Ingham, Alan G. “The Sportification Process: A Biographical Analysis Framed by the Work of Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Freud.” in R. Giulianotti (ed.), Sport and Modern Social Theorists, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. pp. 11-32.
Hargreaves, J. “The body, sport and power relations.” In J. Horne, D. Jary, & A Tomlinson (Eds.), Sport, Leisure and Social Relations. London: Routledge Kegan Paul, 1987. pp. 139-159
King, Samantha and Mary G. McDonlad. “(Post)Identity and Sporting Cultures: An Introduction and Overview,” in Sociology of Sport Journal, 24 (1). pp. 1-19.
King and McDonald’s intro to the 2007 special symposium issue for the Sociology of Sport Journal grew out of a 2004 NASSS conference panel that addressed the topic of (post)identity and sporting cultures because questions of identity and inequality remained at the center of debates in social theory since the founding of NASSS 25 years earlier. The authors outline three basic theoretical and methodological approaches to research within the sociology of sport: an “identity politics” framework that seeks to discern injustices done through sport to particular groups based on their identities; a Marxist or Neo-Marxist approach; and a hybrid approach that seeks to combine the two previous approaches. Within each approach are post-modernists who question the notion of a self-identical sporting subject as well as modernists who see agency and resistance possibilities in a politicized identity. Their own article attempts to identify and examine some key moments in the identity debate through the lens of feminist theory while focusing on sporting culture.
King and McDonald identify that feminists examined identity and inequality through a Marxist lens, investigating the sexual division of labour. Standpoint epistemology proposed to wed Marxism to feminism by understanding how women are constructed as subordinate, but also how male sport structures operate to keep them that way. Feminist thinkers were also influenced by the politics of antiracism and identity that championed personal experience. This led to intersectional analysis that investigated how subjectivities are produced within intersecting matrices of domination and subordination, inclusion and exclusion, etc. The authors show the small influence of psychoanalysis on feminist conceptions of sport before moving on to queer theory. Queer theory was heavily influenced by Foucault who thought that power should be understood as the mechanism that produces identities, both normal and deviant.
In their short concluding section King and McDonald state that their intention was not to declare a winner in the debate on the place of identity within feminist theory. But, for our own fun, can we declare any winners? I can’t help but think that issues surrounding identity or (post)identity serve only to confuse the main problem of capitalism – that it functions by constructing and re-inforcing inequalities. I think capitalism is instrumental in creating identities. Marx showed us that 150 years ago and perhaps we have muddied the waters ever since. Feminist theory, whether influenced by queer theory (or vice versa), insectionality, critical race theory, etc., has helped us understand identity, but I still struggle to understand the connection between identity politics and the inequalities within capitalism. I believe that everything is reducible to money and material, and creating divisions in society based on identity just gives those with money and material (capital) the ability to hang on to that capital based on racism, sexism, etc. I would love to hear what others think about this.
Hargreaves starts with a familiar problem to this class so far, the dualism of mind and body that has served to eliminate the body from the social sciences. He discusses the body’s relationship to power in the modern era to show that the dominant form of control is an expansive system of self discipline and surveillance based on stimulation and satisfaction of desire that is clearly identifiable in the way the body is deployed in consumer culture. Hargreaves seeks to show how the body, deployed in sporting activity and physical recreation, relates to this transformation towards a consumer culture. He traces the historical connections between the body, sport and power to show a developing tension between how the body was deployed in a repressive disciplinary mode epitomized by athleticism, the philanthropic strategy, and respectable sport activity on the one hand, and the hedonistic, disorderly deployment of the body epitomized by disreputable sports and sport as commercialized entertainment on the other. According to Hargreaves, this tension was resolved in favour of deploying the body in sport as a means of individual expression. Consumer culture and sport have a rosy relationship because they are both concerned with using the body in the constitution of the normal individual.
Hargreaves states that “the image of the body in sport does not coincide in every respect with those circulating in consumer culture.” (p. 152) He goes on to add that sports culture is enabled to articulate with consumer culture precisely because as an “autonomous cultural formation” it can make a unique contribution to cultural production in general. Is categorizing sports culture as “autonomous” problematic? Does it not assume that all sport can be seen as “purely sport” and separate from all other forms of cultural production? Is it? I think that sport is connected to so many other areas of culture and studying it as something separate, something that exists on its own, is problematic.
Ingham engages in a “synthetic exercise” in which he takes one key theme from Marx (valorization), Weber (rationalization), Durkheim (collective representation), and Freud (repression) to explain the sportification of play and agonal games as they intersect our biographies. (Not 100% sure what he means by “biographies” here) According to Ingham, this exercise will help us understand social relations in the contemporary institution of sport. The institution of sport offers particular resolutions to the contradictory relations between our selves and the broader social order. After initially disliking this article because I did not understand what he was really trying to do as I read, I came to enjoy it by the end of the reading (especially the Durkheim section in relation to my own research and writing). In the conclusion he indicates that he sought to demonstrate that these classic social theorists have gone unsurpassed in theorizing social development. I think he hits the nail on the head here, sort of. But what do we think about his insistence on reading the classics and using them in your own work? I tend to think that going back to these theorist’s original texts and thinking that the answers somehow lie in their work is somewhat dangerous. Freud, Marx, Durkheim, etc, were all people just like everyone else, as opposed to the gods that Ingham tends to say that they were. I see no harm in reading updated versions of their work by modern theorists. I’m curious to know what others think of his idea on that.
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Sorry about the lack of spaces between paragraphs. I thought I did it properly, but I guess I didn't. Hopefully it's not too hard to read as it is because I couldn't edit the post once I had submitted it. Sorry again.
As I walk through this simulacrum of campus transformed into an apathetic police state on home coming Saturday I find myself wondering about the ‘rules of the game.’ As vocal as I have made my displeasure at the thought of writing anything about sport, I find that when confronted with the option of writing about sport or basking it’s grotesque cultural influence I will take a cup of tea and my laptop any day. This is now my fifth year at Queen’s and will be my fifth year avoiding all Homecoming festivities. I am uncertain if their overlap of these readings with Homecoming weekend was coincidental or strategic, but regardless I am sure that this weekend Queen’s campus is about play, games, and sport.
In many ways this weekend is about play. It is self-indulgent. It is narcissistic. It demonstrates simultaneously ignorance and disregard for any of the rules of ‘propriety.’ At the same time there are, as within games, negotiated rules that come to light through social interaction. I do not need to find literature espousing that I—a queer, a person who is female shaped, and a feminist—cannot go to Aberdeen to know that I am unwelcomed there. It is through my past interactions walking by Aberdeen (having someone yell ‘dyke’ at me) that I am hyperaware that this space is not catering to me (though I don’t presume to know who exactly it is catering to). Lastly, with my limited knowledge about the particular festivities involved I also know that this weekend is about sport, that it is about football, equipped with its much more specific rules and regulations that are widely available to read if anyone is curious. That people exchange money for tickets that they conflate with school spirit.
I guess I am wondering how Homecoming weekend complicates Ingham’s article that left me with the impression that play, game, and sport are linearly transitional, that they are mutually exclusive. I think also that Homecoming weekend also powerfully demonstrates that there are certain things that can be played with: legal drinking age, the criminalization of marijuana, public intoxication, academic deadlines/priorities, and more. It also makes it clear, from my experience that certain things are sacred and ‘serious’ and not to be taken lightly or played with: such as the gendered performance of females as sexually available to males, and the love between a man and a woman. There are of course competing discourses even within this weekend the Education on Queer Issues Project is currently hosting an alternative to Aberdeen queer dance party/concert at the grad club as I write this. I guess what I am asking is how do we read homecoming at Queen’s in terms of play, game, and sport?
I really enjoyed King and McDonald’s article and found their summaries of the different theoretical lenses that we might look through when discussing (post)identity and sporting cultures to be incredibly helpful in suggesting where some of my own viewpoints and ideas stem from.
I don’t quite know how I would go about trying to answer Marty’s question as to who a “winner” might be in the debate on the place of identity within feminist theory. There were a couple of ideas I found particularly interesting, but I’m not sure whether I could make a strong enough argument to make any “victorious”.
I really liked the intersectionality example of Gloria Anzaldùas work suggesting that identities are “fluid, multifaceted, and contradictory” (p.9) and found that theme (of fluidity or identity evolving on a continuum) to be recurring in the many different examples, including the psychoanalytic work of Jagose (p.10) who suggested that identity is a “process rather than a property”. I’m not entirely sure how other feminist theories might deal with this idea though, and still haven’t quite decided what I think it means in terms of identity theory. I feel that we can’t look at identity without realizing the importance of its fluidity, yet at the same time we run the risk of reducing it to this fluidity.
This fluidity of identity reminded me of Foucault’s views on the “fluidity” of power – how it is everywhere and nowhere. I agree with Marty on capitalisms importance in creating identities, and feel that this fluidity is highly visible in capitalisms consumer-sport nation. The marketing ploys surrounding sport have changed over time (and across culture) as the economic status of the areas associated with the sports has changed in order to allow this ‘consuming’ to continue. It really is all about money and material, and we could see that very well with Kats example of this past weekend.
Kingston was flooded with alumni, students, friends, etc who bought football tickets, costumes, hot dogs from the venders that lined every corner within a 1 mile radius of campus, and a ridiculous amount of alcohol. This consumer culture was not only catered to, but encouraged, and discourse around homecoming promoted consumption through associating the weekend with one of play, games and sport.
This culture does not extend an invitation to everyone however. As Hargreaves showed, mid-nineteenth century Britain used sport to separate individuals not only by class, but by gender – to maintain the dominance of men over women (p.144). Homecoming weekend seems to be all about separating and segregating as well. Men might engage in “games” of “chugging” off of rooftop balconies in order to “prove” their masculinity while women are encouraged to look on and cheer, and to enjoy being objects of desire. Like Kat said, there’s a very strong code of “rules” amongst these festivities that dictates who should (and therefore should not) be allowed to participate. Like Freund’s idea of the social constructionism of the “weak” woman’s body earlier in the semester, Homecoming weekend is a great example of the implications that this social constructionism has on what is deemed ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’, and therefore accepted/ desired or rejected/ unwanted. I find it hard to read Homecoming at Queen’s without thinking about this capitalist consumerism, and about consequences of the social construction of “normal” and “abnormal” bodies – not only bodies that sport, but bodies that are “allowed” to play. I can’t help but wonder how, or why, these rules are being maintained?
I found this week’s readings very relevant to my research project. The discussions surrounding the body and identity, consumerism, and sport speak to my interests of analyzing the exercise (cult)ure. More specifically, “why do we do what we do?” According to Ingram, it is ‘because sometimes our very identities are dependent on doing the socially acceptable if we are to be validated, be seen as functional and, hopefully, indispensible” (p.24).
Hargreaves sees the body as an emblem of society and body image as the foundation of personal identity. The emergence of the fit body as the ideal has fuelled a myriad of consumer goods related to the attainment of the ideal body. The current ideal body is also bound up in medical and obesity discourse which has produced a moral panic that according to Hargreaves enables laws and order to thrive. “Consumer culture discourses/practices structures and satisfies individual desire so that individuals enthusiastically discipline themselves”(p. 141). For me, this is where the idea of identity comes in; individuals enthusiastically discipline themselves because of the social status, character inferences and validation accorded to the pursuit of the ideal fit body. Jagoose’s conceptualization of identity makes the most sense in my exercise cult analysis, that is, that identity in psychoanalytical terms is ‘an effect of identification with and against others’(p. 10). This concept invokes the level of competition and judgement that I feel is inherent in the exercise cult.
I thought about Kat’s analysis of homecoming through the play, games and sport trajectory set out by Ingram. I kept thinking about how the Aberdeen Street party might be seen as sport. For example, Ingram states that sport requires the creation of a consumer market. This reminds me how many of the students that are present in the homecoming festivities are in fact not directly tied to Queens. A consumer market has been created; media coverage and partakers of the event extend beyond the Kingston community. Perhaps homecoming on the linear continuum has reached the status of sport.
I think viewing sport as autonomous is way off the mark. It is not independent of anything, government regulation, politics, consumerism, media, morality. Especially not other forms of cultural production, I believe it is sport (not fashion) that determines the current ideal body which has spawned many forms of cultural production (Lululemon, pilates, personal training, bootcamps, women only fitness centres and programs).
Lastly, Like Marty, I am also a Marxist, and I could feel the pulse of Marxism beating strong in all the readings this week.
Thanks largely to Kat’s post, she got me thinking of this week’s readings in an alternate way much closer to home; specifically the linear transitional nature of play, games and sport vis-à-vis the hyperbolic nature of Queen’s homecoming.
Thinking about Kat’s comment of who homecoming is catering to exactly, as well as the fluidity of identities and the nature of hypermasculinity in sport, I think immediately to a personal anecdote from this past Saturday night.
As my friends and I were walking past Aberdeen st. (all of us athletes, not drinking or partaking in the festivities as we had a competition the next morning), I was pushed off the sidewalk unexpectedly by a small unassuming boy half our size. Unsure of what happened or why (5’6 guys don’t usually randomly push 6’4 guys off the sidewalk) a posse of young girls ran up behind him apologizing to us, citing his extreme intoxication as an excuse for that behaviour. She must have assumed that the worst was going to come to him and they were desperately rationalizing his behaviour as “extra homecoming drunk, they kind you’re gonna be later tonight”, something my friends were citing “liquid courage” as the reason for his behaviour.
Little did this girl know we were sober and intended to remain that way, and that she was partly answering Kat’s question of who or what is homecoming is catering to? The term “liquid courage” is thrown around a lot at homecoming and speaks volumes as to the nature of the yearly event. In a psychoanalytic sense it could be channeling repressed desires where the environment of a mob mentality street party of 5’000 provides and excuse for the spontaneous changing of identities for a single weekend.
We could see the transitional nature of how play, games and sport as described by Ingham unfold on Aberdeen st. each year. Play can been seen in the constant self interested, narcissistic casual drinking that happens on that street all year long. The drinking can be taken to another level with the festivities that take place in a more mutual nature such as the casual flipcup tournaments and other social gatherings. But as Marty spoke to earlier, the heightened sense of consumerism and capitalism that is necessarily tied to sport is seen on a grand level once a year.
There is full media coverage each year (with the addition of police video surveillance this year), food vendors on each corner, intense amounts of alcohol and hypermasculine, over competitive nature in every corner of the street. Everyone is competing for the longest kegstands, the most beer chugged, various feats of strength, and fist fights, many of whom have adopted this identity for this weekend alone. Homecoming weekend is the only time I’ve seen bloody fist fights between girls on the street, complete with the language and air of all things hypermasculine in violent sport.
Returning to my earlier anecdote, I think this is who homecoming is catering to: anyone of any personality, size or gender who want to take on a different identity for a night and expects that everyone else is doing the same. Small boys randomly pushing boys twice their size off the sidewalk (something they’d likely never do sober), girls trying to out chug the boys with the balcony beerbong, etc. Taking something that has usually remained on the play level to the arena of sport, with the expectation of there being no consequences for their actions, because everyone else will be “extra homecoming drunk” too.
Thanks again everyone for your insights and comments. Perhaps our challenge for tomorrow is to theorize homecoming from a variety of perspectives: identitarian, (neo)Marxist, psychoanalytic, Weberian, Dukheimian, and poststructuralist. We could see where each approach leads us, what social relations it allows us to see and what relations it obscures. If I understand correctly, Marty and Karima view the economy as the primary and determinant shaper of social life. Kat, Nat, and Andrew imply, but don't explicitly state, a different perspective. The economy is key for them, but perhaps not primary and determining in every instance. This conversation will provide a nice segue from our discussion last week about Foucault's relationship to Marxism.
Nat questions how rules are maintained. I think the answer to this will depend largely on what theoretical viewpoints we subscribe to. In some regards, this is the million dollar question. We will try to answer it.
Kat, I didn't plan the readings to coincide with homecoming, it just worked out that way. I was fortunate enough to be in Toronto the entire weekend but I look forward to theorizing based on your accounts and the extensive media coverage. I think it would be particularly interesting to read your experience of homecoming against Andrews’s in the context of your respective relationships to sport.
Another key theme running through this week’s conversation and prompted by Marty’s initial post relates to the "relative autonomy" of sport as a social institution and ideological apparatus. This is one of my favorite theoretical questions: Where does sport end and [insert another social realm here] begin? And why does this question matter? If sport cannot be separated from other social realms, what exactly is the purpose of the sociology of sport? Theorists have put forth various models in response to these questions: the “sport as a reflection of society” approach; the “sport as a superstructure” (in the Marxist sense of the term) approach; and the “sport as a contextually specific articulation of social forces” approach. There are more I'm sure. Which of these is most useful and why?
On a related note, I think Kat is right to question Ingham's rather inflexible definitions of play, games, and sport. In this sense he's much more of a traditional sociologist than Hargreaves, King, or McDonald. But I think it could be useful to discuss the promise and perils of sociological classifications. Karima wants to claim that sport, not fashion, determines the ideal body type in the present moment, but this prompts us to ask, again, what is sport? And it raises the question of the overlap between sport and fashion: Can we, and do we want to, make such clear cut delineations?
I’m looking forward to talking about these questions and more tomorrow morning….
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