Course Intro Summary PDF

**[Course Intro]** **[Lecture 2]** 1. What is sport ? - Structured -- governed by rules - Goal-oriented -- contests and self-testing - Competitive -- as individuals/teams - Contest based -- competition against a standard - Ludic -- based on play/games - However, there is not one...

**[Course Intro]** **[Lecture 2]** 1. What is sport ? - Structured -- governed by rules - Goal-oriented -- contests and self-testing - Competitive -- as individuals/teams - Contest based -- competition against a standard - Ludic -- based on play/games - However, there is not one definite definition, just many definitions with some overlapping points - Sociologists are critical of *essentialist* definitions of sport 2. Sports as Social Constructions - Sports are a product of the social and cultural contexts in which they exist: they are 'social constructions' - The social aspects of sport only become meaningful when located within their historical and cultural context - Are not 'fixed': have different forms and meanings from place to place, and across time - "Sports are activities for which there are no timeless and universal agreements about meaning, purpose and organisation" (Coakley et al, 2011, p8) 3. Sociology - Is a tool for understanding the place, relevance, and meanings of sports in society - Focuses on many ways individuals' motivations/actions are shaped by the society they live in - Methods are ways individuals contribute to the way society is organised - Different societies have different histories - The only way to explain why different societies are different is the larger social context - Sports also provide a 'window' to understand culture and society 4. Social Institution - Enduring relationships, stories, meanings, social forms that people create together, but exist independently of them - Institutions include language, sport, education 5. Sports as socially contested activities - "Sport itself has no essentialist, pre-given definition. Indeed it is very difficult to arrive at consensus as to what 'sport' is. Fierce argument can and does rage over whether snooker, darts, cycling, fishing, synchronised swimming, skating and professional wrestling are regarded as sports" (Horne et al, 1999: 161) - Struggles over which sports 'count the most' stem from things such as - funding, exposure, status - meaning, purpose, & organisation of sports - who participates and the conditions under which sport participation occurs 6. Approaching the cultural presence of sports - Coakley (2015): 'The great sport myth' - Sports have character-building potential due to their purity and inherent goodness - should be rejected as idealistic and false - Sport tends to be idealised as a social phenomena - trivia, score lines and sensationalism, transcendence, healthy, social unity, integration - Grounded in understandings of society and sport as distinctive, and functioning largely unproblematically - widely conveyed by media, education, politicians, sports administrators, officials - BUT, there is much confounding evidence - Violence, deviance: conflict, drug taking, cheating, match fixing, bribery, inequality & injustice, social divides, elitism, exclusion, greed, inequity, exploitation 7. Sport as a world in and of itself (idealized, distinctive world thesis) - There is little critical sociologically informed analysis of sport: - "Sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand is treated as \[an\] idealised social institution where intellectual analysis is resisted" - Popular representations treat sport as if it is removed from the social relations and forces which shape it: as if it is an entity in and of itself, and not a product of a particular cultural and historical moment - **The idea that sport & the Contemporary society being separate and mutually exclusive entities is [rejected]** 8. Sport as a mirror of society (the reflection thesis) - Sport fundamentally reflects the society that exists (as per a mirror) - Sport will look like the society - One way, determining relationship between the entities (ie. sport is still separate) - **[Rejected]** 9. Sport as both product and producer of society (the dialectic thesis) - Two way & mutually constitutive relationship between entities - Sport as an active crucible in which social processes are both enacted and that *also* impacts broader social relations - **[Accepted]** 10. The 'Promise' of the Sociology of Sport - Sociology is an effective antidote to the 'taken for granted' way of thinking about sport offering 'deeper' understandings - Debunking: "The process of relativising and destroying the facades of taken-for-granted assumptions about the social world" (Berger, 1963) - Look beyond trivia to see sports as social phenomena - Identify & understand social problems and issues associated with sports - Make informed choices about the place of sports in our lives - Transform sports in progressive ways **[Lecture 3]** 1. What is sociology? - The science of society - the study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behaviour 2. What are the tools linked to sociology? - Concepts: culture, socialization, stratification - Theoretical approaches - "frameworks to explain the bigger picture": functionalism, symbolic interactionism, Marxism, feminism's, critical theory. - Research methods 3. What do these tools enable us to see? - Behaviour as it is connected with history, politics, economics, and cultural life 4. Thinking Sociologically - critiquing 'biological determinism', exploring nurture - Nature vs. Nurture - How much of what we are (behaviour, attitudes, aspirations) is learned through socialisation or 'built in' through genes, hormones and brain structure? - Ways of explaining human behaviour commonly understood as due to biological 'make-up': genetic, neurological - Our behaviours and assumptions are also related to the communities/societies in which we live -- we are all 'products' of society - Sociology challenges 'biological determinism' - the premise that an individual's characteristics and behaviours are dictated by our biology - According to biological determinists, categories like gender, race, sexuality, and disability can be understood with recourse to biology 5. Against biological determinism; example: violence in sports - How can we understand violent behaviours in sports? - Against Biological determinism/individualism eg. 'rush of blood', testosterone? - Sociological (things we'd look at to understand the violence): - Social norms, values around violence - norms of gender - Commercial glamorisation of violence - Sport ethic of competition - Rewards and team culture - Who defines what violence is accepted, and what is unsanctioned - Biological determinist understandings are problematic as they obscure social forces shaping things like throwing ability 6. Sociology and Psychology: The Differences - Psychology focuses on why individuals think and behave as they do. - Human mind, brain and individual behaviour - Sociologists focus on social processes that bind and separate people - Norms, culture, communities, socialisation. - Psychology focusses on the individual or small groups (social psychology), and sociology is centred on how social life and organisation shapes human experiences 7. Sociological Thinking: A synthesis of 'Structure' and 'Agency' - Our understanding of human actions can only be developed when we tease out the complex interaction between the individual and the social structures in which he/she lives - Agency vs. Structuralism (in the example of; 'How to be Healthy') - Agency: Individual choice & responsibility - In the example; don't smoke, be active, balanced diet, drink responsibly, drive safe, manage stress. - Structuralism: The social and material conditions of our life as determining - In the example; don't be poor, don't have poor parents, own a car, don't have a stressful job, don't live in a low quality house, don't be unemployed 8. What is this course about? - The social significance of sport & exercise as social, economic and cultural phenomena that shapes our lives