Purism and the category of ‘the aesthetic’: the drama argument

This paper examines one component of Stephen Mumford’s case for the claim that we should regard sport, art and the aesthetic as more closely connected than has tended to be the case, under the influence of the work of David Best, in recent years. Mumford’s rejection of what I call ‘the drama argument’ is examined in detail and it is argued that all but one element of his case fails to do the job he envisages.     

For a ‘United’ Kingdom and a ‘Greater’ Britain: the British Olympic Association and the limitations and contestations of ‘Britishness’

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Home-Nations of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales joined forces in competing in the Olympic Games under the banner of ‘Great Britain’ (or deviations thereof). The Olympics served as an important symbolic site for fostering and promoting a broader ‘British’ national identity. In practice, however, the prevalence and persistence of competing national identities and allegiances roiled early attempts to create a unified British Olympic team. These counter-prevailing forces of nationalism further served to undermine the British Olympic Association's ambitious attempt to unite the British Empire in a ‘Greater Britain’ team for the 1916 Berlin Olympic Games. As this work will reveal, ‘Britishness’ was a layered, contested and racially homogenous term that was interpreted and applied differently across various parts of the British Isles and its Empire.     

Bodies as bearers of value: the transmission of jock culture via the ‘Twelve Commandments’

This article explores a number of insights generated from a three-year ethnographic study of one university setting in England in which a ‘jock culture’ is seen to dominate a student campus. Drawing on core concepts from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture, it illustrates the unique function of the body in sustaining jock culture through the hierarchical ordering of bodies in institutional space. First, the development of this culture over time and the key dispositions that come to embody it are outlined. Next, the authors identify and illustrate the enactment of what they call the ‘Twelve Commandments’. These operate as a series of structured and structuring practices to condition the bodies of group members by appropriating an idealized and internalized jock habitus that is not gender neutral. Rather, it can be seen as a practical and symbolic manifestation of a dominant, heterosexual, masculine orientation to the world. The authors suggest that in spite of seemingly significant processes of accommodation over the years, the ‘illusio’ of this jock culture remains substantially intact and maintained through a combination of the following: (a) symbolic violence and (b) a systematic embodied complicity on the part of many of the actors who have something to gain by avoiding active subordination to, and exclusion from, the dominant group.     

‘Old’ Football and the ‘New’ Codes: Some Thoughts on the ‘Origins of Football’ Debate and Suggestions for Further Research

A close reading of recent contributions to the ‘origins of football’ debate suggests that there is now more consensus among scholars about the broad sequence of events than is rhetorically allowed. However, this consensus itself rests on some shared conceptual and methodological illusions. These include: a continual naivety about the use of the name ‘football’ in the primary source materials; asystematic underestimation of forms of play (and a collateral overestimation of the importance of rules and codifications) in the development of football; and, above all, a widely shared, and very dubious, conviction that the pursuit of the historical origins of football is a meaningful activity. This article analyses each ofthese illusions in turn and suggests some methodological and substantive alternatives to them. These alternatives sum to the conclusion that the origin of both modern football codes is a far more remarkable and many-sided story than has been appreciated, even in the very best research to date. Moreover, it is a story whose many dimensions and implications go well beyond the borders of Britain, and indeed beyond the history of ‘soccer’ or ‘rugby’ alone.     

Going ‘to the Fountainhead’: Black American Athletes as Cultural Ambassadors in Africa, 1970–1971

During the Cold War, the State Department frequently employed prominent black athletes as cultural ambassadors in an attempt to defuse global criticism of racism in the USA. In the late 1960s, as many black American athletes identified increasingly with the “Black Power” movement, their personal motivations often clashed with State Department goals. In 1970, the black American tennis star Arthur Ashe, along with Stan Smith, conducted an extremely successful tour of six African nations. The following year, the State Department attempted to replicate that success by sending NBA stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Oscar Robertson to Africa. Those players, for a variety of reasons, were less cooperative and effective than Ashe. The shortcomings of the Jabbar/Robertson tour contributed to a decline in the State Department's practice of utilising star black athletes as cultural diplomats.     

Sex,sport and justice: reframing the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in European and UK sport policy

Universalist claims are often made about sport which is, as a consequence, increasingly written into national and international policy as an entitlement of citizenship or even human right. Further, in most countries physical education (PE) is a compulsory component of children's education, and sport is seen as central to this. Consequently, in the interests of justice sport must aspire to be egalitarian, that is, relevant to and meaningful for boys and men, and girls and women. In this context three fundamental questions are asked in relation to sport: (1) Do all citizens want to participate? (2) Who counts as a citizen? and (3) What are justice and equality? Feminist political and citizenship theory particularly the work of Pateman, Lister and Fraser is used to explore these questions and interrogate the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in relation to framing sport policy in Europe and the UK. It is argued that notwithstanding the extensive use of the Council of Europe definition of sport,¹1. ‘“Sport” means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels' (CE, 1992 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]–2001 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]). and despite or even because of the widespread adoption of the language of gender equality and gender mainstreaming, although formal sport citizenship rights might be accorded to all individuals and regarded as gender neutral, this masks a discourse of androcentric sport citizenship. This has captured European and UK sport policy and provision and is hindering further progress towards gender justice in sport and therefore PE. Given the universal and compulsory aspirations of sport particularly within PE, gender justice should be conceptualised not only as cultural recognition, political representation and economic redistribution within the normalised frame of competitive performance sport or ‘sport for sports sake’; but also as a critical meta-political remapping and reframing of sport as sport and physical recreation or ‘sport for all’.     

School-based sports development and the role of NSOs as ‘boundary spanners’: benefits,disbenefits and unintended consequences of the Sporting Schools policy initiative

The focus of this paper is on Sporting Schools, a $100 million policy initiative intended to increase children’s sport participation in Australia. Our account seeks to proffer a critical analysis of this federal policy, and the way it functions as part of the new heterarchical or networked form of sports governance in Australia. Using a network ethnography methodology, we analyse Sporting Schools from the perspective of National Sporting Organisations (NSOs), who have the key responsibility for enacting this policy. Using their perceptions, we reflect on their role as policy ‘boundary spanners’ and outline the complexities they face in creating ‘win-win’ scenarios so that schools, students, government and NSOs themselves all benefit from the Sporting Schools initiative. We argue that NSOs have to balance benefits and disbenefits and face tension between their desire for tight quality control of their school-based sports programmes and the need to have a cost-effective funding model for maximum exposure to schools and students. In conclusion, we reflect on the unintended consequences of enacting the policy in its current form, including issues of teaching and coaching expertise, the potential displacement of the educative value of PE in favour of school sport, and the opening of this public policy space to commercial providers on a for-profit basis.     

Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’

Be empowering. Be athlete-centered. Be autonomy supportive. These are three related topics currently being promoted by sport psychologists and sport pedagogists in an effort to recognize athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences and make coaching more holistic and coaches more considerate. This has led us to ask, how likely are such initiatives to lead to coaches putting their athletes at the center of the coaching process given that coaches’ practices have largely been formed through relations of power that subordinate and objectify athletes’ bodies through the regular application of a range of disciplinary techniques and instruments [e.g. Barker-Ruchti, N., &; Tinning, R. (2010). Foucault in leotards: Corporeal discipline in women's artistic gymnastics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27, 229–250; Heikkala, J. (1993). Discipline and excel: Techniques of the self and body and the logic of competing. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 397–412; Gearity, B., &; Mills, J. P. (2012). Discipline and punish in the weight room. Sports Coaching Review, 1, 124–134]? In other words, to try to develop athlete-centered coaches capable of coaching in ways that will empower their athletes without also problematizing the discursive formation of coaches’ practices concerns us [Denison, J., &; Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3, 1–16]. Put differently: how can athlete empowerment initiatives be anything more than rhetoric within a disciplinary framework that normalizes maximum coach control? It is this question that we intend to explore in this paper. More specifically, as Foucauldians, we will argue that coaching with greater consideration for athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences needs to entail coaching in a less disciplinary way and with an awareness and appreciation of the many unseen effects that disciplinary power can have on coaches’ practices and athletes’ bodies.     

‘Being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’: the dancing body-subject and inhabited transcendence

Sports studies is currently dominated by the intellectualist approach to understanding skill and expertise, meaning that questions about the phenomenological nature of skilled performance in sport have generally been overshadowed by the emphasis on the cognitive. By contrast, this article responds to calls for a phenomenology of sporting embodiment by opening up a philosophical exploration of the nature of athletic being-in-the-world. In particular, the paper explores the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with Merleau-Ponty’s important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence. I also draw on data from in-depth qualitative interviews with professional contemporary dancers to explore dancers’ concepts of ‘being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’, and to suggest that during the actual embodied practice of dance, dancers do not experience transcendence and immanence as they are conceptualised in philosophy. Rather, I argue, dancers experience a third mode of being that is somehow in-between these two binary terms. I have called this ‘inhabited transcendence’.     

Governing the child-citizen: ‘Let's Move!’ as national biopedagogy

In this paper, we offer a critical examination of Let's Move!, the comprehensive anti-obesity program initiated by the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama, that aims to solve the problem of childhood obesity within a generation. We argue that Let's Move! is not just a campaign against obesity but is emblematic of the nature of (and assumptions underpinning) the health education of children in the contemporary United States. Drawing on the concept of ‘governmentality,’ we examine how Let's Move! functions as a biopolitical strategy (a solution to the problem of childhood obesity), framed by the political rationalities of neoliberalism. In particular, we identify and explore three interrelated bio-techniques mobilized within, and through, the Let's Move! campaign. First, in an effort to ‘responsibilize’ citizens, the initiative is framed as a social movement whereby all segments of society can (and should) be empowered to take collective action against childhood obesity. Second, an array of multi-sectoral partnerships, including corporate sponsors and non-profit organizations, are being mobilized, resulting in a range of initiatives underpinned by the rhetoric of consumer choice and responsibility as well as the outsourcing of physical education to private entities. Third, the adoption of standardized fitness testing techniques based on the logic of chronic disease epidemiology, and related notions of ‘risk,’ aim to produce the disciplined child-citizen who monitors his/her health goals with the aid of Web 2.0 technologies. In contextualizing Let's Move! in this way, we illustrate how, in line with the soft authoritarian imperatives of the neoliberal enabling state, the campaign functions as a national biopedagogy, working to empower every citizen to be an ‘active partner’ in the fight against childhood obesity, so as to optimize the health of the next generation and allow them, in the words of Michelle Obama, to ‘pursue their dreams.’     

Assembling the privatisation of physical education and the ‘inexpert’ teacher

In this article, I examine the practice of outsourcing physical education (PE) lessons to external sports organisations. I draw from ethnographic research conducted with two primary schools in New Zealand to illuminate how outsourcing interconnects with the privatisation of education. Using Foucault's notion of government, I demonstrate how schools’ employment of four outside providers worked to govern teachers towards certain ends. In addition, I drew on the analytical framework of the assemblage to examine how the dual notions of the inexpert classroom teacher and the expert outside provider converged with the discourse of ‘PE as sport’, neoliberalism, Kiwisport, National Standards, professional development and multi-sector partnerships to form a privatisation assemblage. I argue that the privatisation assemblage worked to restrict and constrain teachers’ possible thoughts and actions, making teachers’ ‘choice’ to outsource PE one that they understood as both pragmatic, in terms of time investment, and educationally valuable, in so far as they perceived themselves as lacking the requisite expertise. I also argue that outsourcing and the privatisation of PE is problematic as it did not necessarily work in the best interests of teachers or students. I suggest further research is necessary to interrogate and make visible how the disparate elements of the privatisation assemblage are made to hold together, as well as how the fragile connections between these elements may be placed under pressure. The notion that outside providers are expert PE teachers and classroom teachers are inexpert is a critical aspect of the assemblage that should be challenged and resisted.     

From ‘cultivators of the soil’ to ‘citizen-soldiers’: physically active education and the nation at Maryland Agricultural College

In 1866, military drill and instruction became part of the curriculum of Maryland Agricultural College as a result of the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862, a law setting the terms for the establishment of agricultural colleges across the USA. The introduction of military instruction meant a direct inclusion of physically active coursework that preceded the widespread emergence of organized physical education courses in American educational institutions. However, this was not the first time physical activity was used and discussed at the college: previously, the uses of physical activity at the college wholly entailed outdoor agricultural practice in which students applied pedagogical training about agricultural techniques in the field. In this paper, we examine early Maryland Agricultural College printed discourse from 1859 to 1886, studying how the college shifted focus from idealizing the Republican male citizen as a physically active farmer or ‘cultivator of the soil’ in the years preceding the American Civil War to a physically active ‘citizen-soldier’ in response to the social and political effects of the conflict. Our analysis sheds light on the historical place of such physical activity coursework within the larger historical narrative of American physical education's emergence, and also provides useful historical context for critically viewing linkages between physical culture, nationalism, agricultural education and the military in contemporary physical education.     

Sociology of a scandal: the emergence of ‘FIFAgate’

This article examines the social forces underlying FIFAgate. Why do corrupt practices, which are often highly consolidated or even institutionalized, suddenly become scandalous? What is a scandal? Why did FIFA fall into crisis in 2015 and not before? To answer these questions, it is necessary to look at the sequence of thrusts and parries between all the parties involved. Our analysis embraces the notion that social processes are based on relationships in order to provide insights into why and how denunciations can lead to long-tolerated corrupt practices suddenly becoming compromising enough to force an organization’s leaders to implement measures that would have previously been unimaginable. We use multiple sources to examine the emergence of FIFAgate and the way FIFA overcame previous critical situations, describing how FIFA neutralized earlier allegations and developed a remarkable ‘resilience’ to scandal. Finally, we analyse the successive mobilizations whose domino effect led to the emergence of FIFAgate and the measures FIFA took to contain the scandal. Our research enabled us to draw up a new theoretical model for analysing corruption scandals.     

Behind the Iron Curtain: Football as a Site of Contestation in the East German Sports ‘Miracle’

Sport is employed as a lens through which one can understand better the social and political inner workings of dictatorship. This paper treats sport as a cultural institution within GDR (German Democratic Republic) society and sets out to complement the two broad paradigms used to study East Germany: the first, a broad approach under the umbrella of ‘Cold War histories’ and ‘totalitarianism theory’, usually focusing on the few; the second, a so-called ‘histories of everyday life’ approach generally focusing on the many. Using an in-depth case study of the sport of football, the paper introduces a new paradigm: the ‘contested dictatorship’ approach. This approach rejects the broad totalitarian notion of dictatorship as applied to East Germany and shares many of the underlying assumptions of the ‘everyday history’ approach, in particular by allowing a far greater role for agency with much more room for manoeuvre for actors and institutions within the structures of an authoritarian state than ‘totalitarian’ understandings usually permit. Drawing on empirical archival material, the paper reveals the endemic rivalries between key personalities (and even large industrial enterprises expressing regional identities) in a struggle for influence over the game; rivalries between fans of GDR football teams; fan culture and hooligan behaviour as forms of self-determination; and how these issues contributed to the poor performance of football relative to other sports.