3 billion has been contributed from
Lottery income to the support of good causes. Sport was one of the major
beneficiaries of this income.
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Given these observations, take some time to consider the following task:
Based on your own behaviour and of those you know well, are we a nation of
gamblers? Draw on your own knowledge and experience to list the evidence for
and against.
Sport-related employment
According to a number of recent economic reports (Sport England, 2007), sport-related
employment is one of the fastest-growing sectors of employment in the UK. Between
1998 and 2003, employment across sport-related occupations increased by 22 per cent.
Sport-related employment is a highly diverse area that includes almost every sector of
the economy. Potentially, it includes areas of retailing for selling clothes and equipment
(managers and shop-assistants); manufacturing of sports products, research and design
(e.g. operatives, designers, technical consultants); building companies (sports stadia,
etc.); media and entertainment (sports journalists and presenters); professional
sportsmen and women (athletes, coaches, managers); and health-related professionals
(e.g. physiotherapists). In 2003, sport-related employment was estimated to be in
excess of 421,000, or 1.8 per cent of all employment in England. To put this in context,
this figure is greater than the combined employment in the radio and TV and publishing
sectors. The majority of sport-related jobs are within the commercial sector and
account for over 77 per cent of the total sport-related employment in England. The
remaining sectors are divided, with the public sector having 12 per cent and the
voluntary sector 11 per cent.
The economic impact of major sports events

For the UK, the costs of hosting some of the worlds premier sporting events are
now a reality. The successful bids for the London Olympic Games in 2012 and the
Commonwealth Games in Glasgow in 2014 (plus the distinct possibility of the 2018
Football World Cup) means that more and more attention is being paid to the economic
significance of sport within the UK. Apart from the personal investment of individuals,
this is further fuelled by the interests of various financial institutions (banks, venture
capitalists and entrepreneurs), due to the vast sums of money now being generated by
sports business. As we have seen over the past few years in football in particular, once
our major professional sports clubs became companies quoted on the Stock Exchange,
they became the focus of takeovers by international financiers looking for high value
investment opportunities.
In 2005, UK Sport commissioned the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield
Hallam University to undertake a detailed assessment of the economic impact of the
funding of major sports events. They examined six major sports events supported by
World Class Events Programme funded by the UK National Lottery. Their research
identified a series of important findings that clearly evidenced that these events should
create a good economic return on the investment. The average return on 2.2m of World
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Class Events Programme support across the six events was 7.1m, equivalent to 3.20
for every 1 spent.
Of all the key interest groups at major events, the report found that it is the
spectators who are the major determinants of economic impact. In recognition of this
fact, it argued that, from an economic perspective, planning for this group requires more
emphasis in comparison to the other significant groups integral to the event the
competitors, officials and media representatives.
The Olympic Games Impact Study, carried out for the DCMS and the London
Development Agency by PricewaterhouseCoopers, check is a relevant example here.
The report argues that staging the London Games can produce an array of benefits.
These include the stimulation of economic and social regeneration in one of the capitals
poorest areas, encouraging the creation of new businesses and jobs, boosting
participation in sport and speeding up investment in facilities. Overall, its main
predictions suggest that there should be around 1.9 billion of direct economic benefits
and in excess of 3 billion in indirect benefits.
These figures seem fairly impressive when compared to the first budget predictions
for the cost of the Games. However, the initial figure of 2.4 billion was a rather serious
underestimate. On 15 March 2007 the government announced that the revised budget
for the Games had risen to 9.35 billion. This figure is made up of a number of costs
which highlight the complexity of staging the worlds most important sporting event.
The cost of staging the Games is now estimated at around 5.3 billion. The new venues
alone (including the Olympic Park at Stratford and the athletes village), which are part
of the legacy of the Games, now have an estimated cost of 3.1bn. Other costs that will
have to be met from the budget will be the regeneration of areas of East London and
extra security. On top of this budget the government has also set aside an additional
2.7 billion in a contingency fund in case costs rise further.
The costs are divided among a number of stakeholders. The government will provide
the majority of income (6 billion), with other funds coming from London Council Tax
payers and the National Lottery. Further income will come from the International
Olympic Committee; TV and marketing deals (560m); sponsorship and official suppliers
(450m); ticket revenues (300m); licensing (60m); London Development Agency
(250m) (news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/other_sports/olympics).
Given the earlier observations regarding the vital importance of spectators, the
scale of expected spectators for the 2012 Olympics is impressive. The LOCOG (London
Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) have suggested that across the Olympics
and the Paralympics there will be approximately 9.6 million tickets for sale 8 million
for the Olympics and 1.6 million for the Paralympics.
Considering the staggering costs, many are sceptical about the actual benefits of
hosting major sports events, or the impact of new stadia, or having successful teams
and individuals. Not surprisingly, LOCOG stress that the legacy of the Games is as much
cultural as it is economic:
The Olympic Games and Paralympic Games will leave a powerful cultural legacy
across the UK. The Cultural Olympiad will create a buzz around the UK that will
last long after the Flame is extinguished at the Closing Ceremony of the
Paralympic Games. The benefits that the Cultural Olympiad will hope to bring are:
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a new awareness of cultural activity around the whole of the UK;

new ways to get involved, new projects to get involved in; more people taking
part in cultural activity within their local community;
new partnerships in the cultural sector and around the world.
(www.london2012.com/plans/culture/legacy)
Most of these benefits come in forms of social benefit that are hard to estimate and
quantify (e.g. cultural activity). From a sociological perspective, it may well be that it is
these other social and cultural factors that need to be emphasised rather than the
simple sets of economic factors that so often become the focus of governmental and
sports governing body assessments.
Professional sport
Sport economists have established a number of resilient measures of the factors
that influence the salaries of professional athletes. In all countries that are members
of the European Union, one of the most important employment factors has been
the establishment of individuals rights as workers under European law. Prior to the
now famous Bosman case, which changed the nature of player transfers in Europe,
football clubs had considerable employment control over their players who were
registered with their club. The club owned this registration which was transferred
between clubs when a player was sold by one club to another club. Following the Bosman
ruling the rights of players as employees was established. This has resulted in the free
movement of footballers between clubs within and between EU countries, with no fee
payable when players contracts have expired. The ruling also meant that players and
their agents or business managers could negotiate their own deals with a new club when
their previous contract expired or was coming close to ending. For professional football in the UK, the end results of this free-market process have been varied and were
not always foreseen.
The following are some of the main consequences of this change in market dynamics
for football, arguably the sport most dramatically influenced by the Bosman ruling: many
of the top players are now in very powerful positions within their clubs as their value to
the club (often in the tens of millions) effectively ends once their contracts run out; a
large proportion of TV income in football goes into paying for the enormous increases in
players salaries; the free market in players has encouraged a huge influx of foreign
players at all levels of the English game. There has also been a recent debate suggesting
that the poor performances by the England national football team are due in part to the
way this free market of players operates.
In recognition of some of these problems, for a number of years FIFA has been
discussing with the EU whether sport should be treated as an exception. However,
recent evidence suggests that this and the limiting of the number of clubs overseas
players would be widely challenged through the European legal system.
Beyond the world of football there are also a number of issues within professional
sport that are important to note. One factor identified by Lavoie (2000) is that there is
good evidence of economic discrimination based on race. Sports such as American
football and baseball were the most consistent offenders. Even in sports that had a
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majority of black athletes such as basketball where there was no evidence of salary
discrimination, it was nonetheless clear that race had an economic impact in that the
greater the racial match between the team and its metropolitan population, the larger
its average attendance (Lavoie, 2000, p159).
Another important, but often neglected, factor relates to the issue of gender. In this
case the evidence that can be used is extremely limited because of the restricted
amount (when compared to mens sport) of professional womens sport. For the most
part, economic surveys of professional sport such as that by Lavoie (2000) take little
or no account of how the professional world of womens sport operates. Beyond a few
sports such as tennis and a relatively small number of exceptional professional female
athletes (e.g. Paula Radcliffe), in economic terms at least, womens sport remains
marginalised and a long way behind that of men.
Understanding sport and consumption

Sport historians such as Mason (1988) have detailed how commercial interest in sport in
Britain initially developed quite differently from that in the USA. In Britain, sport was
much more directly impacted by class interests and the ideals of amateurism, whereas
in the more pluralised society of the USA, the possibility of making a profit from sport
was much more readily acceptable (Mason, 1988). These influences were to be long
lasting and significant. In drawing extensively on the ideals of British amateur sports
such as athletics, de Coubertin developed a vision of the Olympic movement separated
from the pressures of commercial interests. Yet these were also, inevitably, central to
the growth of global sporting competitions as elite sport became hugely attractive to
the media, advertising and other commercial interests. These contradictions were not to
be resolved (if indeed they were) until the 1980s, when all amateur sport and the Olympic
movement succumbed to the allure of commercial possibilities.
Despite the ideals of amateurism, from the late nineteenth century sport had
become established as a distinctive part of the British economy. Since then it has
continued to expand and diversify its products. One of the most important changes to
impact on sport and its commercial potential was the way in which it developed a
symbiotic relationship with the new technologies of mass media. Together they have
transformed each other.
From a commercial perspective, this relationship, in Britain at least, was somewhat
problematic. While newspapers and magazines could exploit sport to boost their sales in
respect of radio and then later television, the BBC had an effective monopoly on all
broadcasting. Unlike in the USA, the new media of mass communication were given a
public service remit, the main elements of which can still be found in the BBCs latest
charter.
The following extracts from the BBC Charter highlight what is meant by public
service broadcasting:
The BBCs public nature and its objects
(1) The BBC exists to serve the public interest.
(2) The BBCs main object is the promotion of its Public Purposes . . .
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The Public Purposes of the BBC are as follows

(a) sustaining citizenship and civil society;
(b) promoting education and learning;
(c) stimulating creativity and cultural excellence;
(d) representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities;
(e) bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK;
(f ) in promoting its other purposes, helping to deliver to the public the benefit
of emerging communications technologies and services and, in addition,
taking a leading role in the switchover to digital television.
It was not until 1955 that Britain had its first commercial broadcast stations. ITV
and its various franchises quickly established themselves and soon began to dispute
the BBCs broadcasting monopoly and exploit the commercial potential of the unholy
alliance between sport and the commercial media (Whannel, 1986). At the heart of this
transformation was the changing economic environment produced by the spread of
television, consumer culture and advertising, and the growth of sport sponsorship. One
of the outcomes has been that sport can no longer ignore the needs of the TV
companies. Whether your sport is netball or surfing, all sport organisations, large and
small, now need to consider the media when planning their strategies (Whannel, 1986,
2000). Consider how television-friendly tennis is compared to squash both racket
sports, but with very different popular coverage and exposure.
This process was not the same in the USA, due to the fact that commercial media
companies had existed from the outset. From the 1930s onward, there was an intensification of the relationship between various companies that wanted a more effective
way to advertise their products to the male consumer (Horne, 2006). The success of this
relationship quickly transformed from one of interdependence to one of dependence. As
the work of Burstyn (1999) details, driven by the need of the USAs rapidly expanding
commercial mass media (radio and then television) to attract advertising revenue, and
the ability of sport to effectively connect men to the ever expanding range of male
consumer products (especially non-sporting products), professional and elite sport
relatively quickly became dependent on media revenue to run their sports.
An indirect but none the less powerful consequence of this process was that it made
women largely invisible in the world of professional sport as it was a world in which a
male-dominated media talked to a world of male advertising executives interested in
marketing a range of male consumer products, and collectively they talked to the world
of male professional and elite sport (Burstyn, 1999).
Since the 1970s significant economic, cultural and technological changes have all
had a transformative impact on sport consumption (Horne, 2006). In relation to sport
the most important of these have come from the developments in communication
technologies. The development of satellite television opened up the broadcasting of
sport in a number of different ways. In the UK the arrival of new forms of media broke
the longstanding cartel between the BBC and ITV, and after pressure from the sports
bodies the government had to relax its own rules and permit the new satellite and cable
companies to bid for the broadcasting rights for nationally important sport occasions
(for example, the FA Cup Final, Wimbledon, the Boat Race, Six Nations Rugby and the
Grand National.)
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The very significant expansion of global broadcasting networks opened up new and
potentially very lucrative markets. However, it did pose one significant problem the
lack of original content with which to fill them. Channels offering endless re-runs of old
soaps may be of interest to some, but they do not command the large audiences that
advertisers are looking for. For these broadcasters, sport has two major advantages.
The first is that sporting action is a highly mobile form of entertainment. Most of the
major sports are well understood by a global audience and even when they are not, it is
a fairly easy process to overdub the visual content with a commentary in the language of
the receiving nation (Whannel, 2000; Miller et al., 2007). Sports programmes such as
TransWorld Sport which operate a magazine format are prime examples of this. The
second is that when compared to the costs of producing other entertainment formats
(e.g. drama) sport is relatively inexpensive.
In the USA, as ever an indicator of future trends in the rest of the developed
world including the UK the cost of broadcasting rights for sport have reached
staggering proportions: in 2005 the rights for the NFL (National Football League)
commanded 10.75 billion (Horne, 2006, p50). In recent times, BSkyB paid the FA
1.1 billion for the rights to broadcast football. It is estimated by industry observers
that BSkyB is able to earn 150 million to 180 million a year from pub and club
subscriptions to its premium sports channels. From this it is estimated that within the
UK market Sky can recover almost two-thirds of the amount it paid for the rights with
the revenue from pubs and clubs. Fears over a lack of competition in the broadcasting of
sport have meant that the European Commission has agreed a reduction in the amount
of Premiership football that Sky can broadcast. This has permitted other digitally based
broadcasters to come into the market. The most recent of these is the Irish broadcasting company Setanta. For the seasons 200710, the two have paid the following for
broadcasting rights: BSkyB 1,314 million; Setanta 392 million. For the clubs this
represents an approximate yearly payment of 18 million to each Premier League club
(www.footballeconomy.com/stats/). For this the two broadcasters get the following
rights:
Sky
23 first-choice matches shown on Sundays.
Sky
23 second-choice matches shown on Sundays.
Setanta
23 third-choice matches shown on Mondays.
Setanta
8 second-choice matches + 15 fourth-choice matches shown on

Saturdays.
Sky
5 first-choice matches shown + 9 third-choice matches + 9 fourthchoice matches shown on Saturdays.
Sky
10 first-choice matches + 7 second-choice matches + 6 third-choice

matches in mid-week and bank holidays, Saturdays and Sundays.
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Recently, an improved Football League deal was negotiated partly by allowing an

increase from 60 to 70 live matches to be shown by Sky Sports, 55 of which will be from
the Coca-Cola Championship. Although an annual total of about 37 million will be
distributed to the 72 Football League clubs, a total figure about ten times higher is
handed out to the 20 Premiership clubs.
With such high levels of expenditure on broadcast rights, economic viability is a
major concern even for the largest global media companies. These costs only make
sense if there are other very lucrative forms of income other than subscriptions to their
sports channels. The most significant of these is advertising revenue. While full of the
inflated claims of advertising, embedded in the following statement are a number of
discourses that highlight the powerful relationship between sport and advertising. This
is what a leading sport advertising company has to say about the relationship:
We use the creative energy of sport to inspire winning market solutions for the
worlds number one brands, athletes and teams . . . The winners mindset . . . starts
with benchmarking and goal setting. We help set your ambition and create a
culture where your teams can perform flawlessly as individuals, fluidly as a team
and ultimately win convincingly over formidable components.
(Branded Sport Group 2007: www.brandedsportgroup.com)
As we can see from this statement, it is a set of beliefs about the character and inherent
values within sport that have endeared it to advertisers. Their desire to have
their products and, more importantly, their brands associated with sport and sport
stars is grounded in the way the sports or the sport stars achievements and public
image can be used to endorse the products they wish to sell or the brands they wish to
develop. This is an issue that we will explore in more detail in Chapter 11 when, as part of
our examination of the globalisation of sport, we will explore the power of celebrity
culture.
Activity 9.3
Make a list of what you perceive to be the character and values associated with
sport generally and sport stars specifically.
Once you have done this, look at a couple of non-sport magazines to see if
you can spot how advertisers use these images to sell their products or enhance
their brands.
As the twentieth century progressed and the processes of technological innovation
and mass production (mostly driven by the profit motive of capitalism) produced ever
more extensive ranges of consumer items, advertisers realised that the satisfaction of
need was only one element of consumption (Sulkunen, 1997). There was another, possibly
even more important, element motivating people to consume desire. The benefit that
desire brought to advertisers is that, unlike need, it is potentially open-ended. As soon as
you have something you desire, the desire ends thus, for advertisers the trick is to constantly conjure up new desires. Advertisers therefore create this years model, this years
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design, this years colours or this years new sport star. An example is that each new
football season now starts with Premiership clubs promoting a subtly different club strip,
instantly making last seasons obsolete. The triumph of this form of consumption is its
sensuality and pleasure. In the modern era consumption for the general public makes a
crucial transition from a matter of need to a matter of pleasure (Bauman, 2001). It is an
affirmation of the right of the individual to seek happiness, albeit a happiness based on
ones ability to be an active participant in the process of consumption.
Activity 9.4
1. Take a few moments to see if you can identify some of the ways in which you
act as a consumer of sport. Make a list dividing them into two groups: those
directly related to being an active participant and those that reflect a more
passive consumption of sport.
Some questions/issues to consider:
Which list is larger?

What are its major components?
What does this tell you about how you consume sport?
Through talking to your friends and family, see if you can recognise variations:
a) based on the type of sport you are most interested in and b) based on how men
or women engage with this process.
2. Practical task: go to a major high-street sports shop and walk around, carefully
noting the following:
What sports goods dominate the layout of the store?

How much of what is being sold is directly relevant to the performance of
sport and how much is clearly intended to be sold as sport fashion?
Check some of the manufacturers labels and make a list of the countries that are
producing the sports goods. Some questions/issues to consider:
Are the sports goods mostly directed towards people who are active in
sport or are they more fashion and lifestyle orientated?
Are the countries where the goods were manufactured the same as the
countries of origin for the brand name under which they are being sold?
The consumption of sporting commodities may have started as a utilitarian process
(buying the products necessary for the performance of the sport) or as an affirming
process designed to confirm an affiliation with a team, a specific sport or a social group.
However, today it is far more than this. It has become a process of exploration (lifestyle)
and the validation of identity.
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Review
Sportsmen and women as well as images of sporting activity are constantly used to sell
us consumer goods historical circumstances have prevailed to create a consumer
society. This capital exchange equation is more easily understood as a process of
commodification. Sport, especially professional sport, has become dependent on its
connections with companies that make and sell consumer products that have little or
no direct relevance to the world of sport. Although some sociologists have claimed that
the commercialisation of sport has led to its degradation (Lasch, 1979), there is no doubt
that the commercial relationships between professional elite sport, the mass media and
advertising are understood by all parties to be one that they can use to develop and
exploit new markets. United together, the commercial reach and influence of all three is
no longer just national despite the huge benefits to the British economy but global.
Sport is no longer just something that is done on a playing field, track or in a sports
hall. It is something that is a very visible and important part of our modern consumer
society.
The habitual actions that combine to create and define our lifestyle (and our sport
choices) are important because they help us to develop our own distinctive identities
and because the bodies of meaning that we normally ascribe to these activities are part
of the cultural knowledge that enables us to understand the world and to make
predictions about it. The fact that we develop fairly effective ways of understanding
our social world also means that we can choose to challenge and experiment with these
meanings. This is particularly so in respect of popular culture, because its transitory
nature means that we do not directly challenge the institutionalised power base (e.g.
you might choose to experiment with some exotic hairstyle when going out to a night
club, but you remain conventional when preparing your hair for sport). This said, these
challenges also have the potential to have a pronounced and conflictual impact on the
existing social order/power base.
Even a simple look at our world today (and its vast and ever changing array of
consumer goods) demonstrates that change is now endemic. Within sport new consumer
products and practices are constantly emerging. There is a never-ending procession of
fashion and technological changes that are always clamouring for our attention. The rise
of our consumer society has had a profound impact on sport and sport is an integral
element in its production. However, evidence is also emerging of some serious disquiet
about the structures, waste and inequalities that are inherent within it. As we move into
the twenty-first century new directions and challenges are beginning to confront sport
and our consumer society (e.g. the anti-capitalist, anti-globalisation and environmental
movements). How sport decides to deal with these challenges will be vitally important
to its future.
After reading this chapter and having done the various learning activities, you
should to be able to answer the following:
1.
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Why is sport such a vital part of the British (and/or global) economy?
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2. How do you understand the term consumer society and should sport now be
primarily understood as essentially no different from any other consumer
product?
3. Are professional athletes merely workers within an entertainment business?
4. Who are your favourite sport celebrities and what positive or negative
images do you think they convey through the media?
5. Could sport today survive without the media and who do you think benefits
more from the relationship sport or the media?
Further study
Until relatively recently the sociological exploration of sport and consumer society
was a relatively limited area of analysis. However, in recent years this has begun to
significantly change. One of the best recent texts to read on this is:
Horne, J (2006) Sport in consumer society. London: Palgrave.
There are now a variety of excellent texts that provide a comprehensive exploration of
sport and the media:
Whannel, G (2000) Sport and the media, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook of
Rowe, D (2004) Sport, culture and the media. 2nd edition. Maidenhead: Open University
Press.
To extend your understanding of sport stars and their celebrity status read:
Whannel, G (2002) Media sport stars: masculinities and moralities. London: Routledge.
Cashmore, E (2002) Beckham. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Smart, B (2005) The sport star: modern sport and the cultural economy of sporting
celebrity. London: Sage.
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Chapter 10
Sport and the media

Ping Wu
The previous chapter explained the emergence of our consumer society and the important contribution that sport has made and is making to this emergent dimension of the
modern world. The book this far has introduced a whole range of sociological concepts,
theories and ideas that position sport as a key component of society. Through our
understanding of ideology, discourse and hegemony in particular we have learnt that
sport is much more than pleasurable physical activity. Of the many themes running
through this book, the relationship between doing sport and the agendas of power,
control and influence has been prominent. In these complex relationships it is the media
that is, all forms of screen channelling (television, computers, mobile telephones and
hybrids of all three) and all forms of written word and picture channelling (advertising
hoardings, magazines, newspapers, books and journals) along with digitalised
commentaries of radio that have been crucial to this positioning of sport. It is the
media that have provided the possibilities for both the reinforcement of residual forms
of sport that is, sport as we have traditionally come to understand it, team games,
racket sports, athletics and other existing and recognised forms and the possibilities
for new sports, or at least new forms of old sports, to emerge.
The media provide, it could be argued, the battleground for sport in the twentyfirst century as ideological positions are both entrenched and resisted. This
chapter suggests that sport, true to the traditions of modernity, is an industry
and therefore concerned with production and profit. To achieve this productivity,
sport has to capture the publics imagination with something achieved through a
combination of extensive high profile coverage (at least of the more powerful sports
such as football) and an emphasis, through the mediation of sport, on drama. Capturing
the popular imagination is not new Riffenburgh (1993) has shown how the
races to reach the North and South Poles around the cusp of the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries were brought into the public domain by the dramatic coverage emerging in the printed media, especially newspapers. Since that time the
sophistication of the media has improved immeasurably through technical innovation, with the Internet being the latest example of the globalising propensity of sport
(see Chapter 11). There is, however, ongoing evidence that the two key ideas of saturation coverage and drama remain the essence of the medias success in shaping sport in
the twenty-first century. This chapter will help you to understand these processes, and
in particular how the media sustain discursive agendas of gender and nationalism,
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10 / Sport and the media
for example, as well as enabling you to develop a more sophisticated understanding of

media representation of sport our understanding of sport is constructed, and the
media play a key role.
Learning outcomes
This chapter is the centre-piece of a trilogy of chapters (Sport and consumer
society previously and Sport and globalisation to follow) which apply the
theoretical ideas of the early chapters to an understanding of sport in the
twenty-first century.
On completing this chapter you should be able to explain:
the interdependence between the media and sport industries;
the features of mediated sports production;
how sport is dramatised by the media;
how mediated sport texts reinforce dominant discourses of gender relation
and national identity;
the collective characteristics of the targeted audiences of mediated sport
and their experience of watching and reading mediated sport.
Introduction
Lets start our adventure from two names: Wayne Rooney and Beth Tweddle. You may
not be fanatical about football, but it will still be very unlikely that you have no idea
about who Wayne Rooney is. Actually, it is not difficult for most of us to tell some
anecdotes about the famous footballer: for example, the earnest once a blue, always a
blue slogan that unexpectedly made him a laughing stock as his devotion to the club
(Everton FC) that nurtured him as a schoolboy prodigy was compromised by his multimillion pound move to arch rivals Manchester United. Girls who rarely watch football
know who his girlfriend is and show great interest in what she wears. Then, who is Beth
Tweddle and what sport does she play? Even those who call themselves hard-core
sports fans may have to look for help from the likes of Google before they can give an
answer. You may argue that she might not have great sporting achievements; therefore,
you do not know her well. She is, indeed, not as well-known as Wayne Rooney. However,
that does not mean that she has achieved less in her sport than he has in football. Wayne
Rooney is, arguably, the best striker at present in the UK and one of the best in the
world, but Beth Tweddle, who won gold at uneven bars in October 2006 in the World
Championships at Aarhus in Denmark, is the first and only gymnastic world champion
in the UK and therefore, without any doubt, the best gymnast this nation has ever had.
However, the footballer who is neither world champion nor European champion is far
more famous than our gymnastic world champion. Very few of us have ever met Wayne
Rooney or Beth Tweddle in the flesh. We owe what we know about them and the stark
contrast between our knowledge of them to the mass media. It is the media that control
our knowing so that we know so much about Wayne Rooney and so little about Beth
Tweddle.
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Naturally, a number of other questions follow. Why do the mass media report Wayne
Rooney extensively and pay little attention to Beth Tweddle? Is that because of Wayne
Rooneys personal charisma or the particular sport, football, he plays? Is that because he
is male and she is female? How far is the media portrayal of Wayne Rooney from the
real person? Why is this young footballer who is barely able to prevent himself
from swearing on the pitch, very often depicted as a hero and a role-model? Relevant
questions can make a rather long list. Because the mass media play such an important role in constructing our knowledge and understanding of sport, media representation of sport has become a major attraction of scholarly attention since the 1980s
(Wenner, 1989).
Sport sociologists and media scholars aim to answer questions arising around
mediated sport that is, the way the media shape and present the sport people watch
from different perspectives. There are three substantive groups that can be identified
and an exploration of each of these will form the framework for this chapter. The three
are:
analysis of the production of mediated sport;
analysis of mediated sport messages;
analysis of audience interpretation.
Some theorists are centrally concerned with the production of mediated sport. They
analyse the wider political, economic and cultural structure within which mediated sport
production is organised. They also examine how mediated sport is produced inside media
organisations. The key questions at the core of their investigation are: who has the power
to affect mediated sports content and in which ways is this power exercised? Other
scholars show more interest in mediated sports messages. Through textual analysis
words and images are defined as texts in the discursive analyses used in these forms of
socio-cultural studies they aim to find out how the mass media intertwine discourses of
gender, race, ideology and identity with sport. The subject of the third approach is the
audience of mediated sport. The central concerns here are the collective characteristics
of the audiences and how the audiences interpret mediated sport messages.
Lets take Wayne Rooney as an example to illustrate the above research approaches.
In order to get a good understanding of the media treatment of Wayne Rooney, we could
break the investigation into three main areas. First, why do the mass media report him
extensively? To answer this question, we need to know why football matters for the
media and why Wayne Rooney matters for the media. Second, how do the mass media
portray Wayne Rooney? To answer this question, we need to analyse reports and
features about him. Third, what do the audiences think about Wayne Rooney? To answer
this question, we need to know who reads and/or watches the media portrayal of him
regularly and their understanding of the media portrayal.
The production of mediated sport

Scholarly investigation of mediated sports production is at three different levels:
macro, organisational and individual. At the macro level, the complex relationship
between sport and the media, two major social institutions, is the main concern. At the
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organisational level, the institutional arrangements of mediated sports production

within media organisations are under scrutiny. At the individual level, the collective
characteristics and professional roles of social actors directly involved in mediated
sports production, such as producers and journalists, the pressure they work under day
in day out and the dilemmas they often have to face are all subjects for investigation.
Interdependence between sport and the media

A consensus regarding the relationship between the sports industry and the media has
been broadly reached among sports sociologists and media scholars today. Although
expressing their points of view in different words, most of the scholars agree that
there is interdependence between sport and the media (Claeys and Van Pelt, 1986; Jhally,
1989; Boyle and Haynes, 2000; and Bernstein and Blain, 2003). Contemporary sports,
especially spectacular professional sports such as association football and major North
American sports will not be able to operate and survive without the huge sum of money
poured in by television organisations (Dunnavant, 2004 and Smith, 2001). At the same
time, the mass media are heavily dependent on sport to deliver lucrative audiences to
advertisers (Boyle and Haynes, 2000 and Rowe, 2004a). The relationship is therefore
symbiotic. In essence, mediated sport is a kind of commodity produced through cooperation between the sports industry and the media in order to pursue mutual interests.
The media are crucially important for sport. Since sport finished its giant and
decisive leap of codification in public schools and universities in England in the late
nineteenth century, mass production of sports matches as a commodity has become
possible. Modern sport was introduced into many other parts of the world through the
expansion of the British Empire, but it is the revolutionary developments in the
technologies of transportation and communication in the 1960s that finally made sport
a truly important part of popular culture on a worldwide scale (Whannel, 1992 and Real,
1998). Cheap air flights between continents made regular international competitions
possible and satellite television disseminated live scenes of international competitions
to people all over the world. Watching competitive sport has become a globally and
frequently shared human experience and has inevitably drawn the attention of
transnational corporations that target global consumers (Whitson, 1998).
In the affair between sport and commercial sponsorship, the media are not just a
go-between. Instead, the media are an inseparable part of the golden triangle. The
sports industry produces competitions and delivers them to sponsors, television
organisations and on-site audiences. The media, including television organisations and
newspapers, then deliver media representation of sports competitions to viewers,
readers and, more importantly, deliver these viewers and readers to advertisers, many
of whom are at the same time major commercial sponsors of sports competitions. What
sponsors and advertisers are really interested in is not a real sports competition that
will take place in a particular stadium and be watched by a particular number of on-site
audiences; rather, it is the mediated version of the sports competition which will be read
or watched by millions of people staying outside the stadium. Nowadays, how much
sponsorship a sport organisation can attract directly depends on how much media
coverage it can guarantee (Gratton and Taylor, 2000).
Therefore, the media, especially television organisations, have become a business
partner whom sports organisations have to please. Sports organisations thirst for
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television coverage of their competitions has actually accorded television organisations

the power to decide when, where and how sports competitions should take place (Boyle
and Haynes, 2000). Football is a good example. Football matches were traditionally held
on Saturday afternoon in England, but now, football can be played and, more importantly,
broadcast on television on any day of the week, as shown in the example below.
Televised football fixtures between 24 and 30 November 2007

Saturday (24 November)
Premier League (Sky and Setanta)
Sunday (25 November)
Premier League (Sky and Setanta)
Monday (26 November)
Championship (Sky)
Tuesday (27 November)
UEFA Champions League (ITV)
Wednesday (28 November)
UEFA Champions League (Sky)
Thursday (29 November)
UEFA Cup matches (ITV)
Friday (30 November)
FA Cup second-round matches (Sky)
It is noteworthy that football, as the most popular and sought-after sport, actually
enjoys an advantageous position in its deal with television. The lucrative broadcasting
right fees and the massive media coverage that King Football receives have made many
so-called minor sports cast envious glances. In fact, it is these unpopular sports that
are much bolder and determined in reforming themselves to attract media and sponsor
interests.
Reflection
BBC Sports Personality of the Year, 2007

An interesting outcome of the achievement of the England rugby team in coming
second in the 2007 World Cup was that they were voted BBC televisions Team of
the Year at the Annual BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards for 2007. It
speaks volumes for the power and standing of team games such as rugby in our
national sporting lexicon that the British cycle team that had won seven gold
medals in the 2007 World Championships only gained a brief mention in
dispatches while the team that came second in their World Cup won the award. Of
further interest at the same awards ceremony is that Victoria Pendleton triple
gold medal winner at the Cycling World Championships was not even among
the ten athletes short-listed for the main award of Sports Personality of the
Year. As with the example of Beth Tweddle, if the public do not get to know about
these achievements, the profile of the sports they represent remains subservient
to those with greater media coverage.
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CASE STUDY
VOLLEYBALLS MEDIA-FRIENDLY REFORMATION
In the late 1980s, the Fdration Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) realised that
the great difficulty in making their sport attractive to television was its sideout scoring system. Back then, it was very difficult to predict how long a
volleyball match would last, and that was something television organisations
resented, because air schedules needed to be strictly arranged and fixed in
advance. If the duration of a match is not fixed or highly predictable, then it is
simply not suitable for live broadcast. After nearly a decade of efforts, the FIVB
finally dumped the old side-out system and introduced the rally-point system to
all sets of a match in 1998. Now, a team will win a point if they win a rally, no
matter which side serves.
In fact, the FIVB has been an avant-garde reformer among the international
governing bodies of various sports and has introduced more media-friendly
changes. For example, a coloured ball was first used in volleyball; many other
ball sports including football then followed volleyballs colourful new trend. In
November 2007, Dr Rubn Acosta, the FIVB President who believes that the
basic rule of progress is change, announced that a new softer ball which was
designed to affect positively not only the appeal of volleyball, but also the ball
control by player would be used in the Beijing Olympic Games (www.fivb.org
press release). Moreover, at the Tokyo World Championships in November 1998,
the FIVB started its dress revolution: all the athletes were ordered to wear newly
designed, provocative, skintight uniforms. Those who refused or failed to do
this were fined by the FIVB. Although at the beginning the FIVBs fashion taste
was ridiculed and questioned by many teams, President Rubn Acosta was
determined to make volleyball sexier to catch television and sponsor interests.
He said: Sports that dont have the favour of television will fade away that is
a fact, that is the reality ( http://www.iht.com/articles/1998/11/30/volley.t.
php?page=1). Today, leggy volleyball players, both male and female, already feel
no embarrassment at all to expose their super-model-like body build in colourful and skinny outfits. In 2004, the FIVB also became the first international
sports organisation that allowed journalists to join their board and congress.
During the 2004 Athens Olympic Games, indoor volleyball and beach volleyball
attracted more than 3.5 billion TV viewers and the FIVB hopes the figure will
reach 4 billion in Beijing in 2008 (www.fivb.org).
On the other side of the coin, sport is of great importance for the mass media.
Among the mass media, television, radio, newspapers and the Internet are the major
players in the production of mediated sport, with television being the most powerful.
The media coverage that sports organisations desperately seek is largely television
coverage. However, that does not mean that television organisations do not need to
worry about the supply of sports competitions that could fill in airtime. In fact, the fight
for broadcasting rights to massive sporting events such as the Olympic Games and the
mens football World Cup has become fiercer since the 1980s. Professional leagues of
popular sport such as football have also witnessed broadcasting right fees soaring in
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recent years. In the 20062007 season, BSkyB paid 2.5 million per match to screen
the Premier League live. In the 20072008 season, it had to pay 4.8 million per match
(Daily Telegraph, 6 May 2006).
CASE STUDY
THE RUGBY WORLD CUP, 2007
In Britain ITV purchased the exclusive TV rights for this tournament. Although
the series of group stage and knock-out matches was spread over nearly six
weeks, and therefore guaranteed extensive advertising revenue for ITV, the
purchase was considered an economic gamble because in order to break even
on their investment, ITV needed England (where the most sizeable viewing
audiences were to be found) to at least make the quarter-finals. The basis for
this logic was that if England, or any of the home nations (Scotland, Ireland and
Wales), were knocked out early on, viewing figures in Britain would drop, thereby
negatively affecting advertising revenue, the life-blood of any independent
television company. In the event, against the odds, given the teams group stage
performances (minutely scrutinised and criticised by sports journalists eager
for stories), England made it to the final and, despite losing this match, their
achievement was enough for ITV to return a profit on their investment.
The introduction of pay-per-view sports dedicated channels caused further
profound changes to the sports broadcasting marketplace. On the one hand, television
organisations now deliver televised sports competitions as commodities directly to
viewers who have paid for the service. That means, besides advertising revenue
generated from sports broadcasting, that television organisations now have another
revenue stream from the sale of subscription to their sports channels. On the other
hand, these 24-hour channels created extra airtime to be filled (Gerrard, 2004 and
Rowe, 2004a). Therefore, the need to guarantee a stable and sufficient supply of sports
competition for broadcasting has become crucial for television organisations. However,
the expansion of sports coverage on television not only results in heated fights for
broadcasting rights to major competitions of popular sports, but also means that minor
sports now have more chances to be televised than before.
Reflection
Ricky Hattons epochal fight against Floyd Mayweather

On 9 December 2007, English boxer Ricky Hatton lost to defending pound-forpound champion Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas. However, Ricky Hatton was
hardly regarded as a loser after having claimed 10 million from the contest. In a
pre-match report, the Daily Telegraph predicted that this showdown could gross
close to 60 million. More than 40 million was expected to be brought in through
pay-per-view buys in the United States and 6 million from viewers in Britain.
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Newspaper sports coverage has also expanded significantly since the 1990s and, as
an indicator of its power, at least half of newspaper sports coverage is devoted to
football. Not only are the back pages of tabloids such as the Sun and the Mirror full of
football stories, quality broadsheet newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and The
Times are also obsessed with football in such a way that they are criticised by nostalgic
scholars and readers as typical examples of dumbing down (Boyle, 2006). You may
wonder why television organisations and newspapers have to cover football. Is it only
because we, the viewers and readers, love football? The love of our national game is
one reason, but the media are not simply satisfying our needs. The ultimate goal of the
media, most of which are in the private sector of the market, is to make a profit. That
people like football means, if football is broadcast and reported, a huge number of
audiences are likely to watch and read regularly. The sheer size of the audience
attracted by football coverage is very pleasing to advertisers and therefore, the mass
media can guarantee lucrative advertising revenues by covering football. The same
rationale works for sport in general. As Lafayette points out, sport is the last frontier of
reality on television . . . the only thing that can guarantee an audience (1996, p145).
The interdependence between sport and the media may deepen in the foreseeable
future because of the fast development in cross-ownerships within the media industry
and between the two industries that result in vertical integration (Bellamy, 1998 and
Gerrard, 2004). The uncertainty that television organisations have to face in the sports
broadcasting marketplace propels the increasing invasion of the mass media in the
sports industry. In the major professional leagues in the United States, that the mass
media are important shareholders of many clubs is nothing new. In the UK, the highprofile but finally denied bid made by Rupert Murdoch to control Manchester United
Football Club highlighted the anxiety of television organisations to guarantee their hold
on broadcasting rights in a market where competition is becoming tougher and tougher.
However, the interest of the media to own major sport teams depends on how the
broadcasting right is sold. If the broadcasting right is negotiated and sold collectively by
the league union the way that the Premier League operates then individual clubs do
not really have control over the broadcasting rights to their own competitions. Although
the collective deal with television did cause complaints from bigger and richer clubs,
the smaller and relatively poorer clubs have significantly benefited from it (Gratton and
Taylor, 2000). In the long run, a sports league will benefit more from collective ownership
of broadcasting right and the then shared television money because, unlike most other
industries, the generation of profit in the sports industry depends on competitiveness
among all the clubs. A relatively balanced wealth distribution is more likely to guarantee
the uncertainty of competition, which is the key factor to keep the audiences desire for
consuming sport high. Thus, the prediction that Tiger Woods will win all four golf majors
in 2008 an unprecedented achievement in golf which is notoriously fickle in its
demands is an immensely attractive idea to float because of the possibility that he
could do it (experts recognise that he has the talent and he is currently playing better
than ever as he enters his peak performance years in golf of his early thirties), yet the
probability is that he wont. It is this uncertainty that fuels the drama of the game and
gives the media coverage of the events extra attraction.
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Mediated sports production

At the organisational level, sociologists analyse how mediated sport is produced to
understand why sport is represented in certain ways (Lowes, 1997; Silk et al., 2004 and
Stoddart, 2006). Sports broadcasting and sports reporting are both highly institutionalised and routinised processes. In the former, the number of cameras, the camera
angles, the changes between a close portrait of a particular player and a distance shot
of the audience as background, replays, live commentaries and post-match quick
interviews all follow certain rules rather than personal fondness or whim: this is
mediated sports production. These rules, whether they are explicit or implicit, are
gradually established on previous practices in numerous matches, believed to be
successful, and therefore will be followed in most subsequent matches.
Activity 10.1
Mediated sport, it has been suggested above, is reality put through a filter so
that what we actually read or watch is a collage or simulation of what actually
happened or is happening.
1. Explain what is meant by the term rules in the context of mediated sport.
2. List what you think these rules are, and give examples where you can from
your own consumption of sport.
3. Use this information to develop a class discussion based on Boyles (2006)
suggestion that mediated sport is dumbing down our knowledge and
understanding of sport in other words, aim to articulate the positive and
negative consequences for us of the way sports are represented in the
media.
Sports broadcasting and reporting also repeats itself cyclically. A cycle of sports
news production can be a competition season (e.g. every Premier League football season
starts in August and ends in May), a calendar year (e.g. the tennis or golf majors), or a
four-year Olympic cycle. News stories that were produced in the last cycle are usually
similar either in content or pattern to those being produced in the current cycle. For
example, before each round of the Premier League, there are always plenty of pre-match
stories to hype up the atmosphere, and the topics are rarely beyond line-up, injury,
debut, return from injury or suspension, history between the two sides that will clash,
star players ambition, managers confidence and teams morale. Then, on the next days
following completion of a round, there are match reports and, again, the topics are very
familiar: who scored, who missed, who made an unforgivable mistake, who was sent off,
and what comments the managers made after the matches (Anderson, 1983; Koppett,
1994 and Andrew, 2005). Comparing the stories about each round of the Premier League,
you will find that the only difference is actually the names: the names of the clubs or
the names of the players. Match after match, season after season, year after year and
cycle after cycle, similar sports news stories are reproduced regularly. Different from
most events whose news values would and could be judged only after they occur, sport
competitions are presumed to be newsworthy before they take place (Koppett, 1994;
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Rowe, 2004a and Boyle, 2006). Not only do the media know that a particular competition
will take place at a particular time months or even years before, but so too do the
audiences. Therefore, sports reporting is normally planned in advance. No matter
whether a football match is exciting or not, the reporter will be sent there and have
to produce a story to fill in the page, space or air time allotted to his/her story in
advance.
There are two important consequences of this cycle of production combined with
this process of scheduled planning and both relate to what might (following Bourdieu,
1984) be thought of as a sports media habitus that is, the unconscious patterning of
everyday behaviour. First, when media production is regular, cyclical and pre-planned
by the originators of sports texts, the encoded messages about race, gender, ethnicity,
the body, consumption, commodification, and so forth are reinforced. Second, this
means that a sufficient and predictable supply of news materials is crucial in sports
news production, and those sports that can guarantee such a supply will be reported
more extensively than those that cant. Professional football leagues in Europe
and major North American leagues cover most days of the year and provide enough
competitions as raw materials that the media can process to produce news stories on an
almost continuous basis. This is another reason why a small number of major sports
dominate sports coverage (Lowes, 1997).
Sports journalists
At the individual level, sociologists examine the unique collective features of social
actors involved in mediated sports production (Garrison and Salwen, 1989; Garrison and
Salwen, 1994; Henningham, 1995; Boyle, 2006 and Lange et al., 2007). The investigations
conducted in the UK, USA and Australia all show that sports journalism is an overwhelmingly masculine profession. In the UK, females account for less than one-tenth of
all the sports journalists who work for national daily newspapers. More women are
involved in sports broadcasting, but it is their camera-friendly faces rather than their
journalistic skills and knowledge of sport that are valued. This serious gender imbalance
inevitably affects the way that sport, especially gender relationship in sport, is
portrayed and contributes directly to the under-representation of womens sport in the
media (Rowe, 2004a and Boyle, 2006).
Another feature for which sports journalists are often criticised by their peers
working in other areas of journalism is their lack of professional credibility. The sports
department in a newspaper has long been ridiculed as the toy department and sports
journalists are very unlikely to transfer to other departments. Within the media
hierarchy, sports journalists occupy a bottom position in the pecking order and are often
teased as fans with a typewriter. Investigative journalism is rarely employed in sports
coverage and the tone of sports reporting is often sycophantic (Rowe, 2004a). The beat
system, which is widely employed in sports coverage all over the world and effectively
links individual journalists to specific sports or even specific clubs, confines sports
journalists to a very small number of sports and makes them heavily dependent on
limited news sources (Smith and Valeriote, 1983; Telander, 1984; Bourgeois, 1995; Lowes,
1997; Boyle and Haynes, 2000; Anderson, 2001; Brookes, 2002 and Wu, 2007). It is not
unusual for a sports journalist to cover a beat (e.g. a football club) for decades or for
his entire journalistic career. Lack of distance from their news sources, who are very
often subjects being reported on, means that sports journalists are reluctant to risk
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their good relationship with the sports organisations or sportspeople, which may have
cost them years of efforts to establish, by reporting negatively and critically.
Textual analysis of mediated sport

Most research on the medias representation of sport examines the meanings of
mediated sports texts rather than how mediated sports texts are produced. Such a
focus on textual analysis, on the one hand, reflects the richness of mediated sports
content; on the other hand, it reveals the difficulty in getting access to data regarding
media production. Although ignoring or neglecting the mechanism of mediated sports
production is an obvious flaw of many textual analyses, sociologists still get some
thought-provoking findings through decoding mediated sport messages.
Dramatising sporting events

Drama is a natural feature of all types of television entertainments, including sports
broadcasting. It also distinguishes sports journalism from other types of journalism or
journalism in general. In a drama, normally there are conflicts, good guys and bad guys.
This formula has been successfully transplanted in sporting coverage. Competitions
between two teams are often represented as confrontation between particular players.
Victory and defeat are often interpreted as results of a star athletes personality rather
than his/her sporting ability. The rivalry between two teams or athletes is hyped up in a
series of reports that could span weeks, months or even years, in a way very similar to
how conflicts are built up in soap operas. Sociologists argue that, through dramatisation
and personalisation, the media have created images of sports heroes and villains which
are, in fact, very different from the real sportspeople in the flesh (Sparks, 2000; Lines,
2001 and Whannel, 2002). However, dramatisation and personalisation should not be
regarded simplistically as a writing style fancied by sports journalists. In this television
era, most of the readers have already known the result, or even watched a live broadcast
of a match before they read the sports pages in a newspaper. Rather than inform the
readers what happened, newspaper sports journalists need to interpret the meaning of
the match and make it still sound newsworthy. In order to hold the attention of someone
whose aim of reading is not necessarily the search for hard facts, sports journalists have
to resort to a more colourful, larger-than-life and exaggerated way of story-telling.
CASE STUDY
THE WAR BETWEEN WAZZA AND WINKER
Englands football team was defeated by Portugal in the quarter-final of the
2006 Football World Cup on 30 June 2006. In this match, Wayne Rooney, who was
dubbed Wazza by his team-mates, was shown a red card by the referee. His
Manchester United team-mate, Portuguese Cristiano Ronaldo, was seen
encouraging the referee to dismiss Rooney and then winking at the Portugal
bench after Rooney was sent off. This match called a halt to Englands journey in
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CASE STUDY continued

Germany, but marked the starting point of a tabloid-driven hatred campaign
against Ronaldo, who who titled Winker afterwards. The aftermath of the match
was much more dramatic than the match itself. The media, especially the
tabloids, portrayed Wazza as a victim of a conspiracy, and Ronaldo the Winker as
a villain who had disgustingly framed his good friend and team-mate at
Manchester United.
The Wazza vs Winker scenario was hyped up by the media with great
passion and many slack days between the end of the World Cup and the
beginning of the Premier League were filled with rumours and gossip about the
two Ws. One day we were told that Wazza wanted to split Winker in two; another
day we were told that Winker feared for his safety in England. Then, Ronaldo
returned to play for Manchester United and stepped into a wall of hate as he
faced the England fans for the first time since the World Cup. Finally, Wazza
showed publicly that he had forgiven Winker by hugging him in the match
between Manchester United and Fulham. From the nasty plot to the redemption,
the winking incident, which might have physically lasted less than half a second,
was successfully made into a quasi-soap opera, which lasted for almost two
months, with a typical Hollywood-style happy ending. (Source: The Sun, 3 July,
13 July, 9 August and 21 August 2006.)
Trivialising womens sport

The relationship between sport and gender is a hot topic in the sociology of sport (see
Chapter 7). The way the media reproduce this relationship has also drawn massive
interest from scholars. There is a large body of relevant literature and it is not an
exaggeration to say that the medias representation of gender in sports coverage is one
of the best-investigated themes relating to mediated sport (Kinkema and Harris, 1992;
Creedon, 1994; Shifflett and Revelle, 1994; Trujillo, 1995; Messner et al., 2000; Dworkin
and Wachs, 2000; Lines, 2002; Stempel, 2006; Crolley and Teso, 2007). The findings
from this body of empirical research are similar. Through comparing newspaper
page space and air time devoted to mens and womens sport, it has been found that
under-representation of womens sport is a worldwide phenomenon. Although
significant progress has been made in womens participation in sports during the past
two decades, this progress has not been reflected in media coverage. Picking up
any national daily in the UK, you will find that mens sport in general, and mens football
in particular, has unchallengeable dominance on the back pages and womens sport is
rarely reported.
Activity 10.2
With reference to one tabloid newspaper (such as the Sun or Mirror) and one
broadsheet newspaper (such as the Guardian or The Times), select a period of
time (for example, one week) and undertake your own content analysis of gender
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portrayal you can find methodological guidance for this in any of the recommended texts listed at the end of the chapter.
Do your findings support the balance suggested by other research outlined

above?
To what extent do the sports reported on in the newspapers reflect the
gender stereotypes outlined above?
Through analysing mediated sports texts, sociologists also try to decode how the
media reconstruct or replicate and reinforce masculinity and femininity in sports
coverage. Their findings show that the media intentionally stereotype male and
female athletes and the medias aesthetics criteria are underpinned by hegemonic
masculinity. Male athletes, especially those who play traditional mens sports such
as football, rugby and boxing, are portrayed as being physically strong and mentally
tough with real manly manners. Their sporting talents are highlighted as the reporting
focus. By contrast, female athletes, even those who play traditional mens sports, are
portrayed as emotional and dependent on the support of their family and male coaches.
Very often, the focus of the medias portrayal of female athletes is neither their sporting
talents nor their sporting achievements. Rather, their beauty, sexiness and femininity
are commonly highlighted and emphasised. Sociologists argue that the rationale
underlying such media treatment of female athletes is that, although these female
athletes have invaded the traditional mens domain, they are still normal women
who are heterosexual, feminine and vulnerable. While the media are eagerly creating
sports supermen, they try to confine contemporary female athletes to the traditional
image of a good wife and mother who always gives domestic duty the top priority.
Thus, the mass media are criticised by sociologists for intentionally trivialising
womens sport.
Activity 10.3
Identify one male-dominated sport that females play (e.g. football, rugby or
cricket) and one female-dominated sport that men are involved in (e.g.
gymnastics). Using an Internet search engine, locate pictures of performers (you
will find website links are useful) of both genders in your selected sports and
describe the characteristics of each gender that are displayed.
1. How do you explain these characteristics?
2. To what extent do they conform to the gender stereotypes discussed in this
chapter and elsewhere in this book?
3. To what extent, if any, does your evidence suggest that these gender
stereotypes are being challenged?
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Creating nationalistic fervour

The mass media play a very important role in constructing and reinforcing national
identity and this could not be revealed better than in media coverage of international
sport competitions, especially huge sporting events such as the Olympic Games and the
mens football World Cup (Clarke and Clarke, 1982; Hargreaves, 1986; Rowe and
Lawrence, 1986; Tomlinson, 1989; Wenner, 1994; Bairner, 2001; Bernstein and Blain, 2003
and Hogan, 2003). The Olympic ideals advocate internationalism and aim at establishing
harmonious relationships between different nations. Ironically, in practice, the Olympic
Games have been changed into a hot-bed of narrow nationalism where different nations
compete against each other to showcase their superiority over others an agenda
enhanced and supported by the mass media. Even the journalists of the BBC, who won
worldwide respect from their peers in other media organisations for their objectivity,
are allowed some leeway to use we and us when they report British athletes performance in the Olympic Games. As for the press, tabloid newspapers have never been
shy to express and appeal for banal nationalistic fervour when England or Great Britain
competes against other nations. Images of fans holding national flags and wearing
national colours have become an inseparable part of media portrayal of international
competitions. War metaphors are often used to hype up an unhealthy or even hostile
atmosphere, and the results are always connected to an enhancement or diminishing of
national pride.
Reflection
England fail to qualify for the finals of Euro 2008

On 21 November 2007, the England football team was defeated 32 by Croatia
at Wembley Stadium (the multi-million pound showcase of the Football
Association) and therefore failed to qualify for the final stages of the 2008
European Mens Football Championship due to be held in the summer of 2008.
The Sun reported the reactions of England fans under the headline We Stink. Its
All Over: Outraged Fans Blast Flops (22 November 2007, p4). In the story, one of
the England fans expressed his feelings as I was ashamed to be English after such
a pathetic performance; and by contrast, the reaction of Croatian fans reported
was: There are only four million people in Croatia half as many as London. We
are very proud of the way we played.
Understanding the audience of mediated sport

How the media intend to represent sport is one thing; how the audiences interpret media
representation of sport is another. As receivers of media messages, the audiences of
mediated sport also draw attention from sociologists. However, compared with textual
analysis of mediated sport, research on audiences of mediated sport proves to be a
difficult task. Although some investigations were conducted (Marles, 1984; Wenner
and Gantz, 1989; Barnett, 1990; Crabbe, 2003 and Redhead, 2007), the findings have
not shown a clear picture.
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The mass media are keen to understand who watch and read its productions and
what they want. What concerns the media is the size, habits and demographic profiles of
audiences (Whannel, 1998, p222). Although human beings viewing and reading practices,
and motivations and reasons for such practices are too complicated to be coded or
decoded with simplistic models, it is generally accepted that mediated sports are more
viewed and read by men than by women all over the world, and men enjoy aggressive
narratives of sport much more than women (Sullivan, 1991 and Wenner and Gantz, 1989).
No matter how significant gender difference in mediated sports audiences might be,
the mass media are convinced that the majority of their viewers and readers are men
and therefore their representation of sport has a strong and overt male-orientated
appeal.
Here, lets rethink media treatment of womens sport and female athletes. As the
media presume that the targeted audiences of their sports coverage are men who
appear to prefer fast-paced confrontational sport and expect aggression and violence,
which womens sport is thought to lack, the little media coverage that womens sport
receives can be understood as a choice based on business strategy as well as the
hegemonic ideology of gender relationship. Sexualisation of female athletes could be
understood as an attempt to satisfy male audiences desire rather than banal gender
bias against females, because the sexualised media representation of female athletes
is actually encouraged by the male audiences who absorb these texts actively through
reading and watching sport, which has become part of their habitual patterns of leisure.
Another important feature of the audiences who watch sports broadcasting most
regularly makes them very attractive to advertisers. The dominant viewing audience for
sports programmes is young professional males who are not necessarily easy to reach
via other advertising possibilities, yet who often have a considerable disposable income.
This demographic group rarely watch other types of television programmes, but their
sports interest leaves them as the likeliest group to buy into the specialist satellite and
cable television sports channels. It is ongoing market research that both identifies such
social groups and then packages its sports production to satisfy the consumption
needs.
However, media representation of sport, which is intentionally produced to cater
to the audiences taste, in turn affects the audiences choice and experience of watching and reading sport. While the media did not appear to have fabulous powers to
determine what people thought, it did however appear to have a power to determine
what people thought about (Whannel, 1998, p225). On the one hand, satellite television
and, more recently, the Internet have transcended limits of time and space, and
revolutionised and extended our experience of viewing sport. On the other hand,
the price we pay for watching live sports broadcasting on television or online in the
comfort of our homes (or the camaraderie of the pub) is that we give up our own
authority of observing to a considerable degree and only see what the media allow us
to see. In fact, what we have watched on the screen is, very often, far from what
really happened on-site. Some contemporary sports theorists argue that nowadays sports coverage is full of hyper-realities that are realer than real (Giulianotti,
2005). For example, the replays of a goal from different angles are something that
the on-site audience could not watch without the help of big screens (a growing
characteristic of modern stadia so that, by extension, even being at a match does not
guarantee a live and real viewing).
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These realer than real scenes give the audience new watching experiences that are
otherwise impossible, but at the same time they also create a hype and pastiche
atmosphere that does not exist in reality. Sociologists are concerned with how much the
audiences of mediated sport are exposed to distorted versions of reality and how well
they are aware of the media manipulation made possible by the sophisticated
technologies available to those companies that specialise in mediated sports production.

Today, the most common way in which people consume sport is watching it on a screen,
although newspapers have proved remarkably resilient as sites for the construction of
our knowledge about sport in modern society. The way that we understand sport is, to a
great extent, gained from these key media and, thereafter, shaped by the social, political
and economic agendas supported by those media. As a student who tries to understand
the role that sport plays in todays society, you cannot bypass or ignore the role that
the media play in promoting sports profile and highlighting sports central position in
popular culture and social practice. However, our everyday life is so media-saturated
that we often simply take media representation of sport for granted and accept it as a
true reflection of reality without questioning. In fact, mediated sport is not only
underpinned by hegemonic ideologies and dominant discourses of gender, race and
identity, but also produced through a complicated and often routinised process where
media organisations and sports organisations co-operate and contest at the same time.
Reading between lines to understand the deeper meaning of mediated sports texts is
important, but it is far from enough to get a comprehensive vision of the whole picture.
As Wenner (1998, p9) points out, macro-level political-economic analyses of sports
and media organisations form the backbone of mediated sports studies. Sport and the
media need each other and operate to mutually support the others agenda. By
presenting sport as a social drama, sports stories can be given legs that is, extended
over time to capture and retain our interest in the athletes and their antics. The
emergence of sports celebrities in an age of mediated sport is far from coincidental.
At the end of this chapter, lets rethink one of the questions proposed at the
beginning: why do the media report Wayne Rooney extensively? Now, you should know
that it is not simply because we love him!.
Further study
Any of the references cited in this chapter will offer detailed insights into the world of
mediated sport, and these are listed at the end of the book. The following books,
however, are of particular interest because they provide a more extensive overview of
the key learning points from the chapter.
Wenner, LA (ed) (1998) MediaSport. London and New York: Routledge.
Rowe, D (ed) (2004) Critical readings: sport, culture and the media. Maidenhead: Open
University Press.
Boyle, R and Haynes, R (2000) Power play: sport, the media and popular culture. Essex:
Pearson Education.
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Chapter 11
Sport in a global world

Peter Craig
This chapter, the third in the trilogy central to our understanding of sport in the twentyfirst century, is a logical extension of the discussions of consumption and sport media
that have led us to this point. By recognising that sport plays an important role in
consumer society, and that the way we understand sport is mediated in ways consistent
with powerful social, political and economic ideologies, we have identified sport as a
contributing element of our capitalist defined world. With the failure of the Communist
societies of Eastern Europe to offer a sustainable political creed and the reinterpretation of Communism in China to incorporate free market characteristics, the
global dominance of capitalism looks set for the foreseeable future.
Sport, as we have already seen, is far from immune to capitalism rather, it is deeply
infiltrated by the ideas of competition, status, commodification and consumption so it
is hardly surprising that sport can be seen as a vehicle for the promotion of its vested
interests on a global scale. The discussion that follows aims to develop these ideas and
asks the obvious questions arising: how is sport embedded in the globalised world?
What sports have benefited from globalisation and what sports have lost out?
Additionally, is international sport the same as global sport? And is there resistance to
the globalisation of sport? The answers to these questions are complex and, inevitably,
fluid and dynamic. This chapter aims to unravel some of the complexities as a way of
further understanding sport in the twenty-first century.
Learning outcomes
explain the role that sport plays in globalisation;
provide an overview of the major themes within a sociological analysis of
globalisation;
explain what is meant by network society;
explain how the globalisation of sport can be resisted.
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11 / Sport in a global world
Introduction
One of the sociological arguments that has been a recurrent theme within the preceding
chapters is that the development of a sociological analysis of sport must proceed from an
understanding of the modern world as a complex and changing structure. The realities of
this modern world emerge out of a complex interaction between individuals (us!), the
impact of social institutions and the bodies of knowledge through which we understand
and give meaning to that world. While our actions as sportsmen and women can be
routine, habitual and conforming, they can also be potentially critical and transformative.
As the twenty-first century proceeds, it is also plainly obvious that we are living in a
world that is changing rapidly and that seems to be becoming more unpredictable,
disordered and sometimes threatening. Many of the patterns of everyday life that
seemed to be an accepted part of that world are now less certain. One of the terms that
you have probably heard in reference to some of these changes is globalisation.
In its most typical guise, globalisation is more often than not represented as an
economic process. On a daily basis, the media constantly remind us of the interconnections between the worlds financial markets and the importance of huge
transnational corporations such as Microsoft whose commercial operations seem
to stretch uninterrupted across all national boundaries. However, as numerous
social theorists such as Giddens (2001, p52) have stressed, globalisation cannot be
simplistically reduced to an economic process and its reach extends into the routine
and familiar aspects of everyday life such as sport:
Although economic forces are an integral part of globalization, it would be wrong
to suggest that they alone produce it. Globalization is created by the coming
together of political, social, cultural and economic factors. It has been driven
forward above all by the development of the information and communication
technologies that have intensified the speed and scope of interaction between
people all over the world. As a simple example, think of the last World Cup, held
in France. Because of global television links, some matches were watched by over
2 billion people across the world.
Delivered into every home with a television set and/or other screen-based channels,
modern sport has come to be seen, even by sociologists whose work normally takes
little direct interest in sport, to epitomise our increasingly globalised world. The
physicality, the drama and the secular nature of modern sport enables it to cross
boundaries of language, religion and culture. As we have discussed in some detail in
Chapter 9, sports universal appeal means that it is a powerful tool aiding the
construction of global markets, and for the assignment of status within those markets.
The impact of sport on the processes of globalisation and the impact of globalisation on sport are, however, somewhat of an enigma. When we attend, either as
participants, officials or spectators, the worlds major sporting events such as the
Olympics or any of sports world championships, and when we watch these events live on
our screens, the world seems to be a single place. Yet, for most of us, the reality of our
actual physical involvement in sport is much more likely to be locally, county- or
regionally based. What it means to live and play sport in this globallocal context, how it
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is being transformed and how these transforming processes can be understood become
questions that cannot be easily ignored.
In analysing how we have come to see the world as closely interconnected, it is
important to recognise that globalisation is not a recent phenomenon. Indeed, it could
be argued that the history of the migration of the human race across all the continents
of the world is its primary source. However, there is also no doubt that in modern times
the process has gained a dramatic momentum. The underlying reasons for this include:
the emergence of a range of modern technologies that enable people, goods,
money, images, ideas and cultures to rapidly (even instantaneously) move around
the world;
the impact of colonisation by powerful Western countries;
the development of global capitalism and systems of production ;
the emergence of social movements that are global in their scope and interests.
For theorists such as Giddens (1991) and Castells (1996), the impact of technology
has led to a series of profound changes. The new computer-mediated technologies in
particular have facilitated the compression of time and space (Giddens, 1991, 2001).
People all around the world can now have a sense of sharing and experiencing events
such as the Olympic 100 metres final in real time, even though the physical action may
be occurring on the other side of the planet. Whats more, the timing and experience of
the competition is further collapsed or even displaced as it can be replayed and shown
from different camera angles and at slow motion. In a real sense, the event is taking
place not only in the Olympic stadium (i.e. at a particular time and in a particular place),
but simultaneously in every place where a television set is tuned into it. With these ideas
in mind, we can now begin to suggest a more formal definition of globalisation.
Definitions: globalisation
Globalisation can thus be defined as the intensification of worldwide social
relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are
shaped by events occurring many miles away (Giddens, 1990, p64).
Globalisation refers to the processes of global compression through which
people increasingly regard the world as one place (Robertson, 1992).
Before we engage in a detailed sociological exploration of sport and its connections to
globalisation, a good starting point is for you to briefly examine some of your own
assumptions about globalisation.
Activity 11.1
Based on the issues briefly highlighted by the introduction, take a few moments
to write down your own understanding of globalisation and how you perceive it
as directly affecting your own life. Some questions to consider:
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If asked, could you describe and explain globalisation?

Do you care about it?
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How do you experience it at the level of everyday life?

How strongly do you consider yourself to be defined by being a citizen of a
nation with a distinctive and autonomous culture?
How does globalisation impact on your experience of sport?
Based on your answers to these questions, see if you can categorise your own
experience and understanding of globalisation. Jarvie (2006) has four broad
categories that you could use:
political globalisation;
social globalisation;
cultural globalisation;
economic globalisation.
If this exercise seems difficult, dont worry. The purpose of the activity is to help
you realise that globalisation is not only a process happening out there and
transforming how your world operates, it is also something that is happening in
here in your own life and within your experience of sport. When you have
completed the chapter, you might like to repeat the exercise to see if the results
are significantly different.
Creating the global imagination: the role of popular culture

In writing about how we come to understand ourselves as members of a nation with a
shared sense of traditions and values, Anderson (1983a) develops the idea of the
imagined community. The main thrust of Andersons argument is that in the reality of
modern life we can never meet more than a tiny fraction of the multitude of people with
whom we share a sense of national identity. For this to happen, we need to develop a
range of social and cultural activities that routinely create the sense that we all share a
common community.
The key to this was the development of media technologies that enable this
imagined world of the nation to be presented to us on a daily basis (Edensor, 2002).
Through the medias constant reminders, the idea that we belong to and share a national
space and culture becomes rooted in our consciousness. This same process of
imagining is also essential to the understanding of ourselves as members of a global
community. One way to consider this is to think about how science and technology
are constantly transforming our perceptions of the world. Although this may seem
a distant historical event, it is less than fifty years since the space programme produced a unique view of the planet the view of Earth from space. This enabled our
perspective to change to see ourselves sharing a world floating in space. Today, the
debates about climate change continue to dramatically reinforce this idea of a shared
global space.
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Many who hold powerful positions in our cultural, economic and political institutions
often refer to globalisation as a given reality of everyday life. From a sociological
perspective, this naturalising of globalisation into our everyday language and speech
habits needs to be understood as a discourse. As you should recall from the discussion
in Chapter 7, sociologists use the term discourse to explain that our understandings of
particular aspects of our social world (in this case, sport and globalisation) occur within
a framework of interconnected ideas that act together in ways that tend to fix how we
typically understand our social world. For instance, today wherever in the world you
might be, there is a fairly well-established interpretation of elite sport. If asked, most
people would assume that it involves professional attitudes within sport, that the
economic power of the globalised network of professional sport means that athletes
are often very well paid, that global sport relies on its media presence and that in most
instances it has remained dominated by masculine and Western interests.
When we talk about globalisation, we need to be careful that we do not use the term
simplistically. The fact that sport appears to have developed a global presence does
not mean that this occurred due to some natural or inevitable condition of the modern
world. As we shall see in the next section, globalisation theorists are deeply divided as
to its causes, benefits and problems.
Sport and globalisation: an overview of competing

theories
As with other difficult and challenging social processes, the complex nature of
globalisation has meant that in its attempt to explain it, sociology has developed a
number of competing theories. Even the way sociologists use the term shows just how
contested the theoretical field is. For some, globalisation refers to real historical
processes largely beyond the scope of individuals and even nations to control. For
others, it is more of a conceptual tool whose purpose is the critical development of ideas
and ways of thinking about the processes inherent within it.
Equally, like many of the sociological concepts we have introduced you to (class,
gender and modernity are examples), the term itself is not neutral. For those who are
concerned with the way that capitalism has created global structures of inequality,
globalisation is perceived as a controversial and at times a harmful process. Others
perceive it more favourably and focus on its potential to extend the processes of
modernisation that have drawn the people of the world closer together (Giddens, 2002).
A number of commentators have tried to classify the various theories. Maguire
(1999, 2000) identifies a number of broad schools: world-system theory, world polity
theory and world culture theory. However, Held et al. (1999) and Giddens (2001) suggest
a different typology that some influential sport theorists such as Hargreaves (2002)
have drawn on in their analysis of sport and globalisation. This typology has three
elements:
the sceptics;
the hyperglobalisers;
the transformationalists.
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The sceptics
This is the least prominent of the three perspectives and therefore we will only deal
with it briefly. The main thrust of the sceptical view is that globalisation is not a new
phenomenon. There are a number of points within this analysis worth noting as they
provide a set of critical questions that you should bear in mind as we explore the two
other categories.
First, the process of global economic integration was already well established
by the nineteenth century. Second, the vast majority of global trade is actually
regionalised and based within three regional groups Europe, Asia-Pacific and North
America. Third, it is pointed out that the suggested decline in the importance of the
nation-state is a gross over-representation of the facts. If anything, it is argued, the
integrity of the nation-state is being enhanced rather than diminished by globalisation.
National governments and national organisations such as our national governing bodies
of sport remain powerful arbiters of our everyday experiences (Giddens, 2001).
The hyperglobalisers
Not surprising, those theorists who might be termed hyperglobalisers take almost the
opposite perspective to that of the sceptics. From their analysis, globalisation is a very
concrete reality whose consequences are profound and will impact on nearly every part
of the world. Globalisation is seen as an unstoppable flood sweeping across national
borders, making the power of national governments to exercise control over their
economy, cultural life and their citizens relatively ineffectual. They suggest that as
people realise how ineffectual nationally focused organisations actually are, they will
create an upward pressure that will require all nations to work internationally and
transnationally. The inevitable outcome will be the emergence of a global society
(Hargreaves, 2002) and the formation of a global system of governance. This system of
governance, however, will be less hierarchical than that usually associated with the
nation-state. The plurality of interests within this new global political order will mean
that no single institution, organisation or individual can define or impose its own
ideology or definitions of what is valuable. Within our contemporary world two
prominent examples of how nations are agreeing to work co-operatively in this new
global reality are the United Nations and the European Union.
Organisations such as those governing sport also require the ability to make
policy decisions that address the international and global dimensions of the sport.
While the formal term for this sort of organisation an international non-governmental
organisation (INGO) may be fairly unfamiliar, names of actual INGOs, such as the
International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Amateur Athletic
Federation (IAAF) are likely to be much more familiar.
Rather than decrease problems, it can also be argued that the existence of
globalised systems of governance and culture act as a source of new conflicts. The
decision of some Western countries to use military intervention or economic sanctions
to encourage countries who do not appear to be adhering to the agreed principles of
the free market or even the maintenance of appropriate levels of human rights is one
example. Another is the resistance of some Islamic countries to processes of global
modernisation and the concurrent rise of Islamic fundamentalism. Within sport there
is always the suspicion that the way the countries of the world organise their sport is
always bound to fall short of the global standards laid down by the worlds sporting
169
INGOs. The fact that we seem to be constantly discovering new problems within sport
(such as drug abuse and corruption) can actually be taken as a sign of the strength of
the world sporting culture. In a diverse, conflictual, and decentralised globalised world,
the values that sport provides act as common models for thinking and acting.
Another of the key architects of globalisations inevitable progress are transnational corporations (TNCs), companies that see their systems of production and their
markets as operating in a more or less borderless world (Ohmae, 1990). As we have
discussed in our examination of sport and consumer culture, some of the worlds biggest
TNCs such as Microsoft, Nike, Coca-Cola, Sky and Vodaphone, are either sport based
or have a deep and enduring relationship with it.
By the end of the twentieth century, a global culture had developed and penetrated
all societies. Sport is one of its most prominent forms. While the origins of modern sport
can be argued as emanating from the West, and Britain in particular, sport is no longer
just the preserve of the West. Its globalised forms have become a common heritage,
institutionalised across the globe and supported by a network of transnational
organisations, INGOs and TNCs.
Allied to this perspective, but with a much more pronounced criticism of its
economic basis, is world-system theory (Wallerstein, 2004). Wallerstein draws
extensively from a Marxist perspective to argue that globalisation needs to be
conceptualised as a historical and developmental process that was more or less
completed by the end of the twentieth century. The driving force behind globalisation
is capitalisms endless search for markets and profits. The economic and political
power that this created inevitably favoured European and Western First World
countries who were able systematically to exploit poorer and Third World countries.
As we progress further into the twenty-first century, the capitalist world economy
is moving ever more into a series of crises (the most notable is that posed by climate
change and our need to consume less) which suggests that the freedom of free-market
capitalism to seek an almost endless accumulation of capital via the processes of
commodification (Wallerstein, 2004) is starting to erode.
The transformationalists
In recent years a number of theorists (Giddens, 1990, 2002; Robertson, 1992; Held et al.,
1999) have been responsible for establishing the transformationalist perspective as
one of the most rigorous versions of globalisation (Hargreaves, 2002, p26).
Giddenss (1990) analysis of modernity provides the starting point for understanding the institutional dimensions of the global system. For Giddens (1990), the four
institutional characteristics of the modern world the international system of nationstates; the global capitalist economy; the international systems of production and its
globalised division of labour; and the worlds military order are the basic components
underpinning the development of globalisation.
In brief, Robertsons (1992) account takes a more historical view of globalisation.
He argues that globalisation has gone through a number of distinct historical phases:
the germinal phase (14001750) characterised by the growth of new national
communities;
the incipient phase (17501870s) characterised by the emergence of nation-states,
colonialism and world trade;
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the take-off phase (1870s1920s) characterised by the emergence of global

communication systems and international events such as the Olympic Games;
the struggle for hegemony (1920s1960s) characterised by the struggle between
states for power and leadership in the world in sport, this was particularly
evident in the way the superpowers of the USA and the USSR used international
sport as an extension of the Cold War;
the uncertainty phase (1960s to the present) characterised by new forms of
global relationships due to technological advances and an intensification of
migration patterns of global culture emerge and are resisted through increased
nationalism and an emphasis on traditional religious beliefs (adapted from Bilton
et al. 1996, p59).
Although the various theorists who take a transformationalist perspective develop distinctive analyses, they share the dominant sociological understanding of globalisation,
which is not a uniform or uni-directional process. The process of globalisation that
characterises our contemporary age is the outcome of the unprecedented conjunction
of forces, institutions, organisations and infrastructures that have led to a flood of
goods, services, people, images and symbols across the globe (Hargreaves, 2002, p27).
Based on this account, globalisation needs to be understood as revolutionary, uncertain
and contested.
Activity 11.2
Two of the major forces of globalisation are the way global communication
networks such as the Internet connect people together and make available a vast
array of knowledge and the power of transnational corporations to influence the
lives of people around the world. The purpose of this exercise is to integrate these
in order to extend your understanding of how both are interconnected and how
they impact the experience of sport around the world.
Read the two following passages:
Acting responsibly in the global world

Nike responsibility innovate for a better world
We believe in the power of sport to unleash potential. Thats why we will
invest a minimum of $315 million in grants, product donations and in-kind
support through 2011 to give excluded youth greater access to sport.
This year, well help bring sport to a Somalian girl growing up as a
refugee in Kenya, to a young homeless man from Scotland with a passion
for football, and to kids in New Orleans who are rebuilding their communities. Well provide Nike products, resurface old playing fields, fund
community-based programs and help young people create their own
communities.
These impacts come as weve evolved how we frame, define and
approach corporate responsibility. We see corporate responsibility as an
integral part of how we can use the power of our brand, the energy and
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passion of our people, and the scale of our business to create meaningful
change. So weve set aggressive business targets that embed our
corporate responsibility goals into the companys long-term growth and
innovation strategies, because we believe theres no better way to achieve
them than to tie them directly to our business.
(www.nikebiz.com/responsibility/)
(If you wish, you can explore further Nikes representations of its evolved sense of
corporate responsibility at http://nikeresponsibility.com/)
Living in the global world

The Sri Lankans were playing a Test match against India at the Sinhalese
Sports Club in Colombo. Loitering outside the heavily guarded gates was a
young boy, barefoot, his scrawny legs sticking out of dirty shorts. Unable to
afford the price of a ticket, he bided his time, hoping for a glimpse of
Aravinda de Silva, Chaminda Vaas or some other deity of south Asian
cricket. His tattered tee shirt was hand-decorated, with the letters
N-I-K-E and a big, black swoosh, the Nike symbol, carefully drawn in felt tip
pen. Like so many others around the world, this boy was prepared to do for
free what Michael Jordan will do only for millions of dollars. At least, unlike
so many of his contemporaries, he was not paying over the odds for the
privilege. Replicating corporate symbolism was as close as he could come
to joining the consuming classes.
The barefoot Sri Lankan was not alone. Americas tatooists report that
the swoosh is their single most requested design. And if Nike is too
downmarket for you, there is always the elite sports watch market, in
which an Alexander McQueen design gets the Colin Jackson endorsement.
Because modern sport is universal and secular crossing boundaries of
language, religion, culture it is a handy tool for the construction of global
markets, and for the assignment of status within those markets.
(Marqusee, 2000; source: www.frontlineonnet.com)
Based on these two passages, assess how each of the three theoretical
positions highlighted above would account for these different perspectives.
Sport and global culture

One of the most persistent debates within the sociological analysis of global sport is
concerned with the process of cultural globalisation (Jarvie, 2006). The emergence of
a global culture and sport as a cultural product is one of its most prominent forms. This
suggests that all cultures and societies are becoming more alike (homogenisation) and
interactive (hybridisation). This process is dominated by the power of Western media
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interests (particularly American ones) and other forms of mass communication such as
the Internet. When the socialist societies of Eastern Europe opened their borders to
the global flow of consumer commodities, because of the significance of sport within
their cultures, some of the very first imports were Nike and Reebok sports clothes and
shoes (Bilton et al., 1996).
In the global world, the desire to be seen as modern, progressive and fashionable
collapses almost without comment into being Western. Hargreavess (2002, p32)
examination of global sport makes much the same observation:
Globalised sport is, by and large, driven by the West, and since America in so many
ways leads the West, it should come as no surprise to learn that globalised sport
is highly Americanised.
For some sports historians, there is a causal link between colonisation, sport and
the imposition of a cultural imperialism. However, this is a claim that sport by itself
cannot really sustain. Apart from the interests of capital, crucial to the growing
dominance of Western forms of culture are the spread of English as the world language
and popular forms of Western culture such as music, television programmes and films.
Definition: cultural imperialism
The aggressive promotion of Western culture based on the assumption that its
value system is superior and preferable to those of non-Western cultures. (Bilton
et al., 1996, p68)
The ability of the Wests cultural imperialism to impose a homogenised global
culture has been rightly questioned (Robertson, 1992). People do not experience their
lives or their sport at the global level. In its non-commodified forms, sport is always
experienced in local contexts. In many respects, people find it difficult to fully identify
with the global. Because of its diversity of history, languages and cultures, the global
community does not as yet really possess a collective cultural identity. As Smith (1995)
describes, in most respects global culture is essentially memoryless. In attempting to
reflexively understand their lives, people not only seek meaning, but they also do this by
acting and being part of a community and a society. The outcome of this process
provides order and certainty to their lives and gives them identity.
What is paradoxical about our contemporary age is that, at the same time as we can
see these forces of globalisation at work, it is also evident that there are strong counter
currents. The sense of dislocation created by the global, creates a powerful counter
current the need for the local (to be located). Globalisation, paradoxically, has caused
an intensification of our awareness of the local. Its uncertainties help to create an
emphasis on the importance of the home and the local community. However, if we wish
to understand the local character of our lives and the changing nature of the places in
which we live, we have to grasp both the wider global context of which we are part and
what it is that makes us distinctly local.
In simple terms, we are part of more than one world. We live local versions of the
world and in so doing we have to locate ourselves within the wider global context. This
has led some to put forward an alternative conceptualisation of the process
glocalisation (Horne, 2006) which attempts to capture the fact that the global and
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the local are not dichotomous entities but, on the contrary, completely interdependent.
There is a need to step back from some of the rhetoric of globalisation and see that
sporting experiences exist in a localised world where cultural boundaries still exist and
are seen to be important. None the less, this is also a world where these boundaries are
also becoming increasingly permeable.
In recent years the work of numerous prominent sport sociologists Maguire (1999,
2000), Bairner (2001), Houlihan (2003), Hargreaves (2002), Jarvie (2006), Horne (2006)
all point to the same conclusion: that the local, and more specifically the nation, remains
a vital element determining the experiences of much of our sport. Home is where we do
it. This is where our friends and relationships within sport exist. This is where we learn
the significance of sport in our lives, such as playing for local teams or going to the pub
to passionately cheer on the national team.
This argument suggests that, while world culture has an array of homogenised and
commodified elements, people around the world define the global situation in their own
way. Global sport cannot claim a universal consensus. Regions and nations differ in their
approaches to sport and different ethnic and religious groups overtly challenge some of
its core notions, such as individual rights and gender equity. It is clear that even with
powerful and globally powerful organisations influencing its globalised sporting
forms, there is little indication that we are inevitably moving towards a completely
homogeneous world. Nevertheless, offsetting this local focus there is clear evidence to
suggest that sport is part of the broader global transformations of the twenty-first
century.
The global transformation of sport

Appadurai (1990) has focused on how the interaction and interpenetration of cultures
occur. He identifies five dimensions:
ethnoscapes;
technoscapes;
financescapes;
mediascapes;
ideoscapes.
As theorists such as Jarvie (2006) and Horne (2006) have suggested, these can be
usefully applied to our understanding of sports globalisation.
Sporting ethnoscapes
These involve the migration of sports people around the world. Within professional and
elite level sport there is a global demand for highly talented players, managers, coaches
and sports administrators. The impact of globalisation on sports labour force is
immediately apparent to anyone watching professional sport in the UK. Whether your
favourite sport is cricket, rugby or football, all the major teams now recruit much of
their playing, coaching and management talent from around the world. The success of
this strategy is made evident by examining the names of the worlds wealthiest football
clubs, which are now all based in Europe. Long-established South American clubs with
massive fan bases have fallen down the list as satellite and cable cash flows into the
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big western European leagues which have become an irresistible lure to the best of their
players. The increasing penetration of satellite and cable broadcasters into the South
American market means that these European matches, filled with the best of South
Americas footballing talent, can be broadcast to South American homes, reinforcing
the superior status of European football and thus increasing the likelihood that many of
its future sporting talent will join the migrant flow.
Sporting technoscapes
These include the worldwide market in sports technology, clothes and shoes. Also
included is the technological development of the sports environment. From golf course
design to the building of prestigious sports stadia, there is a global transfer of specialist
technologies that include track, roofing and recording technologies, and lighting
systems. Expanding the consumption of sporting goods within a sport is often achieved
by introducing new technologies that enhance sporting performance a good example
might be graphite framed tennis rackets.
Sporting financescapes
These are created by the global flows of capital and wealth that circulate through the
way that many of our best known sports clubs are traded on the worlds stock markets.
The international trade in players and coaches, which runs into millions of pounds, is
clearly a part of this process. The two preceding chapters have already discussed the
issues of media rights, sponsorships and endorsements that collectively offer further
evidence of the working of financescapes.
Although these global market forces are an important engine driving the global
expansion of sport, it is important to note that this process is not always completely
beneficial. The exploitation of the poor in the global production of sport consumer
goods is a serious concern and is subject to increasing resistance. Markets can also fail
or go into recession. One of the most spectacular examples of this was what happened
to a German company called KirchMedia (Rowe, 2004b).
In 1996 FIFA sold KirchMedia the rights to the 2002 and 2006 World Cups for a
reported 2.3 billion. The cost of this investment proved to be excessive, however, and
KirchMedia found it difficult to sell the broadcasting rights to other media companies.
The BBC, for instance, refused to pay the massively increased fee for the 2002 World
Cup which they estimated to be seventy times higher than the costs they incurred for
the 1998 World Cup (BBC Sport Online, 2001). The result was that KirchMedia had to
accept much lower bids for the rights and it lost massive amounts of money that led to
its collapse and that of some of its major partners. One of these partners was ISL, one of
the worlds major marketing groups, which was forced to file for bankruptcy in May 2001.
The impact on sport was profound and led to a number of sports, such as Formula One
racing, having significant financial problems.
Sporting mediascapes
The issues informing the sporting mediascapes should already be familiar to you as they
have been extensively covered in the preceding two chapters. They include how the
sport-media complex transmits a huge diversity of sporting action to global, regional
and national audiences (Horne, 2006). Their ability to broadcast live and recorded sport
almost from practically anywhere into any home with a television or radio is a powerful
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example of how this technology collapses time and space and brings events that are
happening far away to our immediate attention. Stoddart (1997) argues that the medias
involvement in the globalisation of sport needs to be understood not only in terms of
the consumption of media products, but as part of a process of convergence that will
give the media companies ever more power and control. Stoddarts (1997) prediction that this convergence would involve the merger of television, computer and
telecommunications has proved to be accurate, as the current packages from Sky and
Virginmedia all too clearly show.
Today, the medias global influence is even more pervasive and in respect of the
Internet has permitted new and in some cases quite radical forms of global interconnections between sports fans and their beloved sport (e.g. official and unofficial
online fanzines and the debates and reflections that are available on sites such as the
BBCs sport editors blog: www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/sporteditors/).
Sporting ideoscapes
These are bound up with the production and reproduction of the ideologies or
philosophies expressed by, in and through sport (Jarvie, 2006, p100). To some degree,
these ideoscapes lie within the control of the various powerful organisations that
exert significant levels of influence over global sport. As Hoberman (1993) details,
globalisation is frequently depicted as a fateful competition among corporations,
nations or regions of the world. Whether one supports, opposes or is largely unaware
of how globalisation is impacting on sport will depend on the knowledge and experiential
basis that one uses to assess its advantages and disadvantages.
If you take the viewpoint that the benefits of sport should be for all, then your
assessment is likely to focus on how public finance can be used to help the UK
sports councils and the national governing bodies deliver this aspiration for every
citizen. If, however, your view is that sport is largely something done by competitive
individuals acting on their own behalf, it is likely that you will have a more positive
outlook on the way transnational corporate interests have colonised and globalised
sport. The ideology of free market capitalism underpins its power and expansion, and
makes the concept of competition one of the defining principles of international
(sporting) relations. However, as Sugden (2002, p61) suggests, the conflict between
these ideological positions has not gone by uncontested but, in the struggle among
those who seek to overwhelm sport for largely corporate and/or personal gain and . . .
those who want to protect sport as a popular domain of civil society . . . it is the latter
who have lost out.
The global hegemony of capitalist economic relations within a deregulated
globalised market is constantly framed by the conceptualisation of competition as a
natural condition of human existence. The manner in which the media, commercial
interests and those of national and international governing bodies have used sport fixes
this idea firmly in our popular culture. Integral to this view of competition is a neo-social
Darwinism that only the strong and fittest will (indeed should) survive and prosper (and
hence will generate the wealth from which we will also prosper). Given, however, that
competition in sport or in commerce does not start with a level playing field, it is small
wonder that many countries in the developing parts of the world express deep concerns
about having to accept a global economic and sporting system in which the winners and
losers are for the most part already predetermined.
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Sport in the (global) network society

Given the arguments so far put forward, globalisation is a complex and multi-layered
process. However, as Castells (1996, p47) persuasively argues, our globalised world is
now bound together in a network society. At its centre lies capitalisms shaping of
social relationships over the entire planet. The global networks that network capitalism
have penetrated and formed include sport (Castells, 1996; Sugden, 2002). The ways in
which the global flows have coalesced into the network also means that global sport
has its darker side, as its diffuse nature means that corrupt and illegal practices can
also flourish.
The various scandals that have impacted on global sport over the last few years (e.g.
illegal betting syndicates) also evidence the dark underside of globalisation, and need to
be realistically included as one of the powerful forces seeking to exploit sports huge
popular base. Within sports global network, corporate sponsors, advertising and
marketing agencies, media empires, government bureaucrats and politicians all have an
investment, and all seek, fairly or unfairly, to shape it for their own ends. The questions
faced by sport globally regarding match-fixing, the corrupt governance of global sport
(Simpson and Jennings, 1992; Sugden and Tomlinson, 1998; Jennings and Sambrook,
2000) and about the authenticity of the spectacle are by no means confined to football,
the World Cup and the Olympics. In recent times, cricket, tennis, athletics and cycling
have all had major scandals that have damaged their credibility. The question that
obviously arises is what can be done to help global network sport develop a greater level
of transparency and accountability?
In addressing this question in respect of football, Sugden (2002, p78) makes the
following critical assessment:
In Europe, South America and Africa, football, perhaps more than any other area
of popular culture, captures the collective imagination and animates the
discourse of citizenship . . . football clubs and national teams carry meanings
beyond the moment of consumption. They stand for things such as community,
tradition, social solidarity and local and national distinctiveness . . . football
still needs to be protected from the more avaricious and predatory ways of
unregulated global capitalism. FIFA, as currently constituted, is patently
obviously incapable of providing this protection. For this reason, they, and global
sports organisations like them, should not escape the attention of those activists
who are dedicated to the democratic reform of the global political economy.
We are in an age where concerns regarding the negative impact of globalisation
generally and on sport specifically seem to be growing and becoming more vocal. In his
assessment of this, Jarvie (2006) identifies a number of strategies that are being
considered as possible ways to counterbalance globalisations more negative outcomes.
These include:
a reassertion of the power of national and local sports organisations;

the return of economic, political and cultural power to localities;
quotas on the migration of sports talent into the country;
re-evaluation and redistribution of wealth derived from sport to alleviate poverty;
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support for campaigns such as Sport Relief and pressure groups that require
powerful sporting TNCs such as Nike to act in more environmentally responsible
and equitable ways, and international sports federations, such as FIFA, to adopt
more accountable and democratic procedures. (Adapted from Jarvie, 2006, p103.)
Sport stars, celebrities and the global culture of sport

While the development of global sport is bound up with the processes of economic and
cultural transformation associated with the global diffusion of capitalist forms of
consumption (Smart, 2007), by itself this does not fully explain why sport has become
such an important element of global popular culture. In his analysis of this question
Smart (2007) draws on a series of themes that should now be familiar to you. These are
the need to understand the intersections between the development of:
national and international sport;

sports goods companies;
media interest;
sponsorship;
consumer culture;
and the rise of the sporting celebrity.
The power of celebrity in modern sport is not a particularly new phenomenon. In the
nineteenth century even amateur sport figures such as WG Grace had huge iconic status.
Even though the profession of team games was yet to reach the heights it has today,
from the early years of the twentieth century in the North of England, football sport
stars were regularly feted on the streets. Although they may have had celebrity status
at this time, they would have still lived in the same communities as the people who gave
them their celebrity. At this time, sporting celebrity was more often associated with
the recognition of heroism (Holt, 1989) than with the wealthy lifestyle of todays stars
and their WAGS. Today, we regard sport stars as an ever present part of sport. Since
the rise of the celebrated sport star, the world of sport has been transformed by its
close association with the media, sponsorships and the other commercial processes.
The global diffusion of modern sport through the sport-media matrix and its
networked elements of transnational media and commercial corporations (Castells,
1996, 1998) has enabled the celebrity sport star to become an almost universal global
cultural form. Association with sport events and sporting figures presented through
global broadcasting, sponsorship and endorsement arrangements offers commercial
corporations unique access to global consumer culture.
Today, the image and presence of these celebrity sport stars is ever present. We
cannot go far without encountering a celebrity. As I go into my workplace at the
university I am confronted with a life-size image of the Chelsea star Frank Lampard
looking at me from the side of a telephone box, advertising a new range of sports
clothing. When I go into a high street shop I am surrounded by magazines full of
celebrities. When I turn on my computer, websites such as MSN have whole sections
dedicated to celebrities. Much more negatively, the phenomena of reality television
(remember that sport was probably the first and is still the most powerful form of
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reality TV) has projected the image of ordinary people doing relatively ordinary things
into the arena of celebrity. Celebrity has become defined by having a media presence.
Not surprisingly, a few very high profile sporting celebrities have received
considerable levels of attention. Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Wayne Rooney and the
person we will focus on here, David Beckham, lead the way.
Sporting celebrity: the case of David Beckham

Beckham is not just a person with exceptional footballing talent, he is a global brand
(Cashmore, 2002). Like the owners of other global sporting brands (Nike, Adidas,
Reebok, Manchester United), he has gone to some lengths to make sure his brand is well
managed and developed. As Cashmore (2002) and Whannel (2001, 2002) have pointed
out, the power of celebrity is their ability to represent that life has possibility and that
our desires the ordinary people can be fulfilled. Part of the success of the Beckham
brand was his representation that an ordinary working class lad, albeit with a sporting
talent, who through his dedication and hard work, good management and a celebrity
marriage, was able to achieve global stardom.
Review
Globalisation is a complex phenomenon with a long history. In this historical dimension
the emergence of global characteristics has not been a smooth curve of progression
but a series of waves with peaks and troughs, though with a marked acceleration
towards the present time. Sport is a global phenomenon which, as the model of scapes
illustrates, has had a major role to play in the acceleration of these global characteristics. However, not all sports have benefited from global promotion. The unequal
distribution of resources at local, regional and national level in the UK for different
sports (so that, for example, football is dominant, media exposed and powerful, while
table tennis is subordinate, poorly media promoted and relatively powerless by
comparison) is projected to the global stage and powerful sports extend their power.
The picture is further complicated by the paradox of globalisation, which is that
destabilising global forces accentuate the social anchors provided by the local contexts
in which all sports are actually experienced. Additionally, beyond the evident local
resistance to globalisation, there are further anti-global sentiments growing around the
dark side of sport such as drug use, gambling, match fixing and an enhanced alliance of
global environmental issues and the physical, political, social and economic impacts of
sport.
Globalisation is shrinking our world there are cheap global travel possibilities
available that have developed the market possibilities of sport tourism. Such
developments are a part of the network society created by the socialising demands of
capitalism aligned to the sophistication of modern communication technologies. As
sport has become inexorably intertwined with consumerism, media promotion and
globalisation so its position has become more significant in shaping modern society. As
the outcomes of these processes are very uneven, and in some cases negative, perhaps
people involved with sport can reflexively plot a more enlightened course into the
future.
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Through completing the chapter, you should be able to answer the following:
1.
What is it about sport that causes so many social commentators to

recognise the relationship between sport and globalisation?
2. Through an application of Appadurais (1990) five dimensions of
globalisation, explain the connections between sport and the processes of
globalisation.
3. How has the globalisation of sport benefited and harmed British sport?
4. What role do sports stars play in promoting globalisation?
Further study
For a general introduction to the basic sociological issues within the analysis of
globalisation read:
Chapter 3: A changing world, in Giddens, A (2006) Sociology. 5th edition. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
For a well-balanced overview of the general sociological debates informing the
connections between sport and globalisation read:
Chapter 4: Sport and globalisation, in Jarvie, G (2006) Sport, culture and society: an
introduction. London: Routledge.
Maguire, J (2000) Sport and globalization, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds) Handbook of
sports studies. London: Routledge.
For a comprehensive exploration read:
Maguire, J (1999) Global sport. Cambridge: Polity Press.
For an exploration of the interconnections between sport, globalisation and consumer
culture read:
Chapter 2: Consumer culture and the global sports market, in Horne, J (2006) Sport in
consumer society. London: Polity Press.
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PART 4
New games: emergent

and transformative
forms of sport?
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Chapter 12
Sport and the body

Peter Craig and Amanda Jones
This chapter will introduce you to some of the important reasons why sport sociologists
are taking an increasing interest in the body. In engaging you with this sometimes
complex terrain of theories and concepts, our intentions are twofold. The first is to
extend your sociological understanding and analysis of sport to an arena of our lives
that we are all intimately familiar with our bodies. The second is to challenge some
common everyday assumptions about the body in sport. One of the most persistent of
these regards the sporting body as a natural biological entity best understood by
physiologists and biomechanicians whose primary aim is to help athletes and coaches
enhance its performance. While this is a powerful and perfectly acceptable way of
understanding the body, it also tends to distract attention from an understanding of
the sporting body as a sociological issue. Quite rightly, this will take us back into some
issues with which you should now be familiar: how the sporting body acts as a powerful
marker of our social identity in terms of our gender, race, ethnicity, social class and
physical/mental ability/disability; how social and cultural institutions such as the media
influence our sporting decisions to train, discipline and at times punish or pamper our
bodies; how our decisions about our sporting body are connected to our actions as
consumers.
Learning outcomes
explain how the sporting body needs to be understood as a biological, social
and cultural construction;
demonstrate through a critical explanation of sporting examples how these
constructions have patterned class and gendered views of the sporting
body;
detail how sport in modern society is one of the principal means of
disciplining, controlling and constraining the body;
explain how body culture within sport has become a key marker of
identities in consumer culture and lifestyle;
outline some of the major concerns informing a feminist analysis of the
sporting body.
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12 / Sport and the body
Introduction
All forms of social behaviour, none more so than sport, require us to be, albeit at very
different levels of intensity, physically active. All forms of physical activity, in turn,
require us to use our bodies. On the surface these simple, common-sense observations
seem to require little in the way of a sociological explanation. Yet, as soon as we begin to
look more deeply into these processes, their real complexity quickly becomes evident.
The body and its physical attributes of strength, skill, endurance, speed, grace, style
and sexual attractiveness are constantly being monitored and evaluated (Hargreaves,
2000). The body is not only the physical core of all sport, images of bodies performing
sport are also some of sports most evocative symbols.
In the twenty-first century, we live in a world that is obsessed with concerns
about lifestyle and identity, and many of these are focused on body image. The briefest scan of the popular newspapers and magazines or television channels will
demonstrate that there is a vast array of articles, images, advertisements and programmes that constantly bombard us with messages about bodies. As we discussed in
Chapter 9, these media produce powerful discourses through which we become socially
and culturally aware of how our bodies are subject to social evaluations allied to sets
of social practices and behaviours (e.g fitness training, dieting, etc.). These articles,
advertisements and images constantly remind us about how we (and our bodies) should
conform and look. If you think back to the role that sporting celebrities play in our
consumer society (discussed in Chapter 10), you may quickly recognise that one of the
taken for granted ways of evaluating our bodies suggests that we see trim and athleticlooking people as conveying a sense of energy, discipline and organisation, and that
these qualities are likely to make the individual: a) more sexually attractive and b)
socially successful. Although these sport stars may have admirable (but not always)
personal qualities, one of their main selling points is their athletic body. This is why
sport stars are such an attraction to advertising agencies and companies.
As conscious and reflexive individuals, it is clear to all of us that our bodies are much
more than their biology; they are the physical manifestation of our sense of identity.
They are the vehicles through which we present our selves to the world around us and
more often than not how the world presents itself back to us. As the arguments that
occur in many households in the morning all too clearly evidence, the requirements of
getting ready to go out and be seen by others are far from simple. Indeed, they can be
directly threatening and full of worry.
Seen in this light, sport is therefore much more than a collection of competitive and
physical activities. It is a way of conditioning, developing and disciplining our bodies in
ways consistent with these idealistic representations. The interest of sport sociologists
in the body is therefore focused on exploring and understanding this body culture; the
social construction of the body and how sport and the body are sites for the promotion
and contestation of competing views of the body; how, as the social world is changing
and becoming more diverse (see Chapter 8), our views of the body in sport are also
changing.
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The sociology of the sporting body

Within sociology the focus of the investigations and analyses has directed attention to
how our bodies are affected by a variety of social influences (Giddens, 2001). As Giddens
(2001, p144) stresses, the body isnt something we just have . . . Our bodies are deeply
affected by our social experiences, as well as the norms and values of the groups to
which we belong. The intention of developing a sociological understanding of the body is
to help us grasp how modern society and the processes of social change have had a
dramatic impact on the body. In their examination of the body, sociologists do not imply
that issues such as health, illness and injuries are unimportant or imaginary. Rather, how
we encounter and experience them in our bodies are forms of social practice that can be
observed, codified and understood within a variety of contexts. It is important to realise,
therefore that how we conceive the body in exercise or sport has no necessary, fixed
historical or universal meaning. As we shall explore below, the ways we use and seek to
physically develop our bodies are directly related to how we have learned to understand
them through our locations in different cultural contexts (e.g. male or female).
Some of the clearest social and cultural interconnectedness between our bodies
and our social world is evidenced by how our rapidly changing world has impacted on
our bodies and how we use them for work, leisure and play. You are doubtless aware
that we live in an age where scientific advances mean that computer and genetic technologies are having profound moral, social and political consequences for sport and the
body. Concerns about obesity are now widespread, yet the ways health professionals
and politicians are addressing this problem have yet to fully come to terms with how
some of our taken for granted social structures are changing and having a dramatic
impact on our bodies. Some of the social issues that are now recognised as important
factors in the growth of obesity are how family structures are becoming transformed
and diversified; the creation of a relatively sedentary existence (watching TV and playing
computer games, driving cars and working at desks); the mass production and easy
accessibility of relatively cheap convenience foods that are often consumed for
pleasure rather than need.
Activity 12.1
Over the next week keep a diary of how active you are over each 24-hour period.
For each half -hour period of the day use a simple 15 scale to record your level of
activity (1 = very inactive (e.g. sleeping or lying down) and 5 = intense physical
activity (e.g. playing a game of squash or a hard training session). Do not worry
too much about being very exact it is not a scientific investigation. However, be
diligent and make sure you record the full week. Over the same week you also
need to keep a diary of what you eat and drink and your reasons for consuming
it. Again, you should keep this fairly simple. The food category should be either
whether it was a pre-prepared food or something that was created from natural
food sources. The reason should be either hungry/thirsty or other (there are lots
of possible reasons but recording these is not essential to this task, so keep it
simple).
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Based on your findings, take some time to reflect on the following:
Do you have an active or sedentary lifestyle?

Over the course of the week what was the percentage of moderate/intense
physical activity (4 and 5 on the scale) compared with being very or
moderately inactive (1 and 2 on the scale)?
What are your eating habits like? Do you think you have a healthy diet?
Do you think that you are active enough to burn off the calories you are
consuming?
What are the important factors that underpin this lifestyle (work,
college/school, spending time socialising with family or friends,
membership of sports teams or clubs, etc.)?
Do you foresee this lifestyle substantially changing why or why not?
What is the impact of your lifestyle on your body and how you and others
perceive it?
Many people who are involved with working with people whose bodies are in
crisis for example, people who have problems with obesity, eating disorders
or health problems such as heart disease are now realising that simply telling
people that they should eat less and take more exercise does not get very far.
People often have lifestyles that have become full or routine, familiar, comforting
or have imposed habits that may underpin the problems they are having. For
instance, a single parent mother who is reliant on hourly-paid work at the
minimum wage (this often results in working 5060 hours per week) might well
be told she needs to find more time for exercise and the preparation of the family
meals. However, to do so means that she will need to alter substantially
significant elements of her lifestyle and the power to undertake these alterations
may well not easily lie within her ability or circumstances. As well as providing
information about what she (as an individual) needs to do, many healthy
professionals are realising they also need to provide the necessary social
support structures that can facilitate these changes (e.g. free crche facilities
at sport and leisure centres).
In their review of the contribution of sociology to the study of the body, a number of
sport sociologists (Coakley, 2003; Jarvie, 2006) have detailed how the social and cultural
contexts in which our bodies are located affect the relationship between the body,
identity, and society (Turner, 1984; Shilling, 2003). The body is no longer seen as a fixed
biological entity but as socially and culturally differentiated. These sociologically based
analyses have established a number of important ideas that are transforming our
understanding of sport and the body.
They challenge assumptions based within the medicalised view of bodies that the
biology of humans is a natural condition separate from the social world.
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They question some of the ways that modern society has imposed certain social
and moral views of the body as an object something for us to train, discipline,
keep healthy and monitor.
They question the simplistic and stereotypical ways we allocate the physical
attributes of the body (in terms of its reproductive organs, skin colour, hair type,
levels of physical or mental impairment, etc.) to socially constructed and imposed
categories of gender, race, ethnicity, age and disability.
They question how the assumptions produced by the interaction of the above issues
have led to the way that sport has been organised and developed historically.
Sport, modernity and healthy bodies

In our examination of sport and disability (see Chapter 8) we pointed out that one of
the most powerful models for understanding the disabled body in sport is the medical
model. As we explained, health and physical ability, as well as having a rational and
biological basis, are culturally and socially defined. The growth and development of
medicine and the scientific analysis of the body paralleled the development of modern
society, so it should not be surprising that they are deeply intertwined. As modernity
developed, public concerns over the health of people within our expanding towns and
cities focused attention on the rational control of two interconnected social problems.
The first was disease and the second was the health of social groups such as the
working class who were assessed as following unhealthy lifestyles.
For the growing body of modern health professionals who sought to establish
control of the health of the population, disease became viewed as an abnormal condition
with objective and identifiable causes that could be overcome. Illness or malfunctioning
bodies could (and should) be objectively studied by medical experts who could then
identify the source of the problem and rectify it. The power of this detached and rational
medical gaze was that it placed those who were its subjects in a very passive position.
Definition: medical gaze
The medical gaze is the detached and value-free approach taken by medical
specialists in viewing and treating a sick patient. (Giddens, 2001, p693)
Consider what happens when you have a sports injury. You may well be taken to the
Accident and Emergency Department of your local hospital where you will be seen by a
doctor who will attempt to define your injury and prescribe the appropriate course of
treatment. For most of us, this experience requires that we passively permit the doctors
and nurses to do their work, even when on occasion this may well cause significant
discomfort. The pay-off for our passivity towards the way these medical professionals
treat our bodies is that we expect to get well as a result of their ministrations.
Sociologists working within an interactionist framework have identified these processes
and have defined this as the sick role (Giddens, 2001). The question this raises for sport
sociologists is whether these same role definitions also pattern the relationships
between coaches and their athletes.
Historically, the training of the body in sport has been informed by the application
of medical knowledge whereby sports physiologists and coaches focus this knowledge on enhancing the physical capabilities of the body or aiding its effective
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recovery from injury. In some important ways the same role exists between the
coach and athlete as between the doctor and the patient. In sport, the coach has a
similar power to that of the doctor in that they can tell us what to do with our bodies
in terms of physical training and the learning of skills. For the most part, our role as
athletes is to passively accept the prescriptions of the coach because we believe
(based on our judgements of their qualifications, experience and reputation) that they
are attempting to improve our sporting performances. The sociological point to be
drawn from this discussion is to realise that there are clear inequalities of power within
this relationship and that while in most instances this works positively, they can be used
on occasion in coercive and abusive ways. Many coaches, especially in professional
sports, condition their athletes to accept pain and injury as an outcome of striving to
be the best (Coakley, 2003) and that injuries which lead to a permanent disabling of
athletes are unfortunate but inevitable outcomes of the physical nature of some sports
(e.g. boxing and rugby).
Sport, the body and social class

As we discussed in a number of the early chapters of the book, historically, the Victorian
concept of athleticism had a dramatic impact on the formation of modern sport and how
the body was seen in sport. As an ideology, it served to socially justify and reproduce the
demarcation between social classes, and within social classes the divisions between
men and women and the conceptualisation of masculinity and femininity. Through the
paternalistic imposition of ideas such as muscular Christianity, the deployment of sport
and athleticism by the Victorian middle class had the direct objective of improving the
moral and physical well-being of working-class bodies. The French sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu (1984, 1993) has played a vital role in establishing how sport, the body and
social class are socially interconnected. He sets out a number of key theoretical
concepts that many contemporary sport sociologists (Sugden and Tomlinson, 2000;
Giulianotti, 2005; Jarvie, 2006) have now adopted in their attempt to understand the
body as a symbol of distinction. These are habitus, physical capital and social field (see
Chapter 7 for a more extended discussion). Within the characteristic patterns of
thought, behaviour and social practice, class habitus patterns how the various social
classes understand their bodies. Bourdieu argues that the working-class body is often
viewed in terms of its functionality as a productive machine and this is often central to
working patterns of employment and social role. By contrast, The dominant classes view
the body as a project and have available resources to choose whether to place an
emphasis on the intrinsic or extrinsic functioning of the body (Jarvie, 2006, p222). The
middle classes are considered to have more control over their health, which can be
exercised by choosing an appropriate lifestyle.
For instance, within working-class communities the realities of manual labour tend
to create an emphasis on a robust, strong and physically powerful body. Among the
middle class the emphasis is on bodies that are rationally controlled and improved.
Middle-class bodies tend to be judged less on their power or strength (today, some
exceptions to this are now evident, one of the most obvious being the powerful bodies of
professional rugby players) than on their function and ability. For Bourdieu, this
embodiment of class is also then reflected in the sort of sports that are enjoyed and
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dominated by athletes drawn from their various class communities. Examples of this
are the pre-eminence of working-class players in sports such as football or boxing, and
the middle-class fixation with games such as cricket and golf, where skill and technique
are more important than physical size or strength.
Understood in this way, the body can be seen as constituted through and a reflection
of the social structure, its material context, and its habitual social and cultural routines
and tastes. Moreover, as Jarvie (2006) points out, the concept of habitus also helps us to
locate the way social structures and individual actions and choices also manifest
themselves with the performance of the sport. Thought of in this way, playing a sport
well requires us to become a competent social actor . . . having mastery over social
practices that involves a feel for the game (Jarvie, 2006, p222).
CASE STUDY
Lets briefly consider the game of basketball, which in terms of the classifications suggested above highlights how other cultural factors such as race
and ethnicity can also have a significant impact on how sports develop
stereotypic assumptions about their embodied character. At one level, basketball is a sport that, like all others, we have socially to learn in respect of its
rules, regulations, skills and strategies. On another level, as we become more
experienced and proficient, our playing and how we use our bodies to play
become more integrated. When athletes get in the zone the boundaries between
their skilled use of their bodies and their physical engagement with the sport
become blurred.
As all the great exponents of the game, such as Michael Jordan, evidence,
when your playing of sport becomes embodied in this way, the athlete and their
body appears to be able to play instinctively and achieve sporting actions that
amaze and stun the audience. When he was at the height of his career, Jordans
phenomenal ability on the court was seen to epitomise the supreme power
and potential of the African-American body. The mistake made by many
commentators when viewing this sort of sporting action is then to refer to it as
natural or even God-given. The seemingly effortless skill of all great sports
people may draw from a genetic well-spring. However, this potential is never
manifest without its development through many years of coaching and repetitive
practice.
Activity 12.2
This task involves a game of people-watching, your powers of observation and
interpretation. Start watching by examining the size and shape of individuals who
might pass you by in your college canteen or other large area where people gather.
From looking at them, can you categorise them in terms of:
having lifestyles that are physically active;

the main sports they might play?
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If possible, do this as a group, compare your answers and then discuss what clues
you each used to categorise the people you observed. Although it is not necessary
to do so, if possible approach the individual and ask them to confirm whether you
were correct.
Some questions for you to consider:
What did you observe?

How easy or difficult did you and the others in your group find the task?
How much of an influence was the shape of the body and how much were the
styles of clothes, shoes and hair styles, etc.?
If you did manage to talk to any of those you observed, how accurate was
your labelling of them?
What were the things you got right and what did you get wrong?
What do you think a sport sociologist would conclude from your findings?
Because of the way different sports require different forms of physical engagement
(consider the embodied difference between a darts player being in the zone and a scrum
half in rugby), Bourdieu argues that bodies are involved in the creation and reproduction
of social difference that is displayed through accent (e.g. the sometimes restricted
vocabulary of football players), poise (e.g. the refined and balanced stance of the trained
gymnast) and movement (e.g. the bouncing gait of many basketball players). Over time,
the sporting body tends to adopt the imprint of the social class with that the sport is
most closely associated. There are three main factors which sociologists have
recognised as crucial to this formation: an individuals social location, including their
material circumstances of daily life; the particular social characteristics underlying the
formation of their class habitus; and the development of their cultural tastes, likes and
dislikes (Jarvie, 2006, p222). However, not all bodies have the same shape or develop
the same habits and capacities. The sporting habitus that certain people occupy through
their class is also importantly impacted by gender and racial power relations that can
create distinctive patterns of social relations that cannot be simplistically reduced to
the influence of social class.
Sport, gender and the body

Not surprisingly, given the powerful social interest in gender, much of the research into
the body has often focused on how the body becomes the focal point for discourses
about masculinity, femininity and sexuality. The increasing participation of women in
sports that have been the traditional domain of men and their representations of the
interconnectedness between the physicality of sport and masculinity (e.g. the sculpted
and muscled body builder or the aggressive and sometimes violent physical contest
of rugby) have opened up debates that have challenged some of these dominant
discourses and the assumptions about the gendered and sexualised body. What these
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debates evidence is that our notions about sport, gender and the body change over time.
As the growing body of sport sociology identifies (Hargreaves, 1994; Birrell, 2000;
Scraton and Flintoff, 2002), the gendered body in sport involves a variety of social and
cultural processes that demonstrate that:
the bodies of men and women cannot be regarded as homogeneous;
our views of the gendered body are deeply influenced by the prevailing social and
cultural circumstances;
the increasing social and cultural diversity (in terms of race and ethnicity) of most
Western societies have created new and sometimes challenging representations
of gender and sexuality;
the gendered and sexualised bodies of athletes are both facilitated and
constrained by these circumstances;
sport can act as both an arena where new identities based on the physicality and
sexuality of the body can be explored or made subject to threats of repression,
violence and abuse;
the media have a powerful influence in the ways that the sporting body is
displayed as a site of appropriate or inappropriate gender behaviour and
sexuality.
The work of a number of feminist writers on the body (Butler, 1990; Bordo, 1993)
exemplifies some of the most important dimensions of these processes. They have
established how medical discourses about the body, such as those discussed
above, have historically acted in ways that have constrained women (and men) in
sport. By imposing its versions of language, knowledge and truth, the medical establishment has tended to normalise and regulate the functions of womens bodies and
hence their gendered sense of identity. The result has been that within our society the
bodies of women are often subject to powerful discourses that serve, even today,
to culturally position them in terms of their capacity to bear and nurture children.
This view stresses the importance of the female bodys reproductive capacity as
natural and socially desirable, while other physical body states such as those created
by the dedicated female athlete who devotes her life to training her body for sporting
achievement are seen as potentially dysfunctional or unnatural (Hargreaves, 1994;
Birrell, 2000).
Twenty-first century sporting heroines such as Ellen MacArthur, Paula Radcliffe and
Dame Kelly Holmes bear witness to these processes. As their autobiographies detail,
women use their bodies for all sorts of things other than child-bearing and do not
necessarily consider their sporting bodies as either abnormal or dysfunctional. They are
real women who consider sporting endeavour as normal. While some such as Paula
Radcliffe may combine sport and motherhood, for others mothering may not be for them
a priority or a necessity.
What we can learn from a sociological reading of these texts is that sporting bodies
of these women are constantly being evaluated. As elite sportswomen, their bodies are
expected to deliver world-class sporting performances and this often necessarily
engages them with medical and scientific models of the female body. However, unlike
men, the public and, as the autobiographies also demonstrate, private evaluations of
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womens sporting bodies do not end with a rational assessment of the bodys ability to
deliver a sporting performance. Rather, because their bodies are also expected to
conform to social norms regarding their gender, they are also constantly being evaluated
through discourses of femininity and sexuality.
Definition: femininity
The culturally prescribed norm of a feminine body.
Definition: masculinity
The culturally prescribed norm of the masculine body.
Definition: discourse of attractiveness
In Western contemporary culture this would be a body that is slim, toned,
attractive and sexy.
Under the surveillance and disciplinary power of coaches and physiologists, the
bodies of athletes are regularly hooked up to machines to be tested for various
components of fitness or biomechanical efficiency. Even in our more liberal age, many
successful sports people find themselves under a veil of suspicion that questions their
performances and sexuality. An example of how some of these scientific and medical
discourses, articulated through the media, have attempted to constrain the sportswomans body is illustrated in the case study below:
CASE STUDY
In the Guardian, 13 February 1998, a headline read: Breasts, PMT and the Pill Bar
Women from Boxing . . .women should not be licensed to box professionally
because pre-menstrual tension makes them unstable.
This article, and the many similar ones that appeared in the media at the
time, examined the struggle between Jane Couch, Britains then World
Welterweight Champion, and the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC). It was
a case that highlights how the popular media can act in ways that reproduce
traditional constructions of femininity. The articles tended to mirror the social
discomfort of women choosing sporting careers, such as professional boxing,
which were deemed appropriate for men but not for women because they
demanded physical aggression. The entire BBBC defence was based on the
womans reproductive body, citing problems such as water retention, lumps in
her breasts, pregnancy, contraception and heavy periods. Once again, biological
arguments were overtly being applied to womens bodies in order to control their
sporting behaviour.
Jane Couch, alias the Fleetville assassin , finally won her case on 30 March
1998. Sporting history was made as the court ruled that the BBBC was
discriminating against sportswomen. The outcome was that on 14 August 1998
Jane Couch became the first woman to be granted a professional boxing licence
in Britain.
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Activity 12.3
Carry out a Google search on the Jane Couch story. Read the archive newspaper
articles. In the light of the issues identified above, look carefully at the use of
language to see if you can identify the gendered power relations within their
discussion of the case. Make a list of the actual arguments and the evidence being
put forward by both sides.
Some questions for you to consider:
1. If you had been the judge, what decision would you have made and why?
2. Can you think of any arguments like this about mens bodies?
3. What is your assessment of the role played by the media in reporting the
case?
Sport, the body and power

In recent years the work of Michel Foucault (1976, 1980) has had a major influence on
the sociological understanding of power relations and the social construction of the
body. While it could be argued that we have agency in creating our own identities (for
example, a student, a hockey player), as we have shown throughout the text there are a
large number of social and cultural practices that normalise (Foucault, 1976) how we as
men and women come to understand and assess what sports we should be involved with,
our bodies and their sports performances.
Foucaults analysis of the body shows how the body is the basis on which our
individual identities, and our senses of autonomy, power and freedom or social
inequality are built. These power relations are central to the social construction of
other bodies (the racialised body, the ethnic body, the gay body, the disabled body) and
their experience of sport. In respect of gendered bodies, Foucaults work suggests that
historically, changing social conditions have invested them with various and changing
forms of power. The diversity of views of the body that confront us in our contemporary
society causes our understanding of them to become fractured, shifting and unstable. If
Foucault is right, the outcome is that establishing our gendered body involves us with
complex socially guided activities that reinforce particular sporting pursuits as
expressions of masculine and feminine natures. What is most important to draw from
this work is the way in which we as individuals become our own body police, charging
our own consciousness with assessing our body and its shape, and, when required,
deciding to discipline it through exercise regimes and diets. More often than not, we do
not require the voice or the disapproving gaze of others to feel guilty about our lack of
exercise or our expanding waistline our own are more adequate.
Thought of in this way, the sporting body becomes a text to be read and interpreted.
As we hope you found out through doing learning task 11.2, we all have developed the
capacity to read and interpret bodies, although as always in human affairs some are
much better at it than others. How we interpret the text of the body is based on the
messages that we get from looking at a body; the assumptions we have learned to make
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about it. For example, in our contemporary society the images that the media constantly
present to us suggest quite explicitly that the aesthetic ideal of a body is that of the
slim, toned, athletic body. These images teach us to worry about fat, to treat it with
distaste, to marginalise the larger body and often attach assumptions of laziness and
unhealthy lifestyles to it. This is, of course, an image of the body that other cultures
actively question and resist. From a sociological perspective, the assumed connections
between the athletic body as a healthy body and the fat body as an unhealthy body
need to be questioned.
In understanding the body within sport it is important once more to emphasise
that the dominant conceptualisations of modern sport are grounded in discourses
that emphasise performance and celebrate the attributes of power, speed and strength,
all of which have historically been seen as symbols of masculinity (Hargreaves, 1994).
Through this construction our image of sport is often permeated by implicit assumptions about mens superiority and womens inferiority. The questions that this
observation inevitably invokes are whether there are other ways to vision sport and
what would be the outcome if we did change our views? The disputes that would
inevitably be created would probably revolve around what we consider the essence of
sport and its defining characteristics (competition, aggression, speed, and strength). It
is not the purpose of this book to speculate on what the outcome may be, but to observe
that, as we become more socially diverse, there will almost inevitably be challenges to
what we consider to be the quintessential nature of sport (Hall, 1996). If people are
to feel empowered in sport, then those of us involved in sport need to be aware that
if sport does not consciously attempt to address the issues of equity and fairness
raised by the above analysis, then some alienated groups may well feel they have no
other recourse but to create alternative forms of sport organised according to their
own agendas.
Activity 12.4
To close this section of the chapter, take a few moments to reflect carefully on
your own childhood experiences in respect of how you became aware of:
your bodys gender;
the sort of behaviours you were expected to take part in that demonstrated
you knew how to behave in gender-appropriate ways;
the sanctions that might occur if you acted in gender-inappropriate ways;
the role played by sport in assigning and confirming gender.
One of the things that this exercise might have made you aware of is how you
or others have both accepted and accommodated aspects of the social and
cultural ascription of gender, and rejected and resisted aspects of it. As with the
previous tasks, having completed this activity you should also try to reflect on
what your experiences mean so that we can develop a sociological analysis of the
gendered body in sport.
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Sport, exercise and the consumption of the body

The significance of the emergence of a consumer society on sport was discussed in
Chapter 9. Based on the discussion presented in that chapter, it is now possible to
connect the ideas of sport, consumption and the body. This section explores the sociocultural dimensions that explain how the sporting body secures consumers.
Hargreaves (1987) analyses the relationship between sporting bodies, desire,
consumer culture and consumers. She argues that the bodies in advertisements can be
read by consumers and that this reading evokes desires to adopt the values and
identities of this idealistic and simulated sporty, happy, successful, slim and popular
body. The commodification of bodies in the world of advertising incites participation in
fitness practices and encourages consumers to discipline themselves by adopting
behaviours to achieve their desire for a positively evaluated body and identity. Sport,
together with fashion, eating and drinking, cooking, dieting, advertising and a wide range
of aids to sexual attractiveness, are deployed in a constantly elaborating programme
of mediated representations whose objective is to confirm the belief that the
consumption of these products and activities is vital to our achievement of a positive
self-identity. As we suggested in the above discussion of the work of Michel Foucault,
the maintenance of the body is not something that is easy to ignore in our imageconscious age. The body is one of the prime obsessions of consumer culture and its
discourses of health and fitness, exercise, dieting and beauty.
In examining these interconnected themes and how they are constructed through
the intersection of social structures and the reflexive actions of individuals seeking to
construct meaningful lives, sociologists have drawn on the concept of lifestyle (Chaney,
1996). If the vast array of lifestyle programmes on our televisions are anything to go by,
it seems that today we have a national and individual preoccupation with healthy bodies
and healthy lifestyle. In typifying this, Howell (1991, pp266267) argues that the workout yuppie is a symptom of a consumerist definition of the quality of life that
encompasses a self preservationist conception of the body. At the heart of this process is an interplay between the conceptualisation of the fit body, and the notion
of character, morality and responsibility. Here, we can once again observe that
fundamental to this conceptualisation are the scientific and medical discourses
that encourage us to manage our bodies in ways that avoid illness and physical
degeneration. In creating our lean and active lifestyle, we are encouraged to accept
without question that in acting in this way we are providing our bodies with a sense of
betterment, pleasure, freedom, success and positive self-esteem.
Within the expansion of middle-class leisure and lifestyle consumption, health,
fitness and exercise have become the answers to our desire for the body beautiful. One
constantly hears the slogan Exercise makes you feel good and look good. Images of
bodies behaving in a fun-loving way with the ethos of life is too short evidence
discourses of the importance of staying young. The thin active body in consumer culture often infers a promise of youthful health, happiness, success and sociability
(Gruneau, 1993).
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Activity 12.5
As you watch television over the course of about a week take some time to
identify and, if possible, record some of the television advertisements that use
the sporting or exercised body to secure our attention as consumers. Some issues
you should consider:
1.
What products are they selling and what messages are the marketing
companies giving to the viewer?
2. What is the role of the body in the stories?
3. When sporting images are used, what images of the fit body do they convey
and do the products they advertise have anything to do with
sport?
4. If they do not, why do you think the company and their advertising agency
have decided to use sporting bodies and sports stars to market their
products?
One of the issues you may have identified in completing the previous activity was
the importance of how we clothe and adorn our bodies. From a sociological perspective,
rather than as a fashion statement, workout clothing can be understood as being made
from specialist textile technologies that we consume because they accentuate the
shape of the active body. Being able to display a fit and athletic body shape can in turn
be seen as a process of empowerment, especially when it is displayed in places that
celebrate it (the health and fitness club, the sports field). Tight-fitting sports clothing
and fashion can be seen to perpetuate discourses of hegemonic masculinity and
femininity and, specifically, the discourse of the sexualised body. However, while
clothing can be seen both as a function of hegemonic power, it can also be used as a way
of empowering the self and resisting the imposition of dominant norms. For example,
many men and women are conscious of how our consumer society imposes unachievable
and sometimes unhealthy images of the body and therefore choose to wear baggy
clothes to resist such discourses.
The formation of body dilemmas are central in consumer culture, and the concerns
they produce are partly responsible for the contemporary boom in the fitness industry.
However, it is also important to recognise that this boom, while to some degree cutting
across all sections of the population, is primarily an element of middle-class consumption and lifestyle. In her discussion of these issues, Maguire (2002) has usefully
discussed two further ways of examining the sporting body the calculating body and
the motivating body.
Calculating bodies
One of the inevitable realities of our consumer culture and its attachment to the body is
that the body has become a site for consumer investment. This, according to Maguire
(2002, p456), has created bodies that are deemed to be accountable, predictable and
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calculable. Once again, this perspective places the body in the realms of science in order
that it can be measured, weighed and objectively evaluated. The outcome is that it has
become the responsibility of the individual to control their body and to measure and
monitor its features for example, fitness magazines teach consumers how to measure
the fat content of their bodies (Body Mass Index; BMI), and how to analyse their food
consumed in terms of input and output of calories.
Activity 12.6
How do you calculate your body? Think over your daily habits and what you do to
control and manage your body. You may give examples from other people in your
life.
Some everyday processes you might want to reflect on:
Why do you feel that other people or you have to make calculations about
your body?
Do you use bathroom scales? Why do you think people hide them away in
the privacy of their bathrooms?
Do you discuss their calculation of your weight with others? Do you have a
body weight that you think of as ideal and desirable? What would you do to
achieve this ideal?
Have you dieted in order to change the shape of your body (gain weight or
lose weight)? Did people make any comments on the change of your body
shape and what did you feel about their evaluations?
The suggestion made by Maguire (2002) is that there is a link between the sporting
and active body seen in advertising and our elevated preoccupation with health. Through
her analysis of fitness magazines, she argues that Health is not only a benefit of
exercise, but a quantifiable, predictable profit (Maguire, 2002, p456). From this she
suggests that our conceptualisations of the fit body have come to equate exercise with
control over health. Today, many medical, government and media reports aggressively
promote exercise as a positive and necessary element in the establishment of a healthy
lifestyle. There may be many different ways to define what it is to be healthy, but they all
have other discourses attached to them. The discourse of exercise is good for you is
starting to be seen as no longer a personal choice but a response to general concerns
about health and a necessary means of improving the physical, social and psychological
health of the population. The medical benefits cited are numerous and include the
reduced risks of cardiovascular disease, stress, obesity and a preventative measure
against osteoporosis.
These sorts of rational calculations about the body are fuelled by a range of
discourses (such as the risks of not having a healthy body), the outcome of which can be
anxiety and an overreaction to exercise that may be detrimental to health. Athletes
often drive themselves to believe that they can overcome all physical obstacles and
that they thrive on pushing their bodies to new limits. Consciously, many sports people
are moving their (calculable) goals to make their bodies go faster for longer. This
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is evidenced in the development of sporting events such as the Ironman triathlon that
are designed to test the body almost to destruction. However, such behaviour and
associated ritualistic training practices also convey ways in which the athlete is
subjected to sporting formations that may have little to do with health, and indeed may
well have a damaging and crippling impact on the body. In their selling of fitness, some
sports and the fitness industry can be more generally argued as promoting discourses
that encourage the person to rationalise unhealthy and irrational behaviour as a
sacrifice for the ultimate goal of achieving evermore greater levels of fitness.
Motivating bodies
One of the problems faced by those desiring to get fit and also those professionals
whose livelihoods are dependent on helping us get fit is the difficult transition from
thinking or reading about fitness to the actual doing of fitness and the subjugation
of our bodies to its routines, physical demands and discomforts. As Maguire (2002,
pp458459) points out, managing the body and achieving the calculated rewards we
identified in the previous section face three basic obstacles:
First, the physiological inertia of the body means that change is slow and must
be kept up. The body is not only slow to change, but also prone to lose ground
through ageing, injury and inactivity. Second, the . . . increase in sedentary forms
of work means that exercise is an increasingly uncommon everyday habit;
becoming fit requires overcoming the resilience of behavioural patterns of
inactivity. Third, exercise involves a lot of work if the participant is to see results,
which poses a challenge to an industry that sells fitness as leisure. Exercise
competes with other (less strenuous and sweaty) leisure activities.
Maguire (2002) argues that, in their attempt to convince us of the benefits of
exercise, the fitness industry and fitness magazines specifically seek to establish a
number of discourses that provide a range of motives that can be used to inform and
encourage our desire for fit and healthy bodies. These discourses not only educate the
consumers of fitness about the practical physical requirements of developing fit bodies,
but more importantly about the production of positive lifestyle habits (deemed to be
essential for success) that need to be developed through discipline. Akin to the rational
demands of the founding fathers of mass production (such as Henry Ford, the American
car maker) consumers are encouraged to produce habitual rational behaviours such
as time management, exercise and self-scrutiny. In reward, they are promised the
production of an ideal body that is admired and thus can become their ticket to social
success.
Presented in this way, the fit body and the sporting body more generally become
fully integral to, and an essential component of, a well-balanced and successful lifestyle.
This clearly reinforces the analysis of Foucault (1976) in that discipline and critical selfreflection become established as the crucial foundations of the successful individual
(Foucault, 1977) and a healthy, fit and attractive/desirable body. Moreover, it also brings
our attention back to many of the same modernist assumptions that underpinned the
formation and codification of modern sport: the need for constant improvement and
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learning; the importance of predictable routines and physical practices; the ability of
critical self-assessment through detailed record-keeping; and the habitual benefits of
moral virtues such as industry, chastity, temperance and cleanliness. In how it markets
itself the fitness industry may seem to be an arena of consumer lifestyle choices, but
once we begin systematically to analyse its construction from a sociological
perspective, it quickly becomes evident that its roots remain firmly located in the same
social and cultural ground that facilitated the growth of modern sport and the formation
of the sporting body.
Review
This chapter was designed to act as a useful starting point for your further work on
the sociology of sport and the body. As one of its major themes we have considered
some of the important sociological arguments that suggest that sport in modern
society is one of the principal means of disciplining, controlling and constraining
the body. In doing this, we have detailed how sport, the body and society need to be
understood as interconnected social and cultural constructions. Thought of in this
way, the body is much more than a mere biological organism. Our bodies are social
and cultural projects, a work in progress, that, as with the rest of life, require decisions
and the investment of time and capital in all its forms. Central to this analysis is
the concept of lifestyle. Our bodies and sport are allied to aspirations about our lifestyle and concerns over health. In examining these issues, the discussion also
highlighted how our sporting bodies are probed, measured, evaluated and monitored
all with the intention of aspiring towards an idealised body shape that is socially
constructed to reflect images of the consuming body, the calculating body and the
medicalised body.
The habitual actions that combine to create and define our lifestyle and, hence, our
sport are not only important because they help to socially differentiate us from others,
but also because they normatively attach powerful domains of meaning through which
we understand our bodies. This awareness of our bodies is impacted by social and
cultural structures such as class and gender. Situated within these habitual patterns of
thought and behaviour we learn to ascribe specific forms of cultural knowledge that
enable us to understand the realities of our specific social context and to make
predictions about how we and our bodies should act within it.
A central theme within the sociology of the body is the cultural construction of a
consumer who is equipped with an informed awareness of the problems of social status
and consumer lifestyle. The expanding fitness industry promotes lifestyle as the basis
for social identity and mobility. Sport and exercise are marketed as good for you in that
they produce health improvements, empowerment and increased popularity through
the production of attractive bodies. However, as the critical assessment of sport
sociologists identifies, access is commodified and subject to market forces. This
inevitably means that many are unable to afford either the time or money to develop
the bodies or healthy lifestyles that are constantly promoted to them.
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When reflecting on what you have learnt through this chapter, consider how you
might respond to the questions and statements outlined below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Drawing on your own experience of sport and exercise, clearly outline

how the body can be sociologically understood as a biological organism that
can be subjected to rationalised forms of physical training.
Taking football or boxing as an example, explain how social class can
impact on our experience of sport and the production of recognisable body
habits and styles.
What are the arguments that a feminist analysis of sport might put
forward to justify the claim that even today many women feel their
bodies are subjected to coercive forms of social control though
sport?
Are mens bodies subjected to the same levels of social control and
discipline and is there any evidence that this is starting to change?
Why is it important for our society that people are encouraged to
become self-disciplined in terms of how they work and exercise their
bodies?
Are fat people merely lazy individuals who should be more responsible
in terms of their exercising and eating habits?
Can you show through examples drawn from your own experience how
body culture and processes of consumption are important dimensions
of your social identity and lifestyle?
Further study
For a general introduction to sociology of the body read:
Giddens, A (2005) Chapter 6: Sociology of the body: health, illness and aging, in
Sociology. 5th edition. Cambridge: Polity Press.
For an excellent but more challenging and extended exploration of the social and cultural
construction of the body read:
Shilling, C (1993) The body and social theory. London: Sage.
To extend your understanding of the social construction of bodies in sport read:
Cole, C (2002) Body studies in the sociology of sport, in Coakley, J and Dunning, E (eds)
Handbook of sports studies. London: Sage.
Scraton, S and Flintoff, A (eds) (2002) Gender and sports: a reader. London: Routledge.
Jarvie, G (2006) Chapter 10: Sport, body and society, in Sport, culture and society: an
introduction. London: Routledge.
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To extend your understanding of how our bodies are integral to the formation of lifestyle
and consumer culture read:
Horne, (2006) Chapter 6: Sport, identities and lifestyles in consumer culture in sport,
in Consumer culture. London: Palgrave.
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Chapter 13
Sport and adventure

Paul Beedie
Adventure is a term used in different ways in modern society. Depending on which

definition is followed, it broadly refers to uncertainty of outcome. Such uncertainty, as
in not knowing what is around the next corner in a physical sense and/or not knowing what the future holds for a person in the social sense, is always with us so
that adventures are an ongoing possibility in all of our lives. Because a defining
characteristic of modernity is change, in one sense adventure as in not knowing what
the future holds is with us all the time. It is, however, the alignment of adventure and
exploration, and physical pursuits such as climbing, sailing, canoeing, caving, snowboarding, surfing, orienteering, trekking and mountain biking in other words, the doing
of adventure activities that is the focus of this chapter. Collectively known as risk
pursuits, investigation of these activities represents an opportunity to extend the
discussion of the book into new territory and, as we shall see, the ways these activities
are integrated into social life tell us a great deal about the tensions and contradictions
of contemporary times.
Learning outcomes
On completing this chapter you should be able to understand:
that adventure has helped shape the modern world;
how various theoretical ideas and models help to explain the socio-cultural
relationship between sport and adventure;
that traditional or mainstream sport is both resistant and emergent in
relation to adventure;
that adventure can take three main forms (education, recreation/tourism
and sport) and that each makes a contribution to modern society.
Introduction
Adventure pursuits make physical demands they require active participation and
engage with risk. We can think of traditional adventure pursuits that have a
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13 / Sport and adventure
longstanding heritage and operate in wild places (e.g. mountaineering) and new
adventure pursuits typically those that locate to built-up urban areas and are
predicated upon technological innovation (e.g. skate-boarding). Traditional pursuits have
emerged from a historical context that has its origins in exploration Columbus, Drake
and Cook sailed and mapped across the globe; the early fur trappers in Canada paddled
across the wilderness establishing routes and outposts as they went; upper-class
English gentlemen explored the Alps in the nineteenth century before Shipton and
Tilman and many others undertook comparable explorations in the bigger and wilder
Greater Himalaya in the twentieth century. Additionally, overland journeys on foot
have been documented throughout history and include early migrations from Asia
into North America via the Bering Strait, the travels of Marco Polo and those in Africa of
Dr Livingstone. These exploratory journeys could not have happened without engaging
with risk.
In the preface to his book Risk, Adam (1995) says that no one wants an accident,
but everyone wants to be free to take risks. We live in a culture that both glorifies
risk and employs an army of bureaucrats to reduce it. Here he encapsulates the
essence of the structureagency debate: it is generally recognised that modernity
requires progress and that this takes many forms, but in a broad interpretation
this requires exploration of the world. This is why we have always revered the
achievements of famous explorers. As Riffenburgh (1993) has shown, modern society
has a hunger for news about the latest discoveries and the dramas that commonly
accompany these a good example is the race for the South Pole in 1912, as is the
ascent of Everest in 1953. However, at the same time the interests of society must be
served in terms of stability, rationalisation and control, establishing comfort zones
rather than pushing beyond their boundaries. As this chapter will show, adventure
sports strive to explore new physical and social territory, but must do so within a
framework of the structuring dimensions of modernity.
Adventure exploration
Adventure exploration is especially important in modernity because exploring achieved
a number of important outcomes. It gave the explorer (and by extension the authority or
country sponsoring or supporting the explorer) knowledge of new places and thereby
an opportunity to take from those places raw materials and goods to benefit the
sponsoring countrys economy. It also created the opportunity to extend power and
control beyond the home nation so that the discovered places were likely to absorb, or
have imposed on them, the cultural standards and operating systems of the explorers
country. This is how empires have always been built. For example, the industrial
revolution began in Britain. This gave unprecedented power first to Britain and then to
Western nations more generally (including the USA and Canada). It is the framework of
modernity generated by these unprecedented social and economic developments that
continued to follow explorers into all unknown places in the world. These places were
only unknown to Western people, nevertheless the mythology surrounding exploration
embedded itself in Western thinking, and, because we are still driven by the same ideas
and ambitions as those that defined the emergence of the modern world, adventure has
remained an integral part of our culture today.
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Contemporary forms of adventure

This historical legacy, together with the persuasive ideology of capitalism, remains and
continues to shape three contemporary forms of adventure. To a large extent these
forms all reinforce the place of adventure in Western thinking. In adventure education,
outdoor pursuits such as climbing, camping, canoeing, compass sports and sailing
continue to dominate the activity programmes. Adventure education is essentially
concerned with peoples personal growth and advancement of self-knowledge. In this
respect, the adventure activities, which might be thought of as traditional adventure
pursuits, become a means to an end part of the learning process in which the target is
to learn in the broadest understanding of the term. The learning process might be
thought of as the acquisition of educational capital, and the introduction to activities
can promote a life-long interest as adventure recreation. Such traditional activities
are also a significant foundation for adventure tourism, although here the rationale
for participation has arguably more to do with gaining social capital. Adventure
tourism represents a commercial development of adventure that uses the same pursuits
as adventure education but, because it is primarily concerned with adventure as
business, it is always looking for new places and new adventure activities to attract
paying clientele. These usually wild places have a particular attraction and represent
symbolic capital to be acquired through journeys off the beaten track. A combination
of technical developments in adventure equipment, some lateral thinking and a
competitive market has led to the development of adventure pursuits that are less
traditional. Bungy jumping is a good example, but there are others such as white
water rafting. These activities represent a distillation of adventure into relatively
short but intense adventure experiences, often packaged with videos, T-shirts,
photographs and other merchandise that might be thought of as evidence of the
experience and therefore operate as social capital to the benefit of the participants
back in their everyday lives.
Definition: adventure education
Personal growth and the acquisition of knowledge through participation in
activities that encompass risk.
Definition: adventure pursuits
Adventure activities such as climbing, sailing, hillwalking, caving, mountaineering
and canoeing that is, activities that encompass risk.
Definition: adventure tourism
The alignment of travel packages and adventure pursuits consistent with
commodity exchange.
Lastly, there is a form of adventure that brings together the ideas of risk and
uncertainty integral to adventure with the overtly competitive dimension of sport.
Adventure sports therefore nudge into the territory of conventional athleticism and
draw on many of the characteristics familiar to people who play sport. These include
training regimes, diet scrutiny and a systematic approach to regular competitions. The
traditional adventure pursuits are not immune to the encroachment of sporting
characteristics, so we have, for example, climbing competitions, canoeing and sailing
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regattas, and mountain marathons for walkers and fell runners. Training regimes are
about the acquisition of physical capital, although this is transferable into other forms
of capital, particularly social capital (by becoming a star performer) and economic
capital (through prize money and sponsorship deals).
Although this framework suggests three different forms of adventure, there
is considerable blurring of the boundaries. Adventure education, for example, may
utilise fewer traditional pursuits such as mountain biking and abseiling as young
people pick up on media images of adventure as excitement. Adventure tourism
packages may include participation in or the spectating of adventure sports. Star
performers in climbing competitions may work in adventure education and therefore
understand the personal growth potential that adventure offers. These ideas are
developed in the sections below.
Definition: outdoor education
Structured learning outside the conventions of the classroom.
Definition: adventure recreation
Engaging with adventure pursuits (indoors or outdoors, in natural or artificial
settings) as leisure choices.
Definition: adventure sport
New and traditional adventure pursuits that have taken on characteristics
consistent with sporting competitions.
The sociology of adventure

Three social theorists have made a significant contribution to explaining the sociology
of adventure: Georg Simmel (Frisby and Featherstone, 1997), Ulrich Beck (1992)
and Anthony Giddens (1990, 1991). Simmel was developing his theoretical orientation
over 100 years ago, yet his ideas remain relevant today. Simmel was broadly concerned
with how individual behaviour is shaped by social forces, particularly those relevant to
the human propensity for gregariousness (the formation of groups), but at the same
time we exist as individuals with an inner life of our own. Simmels social-psychological
position sees social life as a kind of battleground in which we engage with conflicting
ideas: we need to be both an individual and stand out from the crowd, but to do so risks
social alienation from normal society. This explains Simmels concerns with fashion
because dress codes and other elements of consumption provide a way of establishing
who we are in a social context that is, a sense of identity. Following this line of
reasoning it could be argued that adventure today is a fashion. As youngsters, we may be
introduced to adventure via outdoor education, we may choose to pursue certain
adventure activities as recreation and, money and circumstances permitting, we may
buy adventure tourism packages.
Here, Simmel explains the relationship between adventure and ordinary life:
An adventure is certainly a part of our existence, directly contiguous with other
parts that precede and follow it; at the same time, however, in its deeper meaning,
it occurs outside the usual continuity of this life. Nevertheless, it is distinct from
all that is accidental and alien, merely touching lifes outer shell . . . it is a foreign
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body in our existence which is yet somehow connected to the centre; the outside,
if only by a long and unfamiliar detour, is formally an aspect of the inside.
(Simmel, 1911, in Frisby and Featherstone, 1997, p222)
Simmels foundational contribution to the sociology of adventure is threefold. He
recognises the need for adventure as an assertion of individuality amid the structures of
state control. At the same time, he recognises how all social activity moves towards the
centre in a way that diminishes the extraordinariness of an adventure through the
necessity of social continuity. Lastly, he acknowledges that capitalism has the potential
to shape social activities to its own ends. This analysis is complex, but sets out a
position that adventure is an outer experience, an attempt to transcend the rational
by, for example, actively engaging risk. The problem is that if adventures stand alone
beyond the social, they become ahistorical and are of the moment with no past or future.
How do we know we are having an adventure if there is no social reference point? If an
adventure is a denial of the present as structure that is, it is based on distance and
alienation we have no measurement of our adventure experience. Simmel suggests
that a number of reference points are necessary for people to make sense of their
adventure experiences: words and images are embedded in Western cultural ideas of
the adventure.
In many respects Simmels relationship between inner and outer is similar to the
broader social discussions about structure and agency. Given that social conditions are
constantly changing, and that change is destabilising, this creates what Ulrich Beck
(1992) has called risk society. The social world we live in has been made by historical
change and transformation, but we are not simply the product of our current circumstances as we can construct our own sense of identity. However, we can only do this
within the social rules that set out the broader context. Modernity and its components
of industrialisation, capitalism, surveillance and weaponry is defined by a scientific
rationalism, the ambition of which is control of the physical world. It has been argued
that risk is the negative consequence of such sentiments and possibly the price to
pay for humanity naively thinking that such control was possible in the first place
(Miles, 2001, p124).
Taking a modernist view of the world, Beck (1992) argues that a combination of
technologies and human ambition for control have created a world where, although the
evident risks of everyday life (such as builders falling off scaffolding, aircraft crashing
and food poisoning) have been controlled through sophisticated Health and Safety
Executive (HSE) driven risk-management strategies, the risks that exist today and
impact on all our lives are both greater than ever and less visible. Examples are
terrorism attacks or fall-out from nuclear power generation, or infectious diseases such
as AIDS, or super-bugs resistant to antibiotics. In his argument for a risk society, Beck
emphasises structural changes in modernisation as the catalyst for a risk society. Today,
we appear to be less constrained by structure (e.g. there is more access to university, it
is acceptable to come out about sexual orientation and to have single sex marriages)
but more constrained by a private fear of the risks generated by this changing society
(e.g. Internet chat rooms, nuclear power, BSE). This has led, according to Furedi (1997),
to a culture of fear whereby we increasingly cocoon ourselves in layers of physical
and social protection, cutting ourselves off from the real world while simultaneously
relying on experts to guide us through the complexities. Even this dependence is
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suspect because of the sometimes conflicting views presented by the scientific community. Moreover, although real risks may not be any greater than in previous
generations, the communication of tragedy through a proliferation of media outlets may
make it appear so. This is certainly the case with adventure activities that are clearly
directly linked to risk.
Reflection
When two schoolgirls were swept to their deaths stream walking in Stainforth
Beck (Beedie and Bourne, 2005), media coverage amplified the profile of the
incident to imply that this type of tragedy could occur at any time to your
children. The adventure education lobbys counter argument that many lives are
lost through obesity-related diseases such as strokes, heart attacks and
diabetes resulting from inactive lifestyles (Bailie, 2004), but this was never
adequately offered as a balanced argument. So, we are left with the impression
that adventure activities are dangerous and that these risks should be avoided.
While the principle of a risk society defining our contemporary world is generally
accepted by sociologists, not all subscribe to the environmentalstructural argument presented by Beck. Giddens (1990, 1991), for example, through his theory of
structuration develops insights to the relationship between risk and identity that
emphasises reflexivity that is, as individuals we think consciously about our
social circumstances and develop patterns of behaviour that may avoid risk, but
equally might choose to engage with risk. More so than Beck, therefore, Giddens
emphasises the proactive potential of engaging risk in so far as we all have the capacity to shape the structuring dimensions of life through individual actions. Despite
most definitions of risk being the potential to lose something of value, it is possible
to engage with risk in ways that are positive that is, the potential to gain something
of value (e.g. intrinsic satisfaction, physical capital, status or an affirmation of
accumulated skill). It is in this spirit that adventure in society remains vibrant today,
although, as we shall see in the discussion of the three forms of adventure below,
the structureagency framework remains a useful way of understanding adventure
as a social phenomenon.
Types of risk and the management of risk

So, the control, reduction and potentially the elimination of risk is a central concern of
the modern world. We are in, however, a society full of complexity, ambivalence and
paradox: risk is a key example. In many ways we celebrate the idea of risk-taking as
famous adventurers and their deeds are promoted in the media. There is a human
fascination with adventure as the popularity of stories such as Touching the Void
demonstrate. A further example is the way images of adventure sports are used in
brochures to promote activity holidays, and, increasingly, as a positive attraction for
schools operating in a competitive education market. A central paradox exists, however:
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this is that risk-based activities must be safe, particularly when school children are
involved. It is this latter dimension of contemporary society that has led logically to the
circumstance whereby risk assessment that is, the prediction, calculation and quantification of risk has become an essential part of everyday life.
Risk assessment as promoted by the HSE favours a cognitive position based on
a set of assumptions that see the world governed by laws that, once understood, lead
to (complete) control of an environment. In this way of thinking, risk is objective and
can be identified and positioned in the context of these laws. An alternative position,
the one promoted through the sociological stance essential to this book, does exist
however, which sees the world as socially constructed. The basic assumption here
is that nothing is a risk or everything is a risk depending on the meaning that we
allocate to a particular circumstance, so that risk is subjective. The fact that both these
positions exist demonstrates the complexity of modern society. Licensing authorities
such as AALA have a difficult job to do because they must support and implement a
bureaucratic system of control (objective) within adventure activity providers based
upon a framework of risk assessment, but at the same time deal with an ongoing
manipulation of the idea of risk in society based on emotional (subjective) responses
to isolated news-worthy incidents such as Stainforth Beck. Nevertheless, it is difficult
to argue against a systematic organisation of adventure forms (such as adventure
education) based on assessment of risk the management of risk (and its implicit
agenda of control over the natural world) has always been a part of adventure in all
its forms.
Although risk can be both objective and subjective, all risk in adventure activities
must be managed. When adventure meets sport it is the structural aspects of sport
that contribute to managing adventure situations. Haddock (1993) identifies three
types of risk: absolute risk (the uppermost limit of risk inherent in a situation with no
safety controls), real risk (the amount of risk that exists at a point in time, that is,
absolute risk adjusted by safety controls) and perceived risk (an individuals subjective
assessment of the real risk present at any time). It has been suggested that peoples
perceptions of risk are influenced by a number of factors. These include: confidence
level, leader, equipment familiarity, venue, experience level, mood, degree of tiredness,
psychological make-up, awareness of limitations, knowledge of the situation and fear of
the unknown.
All adventure activities are managed to a greater or lesser extent. This is evidenced
by the ubiquity of RAMS (Haddock, 1993), referring to risk analysis and management
systems. These are both formal (bureaucracy) and informal (social pressure to conform)
so that today, for example, a round-the-world sailor would not be allowed to leave port
without adequate navigation and safety equipment on board. RAMS change real risk to
perceived risk by degrees but with the swing towards perception, the question is raised:
what is real adventure? The logical culmination of a slide into adventure control is a
mediated world (de Zengotita, 2005) where virtual adventure becomes more real than
real adventure. Such a circumstance is already identifiable with the technologies used
to create indoor climbing walls some of these (see the Living-Stone section of the
Foundry in Sheffield, for example) are as good as proper rock climbing. The problem
becomes how to acknowledge the point at which adventure is managed away from the
activity as Simmel recognised, the centre retains control.
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Hard and soft adventure

Attempts to categorise, and thus manage adventure activities have some variations,
but essentially all see hard adventure as physically demanding, dangerous and
exploratory. Examples would include high altitude mountaineering, cave diving, polar
journeys, sailing in the Southern Ocean, white water kayak descents and other activities
that generally require specialist competence, a substantial degree of independent
decision making, physical fitness and an ability to extend comfort zones. Hard
adventures are commonly undertaken in wild environments. Conversely soft adventure
is physical (i.e. active) but not demanding. It is controlled or managed, contained and
recreational. Examples would include nature trail-type walking, off-road cycling on waymarked paths, pony trekking, piste skiing and other activities that make light demands
on specialist skills, require average levels of fitness and generally operate in places that
are neither remote nor wild environments.
Activity 13.1
Martin Lysters book The strange adventures of the dangerous sports club
explains, among other things, the first British-based bungy jumping trials on
Bristol Suspension Bridge above the Avon Gorge. Using the book and/or other
sources, and drawing on ideas of risk management outlined in this chapter, explain
how bungy jumping has become popular and how it fits into the framework of
subjective and objective risk.
A model of risk management options

Whether as an individual or as part of a group, when we become active in adventure
pursuits we have to think through the extent and the type of risk that is integral to our
chosen activity. There are four possibilities:
retain the risk as the frequency and severity is low (e.g. valley walks, supervised
educational pond dipping trips);
reduce the risk by using strategies such as planning from guidebooks, weather
forecasts and training regimes (e.g. Duke of Edinburgh Award expeditions with
valley-based campsites and distance supervision of the walkers);
avoid the risk in situations when management will not work (e.g. avoiding
avalanche slopes, portaging difficult white water rapids, calling off a planned
caving expedition because rain is forecast);
transfer the risk by bringing in experts such as mountain guides or by buying a
package from a reputable adventure tourism company (e.g. climbing on an indoor
climbing wall).
Thus, it becomes clear that adventure, risk and the management of risk are interrelated
and form the foundational understanding for the three forms of adventure set out in
the introduction.
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The way that adventure is defined is continually being modified by the complex of
social, political and economic forces operating today so that any definitions are actually
works in progress because, in the social world, circumstances are rarely located in
clearly defined boundaries. It is important to understand that although education and
recreation may have some common ground (e.g. to take up rock climbing involves
learning about the sustainability of the climbing environment, the political circumstances of access and how to use climbing equipment), the ambition of each is subtly
different. Similarly, there is common ground between adventure tourism and adventure
sports (e.g. guided ski mountaineering in the Alps might operate alongside more
conventional skiing). Moreover, it is hard to argue that an adventure package tour that
takes people to other countries and involves enjoying alternative cultures has no
educational value. Nevertheless, for the purposes of understanding adventure in society
the it is useful to use the three categories suggested. Assuming the sociological
framework outlined above concerning a risk society, adventure can be seen as
developmental (adventure education), escape (adventure recreation), commercial
opportunity (adventure tourism) and competition (adventure sport). The following
introduces a few of the key issues in each of these areas.
Adventure education
The use of wild places for enlightenment, education and personal development has a
history that can be traced back to ancient times when ideas of rites of passage and
transformative points of growing up emerged across a range of cultures around the
world an example is the aboriginal walkabout. These cultural phenomena along with
documented innate drivers for exploration (variously known as the Ulysses factor) have
contributed to a sense of adventure in humans that has been linked with cultural
progress, power and domination and/or control of the known world and its extension to
the unknown world. Thus, a link between adventure, exploration and education has
always existed.
Colin Mortlock (1984) is arguably the foremost British adventure education theorist.
His theoretical ideas have two main elements. First, there is the notion of holistic
development. Mortlock argues that conventional education overemphasises cognitive
development at the expense of other areas of development. In a curriculum driven by
classroom-based learning, there is little room for physical development and almost no
room for emotional education. These latter two elements are balanced in his concept
of holistic development as he argues that adventure-based learning not only engages
the mind, but also requires physical action and, because of the risks inherent in the
activities, is likely to generate apprehension and thus emotional engagement there
are real consequences with adventure activities.
Second, Mortlock recognised that adventure is not fixed but varies from person to
person and from place to place, and even from time to time. His demonstration of this is
the model of stages of adventure. This model sets risk on one axis against competence
on the other. Mortlock recognises four stages of adventure and suggests that
adventure is the best stage for learning. Frontier adventure is the aspirational point for
maximum satisfaction as a persons comfort zone is stretched, but the person just about
remains in control of the circumstances.
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Mortlocks (1984) model of adventure participation

Stage 1 Play this is physical activity with no real or perceived risk. Fear is
absent.
Stage 2 Adventure this is activity that presents a challenge because there are
real consequences of getting things wrong (a capsize in a kayak, for example).
Here, competence is generally greater than the risks. Fear is buried.
Stage 3 Frontier adventure this level is finely balanced as the competence to
deal with the challenge is tested to its limits. This is the level of maximal arousal
where the intensity of the experience determines the positive outcomes. When
things go well, it is at this level where there is a propensity to experience flow.
Fear is just about kept under control.
Stage 4 Misadventure here the scales tip the wrong way and, as the risks are
greater than the participants ability to deal with them, the outcome is likely to be
physical and/or mental and emotional harm. Fear becomes panic.
The concentration required when active at ones frontier promotes the potential
for flow experiences (Foley et al., 2003). Flow is an experience that is engrossing, intrinsically rewarding and outside the parameters of worry and boredom
(Csikszentmihalyi and Csikszentmihalyi, 1999, p153). It is a transcendent state that
offers a holistic personalised experience that, although possible in all walks of life, has
most commonly been linked to adventure experiences.
The flow experience in adventure pursuits

Activity requires skill and a challenge in a demanding environment.
There is total immersion in the activity participants do not see themselves as
separate from what they are doing.
Actions develop with a clear goal orientation such as getting to the top.
Concentration is enhanced and disagreeable parts of ones life are put to one
side.
There is a feeling of control as skill and challenge are matched.
A sense of transcendentalism is emergent an awareness of detail and a
oneness with the immediate surroundings.
The sense of time is transformed living for the moment through complete
absorption.
Mortlock has made a strong case for adventure education through the application of
his model, with activities mostly pitched at level two (adventure) so that maximum
learning can happen because fear is buried. Nevertheless, there is still a tension between
self exploration in dangerous places while undertaking overtly risk-based activities
and the idea of adventure as uncertainty of outcome, a tension neatly captured by Tom
Price (1978, p651) in his essay Adventure by numbers:
The idea of adventure is now widely accepted in education, yet when one comes
to think of it, it is extraordinary that something that is by its very nature so
fortuitous and uncertain of outcome should be harnessed and brought into the
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service of educational programmes . . . What is so valuable and formative in an

adventure is the commitment it invariably calls for . . . The real core of the
business is the enrichment through exposure to experiences and through various
feasts of the senses . . . You cannot plan adventures. The best one can do is to let
them happen.
Thus, a significant result of using adventure as a form of education is that it requires
careful management of risk, perhaps to the elimination of uncertainty of outcome. This
fundamental tension is also evident in adventure recreation and adventure tourism.
Adventure recreation and adventure tourism

Adventure tourism suggests activity, engaging risk and exploration. Moreover, exploration suggests some kind of boundary or frontier. The proximity of a frontier generates
excitement in all sectors of tourism (defined by temporary spatial displacement) but is
particularly important to adventure tourists as in this sector there is an expectation of
considerable excitement. For example, Douglas (2007, p11) captures the appeal of the
towering Matterhorn to tourists in Zermatt in the Swiss Alps:
Most of us, however, are content to admire it from the town square or from a chair
lift. Climbing the Matterhorn is a risky enterprise requiring experience
and fitness, even if you hire a mountain guide. But if youre a fit walker and
want to experience some of the thrill of Alpine climbing without taking on the
Matterhorn, then Zermatt is an ideal place to have a go.
Here the excitement is generated by the brilliant world of dazzling snow and ice and
cobalt skies beyond and by feeling wonderfully invigorated by the cold sharp air
(Douglas, 2007, p11). It is this physical and sensory attraction that appeals to tourists
who aspire to climb mountains, but it is also the iconic status of certain mountains, a
circumstance sustained by discursive agendas drawing on dramatic exploratory events
such as the 1865 Matterhorn tragic success of the first ascent that add to this
excitement.
When adventure appears to offer an escape opportunity, the balance between
structure and agency is apparent. According to de Flores (1978), choosing to do
adventure activities is a game that we choose to play (or not). These games are bounded
by socially defined rules. With adventure as recreation we choose to operate through
our own decision making; when choosing to play is part of an adventure tourism
package, we are more likely to place our faith in the expertise of others. The model
provided by Brown (2000) provides a useful scale for discussing this idea. Browns model
moves from Passenger to Participant to Partner to Practitioner (Brown, 2000, p37) with
a commensurate change in the level of personal responsibility. The passenger is least
involved in the decision-making experience, the participant more so, while the partner
shares responsibility and the practitioner has the skills, knowledge and expertise to
operate more independently of a guide or instructor.
Applying this model to a package adventure tourism frame seems useful in locating
tourists at different levels of ability and influence. For example, thrill-seeking voyagers
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at the passenger end of the continuum demand experiences where it is expected that
providers carry all the responsibility (Brown, 2000, p37). The majority of adventure
tourists may arguably come from a position where they understand some of the risks in
the situation, they accept that they need to act responsibly, pay attention and put into
practice what they are told (Brown, 2000, p37). These people can be thought of as
participants.
One observable trend in adventure tourism that seems likely to increase is the
collapse of the difference between adventure guides and their clients. Increasingly, the
most dedicated adventure tourists with an accumulation of experience undertake tours
to participate in, for example, mountain biking, kayaking and off-piste skiing (with the
latter offering helicopter-facilitated expeditionary trips). Due to the long-term nature
of their involvement in the activity, time, money and physical investments are high with
an accordant coalescence with their guides characteristics. These individuals are
operating in the role of partner who recognises that they need to take responsibility for
assessing situations, understanding causes of problems and working-out in depth
solutions and strategies, however they know that the instructor is still there to support
them (Brown, 2000, p38).
This progressive skill attainment of participants is a rational response to the risks
that are integral to adventure activities. The very doing of adventure brings with it a
learning experience predicated on the acquisition of skill and experience that repositions the participant on the continuum. This process is supported by empirical
evidence. An ethnographic study of kayakers notes: the relationship between the
participants and the guides was an involved two-way relationship, with participants
both seeking and providing knowledge (Kane and Zink, 2004, p336). At the most
advanced end of the continuum the practitioner (Brown, 2000, p38), has a completely
independent ability to partake in adventure activities. Indeed, many such individuals
can be noted to be driving the demand for an increasing amount of skills courses in
various adventure activity disciplines. Information about provision from two premier
adventure tourism companies www.adventure.co.nz and www.jagged-globe.co.uk
shows a drift towards this kind of participant, so that, as with more conventional sports,
people who undertake adventure pursuits, either as recreation or as adventure tourism,
might be thought of as establishing an adventure-focused career.
Swarbrooke et al (2003) suggests that adventure tourists follow career paths in
that skill and experience lead to a demand for greater challenges. At Jagged Globe, for
example, the mountain ascents advertised are given a code that reflects a combination
of altitude, technical difficulty, remoteness and the physical stamina and skill required
to make the ascent. Having successfully completed a 2C, for example, a client may plan
for a 3A ascent for the following year. Literature from Jagged Globe suggests that 60
per cent of its clients return for further mountain ascents with them. Returning clients
are more experienced and are likely to have progressed across the scale of Browns
model. Mountaineering appears to make demands on its participants because of the
timescale of engagement in climbing and the seriousness of the high mountain
environment as hard adventure.
Climbing is not an homogenous sport but a series of related activities, each with
its own terrain, problems, satisfactions and rules (Tejada-Flores, 1978). These are a
series of games: the decision to start playing is just as gratuitous and unnecessary as
the decision to start a game of chess. The games are:
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The Bouldering Game;

The Crag Climbing Game;
The Continuous Rock-Climbing Game;
The Big Wall Game;
The Alpine Climbing Game;
The Super-Alpine Game;
The Expedition Game.
Ethical climbing then becomes the correct application of the socially derived rules.
Moving through the framework reduces the rules so that to climb Everest ladders are
permissible, but to use a ladder to climb a boulder is to miss the obvious point of
experiential challenge. The rules of a lower order game can be applied to a higher order
game but not vice-versa. This is an example of how social groups, in this case climbers,
can control and define the parameters for the way adventure activities operate. The
governing bodies of climbing may exist, but in much less formalised ways than those
of conventional sports.
Adventure sports
The boundaries between adventure as recreation and adventure as sport are not clearly
defined. Broadly stated, the differences relate to the purpose of the activity, and in
particular the degree of overt competition involved. Thus, many activities that might
be thought of as recreational (e.g. surfing) do have a competitive arm (as in surf
competitions see www.britsurf.co.uk). Competitive urges vary with age, gender and
situation so that even an activity demonstrably uncompetitive could become so (e.g. a
Duke of Edinburgh expedition). Many of these competitive urges may come from more
broadly based ideological positions (e.g. capitalism) and as such link more directly to
issues of social status and distinction. Given the prominence of sport in our society, it
would seem logical to suggest that adventure as sport is likely to grow. This is certainly
the case in the USA where Jarvie has shown (2006, p270) that, whereas mainstream
sports such as golf, ice hockey and soccer have shown modest growth (around 15 per
cent), other mainstream sports such as tennis and baseball have seen dramatic declines
in participation. Overall, the growth in mainstream sports is less than 2 per cent.
Alternative sports conversely have grown by 245 per cent. Many of these alternative
sports are what Wheaton (2004) calls lifestyle sports. Many of these are adventure
based and include kayaking, surfing, wakeboarding and indoor climbing. The biggest
growth is seen in sports such as mountain biking and snowboarding at 420 per cent and
238 per cent respectively. This percentage change shows a rise in individual adventure
sports and a decline in team-based sports.
Activity 13.2
Parkour is a relatively new adventure activity which featured in the starting
sequence to the James Bond film Casino Royale. Using web-based research, note
its main features and explain where it originated. You should then make an
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assessment of how popular it has become with whom, and finally note where
parkour takes place today. Summarise these points to contribute to a class-based
discussion on where to position parkour in the framework of adventure (education, recreation/tourism, sport) set out in this chapter.
Drawing on ideas first set out by the cultural theorist Raymond Williams, Wheaton
(2004) identifies the need to move beyond the simplistic categories of traditional/
mainstream sport set against alternative/lifestyle sport. In particular, she identifies
residual and emergent elements of sport culture: the suggestion here is that, rather
than assume two categories, sports that emerge as resistant to the dominant culture
(for example, snowboarding on ski slopes) actually contain residual evidence of
mainstream sport. For example, snowboarding may be organised in zones within
a ski-resort and may also develop racing categories, such as slalom, and rules not
dissimilar to conventional skiing. Snowboarding is now also an Olympic sport. So, to
think about adventure as sport requires incorporation of such ideas. When Wheaton
(2004) discusses lifestyle sports, she identifies a number of characteristics that
support Jarvies (2006) suggestion that participation in alternative sports is growing and that many of these alternatives are adventure based. Wheatons list of lifestyle sport characteristics is included in the following (Wheaton, 2004, pp1112).
Lifestyle sport characteristics

Historically, a recent phenomenon with many new sports such as wind surfing and
snowboarding, or of re-emerging residual sports such as surfing.
Grass-roots participation rather than spectating, as with the X-Games, for
example.
Sports based on the consumption of new objects such as boards and bikes.
Commitment in time and/or money to forms of collective expression, i.e. social
identity.
Participation as fun, hedonism, involvement, self-actualisation and flow, which is
resistant to institutionalisation, regulation and commercialisation.
Considerable emphasis on creative, aesthetic and performative expressions of
sport.
Predominantly white and middle class, but much more that just youth
participation. In some cases there is much less gender differentiation than in
traditional sports.
Predominantly individualistic in form.
Predominantly non-aggressive activities that do not involve bodily contact.
The places used are liminal zones, usually without created or fixed boundaries.
Rural and wild places (such as beaches, hills, moors and woodlands) are popular
because they feed a nostalgic desire for the simplicity and perceived authenticity
of the past. However, urban places do feature with important growth sports such
as parkour and the more specialist sports such as BASE jumping.
215
What this analysis tells us is twofold. First, that adventure as sport is a growing area
attracting academic investigation that combines data collection and theoretical
exploration. Second, that adventure sports are very broadly defined with a range from
adventure as sport (for example, indoor climbing competitions) through to adventure
as lifestyle choices (for example, being part of the social scene of surfing).
There are many examples of adventure as sport where mainstream sport frameworks of rules, regulations and competition are becoming evident. Some have existed
for many years; an example here would be kayaking, which has long been an Olympic
sport as flat water racing and as white water slalom since the Munich Olympics in 1972
(which marked this sports arrival on the world stage by building one of the first artificial
white water slalom courses). Others are much more recent, often because of residual
pressures from those prominent in that sport. Climbing is a good example of this
because historically the competition was understood to be internal (with the demons
in ones head) or with the challenges consistent with wild nature not with other
climbers! However, after many years of vociferous debate, a compromise was reached
whereby climbing competitions were allowed, but only on artificial walls, not natural
crags. This circumstance also allowed the standardisation of routes climbed in
competition and for variations in categories for males and females, children and adults,
bouldering (unroped climbing above large mats) and roped lead climbing (where the
roped climber must clip the rope into bolts placed at stages up the climb).
In both these examples, the sportspeople participating are usually following
conventional participation patterns that include regular training regimes, diet controls,
weight training and technique performance training just like conventional sports
people to a level consistent with their ability and aspirations. Adventure sports of this
kind enhance the profile of the star performers. An interesting development has been
the arrival of the adventure celebrity usually young, dynamic and very media literate,
as a quick search through relevant websites will evidence (try YouTube for video clips
of the professional climber Chris Sharma in action).
Activity 13.3
You need to research and present information about a well-known person from
adventure. Sources might include biographical and autobiographical accounts,
obituaries, magazine contributions, websites, documentation from administrative
perspectives such as editorials and club journals. For example, if you choose
Alison Hargreaves you might use her book A hard days summer and the biography
by Rose and Douglas Regions of the heart, and then refer to media accounts of
her achievements and Jim Ballards own book about his life with Alison. Depending
on who you select to research, you are likely to find both similarities and
differences between what might be thought of as the old generation (e.g. Chris
Bonington) and the new generation (e.g. Chris Sharma).
However, there are also examples of people who take up adventure sports as lifestyle
choices at the other end of the range set out above. For many of these people the sport
becomes a way of escaping the strictures of everyday life the attraction is that there
appear to be few rules, regulations and competition. In this respect, the sport choices we
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make from the huge array of possibilities around us today are important determinants
of our sense of identity: adventure becomes a consumer choice. The indications are that
the processes of individualisation evident in contemporary Western societies are suited
to adventure sports that are mostly about the person and the challenge rather than the
team confrontation of many mainstream sports.
Review
Developing Mortlocks argument that adventure is located in the person undertaking
the activity, it has been suggested that people will have different adventure thresholds,
and that different activities and different places will contribute to the difficulties of
standardising the adventure experience in relation to education, recreation, tourism or
sport. However, two important points can be made. First, following Beck, we do live in a
risk society, a paradoxical outcome of human desire to control the modern world.
Second, following Simmel, we strive for individuality in a world where multiple choices
about what we might do are omnipresent. If those choices involve adventure activities,
we feel the pull of the centre invisible but powerful forces that shape our behaviour
towards conformity, even as we strive for individuality. Such forces have been heavily
determined by commercial interests (such as determinants of fashion), suggesting that
capitalist ideologies continue to operate. So, adventure does still exist, and we are free
agents in the way we choose to engage with such activities, but we are also operating in
a social world that retains structural controls over our ambitions.
Modernity was built on exploration and the adventure of risk-taking entrepreneurs.
Adventure is a malleable term, but here the focus has been on adventure as sport that
is, physical activities that engage with risk. Most of the theoretical models explained
in this chapter represent a scale or a continuum. We can think of adventure sports as a
continuum. On the left side of such a continuum there are educational, recreational
and/or touristic forms where skills and personal qualities are developed and tested
across a range of activities and in different places. Additionally, these sports may be
to the right of a continuum where structuring dimensions of sport (such as competitions,
rules, regulations, league tables and training regimes) position the activities more
obviously in the realm of conventional sports. Many activities span the continuum with
positions to the left and right. Climbing is an example, found both as exploratory efforts
in wild places demanding survival skills as well as climbing skills (to the left), yet also
as indoor climbing competitions with referees and media coverage that encourages
sponsorship and other commercial activity (to the right).
Adventure sports therefore offer the potential for people to be sporty in ways that
are less structured and more individualised than in the mainstream sports explored
elsewhere in this book. In this respect adventure sports might be seen as emergent in
that they can challenge conventional ways of doing sport a good example is parkour, an
alternative interpretation of using an urban environment for physical enjoyment through
imaginative challenge. When sports choices merge with lifestyle choices, conventional
standards of socialisation and stratification may be redefined for example, new
adventure sports may have less gender differentiation than more traditional sports.
Surfing is not strictly speaking a new sport, but as a lifestyle choice it has attractions for
both genders as participants. However, many sports offer evidence of residual
217
characteristics that operate to transform this emergent energy into something much
closer to conventional sport formats. It is often the power of commercial and business interests that determine this resistance to change, and with the emergence of
professional adventurers the ongoing battlegrounds of structure versus agency and the
individual versus society evidenced elsewhere in this book remain.
Further study
Barnes, P and Sharp, R (2004) Outdoor education. Lyme Regis: Russell House Publishing.
Short chapters covering a full range of adventure education issues. Many of these, such
as gender, risk management and professionalism are useful as they cover issues
relevant to the understanding of sport and adventure.
Rinehart, R and Sydnor, S (eds) (2003) To the extreme: alternative sports inside and out.
Albany: SUNY Press.
A well-organised book that offers a collection of paired essays about a whole range of
adventure sports. The essays complement each other as one is written by an academic
and one is written by a practitioner from that sport. Sports covered include sky-dancing,
surfing, mountain biking, snowboarding and climbing.
Swarbrooke, J, Beard, C, Leckie, S, and Pomfret, G (2003) Adventure tourism: the new
frontier. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
This is a textbook about adventure tourism. It draws on a theoretical framework derived
from tourism studies rather than sociology, but it does have some interesting
observations about the relationship between adventure and tourism.
Macfarlane, R (2003) Mountains of the mind. London: Granta.
This very readable book is the best explanation of the social construction of mountains
I have read. The text mixes accessible theoretical ideas of social and cultural context
with accounts by the author of his own mountaineering experiences.
Wheaton, B (ed) (2004) Understanding lifestyle sports. London: Routledge.
Similar to the Rinehart and Sydnor book in that the adventure sport focus determines
the structure of the book (chapters on climbing, windsurfing, snowboarding, etc.). This
book, however, is more directly concerned with the relationship between doing these
sports and the resulting sense of social identity.
Browne, D (2004) Amped: how big air, big dollars and a new generation took sports to
the extreme. London: Bloomsbury.
Ethnographic data combines with informed argument to show that commercial interests
are powerfully deterministic of how the buzz sports (skate-boarding and snowboarding
in particular) have developed.
Curran, J (1999) High achiever: the life and times of Chris Bonington. London: Constable.
One of the great significant others in the sport of mountaineering and hes still alive
and active!
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MacArthur, E (2002) Taking on the world. London: Penguin.

At one level this book tells the story of MacArthurs race to break the solo round-theworld sailing record and it is a gripping account, especially the crossing of the
Southern Ocean. The book offers many additional insights if one applies a sociological
lens: particularly useful are themes of risk management, the influence of technology
and the modernist desire to set and break records. MacArthur is a sailing professional,
dependent on sponsorship to supply her boats, but symbolically representative of a
female achieving fame in an adventure setting largely dominated by men. Lastly, the
book suggests that our oceans may well constitute the last great wilderness on our
planet that adventurers (male or female) who journey in such places can still be hailed
as heroes or heroines suggests that residual forms of adventure still have considerable
popular appeal.
Useful websites
www.adventure.co.nz
www.jagged-globe.co.uk
www.britsurf.co.uk
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229
Index
A
Active People Survey, Sport England 63
Adam, J 203
adaptation, societies 78
Adorno, Theodor 131, 132
adventure 2025, 21719
recreation and tourism 204, 205, 21214
risk 203, 2067, 20712
sociological theories 2057
sports 204, 21417
advertising 135, 142, 1445
and the body 195, 197
media audiences 162
amateurism 31, 35, 38, 40, 87
Anderson, B 167
Appadurai, Arjun 174
Arnold, Thomas 85
assimilation 112
Association of National Olympic Committees
(ANOC) 69
Athens, 1906 Intercalated Games 289
athletes, elite 66
attractiveness 192
audiences, media 1613
B
Barthes, Roland 1001
basketball, and the body 189
Baudrillard, Jean 133, 134
BBC 1412
Sports Personality of the Year 152
Beck, Ulrich 205, 206
Beckham, David 179
Birrell, Susan 103, 108
Blake, Andrew 22
Blankers-Koen, Fanny 34
bodies 1834, 199201
and consumption 1959
and gender 106, 1903, 193, 194
and power 1934
and social class 18890
body, society as 456
230
Booth, D 789
Bosman ruling, football 140
Bourdieu, Pierre 98, 131, 1889, 190
boxing 154, 1923
brand names, sportswear 10
Branded Sport Group 144
British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC) 192
British Broadcasting Corporation see BBC
British Empire 856
British Olympic Association (BOA) 29, 31,
69
Brittain, I 120
Brohm, Jean-Marie 96, 97
Brown, H 21213
BSkyB 1434
Bundage, Avery 33
bureaucracy 224, 31, 79
Burstyn, V 142
C
calculating bodies 1968
capitalism 1617, 57, 967, 110, 1312, 164,
170, 176
capitalist (class) ideology 99100
Castells, Manuel 56, 166, 177
celebrities 1789, 216
Central Council for Physical Training and
Recreation (CCPR) 65
Clarendon, Earl of 85
Clarendon Commission 57
climbing 212, 21314, 216
coaching role 1878
Coakley, Jay 81, 90
codification 32, 578
Coe, Lord Sebastian 36
commodification 1312
common-sense views 12
Communism 97
competition 7981
adventure sports 214, 216
and globalisation 176
conflict theory 467
see also Marxism
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Index
consumption 16, 18, 12930, 1346, 1467
and the body 1959
economic importance of sport 13641
sociological theory 1304
see also globalisation; media
co-operation 7981
corruption 177
Couch, Jane 1923
cricket 14, 57
Crimean War (185356) 60
critical theory 4950
cultural diversity 11012
see also race and ethnicity
cultural imperialism 173
Cultural Olympiad 2012, London 13940
culture 11, 79
consumer 18
and globalisation 1678, 1726
and hegemony 102
and Olympic Games 2931, 35
cycle of production, media 1567
D
de Coubertin, Pierre 28, 38, 39, 107
de Flores, L 212
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
(DCMS) 624, 137
Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL)
67
Desborough, Lord 29
Diem, Carl 39
disability 36, 11921, 123, 125, 197
Paralympic Games 36, 40, 120, 1212, 13940
Disability Discrimination Act (1996) 120
discourse 100, 168, 192
diversity see cultural diversity
division of labour 21
Douglas, E 212
drug use 40, 97
E
economic regeneration 61
economics
importance of sport 13641
sportswear 10
Edstrom, Sigfrid 33
education
adventure 204, 205, 210
elementary 87
hidden curriculum 44
see also physical education (PE)
Education Acts (1944, 1981) 121
employment, sport-related 138
English Federation of Disability Sports (EFDS)
122
equality of opportunity 201
see also disability; gender; race and ethnicity;
social class
equestrian sports 57, 93
ethnicity see race and ethnicity
Euro 2008 161
European Union, professional sport 140

events
dramatising 1589
economic impact 13840
exercise 1959
see also health; physical education (PE)
exploration 203
F
family influence 812
Fdration Internationale de Football
Association (FIFA) 4
Fdration Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) 153
femininity 192
see also gender; women
feminist theory 501, 1037, 109
finance, globalisation 175
fitness industry 1989
flow experiences, adventure 21112
football 4, 11, 57
Bosman ruling 140
and consumption 136
corruption 177
globalisation 1745
and the media 1434, 152, 1534, 155, 1589,
161, 175
Foucault, Michel 107, 193, 198
functionalist theory 456, 789, 80
and social class 956
Furedi, Frank 206
G
gambling 137
Gellner, Ernest 1920
gender 20, 34, 36, 45, 103, 109
and advertising 142
and the body 106, 1903, 193, 194
and consumption 133
feminist theories 501, 1037, 109
and the media 14950, 157, 15960, 162
and power 1078
and professional sport 141
socialisation 82, 84, 879
Germany, 1972 Olympics, Munich 39
Giddens, Anthony 9, 12, 13, 16, 19, 50, 78, 103, 111,
165, 166, 168, 170, 185, 205, 207
gigantism 3940
globalisation 18, 70, 1647, 17980
and culture 1678, 1726
media 1423, 166, 167, 1756
network society 1778
power of celebrity 1789
glocalisation 1734
goal attainment, societies 78, 79
Goffman, Erving 48
Goldlust, John 135
golf 57
governance 612, 69
Department for Culture, Media and Sport
(DCMS) 624, 137
231
Index
global system 16970
International Federations (IFs) 689
local government 645
quangos 59, 657
government 17
policy 5961
see also governance
Gramsci, Antonio 101, 102
Greece, Olympics 289, 38, 39
Grey-Thompson, Tanni 1201, 122
group membership 989
Guttmann, Allen 19, 20, 21, 22
Guttmann, Sir Ludwig 40, 121
H
habitus concept 18890
Haddock, C 208
Halswelle, Lt Wyndham 30
Hargreaves, Jennifer 103, 195
Hargreaves, John 168, 173
Hatton, Ricky 154
health 60, 623, 187
and lifestyle 195
obesity 1856, 194
Health and Safety Executive (HSE) 206, 208
hegemony 1012
and cultural studies 102
male 1037
Held, D 168
heterosexuality 103, 105
hidden curriculum 44
Hoberman, John 22, 176
Holmes, Dame Kelly 191
homophobia 105
Horkheimer, Max 131, 132
Horne, John 131, 133
horse racing 57, 93
Houlihan, Barrie 43
Howe, Jeff 49
Howell, J 195
hunting 59
I
identity
ethnic 11718
national 10, 1718
sub-cultures 48
ideologies 49, 99
capitalist (class) 99100
and globalisation 176
mythic 1001
neo-Marxist 101
imagination, sociological 12
imagined communities 167
impairment 119
imperialism, Western 173
industrialisation 16
inequality see disability; gender; race and
ethnicity; social class
institutional racism 115
integration 78, 79, 112
232
interactionist theory 478

Intercalated Games 1906, Athens 289
international non-governmental organisations
(INGOs) 16970
International Olympic Committee (IOC) 201,
234, 28, 301, 33, 39, 40, 678, 689, 100
International Paralympic Committee (IPC) 40
ITV 142
J
Jagged Globe 213
Jarvie, Grant 115, 167, 1778, 189, 214
Jordan, Michael 189
journalists 1578
K
kayaking 213, 216
Keogh, V 11819
Khan, Amir 118
KirchMedia, Germany 175
L
leisure 132
see also adventure
lifestyle 1956
lifestyle sports 21416
local government 64
London
1908 Olympics 2833
1948 Olympics 335
2012 Olympics 3, 4, 234, 358, 62, 13940
Loy, John 789
Luschen, G 78
M
MacArthur, Ellen 191, 219
Machiavelli, Niccol 8
Maclaren, Archibald 60
Maguire, Jennifer Smith 1967, 198
Maguire, Joseph 168
marathon running 31, 49
Marcuse, Herbert 131
Marx, Karl 21, 56, 96
Marxism (conflict theory) 467, 49, 131
and ideology 101
and social class 967, 989
masculinity 192
see also gender
Mason, Tony 141
mass consumption 16
see also consumption
mass media 18
see also media
Mayweather, Floyd 154
media 18, 106, 116, 141, 147, 14850, 163, 184
audience interpretation 1613
globalisation 1423, 166, 167, 1756
newspapers 1345, 155, 1578, 15960
power of celebrity 1789
satellite broadcasting 1424
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4
5
6
7
8
9
40
1
2
3
4
5
6
711
Index
sports production 1508
television 1413, 1512, 1534
textual analysis 15861
medical model/gaze 120, 187, 191
Miles, S 43, 44
military preparedness 60
Mills, C Wright 12
modernity 1519, 28
and the body 187
and consumption 1301
and cultural diversity 11012
and gender 1078
institutional characteristics 170
and organisational structure 1924
Mortlock, Colin 21011
motivating bodies 1989
mountaineering 212, 21314
multiculturalism 11213
Munich, 1972 Olympics 39
muscular Christianity 57, 60, 834, 188
N
national identity 10, 1718
see also Olympic Games
National Olympic Committees (NOCs) 689
nationalism 60, 70, 161
naturenurture debate 74
Nazism 33
neo-Marxism see Marxism
network society 56, 1778
Newbolt, Thomas, Vitai Lampada 86
newspapers 1345
football coverage 155
journalism 1578
and womens sport 15960
Nike 132, 1712
Northern Ireland 67, 69
O
obesity 1856, 194
Olympic Games 34, 201, 278, 412, 967, 100,
161
1906 intercalated Games, Athens 289
1908 London 2833
1948 London 335
1972 Munich 39
2012 London 3, 4, 234, 358, 62, 13940
ancient Games, Greece 38, 39
Paralympics 36, 40, 120, 1212, 13940
venues 32
Olympic Games Impact Study 139
Olympism 23, 39
organisation of sport 1924, 557, 702
codification 32, 578
historical landmarks 5861
see also bureaucracy; governance
P
Paralympic Games 36, 40, 120, 1212, 13940
parkour 21415
Parsons, Talcott 78, 95

patriarchy 103
pattern maintenance, societies 78
pay-per-view television 154
Penny Brookes, Dr William 39
physical education (PE) 73, 746, 824,
8991
and disability 121
public schools 57, 60, 847
and women 879
Physical Education National Curriculum
(PENC) 121
Pietri, Dorando 31
politics 34, 70
and the Olympic Games 37, 39
and power 567
power 567, 97, 98, 99, 111, 117
and the body 1934
and gender 1078
hegemony 1012, 1037
and ideology 99
press see newspapers
Price, Tom 21112
professional sport 1401
see also amateurism
public schools 57, 60, 847
Q
quangos 59, 657
R
race and ethnicity 20, 11213, 114, 11619,
1235
economic discrimination 1401
statistics 113
Race Relations (Amendment) Act (2000)
118
racism 115, 119
Radcliffe, Paula 191
rationalisation 212
see also codification
recreation, adventure 204, 205, 21214
Reebok 132
Regional Sports Boards (RSBs) 65
reification 115
religion 1920
Riffenburgh, B 203
Right to Roam legislation 59
risk, adventure 203, 2067, 20712
risk analysis and management systems
(RAMS) 208
risk society 206
Robertson, R 1701
Ronaldo, Cristiano 1589
Rooney, Wayne 14950, 1589
Rose, Ralph 29
Rowe, David 136
rowing, Bedford 97
Royal Commission on Public Schools (1864) 85
rugby 152, 154
233
Index
S
satellite broadcasting 1424
schools 75
see also physical education (PE)
science and technology 17, 175
Scotland 667
secularisation 1920
Setanta, Ireland 143
sex/sexuality 103, 192
see also gender
show jumping 93
Simmel, Georg 131, 2056
skateboarding 49
Sky 1434
Smart, B 178
snowboarding 215
social class 20, 57, 59, 60, 93, 945, 109
and the body 18890
and consumption 131, 133
theoretical perspectives 95102
women 88
social control 567
social institutions 75
social mobility 956
social reproduction 14
social stratification 17, 45, 84, 87, 924, 108, 109
see also disability; gender; race and ethnicity;
social class
social structures 45
socialisation 45, 73, 746
competition and co-operation 7981
entering sport 812
physical education (PE) 8291
and sociological theory 7781
social-norms 756
societies 13, 456, 78
sociological theory 1215, 246, 435, 512
adventure 2057
the body 1858
conflict 467 (see also Marxism)
consumption 1304
critical 4950
feminist 501, 1037, 109
functionalist 456, 789, 80, 956
globalisation 16872
interactionist 478
race and ethnicity 11415
socialisation 7781
South America, football 1745
special educational needs (SEN) 121
specialisation of roles 21
spectator sport, growth of 135
spectators 139
media audiences 1613
sponsorship 40
Sport England 63, 66
Sport for All 100
Sport Industry Research Centre 1389
Sport Northern Ireland (SportNI) 67
Sport Scotland 667
Sport 21 66
234
Sports Council 59
Sports Council for Wales 67
Sports Personality of the Year 152
sportswear 50, 153, 196
as symbolic 911
state see government
Stoddart, Brian 176
Stoke Mandeville Games 1212
Storey, J 99
sub-cultures 48
Sugden, John 22, 69, 945, 95, 176, 177
Sutton Report on Social Mobility (2007)
956
Swarbrooke, J 213
T
technologies 17, 175
television 1413, 1512, 1534
textual analysis, mediated sport 15861
theory see sociological theory
Tomlinson, Alan 22, 945, 95
tourism, adventure 204, 205, 21214
training 1878
transnational corporations (TNCs) 170
Tweddle, Beth 14950
U
UK Sport 645, 119
United States 35, 143, 214
and 1908 Olympics, London 2931
economic impact of race 1401
media and consumption 141, 142, 143
urbanisation 17
V
Veblen, Thorstein 131
Victorian era 579, 837, 1345, 188
women 878
violence, institutionalised control 17
Vitai Lampada (Newbolt) 86
volleyball 153
W
Wales 66
Wallerstein, I 170
Weber, Max 21, 98
Whannel, Garry 142
Wheaton, Belinda 21415
Williams, Raymond 101, 215
women
Olympic Games 40
physical education 879
see also gender
Woods, Tiger 155
World Class Events Programme 62, 1389
World Cup (football), media 1589, 175
World Cup (rugby) 2007 154
world-system theory 170
Z
Zatopek, Emile 34, 35
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1
2
3
4
511
6
7
8
9
20
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
30
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
40
1
2
3
4
5
6
711

Sport Sociology

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What topics are covered in the book?

What topics are covered in the book?

Sport Sociology

Active Learning in Sport titles in the series

ISBN-13 978 1 84445 165 4

First published in 2008 by Learning Matters Ltd

Part 1 On your marks: understanding sport and modern society

1 An introduction to sport sociology

2 Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

4 Introduction to sociological theories of sport in modern society

5 Sports organisation and governance

6 Sport, physical education and socialisation

7 Class and gender differentiation in sport

8 Sport and diversity: issues of race, ethnicity and disability

Part 3 Go: analysing contemporary issues and themes the changing

10 Sport and the media

11 Sport in a global world

Part 4 New games: emergent and transformative forms of sport?

12 Sport and the body

13 Sport and adventure

An introduction to sport sociology

1 / An introduction to sport sociology

1 / An introduction to sport sociology

Through a detailed analysis of sporting examples, to develop your awareness and

1 / An introduction to sport sociology

To develop your critical understanding of the various sociological theories and

1 / An introduction to sport sociology

Sport and modernity: an introduction

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

Thinking about sport in everyday life

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

Activity 2.1 continued

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

Activity 2.1 continued

Understanding the social and cultural production of sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

Sociology: some key terms

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

As our initial discussion demonstrates, the language used by sociologists to describe

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

Sport and the formation and structure of modern society

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

the industrialised world, so long as it be recognised that industrialism is not its

From a sociological perspective, industrialisation refers to the process whereby

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

of the London Olympiads, sport, especially in terms of competitions between

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

The organisational structure of modern sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

The IOC and the philosophy of Olympism

Do the IOCs or London 2012s discussions of the concept of Olympism

2 / Sport and modernity: an introduction to the sociology of sport

Activity 2.3 continued