Sociology of a scandal: the emergence of ‘FIFAgate’

This article examines the social forces underlying FIFAgate. Why do corrupt practices, which are often highly consolidated or even institutionalized, suddenly become scandalous? What is a scandal? Why did FIFA fall into crisis in 2015 and not before? To answer these questions, it is necessary to look at the sequence of thrusts and parries between all the parties involved. Our analysis embraces the notion that social processes are based on relationships in order to provide insights into why and how denunciations can lead to long-tolerated corrupt practices suddenly becoming compromising enough to force an organization’s leaders to implement measures that would have previously been unimaginable. We use multiple sources to examine the emergence of FIFAgate and the way FIFA overcame previous critical situations, describing how FIFA neutralized earlier allegations and developed a remarkable ‘resilience’ to scandal. Finally, we analyse the successive mobilizations whose domino effect led to the emergence of FIFAgate and the measures FIFA took to contain the scandal. Our research enabled us to draw up a new theoretical model for analysing corruption scandals.     

A critical analysis of the conceptualisation of ‘coaching philosophy’

The aim of this paper was to critically review existing literature relating to, and critically analyse current conceptualisations of, ‘coaching philosophy’. The review reveals a bewildering approach to definitions, terms and frameworks that have limited explanation and reveal a lack of conceptual clarity. It is argued that rather than provide clarification and understanding the existing literature conflates coaching rhetoric and ideology with coaching philosophy and serves to reproduce existing coaching discourse rather than explain coaching practice. The paper problematises the unquestioned assumptions currently underpinning ‘coaching philosophy’; namely the overemphasis of coaches' agency and reflexivity, the downplaying of the significance of social structure on coaches' dispositions and the acceptance that coaching practice is an entirely conscious activity. The paper argues for an alternative philosophy of coaching that uses philosophic thinking to help coaches question existing ideology, and critically evaluate the assumptions and beliefs underpinning their practice.     

‘Thrash yourself Thursday’: the production of the ‘healthy’ child through a fitness-based PE practice

Saturating the Canadian landscape are media and health industry discourses representing childhood physical ‘(in)activity’ and ‘obesity’ as being at ‘epidemic’ proportion. Increasingly identified as a focus of concern within such representations is the school setting, simultaneously positioned both as a cause of and a key institutional site for redressing these ‘pathologies’. Drawing on qualitative research carried out at a Canadian elementary school, this discussion offers a Foucaultian governmental analysis of one school's navigation of this gauntlet of accountability to improve children's health. Specifically, the school-wide fitness-based initiative known as ‘Thrash yourself Thursdays’, whose objective is the production of ‘healthy’ students, is examined to understand the power relations enacted through it, and how the target of this practice (i.e. the children) negotiated such efforts to shape their bodily conduct. This in turn, offers a unique contribution to the governmental literature, which is more characterised by attending to discourses and strategies of government rather than how the subjects of such strategies respond to such efforts.     

Sports’ disciplinary legacy and the challenge of ‘coaching differently’

Be empowering. Be athlete-centered. Be autonomy supportive. These are three related topics currently being promoted by sport psychologists and sport pedagogists in an effort to recognize athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences and make coaching more holistic and coaches more considerate. This has led us to ask, how likely are such initiatives to lead to coaches putting their athletes at the center of the coaching process given that coaches’ practices have largely been formed through relations of power that subordinate and objectify athletes’ bodies through the regular application of a range of disciplinary techniques and instruments [e.g. Barker-Ruchti, N., &; Tinning, R. (2010). Foucault in leotards: Corporeal discipline in women's artistic gymnastics. Sociology of Sport Journal, 27, 229–250; Heikkala, J. (1993). Discipline and excel: Techniques of the self and body and the logic of competing. Sociology of Sport Journal, 10, 397–412; Gearity, B., &; Mills, J. P. (2012). Discipline and punish in the weight room. Sports Coaching Review, 1, 124–134]? In other words, to try to develop athlete-centered coaches capable of coaching in ways that will empower their athletes without also problematizing the discursive formation of coaches’ practices concerns us [Denison, J., &; Mills, J. P. (2014). Planning for distance running: Coaching with Foucault. Sports Coaching Review, 3, 1–16]. Put differently: how can athlete empowerment initiatives be anything more than rhetoric within a disciplinary framework that normalizes maximum coach control? It is this question that we intend to explore in this paper. More specifically, as Foucauldians, we will argue that coaching with greater consideration for athletes’ unique qualities and developmental differences needs to entail coaching in a less disciplinary way and with an awareness and appreciation of the many unseen effects that disciplinary power can have on coaches’ practices and athletes’ bodies.     

Barney Kieran,the Legendary ‘Sobraon Boy’: From the Mean Streets to ‘Champion of the World’

This article explores the remarkable career of Bernard Bede (Barney) Kieran, known in the Australian sporting press of the time as ‘the Sobraon Boy’. He was born in Sydney in 1886, grew up in the mean streets, was imprisoned aboard the industrial training ship Sobraon and, at the zenith of his sensational world record-breaking swimming career, died suddenly on 22 December 1905. He was only nineteen and was mourned by the public as one of Australia's first sporting icons to be cut down tragically in his prime. Incorporated in this study is the forgotten tragic sporting saga of the first great Australian twentieth-century swimming hero and its connotations of muscularly-based youth reclamation. Consideration is given to the social context, the growing popularity of swimming in the early twentieth century, Sydney and the widespread newspaper coverage of his career and death which helped to create the formation of the tragic sporting hero of Australian myth.     

Purism and the category of ‘the aesthetic’: the drama argument

This paper examines one component of Stephen Mumford’s case for the claim that we should regard sport, art and the aesthetic as more closely connected than has tended to be the case, under the influence of the work of David Best, in recent years. Mumford’s rejection of what I call ‘the drama argument’ is examined in detail and it is argued that all but one element of his case fails to do the job he envisages.     

Assembling the privatisation of physical education and the ‘inexpert’ teacher

In this article, I examine the practice of outsourcing physical education (PE) lessons to external sports organisations. I draw from ethnographic research conducted with two primary schools in New Zealand to illuminate how outsourcing interconnects with the privatisation of education. Using Foucault's notion of government, I demonstrate how schools’ employment of four outside providers worked to govern teachers towards certain ends. In addition, I drew on the analytical framework of the assemblage to examine how the dual notions of the inexpert classroom teacher and the expert outside provider converged with the discourse of ‘PE as sport’, neoliberalism, Kiwisport, National Standards, professional development and multi-sector partnerships to form a privatisation assemblage. I argue that the privatisation assemblage worked to restrict and constrain teachers’ possible thoughts and actions, making teachers’ ‘choice’ to outsource PE one that they understood as both pragmatic, in terms of time investment, and educationally valuable, in so far as they perceived themselves as lacking the requisite expertise. I also argue that outsourcing and the privatisation of PE is problematic as it did not necessarily work in the best interests of teachers or students. I suggest further research is necessary to interrogate and make visible how the disparate elements of the privatisation assemblage are made to hold together, as well as how the fragile connections between these elements may be placed under pressure. The notion that outside providers are expert PE teachers and classroom teachers are inexpert is a critical aspect of the assemblage that should be challenged and resisted.     

‘Old’ Football and the ‘New’ Codes: Some Thoughts on the ‘Origins of Football’ Debate and Suggestions for Further Research

A close reading of recent contributions to the ‘origins of football’ debate suggests that there is now more consensus among scholars about the broad sequence of events than is rhetorically allowed. However, this consensus itself rests on some shared conceptual and methodological illusions. These include: a continual naivety about the use of the name ‘football’ in the primary source materials; asystematic underestimation of forms of play (and a collateral overestimation of the importance of rules and codifications) in the development of football; and, above all, a widely shared, and very dubious, conviction that the pursuit of the historical origins of football is a meaningful activity. This article analyses each ofthese illusions in turn and suggests some methodological and substantive alternatives to them. These alternatives sum to the conclusion that the origin of both modern football codes is a far more remarkable and many-sided story than has been appreciated, even in the very best research to date. Moreover, it is a story whose many dimensions and implications go well beyond the borders of Britain, and indeed beyond the history of ‘soccer’ or ‘rugby’ alone.     

For a ‘United’ Kingdom and a ‘Greater’ Britain: the British Olympic Association and the limitations and contestations of ‘Britishness’

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the Home-Nations of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales joined forces in competing in the Olympic Games under the banner of ‘Great Britain’ (or deviations thereof). The Olympics served as an important symbolic site for fostering and promoting a broader ‘British’ national identity. In practice, however, the prevalence and persistence of competing national identities and allegiances roiled early attempts to create a unified British Olympic team. These counter-prevailing forces of nationalism further served to undermine the British Olympic Association's ambitious attempt to unite the British Empire in a ‘Greater Britain’ team for the 1916 Berlin Olympic Games. As this work will reveal, ‘Britishness’ was a layered, contested and racially homogenous term that was interpreted and applied differently across various parts of the British Isles and its Empire.     

‘True fan = watch match’? In search of the ‘Authentic’ soccer fan

Academics have created typologies to divide association football (soccer) fans into categories based upon the ‘authenticity’ of their fandom practices. One of the main requirements of ‘authentic’ fandom has been assumed to be match attendance. The goal of this paper was to critically assess this assumption by considering how fans themselves talk about the significance of match attendance as evidence of ‘authentic’ fandom. In the light of the fact that the voices of English non-league fans on the ‘authenticity’ debate have so far been overshadowed by the overbearing focus of much previous research on the upper echelons of English soccer, an e-survey was conducted with 151 members of an online community of fans of English Northern League (NL) clubs (a semi-professional / amateur league based in North East England). Findings revealed that opinion was divided on the constituents of ‘authentic’ fandom and match attendance was not deemed to be the core evidence of support for a club by 42% of the sample. Elias (1978) suggested that dichotomous thinking hinders sociological understanding and it is concluded that fan typologies are not sufficient for assessing the ‘authenticity’ of fan activities.     

The Decline of the ‘Elite’ Sport Officials and the Dissolution of the Israeli Sport Association

This historical study will examine the rise of a hegemonic group of sports officials in Israel during the period between 1948 and 1996. The formation of this group is a unique phenomenon of the Israeli sport society. The main argument of the study is that officials of rival sport centres, ‘Hapoel’ and ‘Maccabi’, founded a joint elite group as a side effect of the ‘fifty-fifty’ agreement, signed in 1951. The agreement stated that the Israeli Sport Association, the National Olympic Committee and the Israeli Football Association would be mutually led by officials of both organizations. The members of this elite group, who enjoyed access to economic resources and other benefits, adopted a hedonistic lifestyle, in contrast to the social ethos of Israeli society in the first and second decades of the State. Three events dismantled the group in the middle of the 1990s. The first one was the establishment of the Elite Sport Department in 1984. The second was the establishment of independent Federations by Yadin Machnes. The third was the Maliniak Commission Report. These three events led to the collapse of the Israeli Sport Association in 1996 and to the fall of the Israeli hegemonic group.     

Cuba’s Challenges Hosting the 1991 Pan-American Games and the Spectacle of the Revolution’s ‘Soft Power’

Abstract

This paper examines the confluence of global, regional, and national politics in the lead up to the 1991 Pan-American Games hosted by Cuba. Cuba’s contentious selection as host was wholly underpinned by the international politics of the time. Once selected, the preparations for the Games in Havana were surrounded by an unprecedented domestic economic crisis fueled by shifts in global politics. This paper analyzes how international politics informed the hosting of the 1991 Pan-American Games, and shaped the political challenge the Cuban government faced in hosting such an event. The Revolution’s use of sport domestically and internationally came to the forefront in its efforts as host and the results of those efforts proved to be providential given the emerging political economic contexts during and in the ensuing years after the Games.     

‘Vél’ d’Hiv’ six-day race: the spirit of Paris during the twenties

The Vélodrome d’Hiver, known colloquially as ‘Vél’ d’Hiv’, was a major sports venue located in Paris, not far from the Eiffel Tower. Used for ice hockey, boxing, wrestling and other events, it was above all the scene of a famous cycling competition: the Six-Day Race. It enjoyed such success that it became a source of artistic inspiration, both in painting, literature and film. La Ronde infernale (Infernal Circle), a feature film released in French cinemas in 1928, for example, shows how writer and director Henri Decoin and producer Luitz-Morat, captured the venue, race and popular fervour to depict, with precision and empathy, a typical scene of Parisian life in the 1920s. However, far from being a mere portrait of a bygone era, this film, in the same way as all subsequent figurative portrayals, helped to immortalise this site and establish it in the collective memory, to such an extent that it became a ‘living metaphor’ in Paris. In short, by adopting the principles related to the social history of representations, this paper aims to identify the importance of figurative space in general, and cinema in particular, in the historical, memorial and heritage construction of an ancient temple of French sport.     

The ‘origins of football debate’ and the early development of the game in Nottinghamshire

This article continues the debate on the origins of football. It contains new data which note early football activity and initial club formation in Nottinghamshire. The authors reach the conclusion that former public schoolboys were prominent in the development of football in that particular area and see this as further confirmation of their hypothesis that many of these individuals should be seen as important in the establishment of football as a modern sport.     

Why ‘the best way of learning to coach the game is playing the game’: conceptualising ‘fast-tracked’ high-performance coaching pathways

At the beginning of the 2013/2014 season in England and Wales, 90 head coaches of the 92 men's national professional football league clubs and 20 of the 22 men's professional rugby union clubs had tenure as a professional elite player in their respective sports. Moreover, Rynne [(2014). ‘Fast track’ and ‘traditional path’ coaches: Affordances, agency and social capital. Sport, Education and Society, 19, 299–313] has claimed that many former elite athletes are ‘fast-tracked’ through formal accreditation structures into these high-performance coaching roles. The reasons why former elite athletes dominate head coaching roles in professional sports clubs and why a ‘fast-track’ pathway from elite athlete to high-performance coach is supported remain unclear. Thereby the present study sought to address this issue by investigating the basis for ‘fast-tracked’ head coaching appointments. Eight male directors of men's professional football and rugby union clubs in England were interviewed to examine how particular coaching skills and sources of knowledge were valorised. Drawing upon Bourdieu's conceptual framework, the results suggested that head coaching appointments were often based upon the perceived ability of head coaches gaining player ‘respect’. Experiences gained during earlier athletic careers were assumed to provide head coaches with the ability to develop practical sense and an elite sporting habitus commensurate with the requirements of the field of elite sports coaching. This included leadership and practical coaching skills to develop technical and tactical astuteness, from which, ‘respect’ could be quickly gained and maintained. The development of coaching skills was rarely associated with only formal coaching qualifications. The ‘fast-tracking’ of former athletes for high-performance coaching roles was promoted by directors to ensure the perpetuation of specific playing and coaching philosophies. Consequently, this may exclude groups from coaching roles in elite men's sport. The paper concludes by outlining how these findings might imply a disjuncture between the skills promoted during formal coaching qualifications and the expectations club directors have of elite coaches in these sports.     

From ‘cultivators of the soil’ to ‘citizen-soldiers’: physically active education and the nation at Maryland Agricultural College

In 1866, military drill and instruction became part of the curriculum of Maryland Agricultural College as a result of the passage of the Morrill Act of 1862, a law setting the terms for the establishment of agricultural colleges across the USA. The introduction of military instruction meant a direct inclusion of physically active coursework that preceded the widespread emergence of organized physical education courses in American educational institutions. However, this was not the first time physical activity was used and discussed at the college: previously, the uses of physical activity at the college wholly entailed outdoor agricultural practice in which students applied pedagogical training about agricultural techniques in the field. In this paper, we examine early Maryland Agricultural College printed discourse from 1859 to 1886, studying how the college shifted focus from idealizing the Republican male citizen as a physically active farmer or ‘cultivator of the soil’ in the years preceding the American Civil War to a physically active ‘citizen-soldier’ in response to the social and political effects of the conflict. Our analysis sheds light on the historical place of such physical activity coursework within the larger historical narrative of American physical education's emergence, and also provides useful historical context for critically viewing linkages between physical culture, nationalism, agricultural education and the military in contemporary physical education.     

‘Really on the ball’: exploring the implications of teachers' PE-CPD experience

Continuing professional development (CPD) is currently high on the Scottish Education agenda. Recent curriculum reform in Scotland, with the introduction of Curriculum for Excellence, places physical education (PE) at the forefront for its role in directly supporting learners' mental, emotional, social and physical well-being. This emphasis on PE, along with concerns about the health of the nation, has resulted in a nationwide initiative providing non-specialist teachers of primary PE with the opportunity to develop a specialism in the subject through government-funded CPD programmes at postgraduate level. Using Knowles' andragogical model as a framework, this paper reports data from a larger research study that evaluated a Scottish PE-CPD initiative. This paper comprises a single case holistic study investigating the impact and implications of a PE-CPD programme through the professional learning journeys, from the outset until completion, of four teachers: a nursery teacher, a class teacher, a cluster cover teacher and a PE specialist who participated in the programme. Data were collected over one academic year using two-stage questionnaire interviews and were analysed thematically with special attention given to the emerging general themes to achieve a holistic understanding of the case. Study findings endorse the positive impact of using the andragogical model of adult learning combined with the literature-supported characteristics of effective PE-CPD programmes. Teachers' perspectives on their CPD experiences, integration of acquired learning into working contexts and teaching post-PE-CPD were then examined to determine the next steps. This led to critical reflection on the implications of the findings for the teachers' ongoing professional development. We then challenged the role that university providers play in supporting teachers' lifelong learning. Instead, we suggest new school-university partnerships and alternative ways to support capacity building and lifelong learning towards a sustainable transformational change in Scotland's primary PE.     

Sex,sport and justice: reframing the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in European and UK sport policy

Universalist claims are often made about sport which is, as a consequence, increasingly written into national and international policy as an entitlement of citizenship or even human right. Further, in most countries physical education (PE) is a compulsory component of children's education, and sport is seen as central to this. Consequently, in the interests of justice sport must aspire to be egalitarian, that is, relevant to and meaningful for boys and men, and girls and women. In this context three fundamental questions are asked in relation to sport: (1) Do all citizens want to participate? (2) Who counts as a citizen? and (3) What are justice and equality? Feminist political and citizenship theory particularly the work of Pateman, Lister and Fraser is used to explore these questions and interrogate the ‘who’ of citizenship and the ‘what’ of justice in relation to framing sport policy in Europe and the UK. It is argued that notwithstanding the extensive use of the Council of Europe definition of sport,¹1. ‘“Sport” means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and mental well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels' (CE, 1992 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]–2001 CE. (1992/2001). European sports charter. Retrieved from https://wcd.coe.int/ViewDoc.jsp?Ref=Rec(92)13&;Sector=secCM&;Language=lanEnglish&;Ver=rev&;BackColorInternet=9999CC&;BackColorIntranet=FFBB55&;BackColorLogged=FFAC75 [Google Scholar]). and despite or even because of the widespread adoption of the language of gender equality and gender mainstreaming, although formal sport citizenship rights might be accorded to all individuals and regarded as gender neutral, this masks a discourse of androcentric sport citizenship. This has captured European and UK sport policy and provision and is hindering further progress towards gender justice in sport and therefore PE. Given the universal and compulsory aspirations of sport particularly within PE, gender justice should be conceptualised not only as cultural recognition, political representation and economic redistribution within the normalised frame of competitive performance sport or ‘sport for sports sake’; but also as a critical meta-political remapping and reframing of sport as sport and physical recreation or ‘sport for all’.     

Bodies as bearers of value: the transmission of jock culture via the ‘Twelve Commandments’

This article explores a number of insights generated from a three-year ethnographic study of one university setting in England in which a ‘jock culture’ is seen to dominate a student campus. Drawing on core concepts from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of culture, it illustrates the unique function of the body in sustaining jock culture through the hierarchical ordering of bodies in institutional space. First, the development of this culture over time and the key dispositions that come to embody it are outlined. Next, the authors identify and illustrate the enactment of what they call the ‘Twelve Commandments’. These operate as a series of structured and structuring practices to condition the bodies of group members by appropriating an idealized and internalized jock habitus that is not gender neutral. Rather, it can be seen as a practical and symbolic manifestation of a dominant, heterosexual, masculine orientation to the world. The authors suggest that in spite of seemingly significant processes of accommodation over the years, the ‘illusio’ of this jock culture remains substantially intact and maintained through a combination of the following: (a) symbolic violence and (b) a systematic embodied complicity on the part of many of the actors who have something to gain by avoiding active subordination to, and exclusion from, the dominant group.     

Before the ‘Black Ferns’: Tracing the Beginnings of Women’s Rugby in New Zealand

Abstract

Women’s rugby union in New Zealand has increased in popularity over the past decade, preceded by two decades of dominance at the international level and much activism to have the women’s game recognized and supported, nationally and provincially. However, as this paper reveals, women’s engagement with the game, as players, began more than 100 years before the Black Ferns won their first international tournament. Through an examination of several fleeting ‘episodes’ of women’s attempts to play in earnest, as represented in digitized newspapers from Papers Past, it becomes apparent that women’s foray into the hyper-masculinized team sport of rugby challenged dominant sensibilities but was not wholly resisted. The ‘events’ investigated here suggest that gender roles may have been more porous than traditionally invoked by the categories of ‘Victorian’ and ‘New Woman’, contested, albeit intermittently, by the actions of Pākehā and Māori women around the colony.