The Social Science of Sport

A Critical Analysis

Bo Carlsson, Susanna Hedenborg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138082915
• eBook ISBN: 9781317450559
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In this book questions about definitions and demarcations of sport science are discussed. Not the least the many normative ideas of sport as good or as bad are problematized in relation to the academic field. These ideas permeate sport science in ways that are not seen in other academic fields like history, sociology or law. In addition, if and if so, in what ways sport science influence social science in general. Does sport science bring new questions in relation to issues like "what makes a society possible" or "what is a human being"?

This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

The position and relevance of sport studies: an introduction

Bo Carlsson and Susanna Hedenborg

Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden

Background

How can sport science be defined and demarcated, and what is to be included in and regarded as sport are frequent questions asked by sport scientists. Despite serious and worthy ambitions, it appears to be hard to define and mark this academic field, particularly the concept of sport, which seems to create both a dilemma and a quagmire. This difficulty forms a good reason for a dedicated volume of Sport in Society.¹ Still, this volume will tactically put the stubborn challenge of defining sport in ‘intellectual brackets’ and instead reflect on the position and relevance of sport science – of studying and analysing sport.

First, organized sport plays a rather unimportant part when it comes to the essence of social life, compared to, for instance, the law or questions of how to avoid famine, war and diseases. Without the law we cannot maintain a society,² and we will ultimately fail as humans. Hunger, war and disease threaten our possibilities of acting together. On the contrary, societies will survive, remaining rather unaffected without organized sports, and we will still be humans – perhaps discontented, but nevertheless social and moral individuals. Notwithstanding this principal departure, sport stands out as imperative in our everyday life, probably more crucially for most people than different abstract legal regulations.³ This position is manifested in sport’s ‘colonization of the lifeworld’, to rearticulate Jürgen Habermas’ illustrious expression (and his description of the juridification process).⁴ In the view of the ‘colonization thesis’, sport, mediated through the fitness and entertainment industry, has invaded individuals’ leisure time and our public discourses,⁵ as well as our attitudes and mentality – a temperament that is shaped by a culture of speed⁶ – and the emphasis on champions, (world) records and statistics in different social spheres. In sum, sport – and its characteristics – has developed into an essential – and important – phenomenon in popular culture and in (post)modern society and has a great deal to tell us about human life and (post)modernity.

However, despite these tangible indicators, the advocates of sport seem obliged to add values in order to support and strengthen its importance. Such values normally include public health and integration as well as economic growth. Still, this devotion to and implicit tactics of adding various values to sport might be scrutinized critically and even recognized as an ideological – or psychological – burden among ‘sport evangelists’.⁷ Because, in spite of noble hopes, it is always an empirical question in every individual case whether sport offers/sports offer these (added) values or not. And the question whether sport is ‘good’ (positive) or ‘bad’ (negative) for individuals or groups has, in a similar manner, to be tested empirically.⁸ Besides, there are critical voices arguing that sport is negative, due to, i.e. exclusion,⁹ sexual harassment,¹⁰ violence,¹¹ injuries and medicalization,¹² post-colonialism,¹³ nationalism and even fascist attitudes.¹⁴

However, an alternative strategy for dealing with the question of importance – status and relevance – in sport and in sport science is to discard the normative imprint as well as the incentive of repeatedly adding additional and external values to sport. In this perspective, (1) the dialectics of the importance/unimportance of sport, as well as of its external/internal values, present a reason per se for sport studies. For instance, how is it possible to make such an unimportant subject like sport important? In this respect, the sport scientific analysis of the development of the sport, event and entertainment industry will, consequently, be instructive in a social-theoretical analysis of postmodernity, reality and representations, as well as in the dialectics of seriousness (rationalization) and trivialization. Besides, regardless of the question of being (un)important in human life, (2) sport (and sport science) could work as a ‘social laboratory’ for understanding humans and human life, including the societal processes of social change, social control and social inertia. In that respect, (3) sport science could play a vital role, influencing the development of contemporary social theory in a more substantial way than previously.¹⁵ In addition, (4) sport science could work as an amalgam of natural and social sciences, thus taking Bruno Latour seriously.¹⁶ Through the emphasis on the mixture of, principally, the body, performance, culture, consumption, society and technology, sport science has in itself a cross-disciplinary and/or multi-disciplinary character, which makes the discipline suitable for working at the frontier of social and natural science. In the end, it may sidestep the purification of science and academic knowledge in the wake of Latour’s criticism.

Still, if we are going to take these perspectives and opportunities seriously, the analysis has to go beyond and challenge sport studies’ typical instrumentalism, contextualism and normativity. In this regard, Habermas has clearly demonstrated that knowledge and science are founded on different interests.¹⁷ He dismisses positivism for serving the interest of control and instrumental reason and criticizes hermeneutics for being founded on a vicious circle of contextualism and absence of ideological criticism. Habermas searches for and supports a critical theory that could guide social science beyond, principally, instrumentalism and contextualism.¹⁸ Looking at the development of the social sciences of sports, we find positions similar to Habermas’ definition of positivism and hermeneutics, without any profound critical reflections on the ideology of ‘positive sport’. The study of sport is more or less instrumental, for the purpose of improving sporting results, or contextual, with the aim to understand the specificity of the sporting culture. Besides, in several studies, a sacred atmosphere of ‘sport evangelism’ seems to work as inertia vis-à-vis sober critical departures. Instead, sport must be handled and analysed as a (social and/or biological) ‘phenomenon’, and not as a ‘value’. This departure does not imply that sport is without value(s). On the contrary! however, these values – negative or positive – are imported and assigned as added values and ought to be handled as such, i.e. empirically, and not in a normative and ideological perspective.

Still, the close association to sports, ideologically as well as on the basis of individual experiences and preferences, is fertile soil for anecdotes as well as for normativity in the absence of essential theoretical foundations for sport studies. This is mainly the condition of Scandinavian sport sciences, in spite of recent local ambitions and attempts. In studies without any major and substantial theoretical foundation, the empirical findings – regularly contextual or instrumental – become their only principal outcome, which makes it hard to present and establish any generalizable results and knowledge, if the ‘results’ do nothing but confirm some already established ‘wisdom’. Yet, this local reflection is most likely in line with global considerations regarding the character of social and cultural sport sciences, where a substantial discourse on the epistemology, the social relevance of sport and its scientific status are overshadowed by more hands-on studies.

Relying on, mainly, Michel Foucault’s thesis on power and knowledge,¹⁹ it is even possible to trace some of the puzzles in sport science to the difficulties of being predominantly an applied science. In that respect, compelling authorities and normative influences, such as the Olympic belief, FIFA, the Scandinavian sport movement, governmental reports, the physical education system, the personal trainer boom and the fitness discourse (i.e. obesity), as well as the everyday requests of sports clubs, tend to develop and foster practical demands and useful ‘evidence’. In prolongation, this interest brings instrumentalism and contextualism into sport science. However, in order to evolve towards a substantial social science – that has an impact on and contributes to social theory in general – sport science has to leave this ‘custody of reason’, which is instrumental and applied, as well as ‘one-dimensional’,²⁰ and likewise become empowered by critical reason … and by looking beyond sport(s).

A critical academic perspective

Notwithstanding the premature and investigational approach and style of reasoning in this ‘Introduction’, we still regard it as crucial for a vital sport science to put forward questions and tactics that are not limited to the practice of sport or to the analysis and understanding of (specific) sports. Consequently, we advocate and support departures and strategies in sport sciences that have relevance for social science in more general terms and for our common understandings of humans and human life – and, in that respect, encourage sport studies … beyond sport(s).²¹

Paradoxically, the normativity and instrumentalism of sport have infiltrated sport science and consequently obstructed its further development.²² The thesis of ‘citius, altius, fortius’, for instance, which stands out as providing the essential energies in the history and practice of sport, might also have impregnated sport science with an instrumental vision.

In this respect, sport – as well as the general analysis of sport’s impact – works as blinders preventing a more substantial and serious progress in sport science. Thus, strategically, sport studies ought to put sport into brackets and go beyond the ordinary, expected design of sport science.²³ This could be done: By being increasingly critical, but not fundamentally sceptical, towards the field of sport and sport science! By going outside the academic milieu of instrumentalism, contextualism and reductionism! By regarding, principally, sport and sport studies as important in a different way, and more academically interesting, by advocating sport and sport studies as being vital and valuable in the development of science and social theory, and as a superb medium (a laboratory) to understand society and human life in general.

Putting ‘importance’ on the agenda …

In order to handle some of these meta-theoretical issues and aspirations, the second CPS (Centers and Peripheries in Sport) conference,²⁴ held in Malmö in April 2012,²⁵ was directed towards the status, position and relevance of sport science, with the following rationale and topics.

In various ways and in different areas, sport has contributed to the improvement of products in society. Motor sport, for instance, has been instrumental in profoundly improving motor vehicles in general. The broadcasting of sports events lies behind many technical innovations in television. The production of digital clocks has been influenced by the temporal logics of sports. Similarly, one might expect sport science to have made contributions to science at large. Since, in the Anglo-American world, sport science is generally interpreted as comprising medical, physiological and psychological studies of sports, we find in these disciplines practical as well as theoretical contributions to the mother disciplines. In Europe, however, sport science denotes any academic study of sports, whether based on natural sciences or on, for instance, sociology, history, philosophy or economics. Now, if we consider the social and cultural sport sciences, will we find any evidence that such research has somehow contributed to advances in the theoretical development of social science and theory or of cultural science? Probably not, even though the study of sports relies heavily on theories and methods developed within a number of social science disciplines. So, what are the reasons for this lack of reciprocity? To find out this, we have to look at the internal character and status of social and cultural sport science in Academia, related to:

(1) The history and localization of the development of sport studies.

(2) The recruitment of research staff related to sport studies.

(3) The impact of gender issues on the progress of the social and cultural sport sciences.

(4) The scientific legacy of sport studies.

(5) The scientist being a part of popular culture and the subject that is studied.

(6) A normative and ideological point of departure.

(7) The hegemony of (standard) social theories used in sport studies.

(8) The mixture of cross- and multidisciplinary approaches.

(9) The emphasis on ‘sports relevance’ versus the relevance for society and the social impact of sport science.

The topics definitely appear to be crucial as well as vital for the development of a profound, empowered and influential sport science with ambitions beyond ‘self-referentiality’ (e.g. internal discourses and references mainly to sport science).²⁶

Consequently, the Department of Sport Science in Malmö invited papers to the CPS conference discussing the scientific quality of sport studies and the position of social and cultural sport science in Academia. The planning, the call for papers and the invitation of keynote speakers resulted in a small, but exceptionally creative and challenging conference going on for three intensive days. In addition to the conference, a seminar and a Ph.D. course were organized including, in particular, a brilliant discussion between Jay...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. The position and relevance of sport studies: an introduction
• 2. Thoughts on being the gadfly in the sport sciences ointment: building the road to meta-theoretical research creation
• 3. (Re)Occupying a cultural commons: reclaiming the labour process in critical sports studies
• 4. Slowing the social sciences of sport: on the possibilities of physical culture
• 5. From criminality to creativity: how studies of surfer subcultures reinvented invention
• 6. Modern sport between purity and hybridity
• 7. Re(con)fusion of law and sport in light of ‘seriousness’ and ‘trivialization’
• Index