Inside Sports

Jay Coakley, Peter Donnelly

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780415170888
• eBook ISBN: 9781134696956
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

How do people become involved in sports? What can their experiences teach us?
These are two of the many questions asked by this unique collection of personal stories of people involved in sport. Told by researchers who have interviewd participants and observed what happens in the setting where people play sports, the contributions not only show how sport studies contribute to the wider study of society, but also describe the difficulties and challenges faced when doing research of this kind.
Inside Sports is divided into four main sections reflecting the social processes and developments over time that make up the experience of sport for most people, however diverse their circumstances may otherwise be:
* Early experiences: being introduced to sports
* Experience and identity: becoming an athlete
* Deep in the experience: doing sports
* Transition experiences: facing life beyond the playing field.
In its extensive coverage of the sporting experience from within, as well as its discussion of research methods, Inside Sports will be essential reading for all students studying sport in society.

Part 1
EARLY EXPERIENCES

Being introduced to sports

How do people first come to be involved as active participants in sports? Most of us learn basic physical skills and play our first physical activities in the context of our families and childhood peer groups. But our first experiences in organized physical activities and sports may occur in many different settings. These settings often include physical education classes in elementary school and adult-controlled youth programs in our school or community. First experiences in organized sports generally occur during childhood, but they can occur at any point in the life course.

The chapters in Part 1 provide stories about early experiences in physical activities and sports. In Chapter 1, Cynthia A.Hasbrook describes how children in elementary school develop ideas about physicality and give meaning to their own physical abilities and skills. As a physical educator, she knows that our bodies are central to our sense of who we are, and that we learn about ourselves and the world around us as we participate in physical activities, including sports. Her study of boys and girls from different racial and ethnic backgrounds shows that physical activities are always socially and culturally “situated.” This means that we cannot understand the personal and social significance of physical activities or sports unless we know about the social and cultural context in which the experiences occur.

Hasbrook’s data indicate that children give meaning to their physical abilities and skills at the same time as they learn about what it means to be male or female. Ideas about gender are learned through social relationships and through representations of masculinity and femininity in the media and the social world in which children live. Hasbrook notes that the children in her study learn about their own bodies and what their bodies can do in terms that highlight differences rather than similarities between boys and girls. This learned notion of difference accounts for why some little girls do not play sports even though their physical skills are equal to those of boys. Similarly, it accounts for why most boys participate freely in many of the physical activities and sports that occur in elementary school. This “difference-based” approach to gender creates a social context in which some boys feel that they have “social permission” to put down the physicality of girls, and in which boys are more likely than girls to express themselves in physically assertive performances for their classmates.

Hasbrook observes that children’s ideas about masculinity and femininity are socially constructed and reproduced as they present and move their bodies while they are at school. For example, young boys learn that their status depends on showing others that they are physically strong and willing to be physically aggressive. At the same time, many girls learn that being physically strong and aggressive has few social benefits for them. Some girls, especially girls bigger and stronger than their classmates, challenge these ideas by expressing their strength and being aggressive in their relationships with boys. This sometimes leads boys to fear them and girls to hide behind them, but these girls also experience forms of teasing and social rejection. Over time, strong girls are marginalized. At the same time, certain physical activities, including many sports, come to be defined by the children as “boys’ activities.”

Finally, Hasbrook emphasizes that the meanings given to physicality and expressions of physical abilities and skills vary with the social class and racial/ethnic backgrounds of the children. In other words, physicality is constructed through relationships that are influenced by gender, social class, and race and ethnicity. This is why ideas about physicality vary from one group to another in a society and from one society to another.

The connection between playing sports and learning about masculinity and femininity is the central theme in Chapter 2 by Alan G.Ingham and Alison Dewar. As Ingham watched his son play ice hockey and interact with his teammates on an organized competitive hockey team for 13- to 14-year-old boys, he became concerned with what these boys were learning about what it meant to be a man in sports and in society at large. Alan teamed up with Alison Dewar, then one of his colleagues in the Department of Physical Education, Health, and Sport Studies at Miami University. They brought the boys from this team together to have them talk about their experiences. Alison facilitated these discussions because she was trained in the use of interviewing and because the boys did not know her on a personal level as they knew Alan.

Many issues were explored during Alison’s conversations with the boys. When the conversational data were analyzed, both Ingham and Dewar noted patterns of comments and inferences that revolved around playing sports and being a man. They concluded that as these boys played competitive hockey they were exposed to a narrow set of ideas about masculinity. The boys, however, did not see this as a problem. In fact, they eagerly used these ideas as a basis for how hockey should be played and for how they should assess themselves and their peers as they made their own transitions into manhood on and off the ice.

Ingham and Dewar make the case that contact sports in North America serve as a setting in which honor and shame are used to reproduce a form of masculinity in which power over others and the ability to dominate are primary bases for status and prestige. To the extent that boys apply this narrow definition of masculinity in their own lives, they idealize toughness and come to view anyone who is vulnerable or weak as unworthy of their respect. When this occurs, the locker rooms of men’s contact sport teams become places for the expression of homophobia and negative attitudes toward girls, women, and anyone defined as weak or effeminate. At the same time, playing fields become sites for expressions of violence by those men who use this narrow definition of masculinity as a basis for their own identities. In this way, these men and their fellow athletes become potential victims of their own ideas about masculinity. Ingham and Dewar are depressed by their findings. They conclude the chapter by asking all of us to think about how sports might be constructed to prevent this waste of human potential.

Chapter 3 is written by Mark A.Grey, an anthropologist (and soccer enthusiast) who spent two years as a part of a research team that studied a Kansas town where immi grant workers from Asia and Latin America were recruited to meet the labor needs of a booming beef industry. He and the other researchers focused on the complex patterns of ethnic relations associated with this influx of immigrant families into a traditional Midwestern town populated by white people from Euro-American backgrounds. To learn about the dynamics of the relationships between the established residents of the town and the new immigrants, Mark did his observations and interviews in the local high school where many of the sons and daughters of the immigrant workers became students.

After he gathered field notes and talked with numerous people at the school, Mark discovered that the dynamics of ethnic relations in the town largely depended on two things:

• the ability of the immigrants to speak English;
• the willingness of immigrant students to participate in the traditional American sports offered through the varsity high school sport program.

Established residents of the town expected the new immigrants to fit into the culture that they had created in their community. They did not anticipate that the cultural practices and interests of the new immigrants would change their traditional ways of doing things in the town.

Grey discovered that the new students and their families could prove their willingness to become “real Americans” and be accepted by the established residents by supporting and participating in the traditional varsity sports at the high school. But these sports did not fit the cultural experiences and interests of many of the new students. They often preferred soccer instead of football and basketball. When the new families did not support the varsity sports, the established residents, including many teachers and coaches, were confused. When the new students expressed an interest in playing soccer, even though it was only a club sport with few resources, the established residents and most people at the school felt threatened. Established residents thought that if they “gave in” to this “foreign interest” it might erode the cultural foundations of social life at the school and in the community at large.

Grey concludes that in the case of this town, sports actually interfered with democratic inclusion into the school and the town as a whole. The lack of interest in the traditional sports offered through the school, combined with the interest in the “foreign” sport of soccer, contributed to the social marginalization of immigrant workers and their children. Grey’s study shows how the decisions to play sports and the meanings given to sport participation are sometimes tied to complex social issues such as race and ethnic relations.

Chapter 4 is one of two autobiographical articles we include in the book. Kitty Porter-field never trained or competed in any sport until she was 44 years old. She grew up before Title IX took effect in the USA (the federal legislation that makes gender discrimination illegal in all schools that receive any funds from the federal government), so she had few opportunities to play sports outside of physical education classes in school. After nearly twenty years of watching and promoting the sport participation of her three children, Kitty decided it was her time to train and compete. Inspired by her children’s involvement in rowing, she bought a boat with the goal of testing her own physical limits as a rower. She tells her story in an engaging and insightful manner. She explains what was involved in being a “crew mom” and making sure that her children had opportunities she never had. She also tells us how difficult it was for her to begin training and to enter her first race in her forties.

As Porterfield describes her feelings of accomplishment and pleasure as an athlete, she gives us a vivid inside view of sports. Her story illustrates how she integrates sport participation into the rest of her life, and how her job and family set limits on her participation. As with the elementary school children studied by Hasbrook and the boys studied by Ingham and Dewar, Kitty Porterfield’s experiences and the meanings given to them can only be understood in the social and cultural context in which she lives them. Not only is her age important, but so is the historical point in time in which she grew up.

The last chapter of Part 1 is written by sociologists Janet Saltzman Chafetz and Joseph A.Kotarba. Chapter 5, like the final chapter of each part, is unique because it focuses on the experiences of those who support the sport participation of others in their families. Chafetz and Kotarba did a case study in which they analyzed the social and cultural implications of the role of upper-middle-class little league mothers who supported the involvement of their 11- and 12-year-old sons during a prestigious post-season baseball tournament.

Janet’s son played on the team, so she had immediate access to all of what parents, especially the mothers, did to support their sons’ early sport participation. She recorded information about what the mothers did, what the fathers did, and how much time, energy, and money were devoted to young boys who came to believe that they did in fact, as boys playing sports, deserve these expenditures of resources.

As Saltzman and Kotarba analyzed the data from the case study they found that the mothers of the players worked long hours on highly organized committees and subcommittees. Through these committees the mothers were responsible for maintaining “team spirit” and designing the consumption experiences of team members and team families. The mothers bought food, fixed meals, drove to restaurants, provided preand post-game meals, bought snacks and treats, bought and made other rewards and mementos associated with playing in the tournament, and made sure that the boys could go to movies and play video games in their “off-time” away from baseball. Some mothers organized some of the “baseball sisters” into a cheerleader squad, and others made sure that all the boys on the team had special door decorations for their homes, pins for their shirts, and scrapbooks commemorating their experience. Fathers occasionally helped at practices, but mostly enjoyed attending games, eating food prepared by their wives, and commenting on the sport performances of their sons.

Chafetz and Kotarba concluded that the nearly month-long tournament was the site of a set of experiences that reproduced clearly the notions that women are good wives and mothers to the extent that they facilitate enjoyable family consumption revolving around the leisure and sport experiences of their husbands and sons. It was assumed that these mothers, if they were really good mothers, would expect nothing in return. Through this experience the unspoken message to the boys on the team was that they were “son gods” whose sport participation would be supported by their families, but primarily by their mothers. In this way, the little league experience became a social site for “doing gender” and “doing social class” in a particular way. It maintained what the men, women, boys and girls in the town of “Texasville” came to believe, day after day, was normal and good.

In summary, these descriptions of early experiences illustrate that there is clearly a “social side” to becoming involved in sports. Early sport experiences are part of larger social processes that make up people’s lives. The meanings given to those experiences are tied to how people define themselves, their relationships with others, and their connection with the larger social world in which they live their lives.

1
YOUNG CHILDREN’S SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF PHYSICALITY AND GENDER

Cynthia A.Hasbrook

First graders, Ann and Katherine, were “good at sports.” When they played with us, I could tell they liked sports. Yet, they seldom chose to play. Why not? It puzzled me. After all, I reasoned, they were good and liked playing as much as I did. Why was I the only first grade girl who always played “one-fly up” and “kickball” with the boys?

By the end of first grade, we all knew who the “good” players were. We gathered each recess, selected two of the “best” players as team captains and, in turn, captains chose up teams. The least skilled players were always chosen last, and these players always seemed to be the same few boys. Knowing I would hate to be chosen last, I wondered why these boys would want to keep playing with us. In second grade, they no longer joined us and were labeled “sissies” and “girls.”

By third grade, Katherine and Ann stopped playing with us altogether. While other girls did not seem to care for sports, it was evident that Katherine and Ann still, though secretly, liked sports. I was sad for them and puzzled as to how they could possibly give up doing something they did so well and liked so much.

Often scholars study what personally interests them and do so by using philosophical and theoretical perspectives with which they are comfortable. I have spent much of my academic career exploring several facets of those very questions I first asked myself as a youngster growing up in the 1950s and 1960s. While they may seem like simple questions, they have become more and more complex with each new study I have undertaken.

Initially, my research examined how childhood and adolescent sport involvement was influenced by a person’s social class background and by significant others such as parents, peers, and siblings. I relied on a positivist approach and quantitative methods. I collected numerical data by using paper and pencil questionnaires that asked young people to report basic demographic information such as age, number of brothers and sisters, mother’s and father’s levels of education, and how many sports they played. The young people in my samples were also asked to recall who influenced them to become involved in sports. I then statistically analyzed my data and reported my findings in a number of published papers.

After several years of doing this type of research, I began to ask questions that could not be answered adequately with data collected through paper and pencil questionnaires. I wanted to go inside the experiences of children and learn what encourages or discourages their involvement in physical activity. I wanted to understand why and how children link physical activity and gender, and I wanted to know personally the children I was studying. I wanted to go beyond the numbers generated from questionnaires. But I had not been trained to go into the field and do qualitative research. Therefore, I spent two years learning to do ethnographic research that I could use to study the lived experiences of children as they engaged in physical activities and incorporated movement into their sense of who they are and how they are connected with other people.

As I reviewed the work of others, I found few ethnographic studies exploring children’s social interactions within school settings. I also discovered that there were no such studies exploring young children’s physical activity and gender. Fortunately, I was able to use a semester-long sabbatical leave to begin a study of how a group of first grade children developed ideas about their own physicality and gender. The study turned out to be a three-year project in which I followed the children through their third grade year of school.

To date, two papers have been written from the three-year project: the first (Hasbrook 1997) focuses on the children during their first grade year and specifically examines how girls’ and boys’ physicality and gender are constructed and linked; the second (Hasbrook and Harris 1998) examines how the children, as first and second graders, rely on their physicality socially to construct masculinity(ies). I invited Othello Harris of Miami University to join me in data analysis, interpretation, and writing of this second paper so that it would represent and benefit from the perspective of a black man as well as a white woman. This chapter describes the overall project and some of the most important information reported in th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part 1: Early Experiences
• Part 2: Experience and Identity
• Part 3: Deep in the Experience
• Part 4: Transition Experiences