3. sporting communities
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KNES287TRANSCRIPT
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!Sporting Communities!
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KNES 287 Sport and American Society: Module 3 Topic B!
David L. Andrews !Physical Cultural Studies Program!Department of Kinesiology!
Having discussed sporting subcultures, we now turn to issues of community and community identity, and how they are manifest and experienced through engagement with “representational” sporting culture. !!
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Sporting Communitas!
Topic 1:! Bowling Alone?!Putnam’s (2001) thesis highlights the decline/transformation of American community within consumer society.!!Decline in membership of civic organizations due to individualizing (technological/cultural/political) of society and social life.!!Example: Number of people who bowl has increased, but the number bowling in leagues has decreased.!
Breakdown of social capital, social !belonging, and participatory democracy.!
Bowling Alone!Working Out Alone!Risking Alone !
Sporting Gesellschaft (Individuality)!
Sporting Gesellschaft (Individuality)!
Source: Yeoman, I. (2008. June 23). The sports tourist: The rise of indivdualism.!http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4036524.html!
Adult competitive team sports are on the decline while involvement in individual sports is increasing.!
1. Within wealthy societies, involvement in individual sports a marker of social/status differentiation and individual improvement!
2. Individual sports demand less social investment and are easier to “drop”!
3. Time-pressured existences lend themselves to individually realised activities!
4. Within appearance-based consumer culture, many individual activities focus on body toning/reshaping!
5. Adult recreational team sport on the decline, team sports the domain of the young.!
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While collective/social capital association may have declined for participatory sports, it is still evident in sport spectacting contexts…!
Collective (Communal) Representation!
Émile Durkheim!
Durkheim used the term “collective representation” to describe the elements of life (religion, and yes, sport), that are the commonly shared institutions or experiences through which individuals express and derive their sense of collective belonging; their sense of “we-ness”.!!
According to Durkheim, collective representations can contribute to !the levels of “social solidarity” !(collectivity/ group cohesion) within !a society.!
“an object with which we identify, an athlete or a sports team defines as a ‘community’ all those who relate to the object cathectically or in a possessive manner–our athlete, our team–and who introject the “representation” into their self-definitions (I am a *** fan; I wanna be like Mike [Jordan].”!
Source: Ingham, A. G., & McDonald, M. G. (2003). Sport and community/Communitas. In R. C. Wilcox, D. L. Andrews, R. Pitter & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Sporting dystopias: The making and meanings of urban sport cultures (pp. 17-34). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.!
Sport as Collective Representation!
“communitas–a special experience during which individuals are able to rise above those structures that materially and normatively regulate their daily lives and that unite people across the boundaries of structure, rank, and socioeconomic status.”!!(Ingham & McDonald, 2003, p. 26)!
Source: Ingham, A. G., & McDonald, M. G. (2003). Sport and community/Communitas. In R. C. Wilcox, D. L. Andrews, R. Pitter & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Sporting dystopias: The making and meanings of urban sport cultures (pp. 17-34). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.!
Sport is often the collective glue which, seemingly binds all the elements of the community together (it creates communitas)…!!Oftentimes in different ways…!!!
1. Organic/Face-to-Face Communitas!
2. Spontaneous/Short-Lived Communitas!
3. Ideological/Manufactured Communitas!
Variants of Communitas!
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1. Organic/Face-to-Face Communitas!
“A Town, A Team, A Dream”!
SPACE! PLACE!-Topographic Dimension!!- Geographic Entity!
- Physical World!
- Material Experience!
- Site of Existence!
HOUSE!
- Sociological Dimension!!- Socio-Cultural Entity!
- Social World!
- Cultural Experience!
- Source of Meaning!!
HOME!
“A place is a physical space invested with understandings of behavioural appropriateness, social expectations, cultural meanings, etc…!!…We are located in ‘space’, but we [learn through social and cultural experience to] act in ‘place’” !
Source: Brown, B. A. T. (N.D.). Geographies of technology: Some comments on place, space and technology. Retrieved, from http://www.fxpal.com/ConferencesWorkshops/ECSCW2001/brown.doc!
The “Wee” Tree!
Places are, quite literally, sites of !meaning.!!!Places shape the cultural experience !of space.!!Places often inform individual and !collective/communal meanings and identities.!!!
Sporting Topophilia!
Perhaps more than any other sporting places, it is team stadia which evoke the most topophilic response, in terms of stimulating feelings of affinity and affection.!!Often, sport stadia represent a material focal point--a veritable shrine--for communities of team supporters.!
As John Bale pointed out, topophilia is:!! “literally a love of place”!
Source: Bale, J. (1994). Landscapes of modern sport (p. 120). London: !Leicester University Press.!
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These sporting topophilic places have emerged, ORGANICALLY, through the usage of, and familiarity with, a space by generations of team followers.!
College Football !Communal Topophilia!
Reveille, Dead Dogs, and Communal Space! Baseball’s Communal Topophilic Places!
Wrigley Field,!Chicago Cubs!
Fenway Park,!Boston Red Sox!
2. Spontaneous/Short-Lived Communitas!!
A Spontaneous but Ritualized!Expression of Terp Communitas?!
Learning to act!in place?!
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Philadelphia Phillies 2008 World Series Celebration!
3. Ideological/Manufactured Communitas!
Civic Sporting Celebrations!
Manufacturing Sporting Communitas!
“I try to shake people by the lapels all year to have civic pride. These !guys do it by making the playoffs” (Jan. 13, 2001)!!“You can’t put a price tag on how this unites the city. This !transcends football and sports – it’s a source of pride” (Jan. 23, 2001)!
!“The whole town’s alive and the whole town believes in itself !again” (Jan. 28, 2001)!
Mayor Martin O’Malley Speaks: �
Organically Evolving Communal Sporting Topophilia!
Rationally Manufactured !Communal Sporting Topophilia!
Manufacturing Terp Communitas!
http://www.actlikeyouknow.com/!
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Manufactured Yankee Communitas!
See Video Clip 1
Managing the Dead Tree Crew Community!
See Video Clip 2
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Sport and Organic!Community!
Topic 3:! Dimensions of Sport Community/Communitas I!
Sport!Stadium!
Organic/Local Community !- Relatively close proximity to stadium!- Team represents local identity!- Small town socio-spatiality and populace!- Face-to-Face familiarity and experience of belonging!LOCALIZED ORGANIC COMMUNITAS! !
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See Video Clip 3
Massilon, OH: “Touchdown Town” !
“We love football so much because it’s part of our history. It’s part of the fabric of this community, just like it’s part of the fabric of this society. I think Massillon is like a little America. I mean, this society is sports crazy.”!
See Video Clip 4
TIGER FOOTBALL:!!Dialectically related to the class, gender, racial/ethnic, and nation-based elements of the Massillon, OH, community.!
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Phillipsburg, NJ!
“the community makes what this football program is all about. I grew up in this town. I grew up in this town, and I remember and I remember as a little kid on Friday nights, in the Fall, is football night. That’s what you did. We walked over to the game, and everybody went to a football game, and you grew up with it. And, it just kind of just breeds itself throughout the town.”!
See Video Clip 5
“North Town”, TX!
Source: Foley, D. E. (1990). The great American footbal ritual: Reproducing race, class, and gender inequality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7(2), 111-135.!
Small town (8,000) in south Texas.!!Predominantly farming/ranching community.!!Considerable local poverty.!!80% Mexican-American population.!!North Town H.S.: 600 students/Triple-AAA level sports teams in 5-level state system !!!
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This is a face-to-face community, in that the size of the town was sufficiently small that individual’s would either directly know, be familiar with, or recognize, the majority of their community fellows.!!Thus, it can be considered an “organic” community, in that the experience and feeling of communal belonging was realised through direct participation in, and engagement with, community practices and people.!
Football and the North Town Community/Communitas!
!“The games enlivened the community’s social life…Community sports was the patriotic, neighborly thing to do”!!(Foley, 1990, p. 113)!
Source: Foley, D. E. (1990). The great American footbal ritual: Reproducing race, class, and gender inequality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7(2), 111-135.!
High School Football Rituals and Collective Involvement!
- Friday night games!!- Weekly pep rallies!- Marching band!- Cheerleader/Pep Squads!- Homecoming bonfire and dance!- Powder puff football game!- Booster club!
Source: Foley, D. E. (1990). The great American footbal ritual: Reproducing race, class, and gender inequality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7(2), 111-135.!
Involvement in each of these elements of the North Town high school football ritual, represented a context for the performance and display of individual commitment to the town’s/community’s traditions/rituals/values.!!Thus, on the surface, football becomes a vehicle for affirming the collective solidarity/harmony of the community. !
As much a source of social divisiveness, as social cohesion, the high school football ritual “staged” community politics and social hierarchies:!
• Gender hierarchies!• Sexual preference hierarchies!• Ethnicity/racial hierarchies!• Social class hierarchies!
Source: Foley, D. E. (1990). The great American footbal ritual: Reproducing race, class, and gender inequality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7(2), 111-135.!
So, the example of North Town demonstrates that is important not to overly romanticize the organic community.!!As much as the high school football ritual contributes to the creation of collective belonging and familiarity, it also reproduces dominant CLASS, ETHNICITY, and GENDER based power structures, relations, and inequalities.!
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Thus, North Town, high school football:!!“socialize(s) people into community structures of inequality”!!(Foley, 1990, p. 112)!
Source: Foley, D. E. (1990). The great American footbal ritual: Reproducing race, class, and gender inequality. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7(2), 111-135.!
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Sport and Extended!Community!
Topic 4:!
As centres of population grew from towns, to cities, to sprawling metropolitan areas, so the scale and experience of community has changed.!!Representative sport entities nonetheless became a focal point for civic pride and identity, even with these extended communities.!
Extended Community!- Extended proximity to stadium!- Team represents city/regional identity!- Metropolitan socio-spatiality and populace!- Largely imagined familiarity and experience of belonging!EXTENDED MANUFACTURED COMMUNITAS!! !
Sport!Stadium!
Dimensions of Sport Community/Communitas II!
Although community/communitas exist as the experience of collective belonging. Within extended communities, sporting communitas is often:!!SYMBOLIC and IMAGINARY!!Sport often leads to the manufacturing of a sense of collective belonging and commonality within highly diverse and geographically extended populations.!
Metropolitan “sport communities” are constituted, and united, through their shared (if disparate) relationships with “the team”.!!This is, oftentimes, a relationship of common/shared misery as much as common/shared joy.!!Either way, their relationship with the team provides them with a tangible (if illusionary) sense of collective identity, solidarity and belonging.!
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United in Misery…! See Clip Video 6
Metropolitan communities are “imagined communities”, because their members can only realistically be expected to know, or be familiar with, a very small percentage of the entire populace.!!Hence, the community’s sense of belonging becomes constructed through symbolic and imaginary means, as much as experiential means.!
Source: Anderson, B. (1983). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso.!
With an increasingly mobile populace, local identities become experienced through mass communications channels, frequently engaged in a communal space.!
Sports Bars and Extended Communities ! �Local� sport communities re-form far removed from their point of origin.!
�A slice of !Philadelphia� !
Dimensions of Sport Community III!
Virtual Community !- Mass mediated relationship with team!- Team affiliation represents consumer identity!IMAGINARY/MANUFACTURED COMMUNITAS!!
Sport!Stadium!
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College Park, MD, USA!
Hong Kong, China!
Sydney, Australia!
All of which speaks to a:!!!! Global NEO-TRIBALISM !
A globally disparate community of sport consumers linked to a sport brand/team/ celebrity, rather than to any sport place.!
Maffesoli, M. (1995). The time of the tribes. London: Sage."
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Sport, Community, and the Neo-Liberal City!
Topic 5:!
As the structure and focus of the city has changed, so has the place and influence of sport within the contemporary metropolis.!!There is a discernible disconnection between the traditional local/organic sporting community, and those new consumption communities targeted by the post-industrial city. !
Baltimore: A Neoliberal City
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Historically, city governments and administrations were focused on providing services and facilities for the city populace.
Sanitation Services
Library Services
Education Services Police Services
Fire Services
Baltimore was thus transformed from a city focused on MANAGING THE WELFARE OF ITS CITIZENRY, to one preoccupied with the ENTREPRENEURIAL REFORMATION of the city as a MOTOR OF PROFIT. THIS IS NEO-LIBERAL BALTIMORE (a city increasingly shaped by the interests of private capital as opposed to public interest).
Source: Whitson, D., & Macintosh, D. (1996). The global circus: International sport, tourism, and the marketing of cities. Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 20(3), 287.!
The Reinvented and Re-Imagined City!
“deindustrialization and economic restructuring!have left many cities in what used to be the!affluent West with few options other than!competing with each other to be centers of!shopping and entertainment”!
The Entrepreneurial [Spectacular] City
Investment in and Advance of Spaces of Consumption
Baltimore’s Service and Entertainment Core!
Tangible Benefits (according to the Maryland Stadium Authority):!i. National/international recognition ii. 70 buildings constructed!iii. 30,000 Jobs !iv. $2 billion of investment in downtown!
Through corporate subsidies and commercially-focused initiatives, city governments look to create spectacular “TOURIST BUBBLES” (Judd, 1999, p. 53), designed to attract the discretionary leisure income of:
Out of Town Tourists $$
Suburban Tourists $$ +
Source: Judd, D. (1999). Constructing the tourist bubble. In S. Fainstein & D. Judd (Eds.), The tourist city (pp. 35-53). New Haven, CT: Yale.
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Professional Sport and !the Privatized/Spectacular !Commercial Reinvigoration!
of Baltimore!
!“Sport has become an important part of the way in which cities have attempted to create, espouse and transmit images of the city as a reinvigorated centre of spectacle, pleasure and play”!(Smith, 2001, p. 132)! !
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Source: Smith, A. (2001). Sporting a new image? Sport-based regeneration strategies as a means of enhancing the image of the city tourist destination. In C. Gratton & I. P. Henry (Eds.), Sport in the city: The role of sport in economic and social regeneration (pp. 127-148). London: Routledge.!
Neoliberal Governance and the Baltimore Grand Prix!
Neoliberal City Politics and Sporting Spectacle!"The naysayers certainly had their day…until the race started…Anytime you do something big you take a risk…I had the opportunity to let Baltimore shine.”!Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake Mayoral Election Day:!
September 13!
Source: Scharper, J., Hermann, P., Linskey, A. (2011, September 5.). A jubilant finish line for the Grand Prix. The Baltimore Sun.!
Trickle-Down Grand Prix Racing? !
Costs to City:!$7 million (approx)!(roadwork, police, clean-up etc.)!
(Anticipated) Returns:!$70-$100 million!(tax revenue, extra jobs, related!spending)!!
There has been the creation of a “fantasy city”(Hannigan, 1998), in which the Inner Harbor both presents an unreal perception of city life and shields both suburbanites and tourists from Baltimore’s continuing urban problems.!
The “Rot Beneath the Glitter” (Harvey, 2001)! The Entrepreneurial [Retrenchment] City
Disinvestment and Decline in Public Services
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The Entrepreneurial [Retrenchment] City
Disinvestment and Decline in Public Spaces
Why use PUBLIC MONIES to subsidize PRIVATELY OWNED PROFESSIONAL SPORTS FACILITIES AND FRANCHISES? Isn’t this a form of PUNITIVE TAXATION against the urban populace? Or does it result in some TRICKLE-DOWN BENEFITS to the local/city economy?
“Many stadia have been built under the guise of urban renewal, yet those living in closest proximity to them cannot afford the price of admission…in the case of the imposition of regressive taxes…it is also the poor who bear a disproportionate burden of paying for such facilities.”!!(Ingham & McDonald, 2003, p. 23)!
Source: Ingham, A. G., & McDonald, M. G. (2003). Sport and community/Communitas. In R. C. Wilcox, D. L. Andrews, R. Pitter & R. L. Irwin (Eds.), Sporting dystopias: The making and meanings of urban sport cultures (pp. 17-34). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.!
Working Poor!Underclass!
Middle!Working!
Capitalist!Upper Middle!
(Sub)Community Access to Major Sport Places!
Unlimited Access!
Largely Prohibited!(apart from as hourly workers)!
Limited Access!
Public Subsidiary, Private Property! Interestingly, the Baltimore Orioles and Ravens, having received considerable public subsidies for the building of their new stadia, refused a $1 tax on every ticket that would have gone to funding parks and recreation (and hence physical activity) in the city. For some reason, they both: “balked at a direct subsidy to recreation” (p. 233).
Source: Farrey, T. (2009). The greatest city in America: Baltimore, Maryland. In Game on: How the pressure to win at all costs endangers youth sports, and what parents can do about it (pp. 227-251): ESPN Books.
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Roldo Bartimole, 2000, Cleveland Free Times: !!“Why should the people of Cleveland, where the percentage of poverty that is around 40 percent, pay for the entertainment of people coming out of other areas and who have money to pay for their own entertainment? The injustice of it is what aggravates me and a lot of other people.”"
Civic Sporting Injustice?!
Source: http://www.nightlybusiness.org/transcript/2000/trnscrpt102600.htm#STORY1!
Manufactured Civic Communitas!
Sport provides the imaginary glue binding communities together, but only actually/materially benefiting some within them? !
Anti-Stadium Subsidy
Pro-Stadium Subsidy
Does [professional] sport actually benefit city communities?!
See course website for related lectures slides, video clips, topic readings, discussion tasks, key concepts, and essay question. !