Post-Olympism

Questioning Sport in the Twenty-First Century

John Bale, Mette Krogh Christensen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781859737149
• eBook ISBN: 9781000181890
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Social Sciences

The Olympic ideal and the Olympic Games stand as symbols of global cooperation, international understanding and the bonding of individuals through the medium of sports. However, throughout the twentieth century, Olympic rhetoric was often confronted by a different reality. The Games have regularly been faced by crises that have threatened the spirit of Olympism and even the Games themselves. Given the many changes that have occurred in the Olympic Games during the past century it seems reasonable to ask if this global event has a future and, if so, what form it might take. With this larger issue in mind, the authors of Post-Olympism? ask probing questions about the following: the infamous 1936 Olympics the effect of new technologies on the Games the future impact of the 2008 Beijing Games on China and of China on the Olympics the local and regional impact of the Sydney green Olympics the Games and globalization Disneyfication racism drug abuse The book provides a useful overview of the ongoing significance of the Olympics and will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in the Games.

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Post-olympism? Questioning olympic Historiography

Douglas Booth

Ambiguity accompanied initial scholarly analyses and popular uses of the prefix ‘post’. But by the early 1990s a consensus had emerged among social theorists that ‘post’ connoted a condition of reflection that involved dissection, especially of modernity; hence postmodernism (Kumar, 1995, pp. 66–7). Added to olympism, the prefix ‘post’ thus implies an occasion for critically reflecting on the modern olympic movement and games (see Kevin Wamsley’s contribution to this book, Chapter 15). Consistent with this notion of post-olympism, this chapter questions olympic historiography. Two conditions make pertinent such an analysis of a field that attracts many social historians of sport. First, the juxtaposition of radically different histories of the olympics raises questions about the interpretation of the historical record. Why do olympic scholars, for example Maurice Roche (2000), Helen Lenskyj (2000) and Robert Barney, Stephen Wenn and Scott Martyn (2002), produce such diverse histories? Second, interrogating olympic historiography seems relevant in the context of new questions, new methods and new theories associated with the cultural turn in social history and the emergence of deconstructionist history.

This chapter comprises two sections. The first investigates the general nature of historical knowledge with specific reference to olympic history, and follows a framework developed by Alun Munslow (1997) who discerns three basic models of historical inquiry: reconstruction, construction and deconstruction. Reconstructionism, and to a lesser degree constructionism, dominate olympic history. Reconstructionists and constructionists privilege empirical methods, accept historical evidence as proof that they can recover the past, and insist that their forms of representation are transparent enough to ensure the objectivity of their observations. The key difference between reconstructionists and constructionists is the extent to which they engage a priori knowledge. The latter willingly embrace the concepts and theories of others as tools to propose and explain relationships between events; reconstructionists oppose theory on the grounds that it subjects historians to ‘predetermined explanatory schemes’ and reduces them to ‘tailoring evidence’ (Elton, 1991, p. 27). Sceptical of objective empirical history, deconstructionists view history ‘as a constituted narrative’ devoid of ‘moral or intellectual certainty’ (Munslow, 1997, pp. 14, 15). Slow to penetrate olympic history, deconstructionism nonetheless poses some major challenges for reconstructionism which places inordinate confidence in the cognitive power of narratives that are held to emanate naturally from historical facts.

The second section examines more explicit applications of historical knowledge in sport history under the heading ‘explanatory paradigms’. An ‘interactive structure of workable questions and the factual statements which are adduced to answer them’ (Fischer, 1970, p. xv), an explanatory paradigm carries quite specific philosophical assumptions and constitutes the framework used by historians to orientate their arguments. Olympic history comprises seven basic explanatory paradigms: traditional narrative, advocacy, contextual, comparative, causal, social change and linguistic.

Models of Olympic History

Historians disagree about much: the objectives of history, the meaning of facts, the construction of facts, methods of procedure, the role of theory, the basis of theory, the form of presentation. But they also agree that history is an evidence-based discipline, and that evidence imposes limits on interpretation. The philosophical and epistemological agreements and disagreements within olympic history are examined below using Munslow’s three models of historical inquiry. Olympic history supports mainly reconstructionists and a number of constructionists; deconstructionists are largely absent. Each group conceptualizes history around a different set of objectives, epistemology and mode of presentation.

Reconstruction

Operating under the assumption that they can discover the past as it actually happened, reconstructionists promote history as a realist epistemology in which knowledge derives from empirical evidence and forensic research into primary sources. Forensic research means interrogating, collaborating and contextualizing sources to verify them as real and true. Reconstructionists maintain that history exists independently of the historian and that the past can be approached objectively without ideological contamination. ‘The historian is permitted only one attitude, that of impartial observer, unmoved equally by admiration or repugnance’, say reconstructionists, who insist that real historians are obliged to ‘simply relate the facts’ and to avoid dictating readers’ responses (Stanford, 1994, p. 91). Disdainful of ideological intrusions, reconstructionists are particularly vigilant of colleagues who mesh ideology with sources: this amounts to subjectivity and distorts history. Pierre-Yves Boulongne (2000) accuses ‘feminist leagues’, ‘radical political groups’ and the ‘sporting-counter-society’ of misconstruing Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), by ignoring his encouragement of women and girls whom he wanted to partake in physical activity. These ‘malicious detractors’, Boulongne rails, ‘abbreviate quotations’ and remove evidence from its historical context.

Narrative is the medium of presentation in reconstructionism. Reconstructonists assume a close correspondence between the language in their sources and the past, and maintain that narratives are essentially transparent. In evaluating good representations of olympic history, reconstructionists gauge the structure, unity and coherence of the narrative. They place maximum emphasis on the narrative as a whole process and the way it informs the structure of the argument, although reconstructionists also assess relationships between individual statements and sources. Cross-examination of evidence involves interrogation of language to ascertain the tone and accuracy of sources, and to clarify what particular sources say and what they leave out. More specifically, interrogation entails questions about word usage, figures of speech and stylistic cadence and the way that these articulate ideas and sympathies (Gottschalk, 1969, pp. 149–50). Reconstructionists maintain a strong vigilance over style and rhetoric in their sources and especially in colleagues’ texts. Style has ‘enormous evidential value, both in getting and in giving evidence’; rhetoric is a ‘mechanical trick’ associated with propaganda, poetics and oratory (Gay, 1974, p. 3; see also Gottschalk, 1969, pp. 17–19). Yet, for all their talk about careful scrutiny of colleagues’ language, reconstructionists rarely take their evaluations beyond banal observations about grace of expression and clarity of writing.

Construction

Like reconstructionists, constructionists believe that empirical evidence provides the ultimate source of knowledge about the past. In this sense reconstructionism and constructionism are evidence-based, objectivist-inspired models in which historians aspire to build accurate, independent and truthful reconstructions of the past. Both also distinguish history from fiction and value judgements: history means discovering and recording what actually happened in the past. Where these models diverge is with respect to acceptance of a priori knowledge, particularly theory and theoretical concepts (Struna, 1996, p. 252). Real historical phenomena, according to conservative reconstructionists, are unique configurations and one-off occurrences: history consists of the ‘stories of . . . individual lives or happenings, all seemingly individual and unrepeatable’ (Postan, 1971, p. 62). A form of methodological individualism emphasizing human actions and intentions, or what sociologists call agency (Lukes, 1973), conservative reconstructionism casts theory into the realm of speculation. Theory, argues Geoffrey Elton (1991, pp. 15, 19) ‘infuses predestined meaning’ into history. In short, theory is antithetical to the objectives and practices of conservative reconstructionism.

John MacAloon illustrates the conservative reconstructionist’s wariness of theoretical concepts in his biography of de Coubertin. MacAloon relegates concepts well behind historical facts and detail. Although MacAloon (1981, pp. xiii, 17) employs concepts borrowed from cultural theory, sociology and psychology, he asserts that these are purely ‘strategic recourses’ in the ‘absence’ of primary sources. MacAloon’s suspicion of concepts also appears later in the text where he dismisses different classifications of de Coubertin as ‘enlightened reactionary’ and ‘bourgeois liberal’. ‘There is little to recommend one shorthand over the other’, MacAloon writes, ‘like most men’, de Coubertin ‘possessed . . . views which do not easily amalgamate under simple labels’ (1981, p. 312, 142n).

Not all reconstructionists are so averse to theory; not all reconstructionists consider the investigation of unique events as the ‘litmus test’ of historical knowledge. They acknowledge that historians also discern patterns of behaviour across time, societies and social groups, and that they categorize different forms of human action and place them into general moulds. Such approaches compel historians to think ‘in terms of abstraction’ and theory (Munslow, 1997, pp. 22–3; see also Tosh, 1991, pp. 154–5). For example, collective identities such as nationalities, social classes, amateurs, olympians, and volunteers are invaluable and indispensable historical abstractions.

Constructionists deem theory integral to historical research. Summing up the constructionist viewpoint, the German economic historian Werner Sombart (1929, p. 3) argued that ‘the writer of history who desires to be more than a mere antiquarian must have a thorough theoretical training in those fields of inquiry with which his work is concerned’. While not denying that historians require an intimate and technical knowledge of their sources, Sombart deemed these skills elementary. Constructionists consider theory fundamental to history for three reasons. First, the range and volume of evidence bearing on many historical problems is so large that historians cannot avoid selection, and theory is a critical tool. It provides frameworks and principles for selecting evidence and thus steers practitioners away from contradictions in their explanations. Second, theory brings to the fore interrelations between the components of human experiences at given times and in so doing enriches historical accounts. Third, as already mentioned, identifying historical patterns invariably involves some form of abstract thinking and connections to theoretical explanations and interpretations. Responding to the common charge levelled by conservative reconstructionists that theory predetermines history, constructionists counter that theories enhance understanding and that no one can ‘approach their evidence innocent of presupposition’ (Munslow, 1997, pp. 23, 40).

Where do olympic historians sit in this debate between reconstructionists and constructionists over theory? The reconstructionist position holds minimal sway but this does not mean that olympic historians have embraced ‘complex social science constructionism’. Olympic historians have not employed the historical record to construct formal theories of the modern olympics or olympism, nor have they used it to apply, test or confirm theories. On the other hand, many olympic historians utilize ‘organizing concepts’, as distinct from full-fledged theories, to ‘fine focus’ their interpretations of the evidence. Perhaps better recognized as classes of objects (e.g. amateur sports), general notions (e.g. amateurism, professionalization, commercialization), themes (e.g. sporting ideologies, nationalism, international relations), periods (e.g. age of fascism, era of the boycott, Cold War) and constellations of interrelated traits (e.g. modernity, tradition, globalization), concepts abound in olympic history. However, these are descriptive labels that do not in themselves explain how something came about or changed. Nonetheless, by merely identifying recurrent features and patterns, concepts expose new realms of observation, enabling historians to move past the ‘single instance’ and to ‘transcend immediate perceptions’ (Burke, 1992, p. 29; Denzin, 1989, p. 13).

The range of concepts in olympic history raises the question, where do they come from? Like MacAloon, most olympic historians simply appropriate concepts from outside the field. John Hoberman (1995) is one exception. His concept of idealistic internationalism derives from a comparison of four international organizations: the Red Cross, the Esperanto movement, the Scouting movement, and the olympic movement. By examining ‘analogies between historical instances’ and ‘compar[ing the] actions and sentiments’ of the agents who create international movements, Hoberman’s approach is consistent with historian Arthur Stinchcombe’s (1978, pp. 17, 22) advice for inventing a ‘profound concept’. Yet, it is not clear how far Hoberman wants to extend the analogies between idealistic international movements. Only the olympic movement appears as a twentieth-century idealistic internationalism. The Red Cross, formed in 1863, hardly rates a mention, even in discussions of nineteenth-century internationalism; the Esperanto and Scouting movements receive scant attention in the interwar age of fascism and completely disappear from the discussion relating to the post-Second World War era. Indeed, idealistic internationalism becomes increasingly irrelevant to Hoberman’s argument. Stinchcombe (1978) and the social science methodologist Norman Denzin (1989) regard concepts as the major units of theory: concepts define the shape and content of theory, especially when linked together. The fact that Hoberman (1995) makes no attempt to link idealistic internationalism to other concepts and thus develop a full-fledged theory is reflected in the title of his article: ‘Toward a Theory of Olympic Internationalism’.

Deconstruction

Deconstructionist historians are highly sceptical of the claims to truth made by objective empirical history and they view history as a constituted narrative devoid of moral or intellectual certainty. Deconstructionists argue that historical understanding involves unavoidable relativism (the belief that there are no overarching rules or procedures for precisely measuring bodies of knowledge, conceptual schemes or theories, and that without fixed benchmarks the only outcome can be difference and uncertainty: Munslow, 1997, p. 188). Thus, deconstructionists do not promote the single interpretation associated with the history, e.g. the history of women olympians. Rather, they examine different perspectives within the history, e.g. successful women olympians, women excluded from the olympics, black female olympians, Islamic female olympians and so forth. In this sense, deconstructionists acknowledge that each group has its own unique perspective and faces its own struggles and, moreover, that every group is subjected to internal pressures and tensions. Proceeding from the premise that nothing written can be read as meaning, deconstructionist historians delve into the production of sources and texts with a sharp eye on the intentions of the author. While many reconstruction...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Post-Olympism?
• 1 Post-olympism? Questioning olympic Historiography
• 2 'What's the Difference between Propaganda for Tourism or for a Political Regime?' Was the 1936 Olympics the first Postmodern Spectacle?
• 3 China and Olympism
• 4 The Global, the Popular and the Inter-Popular: Olympic Sport between Market, State and Civil Society
• 5 Cosmopolitan Olympism, Humanism and the Spectacle of 'Race'
• 6 Post-Olympism: Olympic Legacies, Sport Spaces and the Practices of Everyday Life
• 7 The Future of a Multi-Sport Mega-Event: Is there a Place for the Olympic Games in a 'Post-Olympic' World?
• 8 Making the World Safe for Global Capital: The Sydney 2000 Olympics and Beyond
• 9 The Disneyfication of the Olympics? Theme Parks and Freak-Shows of the Body
• 10 Essence of Post-Olympism: A Prolegomena of Study
• 11 Sportive Nationalism and Globalization
• 12 The Vulnerability Thesis and its Consequences: A Critique of Specialization in Olympic Sport
• 13 Doping and the Olympic Games from an Aesthetic Perspective
• 14 Post-Olympism and the Aestheticization of Sport
• 15 Laying Olympism to Rest
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index