Sport and Violence: Rethinking Elias

Dominique Bodin, Luc Robène

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367077785
• eBook ISBN: 9781315448909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The aim of this book, in discussing Elias's theory, is not to refute it. Tendentiously, the theory works with its weaknesses and strong points and it has been enriched by a number of authors over time. The objective of this volume is to discuss the blind spots and, more simply, what is too often taken for granted: namely the obvious pacifying effect of sports and/or produced by sports. This analysis has been guided by two perspectives: the sociological one which questions the "naturalization" of sport which is also the naturalization of the "wildlings" which have to be civilized, and the other which comes from philosophical anthropology and attempts to comprehend the long term characteristics of this union – or disunion – of sport and violence.

Sport and Civilisation: Violence Mastered. From the Lack of a Definition for Violence to the Illusory Pacifying Role of Modern Sports

Dominique Bodin^a and Luc Robène^b

^aUniversité Européenne de Bretagne (Rennes 2), Rennes, France; ^bUniversité de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France

Following the seminal works of Norbert Elias, with regard to the ‘civilising process’, modern sports are generally considered by the scientific community as being, on the one hand, a privileged means that has long facilitated and contributed to ‘the control and learning of the self-control of impulses’ and, on the other, as a political device, which has facilitated, by penetrating into the private sphere in a restrained and play-oriented fashion, the state's monopoly of violence. They are also considered to have facilitated the sociogenesis of modern states. But is this link so evident that this ‘new’ social configuration can be considered a new tool at the service of violence control? Acceptance is so strong that one can almost forget the contradictions, at least the questions, which can and should emerge from this proposition. It should in fact face up to criticism on a certain number of concrete points: definition of violence, rejection of the long-term view, sport be strictly considered in the light of the pacification of habits and social control, hooliganism, etc. This introductory article presents a series of reflections which aim to enrich Elias's theory by underlining both its accuracy and its weak points.

Following the seminal works of Norbert Elias, with regard to the ‘civilising process’,¹ modern sports are generally considered by the scientific community as being, on the one hand, a privileged means that has long facilitated and contributed to ‘the control and learning of the self-control of impulses’² and, on the other, as a political device, which has facilitated, by penetrating into the private sphere in a restrained and play-oriented fashion, the state's monopoly of violence.³ They are also considered to have facilitated the socio-genesis of modern states, following in this aspect the works of Max Weber.⁴

But is this link so evident that this ‘new’ social configuration can be considered a new tool at the service of violence control, forgetting in fact that the institutionalisation of budding practices also, and especially, bears witness to transformations which are both social (free time, access to education, growth of the cities, etc.) and societal (economic development of states, movement of goods and merchandise and therefore of people, shaping of the media and communication societies, dissemination of information and cultural models, factory of fantasies, etc.)?

The theory is so appealing that it is rarely contested, at least on the question of the genesis of modern sports and their presupposed role in controlling violence. Acceptance is so strong that one can almost forget the contradictions, at least the questions, which can and should emerge from this proposition. It should in fact face up to criticism on a certain number of concrete points:

•First, the definition of violence. Does the ‘definition’ adopted by Elias, limited to physical injury and the spilling of blood, permit an understanding of the violence which surrounds modern sports practice?

•Next, the rejection of the long-term view. Are modern sports the consequence of a conceptual and organisational ‘break’ in the eighteenth century or does their modern configuration bear witness, at the very least, to deeper tendencies which mark the slow transformation of ancestral physical activities and ‘ancient games’, leading sport to be considered more like a stage in the genealogy of codified combat?

•Sport again as a tool of ‘civilisation’. Should sport be strictly considered in the light of the pacification of habits and social control, or can it be approached as an object with a much more complex cultural and sociopolitical fabric, integrating a double-entry social dynamic, which shows that violence and sport both oppose and attract each other?

•Finally, the question of hooliganism. Should hooliganism be limited to a negation of the ‘civilising process’, a stage of ‘de-civilisation’ pertaining to certain communities, or does it also facilitate in a certain way the re-creation of new social spaces?

On the Question of Violence

It must be noted, in the mirror of what is observable in modern sports, that it has been from nineteenth century that ‘not only has “contemporary sport” not always pacified, but rather has increased violence; violence towards others, with others, violence towards oneself, symbolic violence or actual violence’.⁵

That said, a first stumbling block appears, that of the definition of violence sustained by Elias, or perhaps one should say the lack of definition to the extent that it is possible to wonder like Wieviorka if Elias is proposing ‘an analysis of violence or an analysis of aggressiveness’.⁶ The answer is uncertain. Elias uses the one and the other, the one or the other, throughout his works, without really situating them, the one with regard to the other.⁷ He tries to articulate, consistently, ‘the political and the cultural as well as the collective and the individual’.⁸ This is the strong as well as the weak point in Elias's thesis. As by doing this he reduces the violence which can be shown by individuals to a state of nature, to animal-like and uncontrolled impulsive instincts in which the pleasures of destroying, of seeing (and inflicting) suffering are mixed, bearing witness, according to him, to a lack of civilisation or to a stage of ‘de-civilisation’. Elias confuses (amalgamates) the manifestation of impulses (the psychological mechanisms which lead to the act) and the act itself (the expression of physical violence), the social impact of which is a consequence of tension which should be analysed as being constitutive of, and constructed by, historical and sociopolitical processes.

For Elias aggressiveness belongs to the ‘structures of man [which] form a whole’.⁹ It belongs to the ‘death drive’.¹⁰ His ‘definition’ is here very close to that given by Freud¹¹ of human aggressiveness. The use of the terms ‘aggressiveness and impulses/drives’ is not unfamiliar, given the training and collaborations undertaken by Elias. His intellectual journey (studying medicine and philosophy) took him to the position of assistant to Karl Mannheim at the Institut für Sozialforschung in Frankfurt University, which also housed at that time the Psychoanalytic Institute directed by Karl Landauer, a disciple of Sigmund Freud. If the intention of Elias is to articulate ‘socio-genetics’ and ‘psycho-genetics’, he is certainly talking about impulses and the natural state when he puts the notion of the Super-ego at the heart of social transformations: ‘social relations are transformed so that reciprocal constraints take on, in each individual, a self-constraining character, and we are faced with the formation of a more and more pronounced “Super-ego”’.¹² If this quote is related to ablutions and cleanliness, the consideration thus begun is rendered permanent with regard to the acquisition of self-constraints and cultural and normative changes, which progressively contribute to the ‘civilisation’ of individuals through:

a very simple mechanism which produces the historical transformation of affective life: impulsive manifestations or pleasures considered undesirable by society are matched with punishments which associate them to unpleasant sensations or to the predominance of displeasure in the form of the threat of punishment … Thus there is a tension between displeasure and fear provoked by society …¹³

But as Duerr¹⁴ suggested, is not the model of the imposition of norms by a now all-powerful state too simplified? Did the budding state have the capacity to act directly on and around individuals without taking into account the organisations that were so important in the structuring of the societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (communities, corporations)¹⁵ and, even today, can it really do so, in the face of the different organisations (political parties, unions and associations) which fight and oppose it or at least negotiate its impositions? Michel Foucault's microphysics of power would seem even here to take more into account the systems of constraint which are imposed on the individual, not only in the frame of the s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Citation Information
• Introduction: Rethinking Elias in the Light of the Links between Sports and Violence
• 1. Sport and Civilisation: Violence Mastered. From the Lack of a Definition for Violence to the Illusory Pacifying Role of Modern Sports
• 2. Sports and Violence Reflected in the Mirror of Modern Societies: Sport Ambiguities
• 3. Role Distance in Question: When it is No Longer Participating But Winning Which is Important
• 4. Sport to the Rescue of the Suburbs: Sport to Educate? Sport to Reassure? When Politicians Respond to the Signs of Disturbance of Law and Order
• 5. Hooligans, Casuals, Independents: Decivilisation or Rationalisation of the Activity?
• 6. Sport, Technique and Violence: The Technical Modes for Generating Sport Violence
• 7. Sport, Prison, Violence: On Imprisonment and Confinement Conditions – ‘French Prison Sport’ and the Instruments of the World’s Good Conscience
• 8. Sport and Civilisation: Violence Mastered? From Civilising Functions to Pacifying Functions
• Index