Power Games

A Critical Sociology of Sport

John Sugden, Alan Tomlinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415251006
• eBook ISBN: 9781136402128
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Critical and radical perspectives have been central to the emergence of the sociology of sport as a discipline in its own right. This ground-breaking new book is the first to offer a comprehensive theory and method for a critical sociology of sport. It argues that class, political economy, hegemony and other concepts central to the radical tradition are essential for framing, understanding and changing social and political relations within sport and between sport and society.
The book draws upon the disciplines of politics, sociology, history and philosophy to provide a critical analysis of power relations throughout the world of sport, while offering important new case studies from such diverse sporting contexts as the Olympics, world football, boxing, cricket, tennis and windsurfing. In the process, it addresses key topics such as:
* nations and nationalism
* globalisation
* race
* gender
* political economy.
Power Games can be used as a complete introduction to the study of sport and society. And will be essential reading for any serious student of sport. At the same time, it is a provocative book that by argument and example challenges those who research and write about sport to make their work relevant to social and political reform.

Part I
Theory and method

1 Theory and method for a critical sociology of sport¹

John Sugden and Alan Tomlinson

The title of this book Power Games has a double meaning. On the one hand, it refers in a general sense to the game of power, that is the manifold schemes, strategies and techniques through which individuals and groups struggle with and against one another for position and dominance, and against subservience. On the other hand, it points towards how such power games are played out in the institutional setting of sport which, in late modernity, has become a very highly valued global commodity, and an important vehicle for the acquisition of wealth and status and the exercise of power. In this book we offer a collection of essays which, incorporating both of these meanings, in different but overlapping ways, illuminates how the dynamic, interactive and embodied nature of power in sport can be researched, interpreted and theorised. In this opening chapter we outline a way of thinking about and researching power that is fundamental to our own work and much that follows.

The centrality of power in sociological analysis hardly comes as a surprise to those grounded in the classical debates of modern Western social science. What has always been at issue is the source of power, and the nature of the context within which power relations are lived out: the mode of production for Marx; new forms of the division of labour for Durkheim; particular forms of authority for Weber, and the individual drive or will to acquire and use power for theorists such as Habermas, Freud and Nietzsche.

More recently, Giddens (1984) has developed structuration theory, an attempted departure from the dichotomous agency—structure debates, which tries to synthesise elements of these classical positions and rework them in an integrated and interpretative sociology centred around power relations. For Giddens, power is the central dynamic of all human societies, at all levels of institutional life, interpersonal relations and everyday practice. It is not merely a matter of having power or not having power, it is that power relations are inherent in and integral to all social life. As Giddens (1984: 15) puts it, 'The use of power characterises not specific types of conduct but all action'. It is the omnipresent transformative capacity of power discovered in all facets of social interaction that is important. Rather than seeing power relations as a zero sum game in which the power of some can only be accumulated and exercised at the expense of others losing all their power, Giddens draws our attention to what he calls the 'dialectic of control'.

This notion involves two key elements. The first centres on the idea that all human beings possess some power in the form of their ability to transform, to some extent, the circumstances in which they find themselves. It is this ability to respond to the social environment and to manipulate it in some way that is a basic human characteristic. The second element follows from this and points to the fact that although it is usually one person or a group that dominates in a power relationship, 'the subordinate party always has some power ... which enables them (in varying degrees) to counter or offset the power of the dominant party' (Layder 1995: 16). This is a concept that we found very useful, for instance, in helping us to unravel the Byzantine power networks within the governing body of world football FIFA (Sugden and Tomlinson 1998: 44).

This is not such a radical formulation, though some of its implications may have radical consequences for the scope and direction of contemporary theory and method. Indeed, philosophy, particularly in the writings of Bertrand Russell, has already provided a powerful rationale for this position. Writing in the context of Nazi and Stalinist totalitarianism, Russell (1940: 10) claimed that orthodox Marxist economists 'were mistaken in supposing that economic self-interest could be taken as the fundamental motive in the social sciences'. For Russell, 'love of power' must be seen as the critical determinant of social affairs. Only then, he argues, can history be rightly interpreted. His study is therefore an attempt:

to prove that the fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense that Energy is the fundamental concept in physics. Like energy, power has many forms, such as wealth, armaments, civil authority, influence on opinion. No one of these can be regarded as subordinate to any other, and there is no one form from which the others are derived. The attempt to treat one form of power, say wealth, in isolation can be only partly successful, just as the study of only one form of energy will be defective at certain points, unless other forms are taken into account.

(Russell 1940: 10)

Russell defines power as the 'production of intended effects ... it is easy to say, roughly, that A has more power than B, if A achieves many intended effects and B only a few' (ibid.: 35). Clearly this does not mean that B is powerless, but simply that B is less powerful than A. For Russell, power over human beings involves the influencing of individuals by (a) direct physical power, typically exercised by organisations such as the army and the police; (b) inducements on the basis of rewards and punishments, typically used by employer or economic organisations; and (c) the influencing of opinion, or propaganda, including the cultivation of 'desired habits in others', such as military drill, by organisations such as schools, churches and political parties. Russell, taking a leaf out of Weber's book, also distinguishes between traditional, naked and revolutionary power, and explores different forms of the power of individuals: the business executive, the politician and the wire-puller behind the scenes.

Russell's argument for the recognition of power as the core concept of the social sciences — to understand the power relation, the 'impulse to power', as the central drive of social life — is matched by an historical and cross-cultural sensitivity to the nuanced and multiple manifestations of power relations in different places and at different times. It is a reminder that, no how matter how seductive and eloquent such arguments might be, theorisations of power should not be, Marcuse-style, one-dimensional (Marcuse 1972). Social scientists should recognise and seek to understand and explain when, why and how power transforms from one of its dimensions, or balance of dimensions, to another.

Too often, treatments of power have lacked Russell's detail and subtlety. By locating power in only one source or another, or confusing the consequences of power (for instance domination) with power per se, such analyses are over-simplified and incomplete. Some key works on the sociology of sport have tended to fall into this trap. Take George Sage's Power and Ideology in American Sport (Sage 1990). Sport is presented throughout this book as 'one of various cultural settings in which the hegemonic structure of power and privilege in capitalist society is continually fortified' {ibid.: 209). Once this all-pervasive power structure is established, alternatives to the present sports system — counter hegemonic initiatives — can then be considered. For Sage these are important but somewhat marginal gestures of resistance to programmes or policies cast by and for dominant social groups. He then catalogues selected forms of political resistance, placing a particular emphasis on gender and race which he sees as having 'given rise to opposition and transformation' (ibid.: 211—14).

It is not Sage's careful and sound critical analysis that is at fault here. In his adaptation of Hargreaves's (1986) model to the USA, Sage's depiction of the ideological nature of sport is convincing and his recognition of sources of resistance appropriate enough. But the picture that is painted is of a monolithic and systemic power structure in sports against which some resistance might be possible, and even some marginal transformation, but in terms of significant change we are still left waiting for the revolution. It is an all or nothing model of resistance, which separates the process of resistance from the embodied power dynamic itself. The Sage version could be formulated syllogistically: you/they are powerful, I/we resist, things change. For all its sociological subtlety, and its acknowledgement of the importance of hegemony theory, recognising the reflexive and interactive nature of power relations, Sage's model is too top-down and is not an adequate portrayal of the dynamics of power within sports cultures and practices.

Sage oversimplifies Hargreaves's position who, in Sport, Power and Culture, offers a concise, flexible and accessible definition of power when he says:

When we use the term power, we are referring ... to a relationship between agents, the outcome of which is determined by agents' access to relevant resources and their use of appropriate strategies in specific conditions of struggle with other agents.

(Hargreaves 1986: 3)

Critical here is the recognition that power is a relationship, a dynamic, and that the relationship involves human agents struggling over resources and outcomes. There are various forms in which power relations are manifest, and Hargreaves outlines four such forms by which the compliance of subordinate groups may be obtained: physical force or its threatened use; economic sanctions; the assertion of authority or prestige; and persuasion. In translation, this breakdown is similar to Michael Mann's fourfold classification of the sources of power that, in shorthand, he refers to as the IEMP — ideological, economic, military and political. These are not totally separate and monolithic dimensions, but 'overlapping networks of social interaction' (Mann 1986: 2) Like Mann, Hargreaves is at pains to emphasise that the exercise of power is always by agents, however much power has become invested in and circulated throughout the social body. Thus it is people, either individually or collectively, and not systems, that wield, challenge, seek or reaffirm power. They act, of course, within the context of institutional structures, but those structures are themselves contingent upon ongoing and embodied power relations.

Rather than working with the couplet Power/Resistance, it is surely important to see resistance as a form of power itself, as a response to say, domination, or in Russell's terms, to a particular form of power, say naked or traditional power. For if actors have some capacity to affect outcomes, they are exercising some degree of power. Lukes (1974) has problematised simplistic formulations on the exercise of power and urged that a deeper study of power must recognise how, in complex and subtle ways the inactivity of leaders and sheer weight of institutions is a form of power. Doing nothing can have great impact on events as surely as can doing something. More generally he stresses the relational dimensions of power:

Power is the capacity to produce, or contribute to, outcomes — to make a difference to the world. In social life, we may say, power is the capacity to do this through social relationships: it is the capacity to produce, or contribute to, outcomes by significantly affecting another or others.

(Lukes 1993: 504)

By such a definition, resistance to domination — as in the refusal to comply — must itself be seen as a form of power. Indeed in a note on historical method, Nietzsche specified resistance as a central process. In The Genealogy of Morals (1956: 210), he talked of how 'the whole history of a thing', such as a custom, constitutes a 'chain of reinterpretations and rearrangements'. Such a history:

is a sequence of more or less profound, more or less independent processes of appropriation, including the resistances used in each instance, the attempted transformations for purposes of defence or reaction, as well as the results of successful counterattacks. While forms are fluid, their 'meaning' is even more so.

(Nietzsche 1956: 210)

Echoes of Nietzsche inform Foucault's writings on power and resistance, particularly his section on method in The History of Sexuality where Foucault disputes that any 'over-all unity of domination' is 'given at the outset' (1981: 92). He argues that power must be understood as 'the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organisation' (ibid,.), and furthermore, involving struggles and confrontation that affect the power relations by transforming, strengthening, or reversing them. These force relations might also form a chain or a system, or be isolated from one another, and they take effect as strategies. According to Foucault, power is not an institution, and not a structure; yet neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name one attributes to a complex strategic situation of struggle in a particular society. With, not apart from, these very power relations, resides the potential for resistance, not a sporadic, dramatic, revolutionary intervention, but something more internal to the power dynamic itself. 'Where there is power there is resistance, and yet, or rather consequently, this resistance is never in a position of exteriority in relation to power' (ibid.: 95).

Foucault goes on to emphasise the relational character of power relations, arguing that:

Their existence depends on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support, or handle power relations. These points of resistance are present everywhere in the power network ... There is a plurality of resistances, each of them a special case: resistances that are possible, necessary, improbable; others that are spontaneous, savage, solitary, concerted, rampant, or violent: still others that are quick to compromise, interested, or sacrificial; by definition, they can only exist in the field of power relations.

(Foucault 1981: 95-6)

Foucault's abstract account at least implies that nobody is excluded from the power game and that individuals can operate in a myriad of ways at points of resistance while playing it. In processes of appropriation and resistance, it is human agents who, in Lukes's (1974) terms, make a difference to the world. Thus, the question of agency has to be located within any adequate conceptualisation of power. Giddens recognises this when he says:

Action depends upon the capacity of the individual to 'make a difference' to a pre-existing state of affairs or course of events. An agent ceases to be such if he or she loses the capacity to 'make a difference', that is, to exercise some sort of power.

(Giddens 1984: 14)

Sport is one cultural form in which these agency/power dynamics can be studied. In de Certeau's terms, it is a prominent practice of everyday life. His project is to develop a multifaceted analysis of culture that he views as the product of the tension inherent in the political dynamics of power relations at every level of society (1988: xvii). Fiske (1989: 32—42) draws upon de Certeau's theory in his argument for the recognition of everyday life as a significant sphere in which 'the people' undermine the 'strategies of the powerful, make poaching raids upon their texts or structures, and play constant tricks upon the system' (ibid:. 32).

Fiske uses this approach to illustrate the progressive, rather than radical, nature of popular culture, and highlights the interpretative and creative capacity of human agents to employ such tactics. Although such an approach can be criticise...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Preface
• Part I Theory and method
• Part II Theory: interventions and re-evaluations
• Part III Method: case studies and ethnographies
• Index