PED 217 - Social Aspects of Sport

Chapter 3

Sport and Culture

Sociology has 2 basic observations

1. Humans are social animals.
2. Human behavior exhibits repetitive and recurrent patterns.

The concepts of culture and social organization are vital in explaining and understanding these observations.

Social conditions can be divided into 2 categories:

1. The structure of social relations in a group (social organization).
2. The common ideas, beliefs, and practices that society members share that provide blueprints for their behavior (culture).

One link between culture and social organization is found in the concept of social role: which refers to the rights, duties, and obligations expected of persons who occupy social status.

People’s social roles occur through social interaction, which produces social structure (page 53).

Culture may be defined as the changing patterns of learned behavior and the products of learned behavior (attitudes, values, knowledge, and material objects) that are shared and communicated among members of society.

It may think of as the way of life of a social group. The distinctive features that characterize it.

Culture may be material or nonmaterial. Material culture includes sports arenas, uniforms, footwear, exploding scoreboards (the atmosphere at Wrigley Field is different from Miller Park). Non material culture consists of symbols, attitudes, beliefs, and values.

Culture and values

Values are conceptions of what is desirable. People will expend a lot of energy to achieve features of social life that they feel is important.

Sport provides revealing clues about society, and we expect it to reflect those characteristics in the larger society. On page 55, there are values of American society that appear to be very important. Do they correspond to sport?

When Michael Irvin was busted for cocaine and suspended for 5 games in Dallas, the fans cheered wildly when he came back. Sammy Sosa’s corked bat incident led to a great deal of stress for Sosa in other parks but he was cheered in Chicago. Each society has deviations of core values and will vary from one society to another. (ESPN video).

There are 7 things that reflect the reoccurring values in sport:

1. Character building: sport helps to develop the socially desirable personality traits such as integrity, responsibility, maturity, honesty, and dependability. There are many who disagree that sport aids in character building.
2. Discipline: Participation in athletics generates self discipline and social control. To argue this: what has happened in sport that disputes this statement?
3. Competition: Sport participation prepares one for the competitive nature of living (Douglas McArthur believed this theory) When individuals seek goals in which there can only be a single of a few winners, competitive behavior is unavoidable.

Why do we compete?

1. The nature of contests compels individuals to perform competitively.
2. Competition produces excitement among participants.
3. Social comparison: individuals engage in an activity to compare themselves with others. It gives us a measurement as to where we stand.

4. Physical Fitness: Exercise physiologists identify 5 different kinds of fitness:

1. Cardio respiratory: it deals with the heart and lungs ability to supply the body with oxygen during physical exertion.
2. Body composition: how much of your body is fat?
3. Muscular strength: the ability to exert maximum force in a single exertion.
4. Muscular endurance: the ability to repeat a particular action multiple times.
5. Flexibility: the ability to move a joint through a maximum range of motion.

Exercise can be aerobic (with oxygen) or anaerobic (without oxygen). What are examples of activities involving these 2 kinds of exercises?

Fitness mania is big and people are being praised for working out because it helps a person physically and psychologically, it slows down the aging process and produces a natural high (the body produces endorphins: a morphine like substance: during long periods of exercise, usually aerobic).

5. Mental fitness: it prepares the mind for battle.
6. Religiosity: sport has contained elements of character regarding a religious cult and served as a prep for life. Many modern sports have come from ancient religious rites.
7. Nationalism: Sports reinforce patriotism. A great example was when Joe Louis fought Max Schmeling: a German: in 1936 and 1938. Hitler was claiming that the “master race” was destined to rule the world. The country was extremely happy when Louis knocked out Schmeling in 1938 (video).

Winning: How important is it? At the professional and division I collegiate level it’s what really matters. Why?

Some sports are indigenous, part of a group’s culture (football in the U.S., sumo wrestling in Japan).

A society’s sport mirrors or can reflect the dominant culture.

1. Bullfighting in Mexico reflects themes of death, dominance, fear, and hatred for authority.
2. Taketak: a bowling game that has no winner, is popular in New Guinea, a land where winning is completely irrelevant. The game continues until all the stakes are removed. Everything in the game and their culture is about equivalence.

Example of how our society once was and how it is today.

Baseball shows the spatial organization and use of time. How the players are positioned, the game has 9 innings, not a time limit. It is an attempt to escape the rigid time consciousness dominating our work a day world.

Football is heroic: The object is to infiltrate the opponent’s territory with people that take on a larger than life or superhuman dimension. It has to be performed in 60 minutes.

Which of these reflects of what society was and now seems to be?

Sport heroes become objects of admiration because they personify values of society held in high regard. You can see everyday the examples of today’s heroes and the behaviors they exhibit. Sports heroes of years past were very different. How?

Read Baseball in Japan: position paper: The difference between American and Japanese baseball: How do the cultural differences in each country make baseball different?

In the 20’s and 30’s: there were heroes of persistence and finesse: Jesse Owens, Babe Ruth and Red Grange.

In the 40’s: it was military heroes who were also or became sport heroes: Ted Williams and Glenn Davis.

In the 50’s and 60’s sport heroes were business executive types: Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, and Vince Lombardi.

The 60’s and 70’s heroes were presenting an anti establishment type image: Muhammad Ali (video).

Immortality via sport: The social significance of the values of achievement in sport is witnessed by the athletes concern of how they will be remembered after their death (symbolic immortality).

• Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs
• Don Larson’s perfect World Series game
• Nadia Comaneci’s perfect 10 gymnastic scores in the Olympics.

Sport provides occasions, settings, and mechanisms through which sport participants can be remembered. Heroes and history represent the very essence of sport. The social world of sport, through achievement and success, is how they are remembered. It gives out more prizes and awards than almost any other social world.

• Baseball Hall of Fame
• Football Hall of Fame
• Heisman Trophy
• Joe Louis Sports Arena
• Lambeau Field

Athletes and coaches understand that how they are remembered will be based on success.

Sometimes people are remembered for a play of a game that was very successful (Jerry Kramer’s block during Super Bowl I).

However, people are also remembered for failure, or how things ended. Woody Hayes, a football coach at Ohio State, struck a player during a bowl game and had to be fired. Barry Bonds may be more known for not winning a World Series, and Phil Michelson has never won a major tournament in golf. Pete Rose will always be remembered for his gambling more than his career as a baseball player (video).