A good place to start with a discussion about race, class, and gender and its importance in sport is to talk about the way that sociologists or social theorists broadly talk about these issues. There seems to be a recurring theme with anyone who writes theoretically about these issues. Social theorists are regularly critiqued for not including enough of one social inequality or the other, lacking nuance in gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and so on. It is possible, in fact probable, that all theories on these subjects could be critiqued in this way. The field of social inequalities is simply too broad. It covers such vast distances of experiences, ideologies, cultures, institutions, and structures that some argue it is impossible to have singular “grand theories” (not necessarily in the historical sense, but simply ones that attempt to holistically cover things) that can accomplish such a task.
The way I hope to accomplish this task throughout this section, as well as other sections in this area, is by doing what Patricia Hill Collins calls a strategy of “dynamic centering”. This strategy of studying social inequalities involves “foregrounding selected themes and ideas while moving others to the background” (2008:68). In her case, this means emphasizing different aspects of oppression and resistance in different ways, at different times. The benefit to dynamic centering of ideas is that it allows the author, as well as the reader, to more closely examine particular types of social inequality. Patricia Hill Collins is best known for her work on intersectional research, and readily acknowledges that it, too, is generally “partial”. The comparative nature of looking at race and class, or race and gender allow us to understand the similarities and differences in those works (Collins 2008).
As a final thought, Collins calms criticism so eloquently by exclaiming:
“There is a rush to tidy up the messiness of always having to say race and class and gender and sexuality and ethnicity and age and nationality and ability by searching for overarching terms that will capture this complexity. The term “difference” tries to do this kind of heavy lifting, typically unsuccessfully. If we are not careful, the term “intersectionality” runs the same risk of trying to explain everything yet ending up saying nothing.” (Collins 2008)
This section begins by discussing the relevant race, class, and gender theories separately are pertinent to sport. But throughout there is an attempt to interject the intersectional ideas of what is missing in those theories, or how they relate. This is not to say that it will be able to address every form of intersecting or overlapping oppression. That, knowing limitations, is not possible and probably not a fruitful endeavor.
This essay will, however, address the major theories as well as related works to understanding sport through race, class, and gender. For the purposes of clarity, I will split those “theoretical camps” along those lines. After the discussion of each separately, there will be a section to address intersectional research and its fit into sport. Finally, the conclusion will address insights from the sociology of sport and how those are more useful to broader understandings of race, class, and gender.
In general, there is a theoretical consistency with studying race, class, and gender in sport. As a major cultural and economic institution, sport is generally one of the most widely understood and simultaneously one of the most theoretically underdeveloped areas of sociology (Carrington 2013). Cases have been made by sociologists of sport (whether they derive from different backgrounds is another case) as well as journalists that sports indeed do matter (Carrington 2012). One needs to look no further than our own university to see recent examples of why sport can be an important cultural institution.
In February 2014 Michael Sam, an All-American defensive lineman for the Tigers came out as gay, and was the first openly gay man drafted into the major American sports: Football, Baseball, Basketball and Hockey (Connelly 2014; Wagoner 2014). A year later, Missouri football players joined in on campus protests by the group Concerned Student 1950 over the “racist, sexist, homophobic, etc., incidents that have dynamically disrupted the learning experience” of students on campus (Tracy and Southall 2015). It also dovetailed the protests that had happened over racial injustices that had happened two hours west, in Ferguson where another unarmed black man was shot by police. The protest by the players appeared to be the tipping point of the protest, as it resulted in the firing of the Chancellor as well as the President. The players wielded the most power available to them as they threatened to boycott the next football game against BYU, a move that would have cost the University one million dollars.
The events over the past few years at the University are just one of many microcosms where sport is increasingly relevant and political. With the current protests of the police brutality and racial injustice by NFL players, started by Colin Kaepernick, sport has come into the limelight for its focus on inequality. All of this is to say that sport is an key aspect of society, and worth investigating further. Overall, sport can be better understood by using the breadth of literature and theory that exists outside of itself. But there is also a reciprocal nature to this question, as the literature on inequalities could greatly benefit by studying sport, and adopting understandings from the studies located there.
Theories and Studies of Race, Class and Gender that are important to sport.
A field as wide as “social inequalities” could be a large enough umbrella to fit nearly any sociological study. Therefore, it is a somewhat difficult task to pick out just a small number of sociological theories that would directly benefit the subfield of sport. Some studies that I think are worth exploring and investigating with more space and time would include critical race theories (CRT) that can be very important in understanding racial dynamics. Here, I will focus on a few “branches” of the larger social inequalities “tree”, that would be worth adopting further into sport.
Race
Race may be the most theoretically developed area of sport. As the first Sport Sociologist, Dr. Harry Edwards wrote what is considered to be one of the first Sport studies, The Revolt of the Black Athlete (1969) as well as the first Sociology of Sport textbook (1973). Edwards was also directly linked to helping create the idea for the 1968 Olympic protest by John Carlos and Tommy Smith, who’s picture is now known worldwide. Dr. Edwards writings on race were truly transformative and ahead of their time, changing understandings about race and structural inequalities facing African Americans. Although the term was not yet created, his work would likely now be considered intersectional based on its ideas centered around masculinity, race, and class.
As far as race theories (or theorists) that help us understand the Sociology of Sport, a good place to start with Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s Racial Formation theory. Omi and Winant have written multiple updates to their 1994 text, helping clarify the theory and including more relevant examples. They define racial formation as “the sociohistorical process by which racial identities are created, lived out, transformed, and destroyed” (Omi and Winant 2014:109). Historically, the black/white binary has dominated the way people think and talk about race (Bonilla-Silva 2014). Racial formation complicates this idea by understanding race as a process.
One of Omi and Winant’s key concepts of their theory is what they call “racial projects”. Racial projects are a space in which social structures and cultural representations clash. Many theoretical paradigms in race (but also class and gender) are primarily focus on either a) structural phenomena that are unable to account for cultural patterns, meanings, and identities or b) systems of culture, identity and signification. Frequently, theorists are uncomfortable with the ambiguity and murky nature of operating within those two boundaries (the implications of this will be discussed further in a later essay). It is in this space where racial projects exist.
The authors define racial project as “simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial identities and meanings, and an effort to organize and distribute resources (economic, political, cultural)”(Omi and Winant 2014:125). Racial projects can occur on both the large scale as well as the small scale, and can be carried out by anyone regardless of their social position.
Included in these ideas of racial projects are things as small as the decision to wear dreadlocks and as large as voting rights laws or civil rights movements (Omi and Winant 2014:125). Using this definition, we should consider the actions and discourse over social media between Jeremy Lin and Kenyon Martin. Lin is the first American NBA player of Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA. His story as a whole has been widely studied in sociology. Kenyon Martin is a retired African American NBA player. To summarize the recent issue, Lin decided to premiere in the most recent NBA season with dreadlocks, and was criticized by Martin for wanting to “be black” saying “Do I need to remind this damn boy that his last name Lin?” to which Lin responded with:
“At the end of the day, I appreciate that I have dreads and you have Chinese tattoos [because] I think its a sign of respect. And I think as minorities, the more that we appreciate each other’s cultures, the more we influence mainstream society” (Begley 2017)
Both the initial act of having dreadlocks, as well as both responses could be different types of racial projects. Lin challenged the system and well as the cultural signification and history that is deeply embedded in dreadlocks. Martin had a racial project of his own, that sought to reaffirm the structures and cultural significance of hair choice. Lin’s response was yet another, one that sought to subvert the system to reclassify the understanding of cultural appropriation and its ties to race.
Although the Lin/Martin example is a micro-instance, it is reflective of how sport can recapitulate our ideas about race through racial projects. Similarly, one could argue that Jack Johnson beating “great white hope”, Joe Louis fighting Italian Primo Carnera in 1935, and certainly Jesse Owens in the 1936 Olympics would be termed “sporting racial projects”.
This idea of “sporting racial projects”. This idea is scarcely developed. Carrington discusses the invention of the natural black athlete as a “global sporting racial project” that was an attempt to “other” blackness into sub-humanized category (2010). In Carrington’s own words “Sports help to make race make sense and sport then works to reshape race” (2010:66). Although he provides the basic definition and connection to the idea of sport, he merely scratches the surface of the possibilities and importance of racial projects to sport.
All of the above previously discussed University of Missouri examples are sporting racial projects. Many of them have pushed unconscious ideas about race to the foreground of discourse. Michael Sam and the implications for race and sexuality. He is simultaneously subverting ideas about sexuality and masculinity, while reaffirming ideas about blackness and athletics. The football team protesting is a racial project challenging the power structure of white dominated and white centered institutions (both sport and the university). Simultaneously, the backlash by white boosters, administration, and fans, run “counter” projects that overlap and compete. Their emphasis on colorblindness operates between the structural and cultural level.
Racial formation theory in general and racial projects specifically are a useful theoretical tool to understand the dynamics of sport and how it intersects with race. But there has been critiques from many different areas of how “useful” a theory it actually is. Feagin and Elias (2013) critique racial formation theory for not being explicit enough with their critique of the racial framework as they see it. Feagin has especially built his career on what he coins “systemic racism theory” (Feagin 2013, 2014). It directly confronts the hierarchical nature of racial oppression in the United States, and implicates whites in the process. The theory includes more grounded ideas than that of racial formation, by discussing the different levels on inequality and how whites use power to oppress racial minorities (although many times Feagin is using a black/white essentialism). To Feagin and Elias, there is not enough critical theory for racial formation to “work” as a theory. Ironically enough, Feagin and Elias’ systemic racism theory is also critiqued, as it privileges race and does not include enough theory of gender and sexuality as a component for oppression (Harvey Wingfield 2013)
The arguments that have been levied against racial formation theory are valid. There is a substantial lack of critical theory implied in racial formation theory. Omi and Winant (2013) have argued that their theory still works, as its goal is not to attempt to pin down the racial classification system as it currently exists. It’s much more ambitious goal is to be able to speak to race as it operates across time and space. Still, it is debatable that it succeeds in doing so.
It would be particularly helpful to revisit the idea regularly with current events that weren’t discussed. Colin Kaepernick, Jemele Hill, Trump, NFL Owners, and the recent World Series racism have all happened in the last couple weeks. Racial formation can help us better historically place these ideas and what they mean, as well as understanding social movements that occur within and around the “field” of sport (in a Bourdieusian sense).
Other contemporary theories of race that are useful in understanding sport include the aforementioned Feagin theory on systemic racism, and Bonilla Silva’s theory of racialized social systems and its implications for colorblind ideologies (Bonilla-Silva 1997, 2014).
Class
With class and stratification being a core tenant of sociology, it would be impossible to list every theory and branch, or even every school of thought here. So I will not address, even though there is most definitely a pertinence, Marx or conflict approaches to class. Although their contributions to the general field of sociology are numerous and critical, I am of the opinion that for the study of sport there are more important theories.
Bourdieu (2011) says there are three guises of capital: economic, cultural, and social. Economic is directly convertible into money, or institutionalized as property. Cultural is convertible into economic capital, or institutionalized as education credentials. Social is connections, convertible into economic, institutionalized as title or nobility.
He goes on to argue that there are three forms of cultural capital. The embodied state which are long lasting dispositions of the mind and body. Parts of the embodied state include external wealth converted into part of the person (habitus). It can be obtained unconsciously like an accent. It is in some ways linked to biological capacity, its often misrepresented a legitimate competence rather than as capital. Finally, it derives a scarcity value from its position of cultural capital. The profits of this form of cultural capital is distinction. According to Bourdieu transmission of cultural capital through families is:
is “no doubt the best hidden form of hereditary transmission of capital, and it therefore receives proportionately greater weight in the system of reproduction strategies…” (p.245)
The second form of cultural capital is the objectified state. These can be appropriated materially (economic capital) or symbolically (cultural capital). It is defined in the relationship with cultural capital in its embodied form, and can be yielded as a weapon and a stake in the struggles which go on in the fields of cultural production.
Finally, the institutionalized state (education) is the final form of cultural capital. Bourdieu states that academic ability itself is a product of time and cultural capital. Viewing education as cultural capital helps us se educations role in the social structure. We could view education as a “certificate in cultural competence” (p.248). This finally makes it possible to compare “conversion rates” for cultural and economic capital.
As we have seen in earlier discussions and sections, cultural capital is key to understanding what a society values (distinction) as well as the different ways that culture operates with class. Building off of this, a couple theorists adopt Bourdieusian ideas and employ them in interesting ways.
Annette Lareau’s (2011) book Unequal Childhoods, describes two differences in the logic in childrearing. The first is centered on what the author calls “concerted cultivation,” which is characterized by viewing children as a project to be cultivated. Parents who subscribe to this method of child rearing seek opportunities for growth and take an active approach in the formation and development of their child. They “invite” and encourage the child to interact within the adult world and often treat them as “equals.”
The second logic in childrearing is centered on the “accomplishment of natural growth,” which views childhood as a somewhat natural and organic process that requires little adult intervention. Parents who subscribe to this logic are less “hands on” and maintain a separation between the adult world and the child world. While Lareau is quick to point out that the dominant social institutions that children come in contact with (namely school), value “concerted cultivation” and stress opportunities for parents to further this plight, there is a clear class distinction on the use of each method.
Concerted cultivation was by and large something that middle class parents subscribed to more frequently that lower and working class parents. Arguably, the access to resources that lend themselves well to the concept of “concerted cultivation” are more easily accessed for the middle class families in the study than the lower and working class families. To be clear, the opportunities for concerted cultivation were more readily available, not necessarily the actual event itself (often the events themselves take an enormous amount of time on the behalf of the family even going so far as being the center of the families social calendars). The interactions have many benefits for the child as children learn: ease in interacting with adults, viewing themselves as equals, developing their voice, larger vocabularies, negotiation skills, and time management skills. However, because their time is constantly regulated by adults, children often have trouble managing “unmanaged time,” are often disconnected from family members, lack interactions with children of different age groups, often feel “bored” and/or exhausted, and develop a sense of entitlement. The skill sets that are developed for children with regard to the “accomplishment of natural growth,” are quite different.
Parents who are committed to the “accomplishment of natural growth,” view their roles quite differently. Often from working class and poor backgrounds families’ concern for children is being able to meet their basic needs. Navigating children throughout the day and providing them their basic needs often takes an enormous amount of time and effort. These families often rely on a vast network of friend and kin relationships for resources (cars, bus passes, phone calls, clothing, etc.). As a result of the effort to provide for children (navigating the bus system, public aid, etc.), children often have close relationships to kin, are resourceful, create ties with children of different age groups, manage their own time, engage in creative activities and have quite a bit of autonomy. Therefore, these children have an emerging sense of restraint, yield to adult authority, and often have difficulty interacting within some social institutions (medical, school, etc.). While there is merit in the development of both skill sets, they are not equally valued by the dominant social institutions in society. Lareau, notes that the skills learned by “natural growth” while important are rendered somewhat “invisible” and these skills (creativity, respect for authority) are rarely valued/praised to the degree that skills (negotiation, language, time management) learned under concerted cultivation receive.
These ideas of concerted cultivation and natural growth are especially useful when trying to understand how class operates in relation to sport. In some cases, the parents are making huge personal sacrifices to give their children “values” (or cultural capital). Sport, commonly viewed as a positive area for socialization and growth, is just one of these cultural arenas that has to be “cultivated”.
Bourdieu combined with Lareau and Prudence Carter’s ideas on the “culture of power” in school (Discussed in another essay) all can be important to understand the field of sport. They are important in understanding the forms of culture that are privileged, and the importance of different types of capital other than economic forms.
Gender
Of the many areas of sociology that touch sport, none may be as developed or shaped by the subfield as much as the study of gender. Sport, as a physical activity, have traditionally been spaces where men can prove their physical superiority over each other. To this day, sport continue to be male dominated, male identified, and male centric (Coakley and Pike 2009)spaces that shape our ideas about masculinity and femininity. But much like race and class, it is also a place where ideologies are contested in a much grander form.
The first theory that comes to mind as central to studying sport and gender is hegemonic masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is a theoretical concept first proposed from a field study of social inequality in Australia, which provided data of interwoven hierarchies of gender (and class) that were active projects in gender construction (Connell 1982; Kessler et al. 1982). The most widely cited, however, came from Connell(1987). According to that work, hegemonic masculinity is “understood as the pattern of practice that allowed men’s dominance over women to continue.” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005:832).
This meant that there were multiple forms of masculinities that existed in the hierarchy. Some were hegemonic, others subordinated. This wasn’t an exercise in statistics. It’s not as if the form of hegemonic masculinity that they were studying was practiced by the most people. In fact, it may be a minority of people. What was significant was that other man had to position themselves in relation to this form of masculinity.
Sport may be the pinnacle of hegemonic masculine practice. Hegemonic masculinity, according to Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) could be achieved through culture, institutions, and persuasion. Some of the earliest adopters of this hegemonic masculinity framework were sociologists of sport. Michael Messner became renowned for his use of the topics on media representation of masculinity, and its connection to violence and homophobia (Messner 1992; Messner and Sabo 1990). Messner (1993) argues that forms of softer or sensitive masculinity are developing but don’t necessarily contribute to the emancipation of women. (Messner 1993: 725) Linked to this is Messner’s (2007) analysis of the changes in the public image of Arnold Schwarzenegger, e.g., illustrates what he calls an “ascendant hybrid masculinity” combining toughness with tenderness in ways that work to obscure – rather than challenge – systems of power and inequality.
Intersectionality
The amalgamation of the above points leads logically leads us to theories of intersectionality. At different points reference has been made to intersections of race, class, and gender. But it truly may be a facile endeavor to try and discuss the relevance of any of those theories separately. Much of the research in the area of intersectionality tells us as much.
Davis (2008) argues that intersectionality has been a ‘buzzword’ of feminist theory ever since its inception. As Crenshaw (1991) writes, this is because an intersectional approach is crucial to addressing the experiences of ethnic minority women for two reasons; the first is ethnic minority women’s experiences and political struggles have been largely neglected by mainstream feminist movements and second, because anti-racism discourses have focused too heavily on the experiences of men, rendering invisible the experiences of women.
An example which demonstrates the impact of structural intersectionality is found in domestic violence cases where race and class formations make women of color’s experiences of rape, violence and remediation ‘qualitatively different from [those] of white women’ (Crenshaw 1991: 1245). Intersectional ideas are also linked closely to Patricia Hill Collins’ (1990)matrices of domination which is a paradigm that different forms of oppression are interconnected. Intersectional ideas can be inclusive of all of the above forms of inequality (race, class, and gender), and although it is considered a “buzzword” that risks losing meaning, it is important for my research especially in understanding race, masculinity, and class.
Sociology of Sport and Its Influence
Hopefully I have illuminated many of the important works on race, class, and gender. In many of the instances, I included the connections to sport, already. I would like to mention some of the other main works in sociology of sport that are critical to understanding inequality.
Much of Messner’s work on gender is essential. He has arguably done more than anyone in the area. For race, Dr. Harry Edwards classic studies are important to set up sport as an area to study inequalities. Of course, there are many race studies such as CLR James Beyond a Boundary that looks at colonialism and sport (cricket). Hartmann has written on Midnight Basketball and its implications for neoliberal society. Brooks and May both looked at race and basketball, and would be considered important contemporary contributions.
All of these readings have in common a challenging of ideas in race, class, and gender. Sport, as one of the largest cultural institutions in the US, will continue to be “contested terrain” for these intersecting and overlapping subject areas, and will continue to challenge and recapitulate our understandings of social theory and global inequality.
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