EMBODYING DISCOURSE AND DOMINATION IN
PUBLIC SECTOR SPORT AND RECREATION
MATT FREW
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of
Glasgow Caledonian University for the degree of Doctor of
Philosophy
Glasgow Caledonian University
Cultural Business Group
JANUARY 2007
1
Abstract
This thesis provides an exploration and reconceptualisation of public sector sport and
recreation (PSSR). It contends that, rather than a neutral, egalitarian or purely social space
of free expression, the PSSR, can be conceived of as a discursive embodied product. By
coupling the work of Michel Foucault (1977) and Pierre Bourdieu (1986) the PSSR is
revealed as a culturally privileging construct emerging from a series of contingent historical
archives that echo in a dynamically embodied present.
With focal data drawn from a longitudinal ethnographic case study the governmentality of
discourse networks through the policy pronouncements advocated by national policy
communities to local managerial and operational practice. However, charged with the
contradictory imperatives of managerialist economic development (Henry, 1993) and
welfarist social inclusion (Collins, 2003), the PSSR is compelled to attract culturally divergent
customer groups. This thesis argues that discourse is unmasked as the spaces of the PSSR
trigger the cultural capital and, thus, sporting subjectivities of those privileged socially
included groups at the expense and domination of the socially excluded. Moreover, being
‘durable and transferable’ and manifest in ‘action’, (Bourdieu, 1990: 35), such capital is seen
in the managed provision, procedural operation and customer practices advocated within the
PSSR. To engage in this social space demands a habitus where the illusio of sport and
recreation, that feel or ‘fact of being caught up in and by the game’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 76) is an
engrained given and the ‘procedural principles’ and ‘professional modes of operation’ that
constitute the field (Fowler, 1998: 17) are understood.
However, while acquiescing to the embodied transformational changes promised by new
policy agendas the socially excluded, lacking a cultural package, appear as fish out of water.
In the spaces of the PSSR, they are perpetually reminded of, and display, their cultural
‘handicap’ that has ‘lasted for generations’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 215). Therefore, without
reflexivity over its cultural content, the PSSR can only perpetuate the domination and social
suffering of the excluded, who by their very being, are destined to break the cultural rules of
conduct. Paradoxically, this challenges the professional claims, purpose and discourse of the
PSSR itself.
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List of Contents
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................... 2
LIST OF CONTENTS................................................................................................................................. 3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................................... 5
AUTHORS DECLARATION ..................................................................................................................... 6
1.0
INTRODUCTION: EXPLORING THE EMBODIED DYNAMICS OF DISCOURSE ............ 7
Why Discourse and Public Sector Sport and Recreation? ............................................................................... 9
Foucault and Bourdieu: an epistemological position ..................................................................................... 11
Research Aims............................................................................................................................................... 12
Research Objectives ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Epistemological commitments, empirical processes to knowledge production ............................................. 14
2.0
FOUCAULT & BOURDIEU: AN UNCOMFORTABLE ANALYTICAL PARTNERSHIP? ...17
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 17
Finding Foucault’s discourse ......................................................................................................................... 18
Resisting history: recovering ethos from modernist dogma .......................................................................... 21
Bio-power: the triad of power, knowledge and the subject ........................................................................... 23
The Politics of Bio-power: different methods same mountain ...................................................................... 29
View from the historical summit: the archaeological mode of objectification .............................................. 29
Viewing the en route dynamic: the genealogical mode of objectification ..................................................... 32
Reflections and modifications: the mode of self subjectification .................................................................. 35
Foucault: linking the strands of the web of discourse .................................................................................... 40
BOURDIEU: REFLEXIVITY IN ETHNOGRAPHIC JOURNEYS OF MARGINALIZATION .....43
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 43
Bourdieu: blissful structuralism or realist constructivist? .............................................................................. 43
Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of the trade ....................................................................................................... 48
Bourdieu, Sport and Recreation: integrative applications within fields of cultural consumption .................. 56
Domination via Distinction: symbolic violence and the performativity of power ......................................... 62
Foucault & Bourdieu: defending convergences & acknowledging criticisms .............................................. 67
3.0
MANAGEMENT: TITANS FOR A NEW AGE .............................................................................75
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 75
Management: modern pariah or panacea? ..................................................................................................... 77
The Road to Modern Management: comfortable teleology or discursive complexity? ................................. 79
The Classics of Modern Management ........................................................................................................... 82
Management for Today: Apollonian vision and Dionysian critique? ............................................................ 87
4.0
SPORT & RECREATION: THE DISCIPLINING OF TIME, SPACE AND SELF .................94
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................... 94
Ritual and Rite: Historical echoes in the making of modern sport & recreation............................................ 95
Religion & Industrialism: revolutions of time, space and identity ................................................................ 99
Sport and Recreation for All: welfarism and the PSSR ............................................................................... 108
Panoptican Policy and Embodied Production: from the gaze of CCT to BVR ............................................ 113
5.0
PROFESSIONALISM AND THE PSSR: AN OLD PARADOX .................................................123
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 123
Professionalism and Professionals: experts and gatekeepers of exclusion .................................................. 124
The Professional Institution of the PSSR: policy communities and the problems of governance ............... 127
Renewing Professionalism through new policy agendas ............................................................................. 131
6.0 ACTION AND THE PSSR: RESEARCHING THE EMBODIED PRACTICES OF WORK
AND CULTURAL CONSUMPTION .....................................................................................................135
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Uncovering the PSSR: the historical positioning of practice ....................................................................... 141
Institutional Representations of the PSSR: relating the historical to the strategic scene ............................. 144
The microphysics of the PSSR: an ethnographic exploration of local practice ........................................... 147
Case study profile: understanding the physical space and provision ........................................................... 148
Contextualizing consumption: the social space of sport and recreation ...................................................... 151
Working in Sport and Recreation: an ethnographic exploration .................................................................. 154
Ethnographic methods: observations of sport and recreation operations and consumption ......................... 157
Ethnographic methods: dynamic adaptations to observations ..................................................................... 159
Staff Forum: closing the action research loop ............................................................................................. 161
Methods: critical reflections ........................................................................................................................ 163
7.0
FINDINGS: THE DATA THEMES OF DISCOURSE ...............................................................168
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 168
Embodied Spaces & Cultural Tastes: ‘just’ differences or distinction? ....................................................... 170
A Facility for Whose Locality? ................................................................................................................... 171
Kids, Clubs & Classes ................................................................................................................................. 180
Cultural Clashes in sport and recreational consumption .............................................................................. 194
Making and Managing the PSSR: National Vision to Local Practice .......................................................... 207
Aesthetics: managing place, provision and people ...................................................................................... 207
Systems & Subjects: the producing and governing the operational body .................................................... 215
Dis-located management: policy, practice and professionalism? ................................................................ 225
8.0
CRITICAL DISCUSSION: THE WEB OF DISCOURSE AND EMBODIED SUFFERING .242
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 242
Embodied Consumption and Conflict in Cultural Comfort Zones .............................................................. 243
New Emperors Old Clothes and the Mythical Mantra of Inclusion ............................................................. 258
The Web of Embodied Consumption: cultured consumers, transients and deviants ................................... 269
9.0
CONCLUSIONS: JOURNEYING TO THE CELESTIAL CITY ..............................................276
Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 276
The Consuming Culture of the PSSR: encrypted past embodied present .................................................... 277
Competing Capitals: the dynamics of embodied difference, distinction and doubt ..................................... 279
Governing the PSSR: performing professionalism an embodied future? .................................................... 284
Further Research: new discursive journeys? ............................................................................................... 288
APPENDIX A – CORE INTERVIEW AND FORUM THEMES........................................................291
APPENDIX B – CASE STUDY PHOTO FILE .....................................................................................295
APPENDIX C – GEODEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE .............................................................................297
APPENDIX D – FIELDWORK AND INTERVIEW CODING LIST .................................................305
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................306
4
Acknowledgements
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me
something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you
clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit
me.
(Matthew, 25, 35-36)
Throughout the journey of this research investigation there have been many valleys and false
summits. However painful as it was, this arduous task was not taken alone, but was made
possible by a variety of special people who should be acknowledged.
At the heart of this process has been my family. So to my wife Karen and children Sean,
Cara and Zoë, who have had to put up with me, the hardship and personal neglect of this
research has brought, I offer special thanks with love and admiration.
I would like to thank my Director of Studies, Professor Malcolm Foley, for his guidance and
perseverance. His ideas and inspiration have challenged me but without his belief I would
not be here. Also thanks goes to Dr Gayle McPherson who has been a constant support to
me throughout.
The time and assistance given by national bodies, strategic practitioners and East Ayrshire is
acknowledged. Again, the contribution and support of the staff and customer groups
encountered during the ethnographic is appreciated.
Finally, I would like to thank Dr David McGillivray who has trudged this path with me. Our
debates have been many and the critical insight has been greatly appreciated. However, it is
for the constant encouragement and friendship I am most grateful.
5
Authors Declaration
I Matt Frew certify that this thesis is solely the outcome of my own research investigation.
As far as I am aware this thesis was compiled within the regulative guidelines as set out by
the University’s Research Committee and the British Library’s Standards Office.
Signed…………………………………………………….
6
Date…………………………
1.0
Introduction: exploring the embodied dynamics of discourse
In this post-millennium era of western consumer capitalism much of the processes activities
and consumption practices that can be encapsulated under the banner of sport and
recreation are a given. Sport and recreation is now a globally mediatised market that carries
commercial and multi-national marketing appeal (Crawford, 2004; Horne, 2006). With
celebrity sports superstars (Andrews and Jackson, 2001), ‘coolhunter’ branding (Klein, 2001)
and mass facilitization the consumption and entertainment spectacle of sport and recreation
has come to typify the borderless world (Rojek, 1995, Handy, 1994). However, rather than
something that people just know of, watch, or do, sport and recreation conveys meaning,
taste and status value (Agger, 1991; Held, 2000). Moreover, for centuries it has been
appropriated as a political and ideological tool (Hetherington, 1993; Henry, 2001) used to
promote and differentiate national, ethnic, class or personal identity (Veblen, 1912; Clarke
and Critcher, 1985; Jarvie and Maguire, 1994). Sport and recreation, as a sub-field of leisure,
is now of increasing sociocultural and personal importance:
It has been argued by a number of authors that the ‘fields’ where identity was once
constructed, for example, work, are being replaced by fields such as leisure in which
personal identities are constructed and maintained.
(Hague, Thomas and Williams, 2000: 9)
More importantly, as sites of identity construction and display the spaces of sport and
recreation represent the ‘construction of normative landscapes and associated behaviours’
that ‘must be created, reproduced and defended’ (Cresswell, 1996: 9). Therefore, given this
historical and politicised backdrop, the rise of post-industrial service economies and a postmodern blurring of time, space and self (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994; Rojek, 1995) this study is
directed towards how discourse works, lives in and through the embodied state of subjects.
Building upon philosophical traditions (Merleau-Ponty, 1962; 1964) embodiment centres
‘our attention to the centrality of perception to our sense of being’ demonstrating ‘that
perception is rooted in our practical form of life, in the forms of comportment and
demeanour, which embody values’ (Charlesworth, 2000: 50). The worldview and the world
7
individuals inhabit do not conform to a Cartesian interpretation but function completely,
interactively and dynamically:
Embodiment is a process of experiencing, making sense, knowing through practise
as a sensual human subject in the world. The subject engages space and space
becomes embodied in three ways. First, the person grasps the world multi-sensually.
Second, the body is ‘surrounded’ by space and encounters it multi-dimensionally.
Third, through the body the individual expresses him/herself through the
surrounding space and thereby changes its meaning.
(Crouch, 2000: 68)
Many studies with leisure links have touched on embodiment such as Elias and Dunning’s
(1986) civilising process, Bordo (1993), and Grogan (1999) on gender, Frew and McGillivray,
(2005) on aesthetics, Abbas (2004) on class or the likes of Hancock and Tyler (2000) or Dale
(2001) on the working body. More importantly, along with sport specific studies (Jarvie and
Maguire, 1994; Wacquant, 1998; Cole, Giardina and Andrews, 2004) the work of the
theoretical coupling underpinning this study (developed below) is steeped in the politics of
embodiment. Others, such as human geographers, have highlighted this process and alluded
to leisure applications through the location, awareness, knowledge, analysis, interactions
differential readings individuals have with social space (Sibley, 1995; Smale, 1999). Social
spaces, including leisure spaces, are formed, interactively functioning with the embodied
politics of those subjects who inhabit them. Given that such social spaces are increasingly
segmented it has been argued that the objective conditions and subjective cultural positions
of individuals be analysed as part of a holistic embodied and politicised dynamic (Hague et
al, 2000).
Echoing post-structuralism (Sim, 1996a), this challenges traditional normative analysis in
terms of ethnicity, class or gender. Moreover, as the postmodern or cultural turn (Du Gay,
1996a) questions the assertions to how leisure cognitively is or normatively how it ought to
be (McLean, 1997) neither leisure studies or leisure sciences have ‘addressed satisfactorily the
situated nature of leisure meanings and their relationship to wider sources of meaning and
identity’ (Coalter, 1997: 265). Again Rojek (2005) notes this arguing that there needs to be
8
an emphasis ‘on the embodied, emplaced character of actors in concrete leisure settings of
location and context’ (Rojek, 2005: 82). Therefore, with these debates serving as a platform
of opportunity, this study is directed towards the spatially located, contextualised and
embodied politics of sport and recreation.
Sport and recreation, far from being a given, neutral or inclusive phenomenon, can be
problematised as a discursively embodied exclusionary social site. Given its formative
impact of modern sport the British experience exemplifies this process. More importantly,
and although the commercial and voluntary sectors play a key role here, the British public
sector, with its disparate origins, politicised development and social remit, represents an ideal
location to empirically explore the notion of discourse. Here the content, consumption and
embodied subjects of sport and recreation can be seen being produced, named, contained
and directed in and through the power-knowledge relations of this social space (Moss, 1998).
Therefore, while sport and recreation frames this study, its embodied management,
operational delivery and consumption within the public sector provides the academic depth
for its empirical exploration. However, in order to facilitate understanding and linkage to
both the relevance of public sector sport and recreation (from here referred to as the PSSR)
and the conceptual coupling that underpins the research process, it is worth taking a
moment to briefly touch on the background rationale for embarking upon this study.
Why Discourse and Public Sector Sport and Recreation?
This study is born out of fifteen years of work experience, accrued at both operational and
managerial level, within the public, commercial and voluntary sectors of sport and
recreation. This range of experience allowed for an understanding of the organisational,
operational and cultural processes when developing and delivering a variety of sport and
recreational services. However, given the socially inclusive remit of the public sector it finds
itself compelled to, simultaneously, deliver services to culturally diverse consumer groups.
Unlike private sector experience the public/open status and cultural diversity of the public
sector produced a series of managerial, operational and consumer tensions. Moreover, the
divergent nature, participation and conduct of these groups was compounded by
9
organizational and management processes that were unable to cope or address this volatile
service delivery environment. With responsibility for understanding and negotiating service
delivery to these divergent groups falling to operational staff, and given the centrality of
management and the social policy remit of the public sector (Henry, 2001; Roberts; 1999),
this anomaly appeared ripe for investigation. The importance of this was enhanced due to
lack of focus at the operational and consumption level of sport and recreation. Many studies
have been conducted into forms of sport cultures (Ellias, 1993; Wacquant; 1998),
participation (Wilson, 2002) and organizational management (Kreitner, 1995; Robbins,
1998). However, there was a dearth of research that historically locates and explores the
working environment and processes found in the daily delivery of sport and recreation
services. No study has focused upon how sport and recreation works, is organisationally and
operationally embodied, practiced and consumed. Also, the depth of research into the
dynamics of the embodied realities of organizations has led to calls and innovative research
approaches for the historically situated, holistic, live and participatory process of
organizations (Boxall, 1993; Reason and Bradbury, 2001a). Rojek (2005) highlights this,
arguing that ‘one of its [Leisure Studies] most urgent and biggest tasks’ is to tackle poststructuralist, action approaches and to ‘focus upon how individuals are embodied and
emplaced through power relations’ (217). This study does exactly that with its discursive
focus upon the embodied managerial, operational and consumer practices of the divergent
customer groups found within the working environment of the PSSR. Moreover, in
addressing the arguments expressed by Rojek (2005) and those above, it does this through a
novel analytical underpinning. However, before touching on this it is important that the use
of the abbreviation PSSR be explained.
The use of the abbreviation PSSR should not be taken as some holistic reference to the
totality of operations, practices and forms of cultural consumption that surround this public
service. Although representativeness and relational generalizability are often desirable for
those swayed by the scientific method (Bryman, 2001), the nature of this study make such
untenable. There are both epistemological and methodological reasons for this. For
example Foucault’s challenge to totalizing truth (Foucault, 1980) and Bourdieu’s Pascalian
refusal of foundation (Bourdieu, 2000) and interest in the small narratives (Bourdieu, 1999)
preclude universals in a metanarrative sense. Moreover, given that both held the
10
Neitzschean view that action and knowledge are never objective, holistic or detached (Webb,
Schirato and Danaher, 2002; Grenz, 1996), crass non-reflexive generalizations are all the
more inappropriate. Therefore, Foucault and Bourdieu reveal the core ontological and
epistemological caveats of this study, and in coupling their work, they drive as well as
problematise the nature and practical operational methods of this research process.
Although, discussed in detail in Chapter Two, it is worth highlighting the rationale for
coupling these theorists.
Foucault and Bourdieu: an epistemological position
As mentioned this study draws on, and conceptually couples, the work of French social
theorists Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. The concepts of these theorists have been
widely attributed to those terrains that surround, and are essential for, the emergence and
development of the PSSR as it is know today. This would include organisational
management (Clegg, 1994; Townley, 1998; Starkey and McKinley, 1998a) sport and
recreation (Ellias, 1993; Wacquant, 1998) and professionalism (Fox, 1993). While each can
be viewed as discourses in their own right, taken together they constitute the enabling
discursive assemblage (Kendall and Wickham, 1999; Danaher, Schirato and Webb, 2000) of
the PSSR. Moreover, the theorists themselves have variously targeted the institutions of the
modern state (Foucault, 1970; 1975; 1977; Bourdieu, 1978; 1988; 1999), and the
interrelationship between power, knowledge and production of embodied subjects.
Knowledge and power dynamically produce subjects within the objective conditions or
sociocultural environment they find themselves. In different ways both point to how
subjects are produced and governed within their culturally subjective, yet, environmentally
objective conditions. Given its institutional status and remit the PSSR provides an ideal site
to locate and explore such discursive processes.
In arguing for Foucauldian analysis, this study then views the PSSR, its institutional
development, physical manifestation, sport and recreation provision, those subjects
managing, operationally delivering and those consuming, as a discursive product that has
been named, categorised, contained and governed. However, while Foucauldian analysis is
11
good for theoretically problematising the discursive assemblage and knowledge formations
of the past, to show how the power/knowledge and subjects of discourse have come to be,
produced, governed and resisted the work of Bourdieu, is worthy of investigation.
The application of Bourdieu’s work takes the abstract Foucauldian notion of discourse and
embeds it in the lived realities of life. In particular through the concepts of habitus, field and
capital Bourdieu provides a way of seeing how the dynamics of discourse are found, work,
are embodied and reproduced within settings of social and cultural consumption. Such
concepts allow the cultural spaces and practices of sport and recreation (as found within the
PSSR) to be problematised and their social, political and privileging undercurrents revealed
(Bourdieu, 1978; 1999; Charlesworth, 2000). Given that ‘sporting practices are practices in
which understanding is bodily’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 166) sport and recreation is an ideal site to
explore embodied politics. As Guilianotti (2005) puts it ‘Bourdieu debunks sport’s sacred
aura’ by demonstrating that ‘sport is one of many cultural means through which the different
social classes distinguish themselves from one another (165). Taken as an institutional arm
of government premised on social remit and designed to intervene, promote and adapt the
lifestyle habits or cultural tastes of those socially excluded the PSSR is ripe for Bourdieusian
theory. Therefore, rather than uncovering some teleological narrative the coupling of these
theorists provides a means of ‘diagnosing the present’ by disturbing the historical givens and
ideas that surround the PSSR. Moreover, it is argued that, although theoretically sound in
their own right, the conceptual coupling of Foucault and Bourdieu enhances the substance
and originality of the study.
Research Aims
Taking into consideration the above it is essential to clearly state the primary aims and
objectives of the study. This study has three main aims:
 To reconceptualise public sector sport and recreation through the analytical coupling of
Foucault and Bourdieu
12
 To critically analyse the embodied operational and consumption practices of public
sector sport and recreation
 To critically evaluate its public status and professional claims as premised on welfare
objectives
Research Objectives
In order to achieve these aims five objectives have been identified. The study will then:
 Problematise the ontological and epistemological dilemmas underpinning the research
process
 Argue for a Foucauldian and Bourdieusian coupling as an analytical alternative;
 Historically locate the development of sport and recreation, management and the
professionalizing process as central to the institutional formation and development of
public sector sport and recreation and its embodied practices;
 Undertake an empirical investigation of a national/macro policy community and its
translation through to the local/micro practices found at the street bureaucracy level of
public sector sport and recreation;
 Reveal the working, internalisation and embodiment of discourse and problematise its
effects through a longitudinal ethnographic case study of the managerial, operational and
customer practices found with public sector sport and recreation;
These aims and objectives represent the core of this study. However, this PhD process does
not lend itself to a neat narrative. Rather, while juggling the wish to convey complexity with
the need for some clarity, this study unravels in a manner akin to the journey found in
Bunyan’s (1886) The Pilgrims Progress. In concluding this introductory chapter, the sections
13
below map this metaphorical journey by outlining the process and contents of forthcoming
chapters.
Epistemological commitments, empirical processes to knowledge production
The journey that this study embarks upon is mapped out in the following way:
Chapter 2: Foucault & Bourdieu: an uncomfortable analytical partnership?
Chapter 3: Management: Titans for a New Age
Chapter 4: Sport & Recreation: the disciplining of time, space and self
Chapter 5: Professionalism and the PSSR: an old paradox
Chapter 6: Action and the PSSR: researching the embodied practices of work and cultural
consumption
Chapter 7: Findings: the Data Themes of Discourse
Chapter 8: Critical Discussion: the web of discourse and embodied suffering
Chapter 9: Conclusions: journeying to the Celestial City?
With the above mention of Foucault and Bourdieu’s importance to the study it would have
been evident that the work of these theorists is far from straightforward. Moreover, the
challenge that they represent to the research process makes it essential to spend some time
examining the problems facing modern research and the contribution Foucault and
Bourdieu make. Chapter Two is dedicated to this. Here the ontological and epistemological
positions of these theorists are outlined independently and critiqued as they directly impact
upon the social sciences and issues surrounding the nature, production and politics of
research and knowledge. More importantly, and a central contention of this study, the
coupling of Foucault and Bourdieu is presented as a novel means to navigate the
philosophical mire, abstract/empirical divide, structure/agency debates that continue to
blight the social sciences as much as impact upon leisure studies (Bourdieu, 1990; Jenkins,
2002; Roberts, 2004). To that end Chapter Two not only provides an extensive discussion
on the development and relevance of Foucault and Bourdieu’s concepts but also the
analytical ‘phrase regime’ (Sim, 1995) of the study and it is for this reason that this chapter
14
appears so early on. Moreover, it provides linkage to the methods developed and employed
(Chapter Six) through the study.
From the theoretically thick discussion of Chapter Two the study shifts to review relevant
literature. Chapters Three, Four and Five are designed to locate and explore the historical
abstraction of the PSSR. They critically discuss those forces, events, disciplines and
institutions, or what would be regarded in Foucauldian terms as a discursive assemblage
(Kendall and Wickham, 1999), essential to the formation, legitimation and maintenance of
the PSSR. These are summarised here under the broad areas of organisational management,
sport and recreation and the process of professionalisation. These chapters provide the
historical premise and modern legitimation of the PSSR, its management, professional,
operational and consumer practices. Essentially, they become central to normalising and
objectifying what can be said about or seen in the material and embodied world of the PSSR.
Flowing from this, Chapter Six takes cognisance of the epistemological commitments of the
study to present and discuss the detail of the research methods employed. The research
strategy accommodates Foucauldian discourse and Bourdieusian its embodied operation
within the internal and living environment of the PSSR. To that end, Chapter Six discusses
the three level action research (Gustavsen, 2001; Borda 2001) approach which links well with
studies of this nature (Rojek, 2005). The chapter represents the integration of all aspects of
the study but, principally, attempts to depict the process of empirically grounding the study
in order to provide necessary coverage and depth 1.
Chapters Seven and Eight will present and critically discuss primary data. Through a series
of thematic sub-headings the three levels (national, local/managerial to case
study/operations and consumption) will be systematically presented. The rationale for this
approach is that the depth and coverage of data demands a narrative to critical discussion
style in order for clarity and critical flow of discussion points to be made.
In briefly mentioning these here, and in action even Bourdieusian reflexivity, such research approaches
functioned in an interactive rather than linear fashion. This is extensively discussed within this chapter.
1
15
Chapter Nine completes and concludes the study by emphasising primary points of analysis,
contributions to knowledge whilst reflecting upon the discursive issue of knowledge
production and recommendations for further research. Resonating with the epistemological
commitments of the study, and as research constitutes a set of actions it reflects on the
research process as intertwined with power/knowledge/subject triad as an embodied
product of knowledge itself.
16
2.0
Foucault & Bourdieu: an uncomfortable analytical partnership?
Introduction
Clearly this study does not follow the standard structure of a PhD. Such a deviation relates
to the nature of the study itself and the theorists involved, namely, Michel Foucault and
Pierre Bourdieu. Given Foucault has been described as difficult if not deliberately
impenetrable (McCarthy 1992), and Bourdieu’s confused reception by Anglo-Americans
(Calhoun 1995), the analytical perspective of the study is presented here. The rationale being
that in order to negotiate the preceding sections, and understand the points made, the reader
demands a grasp of the position of these theorists and their concepts. As such, a series of
‘phrase regimes’ (Sim 1998a: 10) are provided here that are designed to serve a two-fold
purpose. Firstly, the theoretical concepts of the study will be outlined and, where possible,
contextually illustrated through sport and recreation. Secondly, as the analytical substance for
studying the PSSR these concepts enable the identification and unmasking of those regimes
of truth that appear in the guise of rationally objective and consensually coherent knowledge
(Grenz, 1996; Du Gay, Salman and Rees,1996b).
To that end, the work of Foucault is used abstractly to explore how the relational power,
knowledge, subject triad (Kendall and Wickham 1999) of discursive struggles works to
discipline, organise and produce both the social space of the PSSR and the subjects therein.
This is illustrated by drawing upon his concepts of discourse, archaeology, genealogy,
governmentality and technologies of the self. Bourdieu, on the other hand, takes Foucault’s
historical and theoretical perspective and opens up its functional and political ramifications
within lived realities. In other words, Bourdieu is used to reveal how the discursive process
works in the everyday working lives and embodied states of those who manage, operate and
consume the PSSR and the services it provides. Through his concepts of habitus, field and
capital the dynamics, and working processes of domination are exposed. In essence, these
theorists are used, where possible, to complement one another as the Foucauldian bones of
theoretical abstraction are covered with the Bourdieusian meat of empirical reality.
17
This does not mean that the difficulties in such a theoretical coupling and criticisms of their
work are left untouched. On the contrary, while aspects of critique are, inevitably, touched
on in outlining their work, the framework ends by considering the primary criticisms and
areas of convergence. While this critical section will reinforce the rationale for utilising such
an unusual coupling their selection was, partly, born from such criticism. Suffice it to say
here that given their adventurous breadth, depth and eclectic aspects both Foucault and
Bourdieu are easy critical targets (e.g. Frazer, 1989; Alexander, 1995). Given their oeuvre,
Foucault and Bourdieu have come under types of critical gaze that, far from legitimate
academic critique, appear more as academic opportunism. However, as Aronson (1992),
reminds us this is not a new trend as the greatest philosophers, religious leaders, artist or
scientists have all suffered from mis-representation and critical ridicule. Nevertheless, rather
than unreflexively snipe and shout from the sidelines, the coupling of these theorists and
focus of this study enters the research ring and reflects upon the embodied circumstances of
those therein, namely, the PSSR.
Finding Foucault’s discourse
At the time of his death in 1984 Michel Foucault was heralded as the ‘most famous
intellectual in the world’ (Miller, 1993: 13). Before, and since Foucault’s work has caused
controversy among historians, philosophers and cultural theorists because of his challenge to
the nature, limits and use of knowledge and to the reasons and ‘foundation of morality’
(Grenz, 1996: 124). According to Megill (1987) he appeals to a project of unmasking the
‘totalising tendencies’ of historical truths, whilst, stressing the wish to avoid constructing
other truths. His historical development of discourse, power-knowledge and the subject his
approach has been used in areas such as health (Cheek and Rudge, 1997), aesthetics
(Armstrong, 1998), leisure (Hargreaves, 1986; Giulianotti, 2004) and organisational studies
(Townley 1994; McKinlay and Starkey 1998a). Despite his wide use in a variety of academic
facets, Foucault’s work is as difficult to unravel as much as he is to place (Danaher, et al,
2000).
18
This can often be attributed to the early influences and interests of Foucault such as
Saussure, Levi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes and his former teacher Althusser (Reese, 1980; Smart,
1988). Given his early archaeological focus, it is understandable that he was viewed as a
structuralist or, at least, quasi-structuralist (Hoy, 1989). Although openly rejecting this label
(Foucault, 1971) the complexity of his work has seen him also appropriated within poststructuralism and even postmodernism at particular times (Agger, 1991; McKinlay and
Starkey, 1998a; Danaher et al, 2000). Grenz (1996) summarises this confusion as more of
the position of interpretation taken by critics and followers alike. For him Foucault, as with
Derrida and Rorty, are ‘complex thinkers’ who, depending upon the period of focus, ‘can be
read in many different ways’ (190). Even though Foucault positions himself as an
‘archaeologist of knowledge’, and more ‘counter modernity’ than postmodern (Hoy 1988:
12), he remains open to interpreters who advocate readings of the earlier, mid or later
Foucault (McKinlay and Starkey 1998; Ross 1998).
However, as with most theorists, Foucault’s work was developmental; shifting and amending
concepts over time (Hoy 1986). Even with this there are those who argue for a core that
runs throughout his work from his archaeology to his late ‘technologies of the self’ (Dreyfus
and Rabinow 1983; Cheek and Rudge 1997; Freundlieb 1998; Kendall and Wickham 1999).
They point to a focus on how the individual both constitutes and is constituted in and
through the power/knowledge relationship of discursive formations. Therefore, while often
periodized, in his major early works (Discipline and Punish: the Birth of a Prison, 1977; The
History of Sexuality 1978; 1985) and obviously through to the third volume in the History of
Sexuality (Care of the Self, 1986) Foucault has been concerned with the historical embodied
production of subjects (McHoul, 1997).
The notion of discourse, and how it is used, is central to Foucault’s thinking. Discourse, in
the Foucauldian sense, does not refer to the social function of language, as viewed by
formalist textual linguistics, or the more sociological and descriptive common-sense
knowledge underpinning conversation as examined in conversational analysis (McCarthy
1992). Rather discourse examines the social, political and historical conditions whereby
knowledge is constructed and how such knowledge ‘produce a particular kind of social
subject’ (McHoul and Grace 1995: 30). Foucault is then concerned with ‘the structure of
19
discourse’ (Rouse, 1994: 94) or those physical events, institutions, organised groups, media
and the spoken words they produce and use. It is the process of uncovering the ‘bits and
pieces that had to be in place’ or the material ‘conditions of possibility’ (Kendall and
Wickham, 1990: 37), which enable understanding and interaction with the world. Discourse
is mutually conditioning, where what can be seen and said about a given area or subject are
produced and transformed with and through other discourses over time (Flynn, 1994).
Foucault (1978) uses the example of the confessional to demonstrate how rules, regulations
and structure change, altering the hierarchy of sins and how they are to be spoken and
thought of. Sex is demonized to the point that sin can now be committed in thought as
much as deed. As such the institution of the church, its practices and knowledge claims
provides a way of speaking, and thinking, about sex and, thus, produces sex as an object of
sin and a new category of sinner. The discursive arrangements of the church are deployed as
‘hierarchical judgements, spatial organization and examination’ of ‘bodies’ takes place, which
are never simply trained but are subjected to normative judgements…or what Foucault
called dividing practices’ (Cole, Gardina and Andrews, 2004: 213).
For Foucault ‘man is a recent invention’ (Foucault, 1970: 386) a historical product of
institutional arrangements that have been internalized. He contends that these
‘arrangements’ stem from the Cartesian-Kantian claims of a knowing self, thus, setting in
motion processes of objectification that can universally know, determine and categorise what
the world is and all that it believes to exist. This refers to a belief in uncovering the essence
of things ‘out there’, which includes the very nature of the self or ‘man’ (sic). This term
‘man’, for Foucault, is a homogenized construct which, if the discursive arrangements can be
revealed, can be ‘erased, like a face drawn in the sand at the edge of the sea’ (Foucault, 1970:
387). Through the internalization of discursive arrangements, like Wittgenstein’s language
game or Lyotard’s ‘phrase regime’ (Sim, 1998: 10), individuals are provided with the means
to live and act. As Grenz (1996) summarises:
‘Foucault undertakes to bring to light the ways in which the rules that govern such
rules have come to enforce how people think, live, and speak.’
(Grenz, 1996: 128).
20
This is the oft-cited ‘conduct of conduct’ (Rose, 1999: 3) where subjective identities are
constructed through the power of discursive formations. What the subject is, how they are
defined, spoken about, located and managed is a major effect of power as ‘certain bodies,
certain gestures, certain discourses, certain desires come to be identified and constituted as
individuals.’ (Foucault, 1979: 98). These statements highlight how Foucault ‘rejects the idea
of the self-governing subject’ (Danaher, et al, 2000: 31), which has opened him to classic
structuralist and agency limiting critique. However, this would be to mis-represent Foucault
as much of this is related to his view of modernist history, reason and power. For it is in
developing these that the position and production of the subject, within the powerknowledge dynamic of discourse and non-discourse, is framed.
Resisting history: recovering ethos from modernist dogma
Typical of Foucault his conception of history and power (developed below) are markedly
different from others. History, against the Marxian view, is not to be taken in the absolutist
or essentialist sense. Viewing his work as an ‘archaeology of knowledge’ Foucault does not
appeal to standard interpretations and uses of history as the impartial, objective uncovering
past truths. Rather, he viewed such representations of history as discursive as they are
teleological attempts to legitimate a progressive, causal present by pacifying or silencing the
past (Harootunian, 1988). For Foucault, the present is not a logically ordered, linear and
value-free entity but is ‘just as strange as the past’ (Kendall and Wickham , 1999:4). History
is loaded with contingencies, value-judgements and the taken-for-granted.
History is to be problematised, deformed, made to ‘groan and protest’ (Foucault, 1980: 54).
In so doing an attempt is made to highlight the homogenising tendencies of ‘total history’
which seeks ‘a governing principle of civilisation, epoch or society’ in favour of ‘general
history’ that is ‘non-reductive, non-totalising, one that specifies its own terrain’ (Dean, 1994:
93). General history is a ‘strategy’ that elevates ‘otherness as it attempts to ‘deny the
supposed universality and timelessness of categories by bringing them back into the
historical flux’ (Grenz, 1996: 127). Applying a Foucauldian lens to sport and recreation what
21
is now regarded as highly defined, codified, managed and globalized area, again with set
embodied subjects, would not be regarded as a natural, historically objective process. Rather
how sport and recreation has come to be would be open to discursive disruption viewed as a
terrain that has been shaped, disciplined and embodied, produced through a series of
historically competing, contingent and even repressive forces (Hargreaves, 1987; Rose,
1999).
In wishing to place ‘chance’ centre stage in historical development (Foucault, 1974: 82)
Foucault rejects the universality of truth, knowledge and the certainty of progress. This
culturally and contextually constructed production of truth and, thus, what can be known
(Danaher, 2000) reveals Foucault’s much maligned and misinterpreted philosophical
position, and critique, of modernity. For just as he rejects teleological history modernity is
not to be thought of as an epoch but rather as ethos. To take modernity as an epoch is to
fixate history, view it as an objective reality. Whereas the ethos of the Enlightenment project
promised a liberation of humanity form the bonds of superstition, mysticism, want and
deprivation (Harvey, 1989; Hollinger, 1994), its dogmas became typified in ‘positivism,
scientism’, ‘technological reason’ and ‘utilitarian models of action’ (Hollinger, 1994: 13). The
dogmatism of reason is Foucault’s critical concern, rather than his rejection of, modernity.
Foucault's take on modernity demonstrates that he has not abandoned reason, truth or
knowledge but only the representation of such as a universalising, immutable and totalizing
reality (Best and Kellner, 1991). As Barratt (2001: 199-200) points out ‘clearly, for Foucault
forms of truth and knowledge “exist”’ since they ‘have real social consequences and effects’
but, as ‘there are different ways of telling the truth’ there can ‘never be a finalised or finished
truth’. As such, just as Nietzsche (1969) illuminates in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Foucault
wishes to recover the ethos, against the dogma, of reason by diagnostically using history to
get us to critically reflect upon the contradictions of modernity and its discursive effects on
the self. Through history he attempts to reveal an ontology of the self (Fox, 1993), which,
unlike the Kantian mind body dualism, takes the embodied state, the self, as a unified entity
that has come to be the subject of, and in subjection to, the dogmas of modernist reason.
Foucault wishes to problematise the self, revealing what and how we have come to be. As
such, the challenge his work brings to modernist reason, his archaeology of knowledge, is to
22
show how the self, the materiality of mind as well as body, are made malleable in and
through the power-knowledge nexus of discursive formations:
The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as theory, a
doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to
be conceived as an attitude, and ethos, a philosophical life in which critique of what
we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are
imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.
(Foucault, 1986: 50)
Even though the production of the self is problematised within the wider philosophical
terrain, Foucault identifies and analyses the historical problem of such within specific
locations. Within the asylum, prison and clinic, Foucault presents his ‘unique’ perspective on
power and its inter-relationship with knowledge, which affects new subjects within these
fields. This discursive production of subjects, in and through the ‘power-knowledge nexus’
(Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 48) or ‘matrix’ (Hancock and Tyler, 2001: 79), finds a present
productive resonance in ‘hospitals, factories, housing estates, schools and barracks’ (Burrell,
1988: 226). Likewise the PSSR, as this study will demonstrate, is a historical and discursive
institution that through its own power-knowledge matrix produces a particular kind of
subject.
Bio-power: the triad of power, knowledge and the subject
The Foucauldian view of power takes a different position from traditional accounts of
power, such as those of Dahl (1969), Lukes (Lukes, 1974) or Gaventa (1980), who present a
model of power that is possessed, conspiratorial and, thus, negative or repressively enacted
over others. Clegg (1990) and Taylor (1994), while sympathizing with the Foucauldian view
that consequential action is not always intentional or casual, are (with the likes of Lukes)
critical of Foucault’s abstraction. This echoes with those who criticize Foucault for his
apparent ambivalent use of historical facts. However, much of this criticism is set against
views that believe in or assert a teleological view or foundational notion of power. Given
Foucault’s nominalist anti-Platonic stance essentialist notions of power do not exist but are
23
fabrications, truths made via a conviction for historical foundationalism (Foucualt, 1970).
Power should not then be seen as a possession reducibly acted within individualized contexts
of causal domination. Rather power should be problematised with the historians seeking to
‘uncover discursive and nondiscursive practices in their plurality and contingency’, which
impact upon, transform or ‘account’ for ‘our current practices’:
Thus Foucault’s program offers the “new historians” too much and too little: too
many diverse relations, too many lines of analysis; but not enough unitary necessity.
We are left with a plethora of intelligibilities and a lack of necessity. But he
resolutely refuses, as he puts it, to place himself “under the sign of unique necessity”
(Flynn, 1994: 39)
Foucault’s view of power is then distinctive since it is always positive in the sense that it
generates or is the enabling force of sets of actions, which are always relational to other
actions (Foucault, 1977; 1982; 1986). Power is the essential lubricant needed for actions to
take place with or against other actions. It is a dynamic and fluid process that not only
produces, but maintains, the poles of knowledge (the said and seen) of a given discourse:
Power, then, is not essentially repressive; it is not possessed, but practiced. Power is
not the prerogative of ‘masters’, but passes through every force…forces have a
capacity for resistance, such that power is only exercised in relation to a resistance,
each force having the power to affect and be affected by other forces.
(Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 50)
This does not mean that power and discourse are the same. Discourses ‘are not the end
products of power relations; rather power relations are seen to be immersed in discourses’
(Manias, 2000: 52). For Foucault, power is an all-pervasive, strategic process (Foucault,
1977), a ‘productive network that runs through the whole social body (Foucault, 1980: 119).
In essence power not only constructs its own resistance, for ‘where there is power there is
resistance’ (Foucault, 1979: 95), but such resistance is an essential component in producing
the effects or actions on actions (Foucault, 1986). As such resistance here differs from the
24
Marxist view of a repressive power elite resisted by the dominated proletariat. Resistance is
the technical or ‘counter-stroke’ of power:
Power and resistance are together the governance machine of society, but only in the
sense that together they contribute to the truism that ‘things never quite work’, not
in the conspiratorial sense that resistance serves to make power work imperfectly.
(Hunt and Wickham, 1994: 83)
This view of power stems for the rise of the modern state and Enlightenment human
sciences, which saw the shift of traditional sovereign notions of power such as those of the
monarchy or church. Following Nietzsche we have killed God only to replace him with the
new gods of discourse where a will to power is really a will to knowledge (Megill 1987).
However, with no sovereign voice, no God or ontological anchor of truth a plethora of
competing discourses vie for position. Power is inherent in discursive relations as
knowledge is claimed and constructed with and through resistant competition. The
positional ‘uniforms of power’ remain but these are ‘empty’ since ‘power now functions in
terms of relations between different fields, institutions, bureaucracies and other groups’
(Danaher, 2000: 71). Through such power relations the truth or knowledge of discourse are
formed, repetitively articulated and maintained (Foucault 1984).
This highlights that Foucault’s notion of discourse does not exist in a vacuum but within a
specific cultural milieu (Du Gay, 1996b) where the truths or knowledge claims of any given
discourse are the ‘effect’ of ‘networks of power’ (McGuigan, 1999: 41). In this, the distinct,
yet, inter-dependent nature of the power-knowledge nexus is revealed:
Power produces knowledge…There is no power relation without the correlative
constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose
and constitute at the same time power relations.
(Foucault, 1977: 27)
More importantly, the subject is inescapably invested in this process. In an ever-present
world constituted in and through the combative knowledge products or effects of power
25
relations the subject is one such effect. This is why Foucault speaks of man as an invention
(Foucault, 1970: 386). Just as with the death of god we have the death of the individual in
the totally unbridled, self-constituting sense. There is ‘no true state of existence’ (Danaher,
et al, 2000: 48) only subjects. However, although being defined and disciplined to become
the ‘practiced bodies, “docile” bodies’ (Foucault, 1977:138) of discourses, subjects are not
passive but active as they and their actions are the effects of power-relations.
Kendall and Wickham (1999: 54) highlight this pointing out the dynamics of discourse,
which they feel is best viewed as a non-hierarchical cyclical process between the ‘triad of
power, knowledge and subject’. However, although not always clear, due to the
developmental nature of his work, how this triad works is central for Foucault. As such
even though the unified, or more complete, notion of biopower does not appear until later
(Foucault 1979) it does thread throughout his work. This relates to the Enlightenment, rise
of the state, new technologies and a growing global economy, which spawn new forms of
governance. The exercise and extent of power shifts from destructive visual applications
that target and are physically inscribed on the body (Foucault 1977) to those that insipidly
permeate the embodied practices of the everyday. Therefore, Foucault’s overall
development of the processes of biopower is a description and analysis of how the dynamic
triad of power, knowledge and subject of discursive formations work, taking us from generic
socio-structural to the specific micro-physical level. As Moss (1998) puts it ‘pastoral power
spread from the monastery to the state and its institutions’ to become an ‘individualizing
power in that it sought, through supervision, to structure the life of the individual, both
through confessional technologies and techniques of self mastery’ (3).
More importantly, with his overall development of biopower, which being ever present and
cannot be avoided, Foucault shows that there are situations where domination, or being
docile in discourses (e.g. educational, medical or legal institutions) may be acceptable
(Foucault, 1987). This, which is developed later under technologies of the self, demonstrates
Foucault’s view that ‘power is only exercised over free subjects and only insofar as they are
free’ (Foucault, 1982: 221). Of course in saying ‘free’ Foucault is making a point against free
in the idealistic sense (e.g. free will) of the term and pointing to the nature of the subject
within power relations. Patton (1998) summarises this well:
26
However, ‘free’ means no more than being able to act in a variety of ways: that is,
having the power to act in several ways, or not being constrained in such a fashion
that all possibilities for action are eliminated. Here, too, the subject of power is a
‘subject’ in both senses of the term: being endowed with certain capacities or
possibilities for action and subjected to power relations. (66)
This notion of freedom or agency of the subject in the biopower process is found within this
study. As will be seen subjects act freely but only within a series of inherited objective
conditions and through culturally engrained capacities and tastes. Freedom, as much as the
construction and expression of individual identity, is not a simple process but played out,
contested and developed in and through the material and embodied interactions of given
socio-cultural contexts. Foucault, and as will be seen later through the coupling of Bourdieu,
provides a means for moving beyond traditional agency/structure subjectivism/objectivism
debates to, simultaneously, show subjects discursively making and being made, culturally
enabled and constrained. The PSSR is such a discursive socio-cultural context a site of
biopower where the embodied states have been historically formed, filtered through the
state, institutions and disciplines becoming the focus of dividing practices increasingly and
hierarchically objectified, governed and normalized.
However, in reiterating the focus and intention of the study it is still necessary to disentangle,
elaborate and apply Foucault’s (and later Bourdieu’s) concepts. The term ‘disentangle’ is
useful here as there has been much confusion and criticism over the development of
Foucault’s work. While Foucault has testified to such developments (Foucault, 1991) Moss
(1998) has argued that critics should not mis-represent Foucault here, as developments were
a ‘refinement of and response to his [Foucault’s] thinking about power’ (Moss, 1998: 2).
Nevertheless, this has led to Foucault’s work being disjointedly segmented into his
archaeological, genealogical or technologies of the self periods (Burrell 1988; Smart, 1988).
Although able to be marked off and conceptually useful, these ‘periods’ possess a clear core.
They constitute a developmental method for opening and problematising the powerknowledge matrix of discourse and how the subject is relationally produced both in terms of
27
social structures and subjective capacities (Moss, 1998). Therefore, while such periodization
may be convenient Foucault consistently asserted that his ‘objective’ was always ‘to create a
history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are made subjects’
(Foucault, 1982: 208). Rather than methods to be viewed in isolation Foucault modified his
work to trace the discursive forces and threads of biopower (Cheek and Rudge, 1997;
Freundlieb, 1998; Katz, 2001). Hence the subject is far more detached and decentred in
archaeology. With such decentring Foucault was open to structuralist or quasi-structuralist
labels (Hoy, 1986). Such accusations were countered with genealogy which shows not how
the subject is historically produced, made up or come to be but how the past links and works
in the present revealing the superficial and enmeshed macro to micro politics of the subject
in power relations (Burrell, 1998). With technologies of self this is taken further as the
objectifying subtlety of power works at the most individualizing level producing subjectifying
knowledge of the self whereby individuals effect reflexive, self-regulatory choices within
fields of possibility (Foucault, 1982; 1988). Simply put these ‘periods’ are developmental
methods with the subject moving from the background, to foreground and, finally, centre
stage. In this they represent the subject or ‘problematizations based upon practices of the
self’ (Foucault, 1986: 13) that move from the external and detached, to the internal macro to
micro political and, finally, to a reflexive, self-imposed, yet, restrictively liberating process
(Foucault, 1977; 1984; 1986; 1988)
Therefore, and regardless of the developmental modifications of method, the production of
the subject remains the primary focus for Foucault. Essentially, within the triad of power,
knowledge and subject, the subject is represented from different views but from the same
historical mountain of discursive production. As mentioned above the PSSR represents a
discursive socio-cultural context where embodied subjects are relationally produced in and
through the triad of power, knowledge and subject. The PSSR is a historical mountain of
discursive production that can be opened through Foucault’s methods. The immediate
sections continue to disentangle and elaborate Foucault’s ‘phrase regime’ and, again through
examples from sport and recreation, demonstrate Foucauldian applications to this study.
28
The Politics of Bio-power: different methods same mountain
In looking to uncover the variety of ways by which ‘human beings are made subjects’
Foucault highlights the ‘three modes of objectification which transform human beings into
subjects’ (Foucault, 1982: 208). This is where the methods of archaeological, genealogical
and technologies of the self appear. As mentioned while each can be viewed, and critiqued,
separately (as outlined here) how embodied subjects are produced was ‘general theme’ for
Foucault throughout his work (Foucault, 1982; 1991). Like climbing a mountain, depending
upon the location or route taken, Foucault’s methods will provide a different view of the
discursive production of the subject. However, while views may differ on the mountain of
discourse remains the same.
View from the historical summit: the archaeological mode of objectification
In his early work the power-knowledge relationship was examined through the
archaeological method. Archaeology aims to ‘rediscover on what basis knowledge and
theory became possible; within what space of order knowledge was constituted’ (Foucault,
1970: xxi). To do this archaeology describes the formation and bounds of discourses as they
are found in the ‘archive’ or ‘set of rules which at a given period’ define the ‘limits and forms
of expressibility’, ‘conservation’, ‘memory’ and ‘reactivation’ (Foucault 1974: 14). Through
archives Foucault attempts to uncover how particular ‘epistemes’ or periods of thought are
organized and work through discursive formations of institutions, disciplines practices and
events. Archives involve the ‘accumulated existence of discourse’ (Foucault, 1989: 25),
which includes both language and ‘things’ as they are seen physically and in practice. As
such they cover at ‘set of social arrangements’ where the visible and sayable are ‘mutually
conditioning’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 25). In descriptively laying out this process and
their ‘rules’, ‘practices’, ‘norms’ and ‘controls’ the ‘judicative and veridictive’ of the
‘power/knowledge dyad’ is revealed:
An archive is the locus of the rules and prior practices forming the conditions of
inclusion or exclusion that enable certain practices and prevent others from being
29
accepted as ‘scientific’, or ‘moral, or whatever other social rubric may be used at a
particular epoch.
(Flynn, 1994: 30)
Foucault uses his archaeological method to take a ‘snapshot’ or slices into history (Burrell,
1988: 221) in order to describe those enabling and distinguish principles of discursive
formations and, thus, the conditions for the ordering, inclusion or exclusion of what
constituted knowledge (Rabinow, 1986). In other words archaeology detaches knowledge
from the ahistorical ‘truth’ claim and reopens a consideration of its formation thereby
reframing knowledge and giving choices that were previously hidden by accepted knowledge,
standard practices, and existing concepts’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 142). It is through
such an approach that Foucault shows how ‘man’ (sic) is historically produced through the
mutually conditioning visibility/practice and statements/language (Burrell, 1988).
Again the health and fitness industries can be used to illustrate this archaeological process.
Here the relation between the series of statements around fitness and health such as the
forms of activities strategically and locally advocated, organisational positions and remits,
procedural practices, equipment requirements and even the construction and layout of the
building could be analyzed. In other words a focus would be placed upon the mutually
conditioning relationship between statements (said) and things (seen). In this case the
emergence of institutions (e.g. National Health Service), policy organisations (e.g. Health
Education Board), governing bodies of health (e.g. Fitness Industry Association), fitness
organizations (e.g. Sona), manufacturers (e.g. Cybex) and commercial media (e.g. Men’s
Health, Cosmopolitan) all make statements around facility design and build, fitness, obesity,
aesthetics, exercise forms, levels and their organisation. These relate to, or find their
visibility, in types of buildings, equipment, positions, procedures and practices, which are
targeted at effecting change or the attainment of forms of health and fitness. By focusing on
the repetitive and relational articulation of statements, from a variety of authoritative levels
or institutions, we are describing the ‘forms of specification’, the enabling language and ideas
by which ‘discursive objects are targeted’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 28). As such the
discourse of health and fitness can be archaeologically segmented and, thus, seen to be
30
constituted in word and deed as objects are formed and located in physical space (surfaces of
emergence) and practices advocated.
Therefore, as an early Foucauldian method, archaeology historically disturbs those elements
or forces that come to impact upon and produce subjects. It points to how external
governance (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998b; Rose, 1999) is produced and filtered through
authoritative institutions and events that work to govern physical space, time and, therefore,
prescribe the practices and embodied states therein. As such health and fitness not only
appears as a field but with such binary logic as fat/thin, fit/unfit, toned/flaccid, active/lazy it
establishes distinction and division among individuals (Foucault, 1970; 1973). Essentially, as
the knowledge of health and fitness is produced, a classification of subjects is necessarily
produced ready to be worked on in the health and fitness facilities by health and fitness
practitioners. The key difference here is that although knowledge is produced like a tailor
produces a suit of clothes the suit is not made to fit the subject it is the subject that must be
made to fit the suit.
Here archaeology maps or describes the archive of health and fitness opening the
discursively constituted said and seen of its knowledge, which, with its institutional domains
(e.g. health), effectively delimit word and deed or the content and constitution of objects
(e.g. fitness centre) and, necessarily, subjects (e.g. personal trainer) alike. It is the view from
the summit of the mountain. It reviews a particular route taken in order to reveal and
describe those historical ‘things’, institutions or events that led to that route, as opposed to
another, being taken. As such it draws what has become a given truth back into the
historical flux (Grenz, 1996) and, thus, provides for the possibility of being otherwise.
However, this general historical approach opens densely descriptive archives (Dean, 1994),
in order to reveal, not whose, but what discourse is allowed and legitimated (McHoul and
Grace, 1995), the subject appears not only decentred but in total subjection to discourse.
This apparent structuralism is more a problem of the archaeological method itself. Although
the archaeological approach was a purge of ‘anthropologism’ (Foucault, 1974: 16) this does
not mean that the subject or agency is rejected. Rather archaeology served as a noninterpretive description of the knowledge forms of discursive formation (the said and seen)
31
attempting to focus upon what appears rather than look for authors. It sought to uncover
those institutions, events and series of recurring statements as they relate to, locate and make
objects of subjects rather than attribute judgmental meaning (Kendall and Wickham, 1999;
Danaher, et al, 2000). As the subject was not so much erased but placed firmly in
background. Foucault sought to modify this heavy description and decentring of the subject
as evident in archaeology with his turn to genealogy.
Viewing the en route dynamic: the genealogical mode of objectification
With genealogy Foucault directs his attention towards providing a history of the present.
Genealogy is a ‘multi-disciplinary technique for discovering the contingent historical trends
that underpin contemporary discourses’ (Katz, 2001: 120) and as such reveals the ‘growth of
institutions’ and those ‘techniques and disciplines that reinforce specific practices’ (Hoy,
1989: 7). It places the subject in the foreground focusing upon and analyzing ‘local
discursivities’ in order to bring into play ‘subjected knowledges’ (Foucault, 1980: 85). As
Kendall and Wickham (1999) put it genealogy puts archaeology to work uncovering those
that are silenced, ignored, demonized or marginalized and, in so doing, challenges the given
‘truths’ of our time. As Foucault put it genealogy targets ‘the union of erudite knowledge
and local memories’ a ‘knowledge of struggles’ and as such:
What it really does is to entertain the claims to attention of local, discontinuous,
disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body of theory
which would filter, hierarchize and order them in the name of some true knowledge
and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects.
(Foucault, 1980: 83)
Foucault attempts to show the strategic dynamics of local discursivities, revealing how biopower is ongoing and working in the present. Through genealogy he demonstrates the
power-knowledge nexus of discursive formations as knowledge forms of the past grind or
clash, with those of other discourses and their effects upon the production of subjects.
Rather than identify, isolate and describe discursive formations genealogy incrementally
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traces the developments, changes and struggles in power-knowledge relationship evidenced
within and between the fields, institution and disciplines (Foucault, 1977; 1979; Hoy, 1989).
More importantly it is within and between the struggles of such fields, institution or
disciplines that the subject is located and produced. Put more simply, as a discourse
presents knowledge and, thus, objectifies and produces a category of subject, such
knowledge and its corresponding subject demands the ‘other’ of non-discourse. It is the
‘other’, that materiality, thing or individual of non-discourse, which the objectifying
knowledge of a given discourse is directed towards. In so doing the disciplinarity of power
is evidenced as objectifying knowledge pursues a process of normalisation producing both a
category of subject and, through a variety of mechanisms, prescribes a conduct of conduct
for such subjects (Foucault, 1982; Rose, 1999).
However, as discussed earlier, just as objectifying knowledge produces subjects, and
constructs their docility, it does so against the resistant ‘other’ who, by their being, do not
conform but clash with the normalising criteria. But the existence of such resistant ‘others’
does not negate the knowledge claims of a given discourse; rather it can serve to legitimise it.
For as objectifying knowledge brings the ‘other’ into being it, necessarily, takes nondiscursive embodied state and brings it under the gaze of discourse. The ‘other’ is now the
subject of discourse, it must be sought out, its embodied resistance confronted, worked on
and normalised. Therefore, although resistance reveals the imperfection of power within the
power/knowledge matrix of any given discourse it ‘legitimizes disciplinary power itself’
(McKinlay and Starkey, 1998b: 5). It is this process that genealogy seeks to unmask within
the practices of local discursivities (Harootunian, 1988).
In effect genealogy shifts from the theoretically detached external arena to diagnose the
internal personalized arena of practice (Rouse, 1994). Whereas the archaeological approach
provided a macro view from the summit, appearing overly deterministic with a decentred
individual lost in a world of discourse, genealogy highlights the tensions of bio-power en
route (Jackson and Carter, 2000). It shifts to discourse in the making to reveal how the
process of governmentality, those ‘rationalized schemes, programmes, techniques and
devices’ (Rose, 1999: 3), working on and shaping the body. Governmentality is seen to
oscillate from the outside to the inside, work back and forth from the national to local level,
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thus, revealing how ‘power, knowledge and the body are intertwined’ in the ‘play of
domination’ (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998c: 17). Genealogy opens non-discourse focusing
on the contests and construction of materiality or how forms of knowledge emerge,
function, relate and legitimate power in order to produce or advocate who and what ought
to be.
Recreational drug culture provides a useful illustration here. Although, the use of substances
have a long historical, cultural and religious tradition in modern times the phenomenon of
recreational drug taking has become a modern site of governance. Whether fuelled by
political, economic or moral imperatives drugs and drug taking, within western culture, have
become areas of concern and the focus of areas such as health, crime and education.
Against a backdrop of productive, responsible citizenship such areas advance forms of
objectifying knowledge around drugs, their use and those that use them. Essentially, the
external macro level of governance, with a concern over ‘population’ as an economic and
political problem’, focuses on ‘state of health’, ‘illnesses’ and ‘diet’ (Foucault, 1978: 25) and
instigates the production of individualising knowledges at the micro level of practice.
Governmentality is revealed shifting from the management of state boundaries to a focus on
the ‘disposition of the state’s inhabitants’ (Jackson and Carter, 2000: 49). The external
macro and the internal micro becomes linked via institutions and disciplines (e. g. health,
crime) which, along with the doctor, teacher, educator, social worker form part of the
network of ‘judges of normality’ (Foucault, 1977: 304). These ‘judges’ or advocates of
knowledge produce new rational normalising criteria enabling the categorisation of that
‘other’. The ‘other’ having been judged undergoes discursive violence as they are named as
‘addict’ or deviant. Having been medicalised or criminalised a series of positions (e.g.
outreach worker), procedures (e.g. drug assessment) and programmes (e.g. methadone
rehabilitation) are effected ready to be inscribed upon the embodied subject. The addict, or
pejoratively the junkie, having been named against an objective ‘norm’ becomes the subject
of those ‘professional groupings’ who, as knowledge bearers, effect transformatory
interventions, techniques or programmes that perpetually ‘gaze upon the body and soul’
(McKinlay and Starkey, 1998c: 19) of the subject.
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A genealogical view would not only point to such but also to the processes of resistance
whereby addicts avoid the paternalistic programmes or attempts to rehabilitate them in
society (e.g. selling of methadone). As such a genealogist would tease out and highlight the
struggles of this local discursivity as institutions and disciplines attempt to apply their
normative judgements evidenced in procedures, practices and programmes against those
who accept and those who resist. In this both the docile and the resistant other reveal the
power, knowledge, subject triad of this particular discourse as it focuses upon the embodied
state to such individuals (Foucault, 1977; Melossi, 1981; Gutting, 1994).
Therefore, the genealogical approach not only seeks to probe local discursivities but also
attempts to locate and link micro intersubjective struggles with the strategic macro level
politics. It provides an ‘interpretative analysis’ that highlights how bio-power, in this case
that ‘progressive ordering of things in the name of welfare’, works as the intersubjective
resistance evidenced at local level is strategically ‘co-opted and made to serve the very trends
in the culture it opposed’ (Dreyfus and Rabinow, 1983: 165).
Moreover, it also provides a locus for considering Foucault’s final mode of objectification or
technologies of the self as individuals engage in a voluntary process of self-construction and
regulation (Foucault, 1988; Rose, 1999). For it is here that freedom, in the Foucauldian
sense, is asserted as in locally discursive relationships the ‘normalizing and totalizing
tendencies’ of universal knowledge claims are challenged through ‘local knowledge’ that
allows for a ‘framework of self-creation and self-liberation’ (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998a:
234).
Reflections and modifications: the mode of self subjectification
Foucault's early texts are predominately, externally directed with disciplinarity focusing on
processes or what is done to the body in the making of the subject. They minimalise the
internalization processes of governmentality or how subjects reflexively engage in selfdiscipline, working upon and regulating their own embodied state. In his last work (Care of
the Self, 1986) Foucault turned his attention to this process becoming ‘preoccupied with
35
what we say and do to ourselves....the kind of relationship you ought to have with yourself,
rapport a soi…which determines how the individual is supposed to constitute himself as a
moral subject of his own action’ (Dreyfuss and Rabinow, 1983: 235-237). This did not
constitute a U-turn, rupture and reversal towards pure agency or some unbridled subjectivity.
Rather the intention was to examine how the ‘overarching rationale of management’
(Jackson and Carter, 1998: 49) of governmentality percolates through to the minutiae of
subjective embodied production. Technologies of the self focus on spaces and practices of
freedom (Foucault, 1984; 1988) where the ‘self constitutes itself as subject’ and as such they
are ‘not mere ‘objects’ in ‘truth games’ (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998c: 234). It is more about
the possibilities for subjective change or transformation through the localized and collective
construction of truths (Foucault, 1988), and how subjects relate and refer to them, than
some modernist quest that seeks human essence through a universal truth (Dreyfus and
Rabinow 1983 ; Gutting 1994). As Foucault (1986) summarises ‘techniques of the self’ are
about the:
…intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of
conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their
singular being, and to make their life and oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values
and meets certain stylistic criteria (11)
Technologies of the self represent the most internalized view from the mountain. Unlike the
macro view from the archaeological summit or the en route intersubjective struggles of
genealogy, technologies of the self examines self-examination, self-subjectification and selfproduction. It asks, in the case of a climber, of what it is to be a climber, how to climb and,
thus, is there the possibility to be, or have done, otherwise (Danaher et al, 2000). This does
not take place in a vacuum for as the subject is reflexively and actively engaged in selfproduction this is managed within the web of existing discursive practices (Hoy, 1986).
Subjective embodied production takes place within set socio-cultural contexts referencing a
series of pre-existent subjectivities. Just as the voluntary production and self-regulation of
embodied conduct is formed within a ‘minefield of choice’ (Trethewey, 1999: 427) such
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choice reflects the problem of governing ‘virtue in a free society’ and its ‘wars of subjectivity’
for:
Subjectification is simultaneously individualizing and collectivizing. That is to say
that the kinds of relations to the self envisaged, the kinds of dispositions and habits
inculcated, the very inscription of governmentality into the body and the affects of
the governed depend upon an opposition: in identifying with one’s proper name as a
subject one is simultaneously identifying oneself with a collectivized identity, and
differentiating oneself from the kind of being one is not.
(Rose, 1999: 46)
The ability of reflect upon our subjective state, resist, change and be other is one tied to
those discursive forces and other subjectivities that surround us. Freedom, choice or
subjectivity is referential with reflexive embodied identities produced in and through the
blends, shadows or traces of past discourses. Embodied subjectivities and their internalised
rules of conduct, whether those of doctor, lawyer, teacher, manager or athlete, look to that
‘self-constituted class of experts who, through their talk, can establish truth or falsehood’
(Burrell, 1988: 222).
Therefore, while techniques are self-imposed on the body over matters of personal
conscience, such as over a concern for health, holiness or honour, they require and outside
justification. In other words what internally worries us, our ‘ethical substance’, demands and
is driven by an external vehicle, our ‘mode of subjection’, that literally provide specific
referential instructions, manuals or catechisms. These form personalized codes of
conscience, ‘manuals giving techniques of self-improvement’, processes whereby we effect
willing self-discipline form and ‘feel’ our moral, private ‘conscience of self-knowledge’ and,
thus, self-worth (Hacking, 1986: 236-7). With moral exemplars of subjectivity ‘the habits of
self-observation and self-regulation’ (Rose, 1999: 45) are not coerced but freely embodied a
self-governing ‘automatic docility’ (Foucault, 1986: 169).
The production of sport and recreational bodies illustrate this processes well. In a time of
passivity and indulgence the healthy, aesthetic and taut body is a sign of self-control, vitality,
37
sexual prowess, personal and professional success (Shilling, 1999; Hancock and Tyler, 2000).
Moreover, with policy directives, media campaigns and the work of charitable organizations
the healthy, sporting body has become equated with social conscience and signs of ‘civically
active, self-responsible citizens’ (King, 2003: 297). With such positive representations and
associations the sporting, fitness or healthy body deploys those ‘automatic’ techniques of
micro-management embodying the essential, and in this case literal, manuals or codes of selfdiscipline and self-regulation.
Foucault’s technologies of the self show the reflexive subject free, actively selecting in the
present. However, given this present echoes with a historical past, embodied subjectivity
takes place in a world where power/knowledge is fluid and in constant competition with
new discourses, manuals and marginalized voices being ever constituted and thrown into the
flux. Subjects affect technologies of the self but ones made-up from a growing plethora of
power/knowledge. In this, rather than the Enlightenment dogmatism where the normative
criteria of reason takes us on the long march to prison (Bauman, 1992; Hughes, 2001), ethos
is recovered. It may be here, in endless possibilities of technologies of the self, that
Foucault’s notion of freedom appears. With will-to-knowledge freedom is not natural, a god
given right, utopian dream or dystopian nightmare. It is up-for-grabs, pushed and pulled,
challenged at the margins a perpetual historical process found within the power, knowledge,
subject triad.
However, Foucault’s technologies of the self have produced criticisms. Much of this has
surrounded questions regarding the empirical evidence (Danaher, et al 2000). Where are
Foucault’s investigations into the realities of the everyday ones that test this micromanagement within local discursivities (Watson, 2002)? Given his acknowledgement of the
need for empirical exploration (Gordon, 1980) it is perhaps unfair to level such criticism at
Foucault. Nevertheless, Foucault has been utilized in both organizational studies (Townley,
1993; Tretheway, 1999; Rose, 1999) as well as sporting contexts (Hargreaves, 1987; Heikkala,
1993; Rail and Harvey, 1995; King, 2003). Interesting, in even addressing technologies in the
mode of self-subjectification, Foucault has been openly criticized mostly from Marxist and
neo-Marxist circles. This surrounds arguments that embodied subjectivity will be open to
sophisticated exploitation of organizations or government (Alvesson and Willmott, 1993;
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Watson, 2002). Again, as with general critics of Foucault (Frazer, 1989; Moss, 1998), this
forgets Foucault’s nominalism and his overall position on discourse. Embodied subjectivity
is located and caught up in the web of discursive relations. Technologies of the self open
‘wars of subjectivity’ (Rose, 1999: 46) of discourse but with the reflexive potential to be
otherwise. The trick is to continue opening such discursive wars, probing at the margins,
never letting embodied subjectivity to settle by drawing it back into the flux. With its focus
on the PSSR this study adds to this Foucauldian tradition.
Therefore, rather than being viewed as a process of negative, agency nullifying imposition
Foucault’s later technologies take the bio-power of governmentality into the soul of the
subject. Power is part of embodied subjectivity. It is, simultaneously, involved in the
process of being made and making seen as productive, reflexive and resistant. Just as it
normalizes, judges, producing the conduct of conduct it opens alternatives, other
possibilities for action, other ways of being. With the demarcation and definition of space,
subject and practice the limiting dogmatism of disciplinarian power is evidenced and, in
recognizing such, other practices or actions of self-imposed discipline can be affected. Here,
technologies of the self embody Foucault’s ethos whereby the subject not only recognizes
the historical limitations of discursive dogmas but also, in actively challenging such, engages
in the production of the self. In this the subject is both made and making, working and
experimenting on the margins ‘with the possibility of going beyond them’ (Foucault, 1984:
50).
The concern here has been to outline Foucault’s conceptual coverage in order to understand
the historical production of the subject in the power, knowledge, subject triad of discourse
and its relationship to this study. This final section summarises and draws Foucault’s
coverage together by utilizing the metaphor of a web to demonstrate how ‘the network of
power relations ends by forming a dense web’ (Foucault, 1979: 96). However, this metaphor
is extended here as it enables the representation and linkage of Foucault’s and, as seen later,
Bourdieu’s work. In other words, by referring to a web the abstract notion of discourse and
bio-power can be historically and empirically located in the socio-cultural politics and
embodied practices of the PSSR.
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Foucault: linking the strands of the web of discourse
Given the tendency to view Foucault in periods, possibly for practical clarity rather than
critical conspiracy, it is understandable why he attracts tags such as structuralist (Flick, 1999),
anti-modernist or postmodernist (Rose, 1999). His countermodernist (Hoy, 1988) stance is,
just like his take on history, an attempt to avoid the modernist teleological trap. Foucault
argues for fluid processes rather then processional projects, contingencies rather than causes
a rupturing ethos rather than rolling dogma. Given the above development of his work
there is no one totalizing truth only the heterogeneous and discursive formation of bodies of
knowledge, which are the dynamic products of power relations. Therefore, for Foucault, the
subject should never be perceived as a fly caught, and deterministically doomed, in a web of
discourse.
Rather, by attempting to delimit, discipline and organize and, thus, legitimate a ‘power
relation’ and its ‘correlative constitution of a field of knowledge’ (Foucault, 1977: 27), other
discourses emerge to clash and compete. Even though the swarm of power-knowledge
categorizes, marks or inscribes identity through a ‘law of truth’ (Foucault, 1982: 212) it,
likewise, carries its imperfection through a ‘swarm of points of resistance [that] traverses
social stratifications and individual unities’ (Foucault, 1979: 96). In other words although we
can only understand ourselves by reference to knowledge, in a world where there is no one
authoritative truth or voice of knowledge, forms of resistance, knowledge or other ways of
being are, likewise, ever present and produced. The production of the subject is not passive
but a dynamic process engaged by free subjects in the sense that they can only and ever refer
to competing processes and bodies of knowledge. With a godless world, power now flows
through, rather than possessed by, groups, events, institutions or individuals, and their
competing bodies of knowledge not only produce or advocate subjects, they provide
alternative avenues for subjective production. As such these competing bodies of
knowledge provide free subjects with a ‘field of possibilities’ or avenues that, whilst they
offer ‘ways of behaving’ they, simultaneously, produce ‘restrictions’ (Foucault, 1982: 221). It
is through a reflexive understanding of this dynamic process that Foucault evokes his critical
40
ontology of the self, one that recognizes our production and our complicity in and through
webs of discourse (Foucault, 1984). Therefore, although modern institutions ‘work to
produce ‘docile bodies’, discursive boundaries are challenged through the inherent seeds of
resistance that ‘are just as likely to produce rebels (Danaher, et al, 2000: 128).
The PSSR is just one such web of discourse, which with its docile subjects and resistant
others is a dynamic space produced in and through the triad of power, knowledge and
subject. It represents a cultural field within which to demonstrate this process, problematise
the productivity of power relations, normalizing assaults of knowledge, question the
channeling of freedom and possibilities of being. The PSSR is a discursive web to be
unraveled, a ‘work of truth’ to be ‘destabilized’:
In particular, what is to be destabilized, what we are to try to think beyond, are all
those claims made by others to govern us in the name of our own well-being, to
speak for us, to identify our needs, to know us better than we can know ourselves.
(Rose, 1999: 59).
However, even though Foucault’s work provides the conceptual tools to locate and
problematise the discursive process his inability to demonstrate how this process works from
and empirical standpoint remains a bone of critical contention (Hoy, 1986). As mentioned
questions remain as to how local discursivities are opened up (Gordon, 1980; King, 2003;
Cole, 2004), where they can be historically and practically located, what form does discursive
docility, resistance or technologies of the self are take and how do they work?
Bourdieu helps us to answer these questions through a series of concepts that empirically
demonstrate the assimilation, transition, reproduction and resistance of discourse in and
through the embodied state of live subjects. With a ‘view of action’ involving a ‘subtle blend
of experience and cultural unconscious’ Bourdieu offers a ‘theory of practice’ that, although
‘not without problematic elements’ is one of ‘the most mature and sustained studies of our
period’ (Fowler, 2000: 321). In other words, for this study, he enables us to ethnographically
locate and view how the dynamics of the power, knowledge, subject triad works and is
embodied in the practices of everyday life. He also enables us to refine the Foucauldian
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‘half-way ‘transformation’ or ‘unempirical conceptualisations of the pure 'theoretician' by
embedding and exploring them ‘into the everyday experience of the social’ (Honneth, 1986:
37-39). Bourdieu allows us to take the theoretical discursivity of the PSSR and explore it
empirically ‘on site’ within the embodied everyday reality of subjects, as they are both made
in and make the dynamic web that constitutes the PSSR.
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Bourdieu: reflexivity in ethnographic journeys of marginalization
Introduction
This section discusses the work of Pierre Bourdieu and its relevance to this study. As with
Foucault, the sections below provide an initial overview of Bourdieu and his primary
concepts. Also, where possible, such concepts will be contextualized within the sub-field of
sport and recreation. This focus on Bourdieu is split into five sections.
The first section opens by considering the often controversial work and position of
Bourdieu. It highlights classical structure/agency debates that have plagued sociology, as
much as leisure studies, and the problems Bourdieu has had in trying to develop a
theoretically sound, yet, empirically grounded course through this divide. From this, a more
theoretical discussion of Bourdieu in sections two and three incrementally build on one
another. Initially the conceptual tools Bourdieu has developed are outlined and contextually
illustrated with sport and recreation examples. By section four Bourdieu’s critical points
over distinction, cultural domination and symbolic violence are brought to a head. Here,
again drawing upon aspects of sport and recreation, the process and power of performativity
is revealed as being intrinsically bound to institutions and translated in the authoritive
positions and embodied states of those actors within the field. Finally, section five turns to
those aspects of convergence and criticism aimed at both Foucault and Bourdieu.
Bourdieu: blissful structuralism or realist constructivist?
According to Blackshaw and Crabbe (2004) ‘the work of Pierre Bourdieu has become
increasingly influential within cultural studies’ as he has ‘developed a unified sociological
theory which is supported by historical research and classical empirical enquiry’ (33).
Although such unmitigated praise can be contested (see below), Bourdieu is not easily
swayed by pandering academics given he describes his work and ‘style’ as a ‘struggle against
43
ordinary language’ (Bourdieu, 1988: 149), a theoretical product of being impatient with
‘puffed-up-words’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 4).
Nevertheless, underlying all of Bourdieu’s work is the concern for, and interplay between,
theory and practice. He has no time for the ‘theorising theorist’ who is ‘content with just
reading books and visiting libraries’ (1986: 37). For Bourdieu, the ‘pure theoretician’ is a
halfway-house in social research that must be resisted believing that it is:
…absolutely necessary to be at the heart of events and to form one’s own
opinion….To see, to record, to photograph: I have never accepted the separation
between the theoretical construction of the object of research and the set of practical
procedures without which there can be no real knowledge.
(Honneth, 1986: 37)
The reference to ‘real knowledge’ should not be taken as assent to positivistic objectivism
and its extension to universals. Rather, just as Blackshaw and Crabbe (2004) assert,
Bourdieu’s work is an attempt to move beyond the binding polemics of structure and
agency, objectivism and subjectivism. This links with his annoyance with the theoreticians
who, citing the likes of Foucault and Derrida, have not helped by creating what he terms the
‘ology effect’ (e.g. archaeology, grammatology, semiology), which has only served to
‘obfuscate the boundary between science and philosophy’ (Honneth, 1986: 36). Bourdieu
challenges both the ultra-subjectivism of existentialist phenomenology and objective
determinism of structuralism (Bourdieu, 1977; (Bourdieu 1986). Jenkins (2002) summaries
this, and Bourdieu’s work, well:
His own most recent characterisation is to describe his project as ‘genetic
structuralism’, the attempt to understand how ‘objective’, supra-individual social
reality (cultural and institutional social structure) and the internalised ‘subjective’
mental worlds of individuals as cultural beings and social actors are inextricably
bound up together, each being a contributor to –and indeed, aspect of – the other.
This is Bourdieu’s place in the debate on structure and agency. (19-20)
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By rooting theoretical reflexivity in empirical research (Honneth, 1986; Bourdieu, 1988) and
questioning the ‘opposition between the individual and society’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 31)
Bourdieu’s work presents an epistemological challenge as it questions the conditions and
context of knowledge. Empathising with Weber, he focuses upon culture as an arena of
hierarchical contestation where individuals pursue strategies of distinction that are, at one
and the same time, unique to the individual and, yet, structurally intertwined with the
economic material conditions of existence (Lee, 1993). Society and self emerge from the
dynamic between the structuring fields of economy and individuating culture.
Of course, Bourdieu’s analysis of ‘culture’ is not straightforward. For him culture takes the
form of ‘Culture’ in the artistic sense and ‘culture’ in a secular social life context. Although
differentiated these are interconnected, since pronouncements over ‘Culture’ operate within
and between ‘cultural fields’ and, thus, ‘demand ‘figures of legitimation’ (Webb et al, 2000:
152). These ‘figures’ (e.g. art critics, professorial expert or priest), speaking with a
logocentric or word from god quality, are perceived and bestowed with an innate mystical
authority (Fox, 1993). This take on the extremely complex concept of ‘culture’ is echoed by
Hall (2005) who, through an extensive etymology and deconstruction of the term, argues
that central to what constitutes culture is the notion of ‘cultural power…the means of
culture making in the heads of the few’ (67). He concludes that culture is not ‘fixed’ not
about ‘separate ways of life’ but ‘ways of struggle’ that ‘arise at points of intersection’ (70).
Sport and recreation is one of these ‘points of intersection’ and ‘struggle’ where embodied
practice and consumption is fought over, delineation and domination attempted. In the
Bourdieusian sense such a site and the struggles it evokes is directly connected to what is
referred to as misrecognition and the possession of cultural capital by the leading ‘figures’ of
a cultural field (Jenkins, 2003) who Hall would view as a cultural ‘power-bloc’ (71). Bourdieu
has studied this embodied political process within sport (Bourdieu, 1978; 1986a) with a
specific enquiry that resonates with this study:
How is the demand for ‘sports products’ produced, how do people acquire the ‘taste’
for sport, and for one sport rather than another, whether as an activity or as a
spectacle.
(Bourdieu, 1978: 819)
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The embodied politics within such an enquiry has led others to apply a Bourdieusian analysis
to various sport and recreational contexts (Hargreaves, 1987; Gruneau, 1993; Wacquant,
1998a; Mennesson, 2000; Back, Crabbe and Solomos, 2001). This study adds to this
tradition but, with the aid of Foucault, embeds embodied politics within wider notion of
discourse. The embodied politics that produce sport and recreational ‘tastes’ are traced
within, bound to and enabled through a historically discursive process.
Nevertheless, and more importantly, Bourdieu is at pains to stress that strategies to
accumulate distinguishing forms of cultural capital emanate from and are directed by the set
of predisposed sociocultural ‘tastes’ of the habitus. Bourdieu, arguing through such
concepts (these, including Bourdieu’s formula of field, habitus and capital, are expounded in
the following section), demonstrates how this process serves to legitimate, reproduce and
maintain the cycle of economic structure, cultural consumption and privileging distinction
(Bourdieu, 1986a; 1993). Here Bourdieu displays an overt but, as discussed in criticisms
below, theoretically problematic politic. Whilst distancing himself from Marxism, neoMarxism or Social Darwinism, Bourdieu demonstrates how the dynamic subtleties of cultural
consumption perpetuate domination and symbolic violence (Jenkins, 2003; Bourdieu, 1986).
Guilianotti (2005), citing Clement (1995), attests this when he states:
He [Bourdieu] defines class more in cultural than neo-Marxist terms, as a group of
agents, that ‘share the same interests, social experiences, traditions, and value system,
and who tend to act as a class that define themselves in relation to other groups of
agents’. (159)
In short, he argues that the structure, privilege and domination of class are not
conspiratorially imposed but are produced, practically played out and reproduced through
the dispositions individuals assimilate from their sociocultural contexts (Bourdieu, 1977;
Danaher, et al, 2000).
Undoubtedly, Bourdieu does not present a neat, happy-meal theory of social and cultural
practice. In oscillating between the structuring regularities of economic necessity and
46
individual modes of cultural consumption, Bourdieu ‘steers a delicate course through those
“isms” that attract loyalty rather than critical reflection’ (Miller, 2003: 89). Armed with an
ever present critical reflexivity (discussed below) that is aimed at sociological theory as much
as practices of cultural consumption, Bourdieu’s project is one of emancipation (given
Foucault this issue is dealt with later) as it attempts to rest ‘real-life actors’ from the likes of
Althusser and Levi-Strauss:
I do mean ‘actors’, and not ‘subjects’. An action is not a mere carrying-out of a rule.
Neither in archaic nor in our society are social actors regulated automatons who, like
clockwork, follow mechanical laws existing outside of their consciousness.
(Bourdieu, 1996: 41)
Just as there is no deterministic reductionism or ‘abstract universalism’ the ‘actor’ is not to
be conceived of in the ‘nihilistic (pseudo-) subversion’ (Bourdieu, 2000) terms of reactionary
postmodernism (Foster, 1983). Rather than being the cynical puppets of circumstance
actors are dynamically invested in the process of being and becoming. They work with and
against the sociocultural contexts that they find themselves in. Bourdieu attempts to move
beyond the ‘two extremes of theoretical formation’ (Lee, 1993: 31) to provide a realist
constructivism (Fowler, 2000). Social actors are neither the ‘fully conscious maker(s) of
social meaning’ nor bound ‘to the various external forces and the object of socialisation
processes’ (Lee, 1993: 31). This constructivist ‘theory of cultural dynamics’ is not only
‘sophisticated’ and ‘multidimensional’ (Gartman 2002: 261) but practically applicable (as
evidenced below) to the cultural field of sport and recreation. Moreover, as a proponent of
the Bourdieusian constructivist analysis, Wacquant (1995) (with a sideswipe at Foucault)
argues for the need to engage such analysis in empirical situations:
With precious few exceptions, the 'constructivist' analyses that have dominated
recent social studies of the body are so concerned with its representation or its status
as a 'surface' on which social forces 'inscribe' themselves that they invariably end up
reducing it to an epiphenomenon of symbolic practices - a target and object, or
'effect', of discourse in the exemplary (and enormously influential) case of Michel
Foucault (1981). This has resulted in an abysmal gap in our understanding of the
47
concrete practices and organizational arrangements through which real bodies are
actually produced.
(173)
This study attempts to be one of Wacquant’s ‘exceptions’ in that it breathes life into
Foucauldian discourse through Bourdieusian constructivism. As a field of cultural
consumption, where embodied states dynamically play out and reproduce privilege and
domination, sport and recreation is ripe for such an analysis. This analysis is not only
directed at the activities of sport and recreation but at its managerial and operational
delivery. For this study, in exploring and reconceptualising the PSSR, Bourdieu’s concepts
provide an empirical bridge to span the ‘gap in our understanding’ and reveal how discourse
dynamically works through embodied states. However, just as with Foucault, the enabling
concepts that Bourdieu brings to this study (in particular with regard to the ethnographic
embodied element) need to be outlined.
Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of the trade
Given his methodological diversity and disciplinary disregard (Fowler, 2000) Bourdieu, as
mentioned, challenges both the ultra-subjectivism of existentialist phenomenology and
objective determinism of structuralism (Bourdieu, 1977; Bourdieu, 1986a). Like Weber,
Bourdieu’s work is multi-dimensional (Gartman, 2002) and, being an exponent of
quantitative and qualitative methodologies, tends to ‘blend a variety of sociological styles
from painstaking ethnographic accounts to statistical models, to abstract metatheoretical and
philosophical arguments’ (Wacquant, 1992: 3). It is by rooting his theoretical reflexivity in
empirical research (Honneth 1986; Bourdieu 1988) that Bourdieu attempts to overcome the
detrimental or ‘most ruinous’ dualism (Bourdieu, 1990: 35) of the subjectivism-objectivism
divide. Believing that this epistemological war has plagued social science for decades
(Bourdieu, 1990) Bourdieu is scathing of the failures of instrumental positivism as much as
detached abstractions:
48
I have combated untheoretical empiricism vigorously enough to be also able to reject
the unempirical conceptualizations of the pure ‘theoretician’.
(Bourdieu cited in Honneth et al 1986: 39)
The objectivist position of many anthropologists, even though Bourdieu’s early years were
heavily anthropological, has received particular critical attention (Fowler, 2000). Being
content to objectify cultures and practices such objectivism fails to appreciate the
contaminating cultural positions of anthropologists who, as Bourdieu would see it, have
‘already written their books before they arrive’ (Webb et al, 2002: 35). Given the
ethnographic core of this study the importance of this critique is not lost. Bourdieu does
not negate anthropological or ethnographic research. Rather, he is challenging the
epistemological framework, cultural position and politics of the researcher within the mix of
social, embodied realities. Robbins (2003), in highlighting the responsibility of the
ethnographer, summarizes this position or ‘difficult line’ and cry for an inherent reflexivity:
…social science should be seen as an act of engagement. Social science cannot
simply provide detached, objective knowledge about situations but, equally, it cannot
be merely the projection of subjective, inherently narcissistic social
involvement….reflexivity involves subjecting objectivist explanations of primary
experience to a second-order scrutiny….objective representations of situations are as
much parts of the reality to be explained as the realities which they seek to represent.
(11)
Armed with a reflexive attitude, and acknowledging the participatory aspect of
constructivism (Reason and Bradbury, 2001), Bourdieu views the cultural spectrum as the
modern arena of hierarchical contestation where the subtleties of class relations are found
and reproduced (Lee, 1993). Given sport and recreation is a primary area of modern cultural
consumption, as much as its welfarist inclusion within the public sector; it is an ideal target
for Bourdieusian analysis (Bourdieu, 1978; 1986a; Wacquant, 1998).
49
According to Bourdieu modern consumer capitalism, and the politics of class relations, have
become increasingly stratified being constituted by a series of fields (Bourdieu, 1985). This
notion a ‘cultural field’ is not straightforward or static but complex and dynamic:
A cultural field can be defined as a series of institutions, rules, rituals, conventions,
categories, designations, appointments and titles which constitute an objective
hierarchy, and which produce and authorize certain discourses and activities.
(Webb et al, 2002: 21-22)
Cultural fields provide the objective boundaries and structures whereupon the particular
rules of any given game are played out. They resonate with Foucault’s ‘surface of
emergence’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1998: 26) but in practical embodied contexts. In this
way fields are living entities where past historical forces and institutional developments
operate and impact upon the present structural and embodied realities actors find themselves
in:
It encompasses the infinity of layers of organisations, institutions and practices
which are characteristic of advanced societies….The field constrains, manages and
orchestrates the kinds of practices which can take place within its frame. Social
groups are organized within these fields. Subgroups also seek a place and gain
recognition as they compete for a higher position.
(McRobbie, 2005: 130)
As cultural fields are open to the external focus, influence and pressures of other fields,
discourses or influential groups they are spaces that are in constant contestation. While ‘field
can be defined as a social arena’ it is ‘simultaneously a space of conflict and competition’
(Kay, 2004: 157), thus, fields are spaces embroiled in power struggles and, ‘as a social arena –
sport is one such field’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994: 193). Moreover, the dynamic struggles
within the social spaces of the field of sport can be extended or segmented into specific subfields such as health and fitness, extreme sports or into areas such as the public leisure
sector. Although these sporting sub-fields display apparently objective structures, rules and
regulations, they are consumption sites that are not only embodied by actors but also
50
protected by ‘guardians’ who advocated practices, ‘ritual practices’, designed to ‘maintain the
sanctity’ of these ‘sacred spaces’ (Sibley, 1995: 72). As alluded to earlier in the discussion on
culture, the sacred sporting spaces have special figures, these guardians, who through the
performative power they draw from the institutions, field and their position within such (this
process is discussed in depth below), make authoritive pronouncements that inscribe and
define the field. However, these guardians and their pronouncements are not fixed as they
compete with others over the meaning, constitution, possession and profit accruable from
the cultural capital of the field (Bourdieu, 1996; Jenkins, 1992). With constant competition
over capital the field is never fixed. Just as there is a ‘universe of class bodies and practices’
clashing and competing within cultural fields, similarly, there is a ‘universe of sporting
bodies’ and, thus, ‘the task is to map out these on to social space’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994:
197). Therefore, influenced and pressured both externally and internally, the sanctity of
cultural fields, its capital and those regarded as its guardians is a fluid cultural game
(Bourdieu, 1977; 1978; 1986b).
Bourdieu highlights these games of cultural contestation through his analytical apparatus.
Through his ‘formula: [(habitus) (capital)] + field = practice’, the ‘multiplicity of the set of
practice performed in fields’ is revealed, thus, highlighting the dynamic dialectic between
structural regularities and subjective experience. However, as Bourdieu puts it, to uncover
‘the structure of symbolic space’ and ‘rediscover the kernel of truth’ bound to the ‘systematic
nature of life-styles...one must return to the practice-unifying and practice-generating
principle, i.e., class habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1986: 101). Therefore, although the concept of
capital, in its various cultural and field specific forms, is the essential currency of
contestation and change within cultural fields, it is intertwined with that of ‘habitus’.
Habitus is literally ‘history turned into nature’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 78) as the dispositions,
perceptions and aspirations of sociocultural contexts become physically incorporated within
the bodies of individual actors. As such ‘habitus is necessity internalized’ that ‘converted
into dispositions…generates meaningful practices and meaning-giving perception’
(Bourdieu, 1984: 170). Although formed through interactions from childhood and, thus,
providing a ‘group-distinctive framework of social cognition and
interpretation…temperaments and cultural sensibilities’ the habitus is:
51
Neither a functional product of socialization and external social rules, nor simply a
random configuration of natural dispositions, the habitus represents the structuring
of cultivated dispositions into a matrix formation providing for a certain consistency
or logic to everyday practices and actions….To this extent the habitus represents a
conceptual framework describing a ‘perception-enabling prism’ which houses the
various social dispositions that, according to its particular logic, allow for the cultural
classification of the social world.
(Lee, 1993: 31)
Therefore, habitus is a form of second nature (Bourdieu, 1977) that whilst it is unconscious
it is not passive but active naturalizing ‘agendas, strategies, goals and desires’ (Webb et al,
2002: 16). Like a self-legitimating belief system the habitus of individuals is engrained to the
point of producing the unquestioning ‘doxic’ attitude (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992).
However, having unconsciously internalized this doxa of perception and aspiration, this
internal embodied habitus must meet and interact with an external world of socio-cultural
contexts or fields. For Bourdieu the actor, in this dynamic context, displays a ‘bodily hexis’
which is ‘political mythology realized, embodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a
durable manner of speaking and thereby feeling and thinking’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 94).
An illustration of these concepts can be given within the field of sport and recreation or,
given Bourdieu’s interest, leisure more generally. Found within specific sociocultural
contexts, tastes are transmitted, assimilated or embodied being ‘learned by body’ but ‘not
something one has, like knowledge that can be brandished, but something one is (Bourdieu,
1990: 168). Through the habitus we learn ‘specific schemes of perception and appreciation’
which extend to and value aspects of sports and recreations such as the ‘health, beauty,
strength…through bodybuilding…keep-fit’ or with other sports like boxing, football, rugby,
tennis, skiing or polo (Bourdieu, 1986a: 20). Therefore, perceptions of, aspirations for,
tastes in and consumption patterns, including those of sport and recreation, are
unconsciously assimilated through habitus:
52
Children living in that sort of family will simply grow up knowing what is best,
without ever bring those choices and judgments to consciousness. It will seem
simply ‘natural’ to like particular kinds of novels, films, meals, holiday destinations
and sports.
(Harris, 2005: 38)
However, as with Foucault and Nietzsche before him, through the habitus, actors are
furnished with knowledge, positions and actions that masquerade as altruistic, yet, are selfserving (Grenz, 1996). This is not lost on Bourdieu, relating as much to academics as others
in positions of privilege (Bourdieu, 2000). With privilege manifest in forms of cultural
capital, that not only accentuates an individuals distinction but is also reanimated into
economic capital only to sustain an actor’s cultural position. In other words, given your
habitus and extent of privileging cultural tastes, a self-legitimating cycle of capital is created:
An individual’s material conditions of existence, determined by her economic capital,
ingrain a habitus or set of dispositions, which in turn generates cultural tastes. The
“right” tastes facilitate the accumulation of cultural capital, which makes the
individual look distinctive and hence justifies the economic capital that determined
her cultural tastes to begin with.
(Gartman, 2002: 257)
Therefore, the term culture in Bourdieusian analysis is politicised as it legitimates and
privileges particular groups, actors or figures who are perceived as possessing an innate
authority (Webb at al, 2002). In the field of sport and recreation these actors could take the
form of sports managers, critics, pundits or past experts/players. However, the legitimacy
and authority of such actors is no quirk of fate. Rather, it is interconnected with the cultural
trajectories these actors have assimilated via their habitus. Within their given sociocultural
environment and, inevitably, the cultural fields to which they are exposed, an individual lives,
moves and has their being. It is here that their formative predisposition of cultural ‘tastes’
(Bourdieu, 1986a; Bourdieu, 1993) that are ‘durable and transferable’ and manifest in ‘action’,
(Bourdieu, 1990: 35) are produced. For Bourdieu these formative, habitual tastes configure
as enabling cultural capital that directs the selection, access to, navigation of and success
53
within various cultural fields. As a set of ‘culturally-valued taste and consumption patterns’
(Harker et al, 1990: 1) cultural capital is not only assimilated, embodied and performed by an
individual in the everyday but also taught, passed on or reproduced in the next generation.
In this way forms of cultural capital can be inherited like material assets.
However, since cultural capital is played out in cultural fields it is ‘not set in stone or
universally accepted, either within or across fields’ (Webb et al, 2002: 22). This is because
individuals not only affect strategies to accumulate distinguishing forms of capital but also
affect what constitutes cultural capital with that given field (Jenkins, 2002). The capital of a
given field (in this case sport and recreation) represents the dynamics of power and, like the
cycle of economic structure and cultural consumption, is in perpetual competition:
The distribution of certain types of capital – economic, social, cultural and symbolic
– denotes the different goods, resources and values around which power relations in
a particular field crystallise. Any field is marked by a tension or conflict between the
interests of different groups who struggle to gain control over a field’s capital.
(McNay, 1999: 106)
This constant wrestling competition over capital reflects Bourdieu’s concern to overcome
the objectivism/subjectivism debate and that his analytical apparatus should not be casually
applied (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992). Just as fields are made up of institutional
arrangements, rules and rituals they are embodied and interactively competed over
(McRobbie, 2005). Given this a situational sensitivity is required in order to avoid
fabricating an analysis that forces the round pegs of capital into the square holes of cultural
fields (Calhoun, 1995). Simply put, whilst everyone possesses, and is possessed by, a habitus
and lives within and between cultural fields (e.g. politics, religion, education or sport) each
field requires a suit of clothes in order to operate within that field. Cultural capital can be
viewed as the suit but the style, cut and colour of the suit is open to constant contestation.
Therefore, while forms of cultural capital are convertible and privileging they are also
multiform (Bourdieu, 1986b; Lane, 2000; Webb, et al, 2002). Bourdieu provides a useful
way to negotiate or think about such forms:
54
Cultural capital can exist in three forms: in an incorporated state, that is to say in the
form of durable dispositions of the organism; in an objectivated state, in the form of
cultural goods, pictures, books, dictionaries, instruments, machines, which are the
marks either of realized theories or of criticisms of these theories of problems, etc.;
and finally in an institutionalized state, a form of objectification which must be kept
separate since, as can be seen in relation to scholastic titles, it confers on cultural
capital the supposed capacity to guarantee completely original properties.
(Bourdieu, 1979: 52)
While the objectivated and institutionalized forms of cultural capital are relatively straight
forward the incorporated form needs clarification as (along with the others) it is directly
applicable to this study. Although, incorporated cultural capital can refer to embodied
speech, vocabulary, manners, posture and social gestures it can also take a physically
aesthetic or practically functional form (Bourdieu, 1984; Wacquant, 1998). Incorporated
cultural capital involves a ‘body scheme’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 216) that can be seen to
incorporate aspects of physicality that produce specific skills, performative abilities or
aesthetic qualities that are valued and admired within the field (Shilling, 1993; Hancock et al,
2000; Frew, 2005).
Therefore, it is important to recognise that cultural capital takes both material (e.g.
objectified goods, possessions or embodied/physical anatomy) and abstract (e.g. knowledge,
position or authority) forms. Regardless, and within particular fields, such capital signifies
distinction and lifestyle differentiation. More importantly, the possession of cultural capital
is not enough but is interrelated to the behavioural conduct and attitudinal display and
consumption of such capital among peers or cultural interpreters. As Lane (2000) highlights
just as ‘clothing, language and cultural taste’ provide ‘prestigious differences’ to be ‘read as
signs of inherent refinement and moral excellence’ such capital demonstrates:
A new form of rarity, rarity in the art of consumption and no longer in the goods
consumed… [enabling]…domination of class distinction (44)
55
For Bourdieu there is a political zero-sum game at play at play with cultural contestation at
the centre the politics and economics of consumer capitalism. Through the habitual
production, assimilation and operation of cultural capital particular groups are not only
privileged over others but also this privileged cultural position allows them to establish their
distinction and domination of others (Bourdieu, 1986; Lee, 1993). Featherstone (1984), in
looking at the use of commodities, echoes Bourdieu here arguing that they are central to the
identity construction and transmission for individuals in modern times. However, unlike
Featherstone, Bourdieu demonstrates that at the core of cultural contestations, over what
counts as capital, lays the hope of attaining its symbolic derivative.
Symbolic capital is the holy grail of capital being the abstract derivative that emanates from
other forms of capital. The achievement of symbolic capital demands both the identification
and recognition of a form of capital as capital within a given field and, most importantly, its
scarcity, thus, increasing its social desirability within the field. It demands the collective
acknowledgement of the cultural interpreters from within the field, as it is the ‘form different
types of capital take once they are perceived as legitimate’ (Bourdieu cited in Calhoun, 1995:
140). An actor cannot actively possess symbolic capital, unlike other forms of capital, it is
subjectively bestowed by those within the given field of cultural consumption (Bourdieu,
1990). It is a metaphysical badge of honour, status, or field credibility (Fowler, 2000).
However, as it is depends upon and is bestowed by others, it is subject to the fluid vagaries
of the field. Bestowed upon the like of the sports champion, scientific expert, artist or
adventurer, symbolic capital is fragile and ephemeral but a continuously competitive process.
As a growing, global arena of cultural consumption, sport and recreation serves to illustrate
and integrate these Bourdieusian concepts.
Bourdieu, Sport and Recreation: integrative applications within fields of cultural
consumption
Whereas a Foucauldian analysis argues that the said and seen of discourses arise out of
historically contingent struggles and clashes of events, institutions and groups (McHoul,
1995; Rouse, 1994), Bourdieu’s is a world of segmented, yet, dynamically converging cultural
56
fields (Bourdieu, 1985). More importantly, this world of dynamic fields is embodied as
individuals negotiate cultural spaces through a habitus that endows them with a bodily
practical sense or feel for the game (Bourdieu, 1978; 1990). This process and ‘the
transformation of an autonomous field into a heteronomous one’ can be seen in the area,
and body politics, of health and fitness. Presently, in western consumer capitalism, the
physical shape and condition of the body has become a growing phenomenon (Mintel, 1998;
Hickman, 2003). Much of this body consciousness is attributed to concerns over obesity,
pacification through technology and an occularcentric society saturated with the aesthetic
imagery of sport, music and film icons (Grundy, 1998; Campbell, 2000). With these,
paradoxical, trends of growing obesity and a body fascination, where the UK closely follows
the USA (Lawson, 2000; Atkins, 2001), the body is not only functional but carries meaning.
The aesthetic, taut and trim body has entered the social consciousness being associated with
health, sexual vitality and professional success (Bordo, 1993; Hancock and Tyler, 2001).
Here, it could be argued, the fields of media, health, sport and entertainment have
contingently conspired to produce a desired more aesthetic and valued body in western
culture (Shilling, 1993; Hancock and Tyler, 2000).
As a cultural sub-field, where the body is both produced and consumed, the health and
fitness industry has emerged and grown to feed this desire for the fit, fat free aesthetic body
(Mintel, 1998; Monaghan, 1999; Monaghan, 2001). In a world of fast food indulgence and
instant gratification (Adams, 1999) the aesthetic body has become a scarce commodity.
Now, with ‘cradle to the grave’ marketing and specialist fitness facilities and equipment for
children (Amber, 2001; Catlin, 2004), this valued physical condition witnesses the transgenerational taste, particularly, although not exclusively, of the middle classes (Jarvie and
Maguire, 1994; Hughes, 2001). In other words it is a taste inculcated through the habitus of
actors and reinforced due to the increasing focus and influence by a number of fields. With
this weight of attention the healthy aesthetic body has become a recognised, socially valued
and desirable entity.
In a Bourdieusian sense the embodied states of individuals display forms of physical capital
that can be socially read and, for those with such capital, seen to convey status value to the
barer (Calhoun, 1995; Bourdieu, 1984). As such capital is recognised and valued in other
57
fields, carrying the symbolic currency of self-discipline, professional and sexual success, such
aesthetic physical capital is a tradable asset (Shilling, 1993; Tyler, 1998). Essentially, as a
commodified entity the physical capital of an actor’s body is not only systematically
objectified and capitalised upon by the sub-field of health and fitness, but also assimilated
into the symbolic and literal economy (Miles, 2001).
Found within the socially inscriptive, enabling or restrictive material conditions of the
habitus the individuals ‘body schema’ is one that recognises, values and desires physical
capital even if it is not physically manifest. With forms of objectified (e.g. appropriate
clothing, equipment) and incorporated (e.g. social manners and gestures) cultural capital
actors find themselves equipped with specific social skills and performative abilities, whereby
they are able to access and operate within the lifestyle spaces of the health and fitness subfield (Bourdieu, 1984b; Shilling, 1993; Hancock, et al 2000). So attraction to and
participation in this sub-field of cultural consumption ‘is not the result of individualistic
choices, but socially patterned’ (Lury, 1999: 83) via the trans-generational operation of the
habitus. More importantly, while physical capital is an appreciated and valued aim
individuals require a ‘competency in’, or better yet, a ‘mastery of practice within a specific
field’, all of which is ‘dependent upon their habitus and possession of capital’ (Jarvie and
Maguire, 1994).
In entering the sub-cultural field of health and fitness, actors display a desire or willingness
to compete in this commodified aesthetic ‘game’. Those entering this sub-field are akin to
competitors who, in pursuit of physical capital, reveal their unconscious acquiescence to the
illusio of the aesthetic game of health and fitness. This, again linked to their habitus, refers to
that feeling or ‘fact of being caught up in and by the game’ as, individuals by their very
presence, acknowledge that the game is ‘worth playing’ and the ‘stakes…worth pursuing’
(Bourdieu, 1998: 76). These ‘stakes’, in this case physical capital, are aided by a doxic
‘attitude’ that, whilst unconsciously ‘internalized’ (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992: 121), also
understands the ‘procedural principles’ and ‘professional modes of operation’ that constitute
the field (Fowler, 1998: 17). This acquiescent attitude and understanding of the operational
rules, codes and consequences of the field, being facilitated by a habitus and enabling capital,
furnishes the individual with a ‘logic’ or ‘practical sense’ (Wacquant, 2000:117). However,
58
this is only one aspect of a dual epistemology that will determine the level of success an
individual may achieve within a given field.
The use and successful maximisation of capital within a given field demands both a ‘logic’ of
practice and its ‘reflexive’ operationalization (Bourdieu, 1980; Lane, 2000). In the sub-field
of health and fitness, this logic or practical could be illustrated through the levels of use and
understanding of the practical aspects of machines, exercises, classes and movements as well
as facility procedures and space specific codes of conduct. Just how well this is performed,
deployed or timed in the given social spaces of the facility corresponds to the success of the
individual within the field (Bourdieu, 1980; Robbins, 2000). However, added to this is the
capability of an actor to reflexively understand and critique their interrelations or personal
givens within a field. In being ‘an extension of the practical sense’ and, thus, ‘quite restricted
because a field more or less speaks us’ Webb et al, (2002) demonstrate how this ‘reflexive
relation’ works with ‘regard to three main aspects of contexts’:
The first of these is our social and cultural origins and categories (say, generation,
class, religion, ethnicity); the second is our position in whatever field we are located
(as anthropologist, journalist or bureaucrat, for example); and the third is what
Bourdieu refers to as an ‘intellectual bias’, that is, tendency for some agents (in fields
such as the arts and academe) to ‘abstract’ practices, and to see them as ideas to be
contemplated, rather than problems to be solved. (50-51)
This accentuates the dynamics of cultural contest with any given field. For endowed with a
habitus and forms of cultural capital and, thus, logic of practice needed to enter and
negotiate the ‘game’ (e.g. of health and fitness), an actor’s capability to reflexively enact and
anticipate the use of capital enhances their ability to succeed and stay ‘ahead of the game’
(Bourdieu, 1998: 80). More importantly, while an actor’s logic of practice enables and
individual to ‘naturalise, embody and act out’ the written and unwritten codes of conduct of
the field (Webb et al 2002: 50) the strategic deployment of its reflexive relation accelerates
the ability to achieve the ultimate prize within the field, namely, symbolic capital (Fowler,
1999). In terms of health and fitness sub-field this is complex as it is often aesthetically
rationalised and spatially gendered (Bordo, 1993; Sassatelli, 1999). Moreover, while Bourdieu
59
(1977; 1992) and Wacquant (1998 have extended into sport, the notion of symbolic capital
being more related to the fetishism and mystical power of institutionalised, high or
consecrated culture (Bourdieu, 1993). This has left much of mass or populist culture
unexamined (Thornton, 1995). However, and countering this trend, Charelsworth (1997)
has applied Bourdieu’s work to the working-class lifestyles showing that even in the
‘protected markets’ of the ‘gym, the night-clubs and pubs’ the ‘social properties’ actors
‘possess can be said to be capital’ (154). That said professional sport provides a clearer,
possibly simpler, route to understanding symbolic capital and closing off the application of
Bourdieu’s concepts within sport and recreation contexts/fields.
Within the field of the professional sports, as with any cultural field, its capital (here focusing
on incorporated/physical and symbolic) demands that the other competitors within the subfield are, as stated, cultural interpreters. In essence they share a common illusio and doxa
translated via a habitus that understands and values participation in the field. Here, in the
case of sports such as American basketball or football, the value of incorporated/physical
capital and its symbolic derivative is openly recognised and rewarded. These arenas not only
possess superstar icons but also they convey awards (by game and season) known as the
Most Valuable Player (MVP). The MVP award is bestowed upon the player who possesses
and consistently displays those valued forms of capital (e.g. physical prowess of speed,
power or endurance, technical skill and execution, spatial and tactical awareness) within the
field. Whereas each component can be seen as capital in its own right the MVP award, and
the symbolic capital it conveys, derives for the synergistic sum of such capital. As those
within the fields form a group of cultural interpreters and, being able to perceive and
appreciate such capital, a player is identified who transcends all others, thus, the MVP is
awarded and a champion crowned who, for a time, basks in the glory of symbolic capital.
However, Bourdieu stresses that this is dependant upon a process of ‘misrecognition’ as
those within the field come to see it as some innate, natural, God given ability rather than a
form of capital intertwined with the individual’s habitus (Bourdieu, 1990; Jenkins, 2002).
Those within the field tend to forget that through the family, education or sociocultural
context actors learn and assimilate forms of capital (Webb et al, 2002) that enable or
privilege the production of these champions or experts. The players possess a habitus that
60
reproduces cultural tastes, steeps them in the sporting field, and equips them with capital
whereby their practical mastery that embodied innate sense appears natural. Wacquant, who
has also researched this at length in boxing, highlights this when ‘the ball player endowed
with great ‘field of vision’ who, caught in the heat of the action, instantaneously intuits the
moves of his opponents and teammates, acts and reacts in and ‘inspired’ manner’’ (Bourdieu
and Wacquant, 1992: 21).
Moreover, these actors are doubly privileged as, having been crowned as champion, and
armed with symbolic capital, they become the ‘gatekeeper’ or ‘’guardian’ (Sibley, 1996: 72) of
the field. Essentially, with such misrecognition and the maintenance of positions of
privilege, these champions, experts or guardians, be it past or present, are best placed to be
able to define and legitimately defend what stands for capital within the field. Sport has a
long tradition here with such actors able to ‘define what was the legitimate definition of
sport practice and the legitimate function of sport activity’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994: 196).
For Bourdieu, through the interrelationship between habitus, field and capital, such
champions emerge, embodying privileging forms of capital that leach back into the
dominant economic system (Bourdieu, 1986a; 1990), thus, reinvigorating and reproducing
both the system and its privileging forms of cultural domination.
Therefore, whether within the wider field or sub-fields of sport and recreation a series of
cultural contests are at play. These ‘games’ not only important to those actors in within the
field, in terms of the immediate capital of the field, but also because such capital is
economically, professionally and, thus, personally convertible. Cultural contestation masks a
hidden function as it fuels and maintains the hierarchical and privileging economic system
(Lee, 1993; Lury, 1999). More importantly, by unveiling the processes of cultural
consumption as anything but neutral or egalitarian the power of cultural privilege is laid bare
as the distinction it brings is produced at the expense and domination of others. In
finalizing this outline of Bourdieu and, given the Foucauldian interrelation of the
power/knowledge/subject triad, it is worth highlighting the process of power and the
symbolic violence domination produces.
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Domination via Distinction: symbolic violence and the performativity of power
It was stated above that individuals, through their habitus and the cultural capital they have
trans-generationally and doxically assimilated, are able to negotiate and compete within
cultural fields such as politics, the media, education, sport or its sub-fields such as health and
fitness. Again, these fields are not autonomous but may dramatically or incrementally
transform (Jenkins, 2002). The slow transformation of rugby union in the UK from
amateurism to professionalism in 1996 illustrates this point.
As the external social and institutional forces, such as market ideologies, professionalism
within other sports, media and internal restructuring of the game (Giulianotti, 1999),
impacted upon and challenged the champions and the capital associated with this gentrified
public school sporting sub-field (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994; Roberts, 1999) the game, its rules,
values and capital slowly changed. Just like the attempt of the Olympic movement to hold
on to and universalise its purity and ‘lily-white values’ the ‘internal practices and politics,
and…convergence with other fields’ (Webb et al, 2002: 27-28), forced a value shift, what
counts as capital and, thus, amateurism gave way to professionalism.
However, while this illustrates that cultural fields are embroiled in power struggles that are
dynamic and embodied, Bourdieu seeks to demonstrate that the power and struggles within
these games of cultural contestation are anything but equal (Bourdieu, 2000). Rather, power
is embodied and enacted within the social spaces of cultural fields to produce and perpetuate
self-serving privilege at the expense and domination of others (Bourdieu, 1986; Bourdieu,
1992). Poupeau (2000), in highlighting that such domination is ‘not merely power over a
group’ but about ‘a relationship of meaning between individuals’, argues:
Thus within the order of cultural practices, Bourdieu demonstrates that the
dominant culture, by making itself recognized as universal, legitimates the interests of
the dominant group, thus forcing other cultures to describe themselves negatively in
relation to it. (72)
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Just as Foucault highlights the self-legitimating knowledge and said and seen of discourses
(Grenz, 1996) Bourdieu perceives power as embodied vested interest played out within
cultural fields (Bourdieu, 1992; Calhoun, 1995). His conception of power is, again like
Foucault, fluid and dynamic since individuals, armed and embodying the innate forms of
capital of their habitus, compete for distinction, position and personal fulfilment. Moreover,
in negotiating fields of cultural competition the content of individual identity is a paradoxical
prize. For since the materiality of identity develops via contestation over capital within
fields, identity, mirroring the shifting dynamics of the capital of fields, is a perpetual process.
Although the habitus provides the enabling capital and, thus, foundations of identity it is also
increasingly incomplete. Just as the habitus precedes the individual, exposing them to a
series of structural regularities, clothing them with forms of capital to compete within the
fluidity of fields, the incomplete individual is compelled to negotiate and effect strategies of
capital assimilation. Echoing Foucault’s biopower production of the subject within the said
and seen of discourse the identity of any individual or, following Bourdieu, ‘actor’, on
entering the world of words, actors and actions of cultural fields, finds its embodied
substance, its very being, under constant construction. It is here, through this perpetual
process of capital display, assimilation, successful or failed acceptance within given fields
that, over time, the habitus itself and its bank of trans-generational capital is impacted.
Rather than criticize it as overly structuralist or deterministic (Alexander, 1995), Bourdieu’s
concept of habitus, it is argued here, is a more osmotic, pliable process. Habitus, just as the
‘individual…the subjective is social, collective. Habitus is socialised, subjectivity’ (Bourdieu
and Wacquant, 1992: 126), the individual, their capital/identity and habitus is never a
complete, static totality. Following this line of thought, in fighting for fulfilment within
fields of cultural contestation, the individual comes not only to mirror consumer capitalism
but, sustains the economic process, essential domination and, thus, capitalism itself.
Sport and recreation, as a sub-field of capital and offering opportunities of identity creation
and, thus, distinction, can be seen to reflect this process. This is because sport manifests
the ‘struggles between the fractions of the dominant class and also between the social
classes’ as those from a habitus vested with appropriate cultural capital are able to advocate
‘the legitimate body and the legitimate use of the body’ (Bourdieu cited in Jarvie and
Maguire, 1994: 193). However, an enabling habitus and capital, in reflecting hierarchical
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position and privilege, not only produces distinction but also produces and perpetuates
domination and symbolic violence against those lower, culturally inept classes.
For domination and symbolic violence to occur ‘an act of recognition and misrecognition’
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 168) is required. Bourdieu (2000) argues that because
individuals or groups are ‘bound up with’ the world of their embodied practice, inhabiting it
‘like a garment’ (143) they engage in their own cultural domination. They are complicit in
their oppression:
In other words, agents are subjected to forms of violence (treated as inferior, denied
resources, limited in their social mobility and aspirations), but they do not perceive it
that way; rather, their situation seems to them to be ‘the natural order of things’
(Webb et al, 2002: 25)
As misrecognition is ‘the obscuring of the logic of self-interest’ it must be unmasked as it is
‘a tool of symbolic violence in the manufacture of complicity in maintaining the established
dominant order (Stepney, 2003: 9). The unmasking of misrecognition and the symbolic
violence it perpetuates in and through the cultural practices of consumption is important as
‘symbolic violence maintains field disadvantages among low-capital social groups’
(Guilianotti, 2005: 160). Such symbolic violence is often highlighted by those with ‘high
educational qualifications’ who with their taken-for-granted ‘cultural knowledge’ are ‘able to
ridicule or abuse those without…ensuring their crippling sense of social inferiority’
(McRobbie, 2005: 137). Moreover, just as the superior and dominant groups express ‘disgust
for the taste of other groups’ (Defrance, 1995:126) those without the appropriate cultural
capital fatalistically embody their suffering. Being the culturally barren they are ‘condemned
to live out lives of struggle beyond the confines of legitimate, consecrated, culture’
(Charlesworth, 2000: 63), where self exclusion is a normalized, everyday occurrence.
However, self-imposed exclusion, or feeling of being proverbial fish out of water, in the
social spaces of alien cultural fields is supported by those who service, work or operate as
much as those who live and consume within cultural fields. The embodied power of cultural
practices, legitimacy of its capital is not only enacted but also historically supported through
the process of performativity.
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The notion of performativity refers more to mere words and corresponding actions. It is
intrinsically bound to the institutions of cultural fields and those ‘representatives’ who being
‘mandated by the people’ are seen to possess ‘linguistic power’ (Fowler, 2000: 4). In this
performativity demands a habitus that recognizes and defers authority and legitimacy to
those officials, practitioners or experts within the field. The words of the priest, politician,
or personal trainer carry a performative power in that their position, words and deeds
‘derives from the power of social institutions’ and ‘habitus which tacitly recognizes that
authority’ (Lovell, 2000: 31). In the appropriate institution and position of a cultural field
the ‘illocutionary force’ of words is not bound to the person or the words themselves’
(Poupeau, 2000: 80) but is magically invested with the dispositions of the habitus. A form of
historical faith is triggered as the words and institutional authority of the speaker is
recognized producing acquiescence of actions or practices (Bourdieu, 1991; 1992). It is this
performativity of a given cultural field that gives the embodied actions of cultural taste an air
of natural, commonsense, almost fatalistic, legitimacy. Although bound to misrecognised
cultural ineptitude, the performative power of those in cultural fields compounds the sense
of injustice, for Bourdieu, as it provides a mystical veil behind which domination and
symbolic violence occur (Bourdieu, 2000). In moving towards finalizing this section,
Blackshaw and Crabbe (2004) provide an extensive illustration of this process with their
discussion of the novel A Kestrel for a Knave (and, subsequent, film Kes).
Focusing on the school scenes between the main character (Billy Capser) and the PE teacher
(Mr Sugden) they show how Casper, in a life of poverty and misery, finds his ‘individuality’
suffocated and ‘perplexing non-conformity’ institutionally punished and embodied by
Sugden. This is expressed during a game of football as:
These values, enshrined in the institutional 'cultural capital' (Bourdieu, 1984)
associated with 'Sugden's' qualification badges and the school rules, which are denied
to and deployed against 'Casper', are seen to empower the teacher as much as
asserting the primacy of the hierarchical disciplinary regime of industrial
capitalism…As teacher, captain, referee, commentator and disciplinarian, 'Sugden's'
authority may have many guises, but only has one voice, one body, one fist. (157-8)
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Here not only was the literal game rigged (with Sugden picking the best players, choosing to
play down hill, physically bullying players and overruling decisions) the cultural and
institutionalized ‘game’ was also rigged. In this field of education, as much as on the football
field, Casper’s life of struggle found no respite. Here the culturally inept Casper finds
Sugden’s performativity, as much the physical pain of his fist, a harsh but given, accepted
reality of the world he inhabits. Casper is compliant as ‘dominated groups derive their
authority from the loyalty of the dominated’ and so perpetuates ‘symbolic violence’ this
power to produce acceptance for a domination misrecognized as such, by imposing
meanings which serve to obscure the truth about social relations’ (Poupeau, 2000: 71).
Interestingly, through nursing and learning the intricacies of hawking, Casper displays a
resistance and traditionally aristocratic form of capital that indicates the fluidity of fields,
how dispositions are embodied and can be, contingently, assimilated into the habitus.
Although this illustration and the above chapter, in outlining the primary concepts of both
Foucault and Bourdieu, represent the analytical perspective of this study these theorists have
attracted critical attention. While some points of criticism have been mentioned this has
been in no way exhaustive. Therefore, the following section focuses upon the major areas of
critical commentary targeted at both Foucault and Bourdieu. However, before addressing
critical components the section will briefly present a case for such a convergence and, thus,
will reinforce the rationale for utilising this unusual theoretical coupling.
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Foucault & Bourdieu: defending convergences & acknowledging criticisms
Undoubtedly, both Foucault and Bourdieu are a complex, and as mentioned, uncomfortable
coupling. Moreover, their work, conceptual development and criticisms mark them as
controversial targets. Whereas sections above have examined their work and rehearsed the
benefits of both and their critical points this section draws core criticisms and the case for
their coupling into relief. Before turn to this it is worth stressing that these were not the
only theorists considered for this study. Prominent among those considered within the
theoretical community were Max Weber and Jacques Derrida.
Weber (Weber, 1976), having advanced the development of capitalism positing the
protestant work ethic, as well as concepts of class, status, party, rationalization and ideal
type, was clearly applicable to the development, management and consumption of sport and
recreation (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994; Dyck, 2000). Again, as literature chapters highlight, the
centrality of Enlightenment reason, its appeal, use in constructing bodies of knowledge that
facilitate and privilege disciplines and professions is important to this study. All this when
added to the march and stifling, dehumanizing impact of rationalization process enhances
the appeal of Weber. However, having used Weber in previous work and feeling that his
work did not provided the flexibility for an ethnographic account of the dynamic
interactions, problems and patterns of reproduction in cultural consumption drove
alternative options. A conceptual approach was needed that allowed embodied process to
be viewed in dynamic interactions that provided a adequate and alternative historical account
but also ones that were not so fixed but contingent and fluid holding the possibilities for
otherness. Now while this might point to the likes of Ellias and Dunning (Elias and
Dunning (1986) figurational and civilising process, and given their applications to sport, they
were rapidly discounted. Out with the residing criticism that that the figurational approach
still panders to positivism (Turner and Rojek, 2001) it was felt that this approach lacked a
sound methodological clarity that provides little assistance in operationalization at ground
level. Again, and to be brutal, figuration claims a fluidity of embodied interactions but leaves
the how, the lived reality of worldviews and processes of assimilation and resistance in
abstract limbo. Simply put an approach was required that takes the development and
working of embodied realities apart one that questions and challenges through to
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epistemological and ontological foundations. To that end Derridean (Derrida, 1976; 1981
deconstruction was a serious theoretical contender.
The deconstructive approach was considered as a valid approach given it virally disrupts
ontology and epistemological truths viewing them as logocentric cultural constructions.
Derrida questions the logical of identity or structure of western thought seeing the essence
or ‘pressence’ of a signifier (e.g. word, image or symbol) as always in infinite trace of the
other. In challenging our cognitive frameworks, worldviews and, thus, normative ways of
being (Fox, 1993; Grenz, 1996) Derrida highlights how presence or identity, in this case
subjects embodying management, sport or recreational consumption practices, is infinitely
absent being derived from and dependant upon, paradoxically, the other that it is not.
However, Derrida’s deconstruction was discarded due to its profound philosophical
abstraction and difficulty of application. While a novel approach deconstruction was
deemed inappropriate for a study such as this that places ethnographic and empirical work at
its centre. Nevertheless, what such deliberations pointed to was the need for an approach
that could cope with the material and contingent emergence, rather than acceptance of
universal truths or traditional histories, development of the phenomenon of sport and
recreation, its inclusion and management within the public sector. Moreover a form of
analysis that could take the abstract materialisation and alternative reading of histories and
locate them within the embodied and dynamic reality of everyday life. Therefore, in
scanning and deliberating over those within the theoretical terrain and in concluding that no
one theoretical approach could adequately achieve the above, the rationale for the
Foucauldian and Bourdieusian coupling was born. This coupling, as well as individually,
have both convergent benefits as well as criticism and it is these that this section addresses.
For this study Foucault provides the language of discourse. Through his concepts he shows
how institutions emerge, processes of objectification and normalization converge to produce
categories of subject. Within the dynamic power/knowledge/subject matrix Foucault argues
for power as essentially productive. Through the dual poles of knowledge (what is seen and
can be said of what can be seen) power not only produces both institutional arrangements
and subjects therein but, due to its imperfection, it is compelled to construct its resistant
other. In this Foucault brings history into the present, a living force with bio-power fluidly
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producing and governing bodies. Foucault provides a theoretical analysis of the historically
situated, yet, presently active body. He shows how embodied subjects have been
contingently produced, labelled, objectified and categorised over time. In Foucault’s matrix
of power/knowledge/ subject, the subject is contingent product of dynamic events,
dissipating and reconfigured across time. Moreover, just as the embodied state is produced,
as stated earlier, it is also free (Foucault, 1982) always grinding with and against the historical
forces and events that feed and filter into local discursivities. Oscillating back and forth the
bio-power of governmentality, simultaneously, shapes and is shaped by its embodied
products those docile self regulating subjects and those resistant others (Kendall and
Wickham, 1999). Foucault’s conception of power, its matrix, bypasses the structure/agency
binary for it is as dynamic as it is unpredictable. It is productive but always imperfect
carrying the seeds of its own destruction or resistance and it is this that ensures the incessant
contestation of discourse (Foucault, 1977; 1980). However, the historical transitions,
sophistication and subtlety of Foucault’s discourse is not grounded or rehearsed in the live
embodied worldviews of individuals. It is at the internal embodied operationalization that
Foucault falls down for this study. How discourse is actually enacted, processes of
governmentality internalized, translated and resisted are, absent or lost in Foucault’s
discursive abstraction. This is where Bourdieu comes to Foucault’s aid.
Bourdieu, for this study, is at his best when delving into the living minutia and politic of
embodied conflict and suffering (Bourdieu, 1999). Although criticised by the likes of
McRobbie (2005) for not being empirical enough the majority of his work and concepts are
reflexively steeped in the empirical worldviews of actors (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992;
Webb, et al, 2002). From habitus to field Bourdieu attempts to provide a historical
trajectory, understanding of the interactions between objective structure and subjective
relations separating and segmenting both actors and social space. In so doing he argues that
the subtleties of consumer capitalism are reinvigorated via cultural economies. For him such
processes mask a politic that is essentially unequal, being privileging, maintained and trading
on the trans-generational cultural capital of its actors. Bourdieu, therefore, takes
Foucauldian understanding of discourse and embeds it in the dynamics of field, which in the
case of this study is the PSSR. Bourdieu penetrates into the soul of social space through the
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analysis of the embodied states and rich narratives of actors who produce and consume in
constant cultural consumption.
Bourdieu takes the sophistication of Foucauldian discourse and provides it with life-giving
substance. Discourse, as argued here, is a Frankenstein creation. Foucault may be the
metaphysical rationality or enigmatic force but Bourdieu brings the parts together, throws
the switch and investigates the effects of discourse as it lives in and through the embodied
realities of the everyday. In seeking to ‘dissolve the theory-evidence binary’ (Guilianotti,
2005: 155) Bourdieu demonstrates how the practices of habitus reveal ‘the embodiment of
the immanent regularities and tendencies of the world’ (Bourdieu and Waquant, 1992: 138).
Therefore, given Foucault points to how ‘subjects are made up by and are the primary
vehicles of modern power’ (Cole et al, 2004: 211) and with Bordieu’s (1978; 1984; 1990;
1992) past sporting focus, the field of sport and recreation is an ideal site to analyse the
discursive contestation of cultural consumption:
Sport is thus implicated as an optic of modern disciplinary power: a mechanism of
surveillance which renders visible and intelligible the normal body, and the abnormal
body against which the norm is constituted.
(Andrews, 2000: 124)
However, it is stressed the complementary coupling of these theorists is more that shifting
from sophisticated abstraction to empirical counter-balance. Given Bourdieu ‘pays attention
to the intersection of symbolic and material dimensions of power’ (Hunter, 2004: 177), it is
argued, that he not only shows how discourse is actively embodied but also how it is
ongoing, a constant reminder of a subjects lot/privilege or lack/poverty. Discourse moves
past the boundaries of actual social spaces being carried in the bodies and projected in the
lives of subjects. In the case of the other, those lacking capital and privilege, such lack is not
only internalised into their habitus but also serves as a source embodied angst. Even for
those looking to effect a technology of the self for ‘struggling to alter their expectations…to
change one’s embodied sense of the world, to re-learn how to be’ find themselves in a state
of aporia struggling in a ‘shadow-world of unsatisfied need’ (Charlesworth, 2000: 62).
Although Foucualdian power/knowledge/ subject of discourse enhances the dynamic
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transformational world of fields and subjects, making it less deterministic (returned to
below), Bourdieu shows that discursive contestation has casualties. Bourdieu does more
than animate Foucauldian discourse he demonstrates its ongoing embodied reproduction,
functionality and struggle. Of course in bringing this to the fore by arguing for this coupling
is to return to the criticisms as much as raise the spectre, or more critical clash, between the
two. The core of this, which links to lesser critical issues, is the ideological emancipatory
politic of Bourdieu and Foucault’s discursive stance against normative processes.
Bourdieu is overtly political in has work. In unveiling the subtle reanimation of capitalism
through cultural fields of consumption and the distinction, domination and symbolic
violence of social groups perpetrate one against the other Bourdieu’s is an emancipatory
politic. This is most clearly highlighted in the ethnographies of The Weight of the World
(Bourdieu, 1999) where Bourdieu and his team challenge the government, academics and
political activists of modern France to address the inequalities and social suffering of the
poorest and most vulnerable of society. In unmasking the bleak or ‘tragic consequences’ of
the ‘projects or housing development…with all the suffering this entails’ (Bourdieu, 1999: 3)
not only seeks to understand but also implores change. The ideological position of Bourdieu
is so marked that he has been the tagged, and his work virally contaminated, as neo-Marxist
(Alexander, 1995). Not surprisingly the neo-Marxist tag brings, along with his largely French
focus, the associated criticisms of French ethnocentricism, determinism and essentialism.
This is to miss the modifications and applications of Bourdieu’s work by others (Wacquant,
1998; Dale, 2001; Webb, et al, 2002:) as much as Bourdieu’s resistance to metanarrative
positions (Bourdieu, 2000). Bourdieu’s emancipatory stance is one committed to unmasking
metanarratives by revealing the layers of suffering and symbolic violence within capitalism.
As Bourdieu looks to reveal ‘universal laws that tangentially regulate the functioning of all
fields’ Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 36), he invokes a call for a reflexive consciousness that
acknowledges the constant flux of cultural capital within fields. The smoke and mirrors
game is between the truths of universals, and those that are situationally specific and fluid
being bound to the transformatory power of cultural capital (Calhoun, 1995). Therefore,
although pursuing emancipatory change ‘Bourdieu shares with writers like Foucault a
critique of universalistic claims to represent humanity as frequently merely masks of
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domination’ (Poupeau, 2000: 67). For Bourdieu sport is one of the many areas of culture
where the domination of capitalism can be revealed (Bourdieu, 1988) and a project of
emancipation furthered. Of course this is where Foucault will not go.
Rather than ideological Foucault’s conception of discourse prevents him from advancing
emancipatory solutions. What has to be remembered is that discourse is historically fluid
and contingent not deterministic or purposefully conspiratorial. This makes normative
positions not only impossible but, for want of a better term, illogical. Foucault’s wish is to
make history protest or groan, which reflects his attempt to deconstruct the universalist, one
voice of the author (Fox, 1994) and avoid being dragged into normatives. Regardless, of his
‘historical oversights’ Foucault’s approach not only challenges his own critics to ‘examine
their own methodological assumptions’ but:
It is precisely because Foucault eschewed political alliance and theoretical affiliation
that his readers have been able to inscribe their own politics and scholarship on his
intentions, and to create a lively critical exchange around his ideas.
(Katz, 2001: 125)
The push for normative criteria is as much a political process as any request for academic
defence. The difficulty or paradox of producing normative criteria is not that they enable us
to make sense of things, provide platforms from which to speak, criticize and be criticized.
Rather it is the fear that such normatives possess the potential to become constraining
silencing or suffocating voices rather than letting them speak. In short the small voice of
truth can easily become a universal truth more constraining than liberating. This is where,
for Foucault, ethos turns to dogma for in the normative naming that productive claim to
knowledge ‘is always an act of violence’ (Grenz, 1996: 133). Many of the critics of Foucault,
particularly brands of Marxism, critical theory and feminism, fail or are unwilling to
acknowledge this precisely due to the political project inherent within their own positions.
Simply put the normative criteria that form the foundations of ideological standpoints or
metanarratives must be sustaining, defended, advanced with a proselytizing zeal. Having
usurped the old gods the Marxists, critical theorists or feminists are compelled to protect the
normative foundations of their knowledge. The game of metanarratives, old or new, is a
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loaded zero-sum game of normative criteria and you can only play on this park is if you have
your normative boots on.
Admittedly, Foucault’s take on discourse and avoidance of normatives leaves him open the
associated accusations of functionalism and, thus, plays into the hands of conservatism and
maintenance of the status quo (Sim, 1996). With this comes the charge of nihilism or the
relativistic ‘anything goes’ association with postmodern camp (Habermas, 1987). Of course
this would put him at odds with Bourdieu’s emancipatory politics. However, and given the
above, this is misleading for if:
The ‘human being is always involved in an inescapable process of 'being thought’
that is ‘made up in thought’ then to diagnose the historicity of our contemporary
ways of thinking and acting’ is to contest thought and, thus, advocate ‘new
experiments in thought’, which can imagine new ways in which we can be and act.
(Rose, 1999: 59).
As Rose points out here the Foucauldian approach may not possess an overt emancipatory
project like Bourdieu but by ‘denaturalizing’ the ‘role of thought’, that is revealing how it is
used to construct and legitimate the normalized criteria of governance, such thought also
challenges the normalizing nature of governance. Therefore, the Foucauldian approach, far
from conservative and reinforcing the status quo, opens the cultural contingencies in
historical and presently embodied processes of thought necessary for the development or
claim of consensual meaning and, thus, normative criteria. The cry for normative criteria in
order to challenge or present a ‘better’ or alternative present (Frazer, 1989; Habermas, 1987)
misses the boat. Foucault pulls back the abstract sheet of history to reveal the normatives
and their impact on embodied subjects of the present. As lover of facts, keen to challenge
teleological accounts that suffocate localised truths and moralities Foucault is anything but
nihilistic (Megill, 1987; Du Gay 1996a). It is understandable that Bourdieu, faced with the
lived reality of discourse, wishes to do more that empirically reveal the social suffering of
subjects but also champions their emancipation. These theorists and their concepts
complement one another. The historically located power/knowledge/subject matrix of
Foucault’s discourse is put to work by Bourdieu who activated genealogy in the embodied
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minutia of the everyday realities encountered in the ‘vexed nexus of culture, power, and
identity in modern society’ (Wacquant, 2000: 117). Finally, Foucault and Bourdieu may be
an overly ambitious analytical coupling. Nevertheless, given the focus of this study, it is
contended that there is merit even in the attempt.
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3.0
Management: Titans for a New Age
Introduction
With its unforeseen pitfalls, reflections, reviews and reworking the process of designing and
developing research is akin to the often chaotic and contingent experience of life. It is
ironic, therefore, that the traditional production of a Ph.D. study adopts a rationalised and
linear structure (Phillips and Pugh, 2000). Mess and muddle give way to clarity and
coherence in an attempt to make sense of a most complex process (Schein, 2001). While the
following chapter and sections attempt to conform to this they do not provide a comfortable
chronology as they attempt to open up the emergence, development and normalization of
that thing, discipline or schools of thought that reside under the name ‘management’. In the
modern context management appears as a taken-for-granted, prevalent catch-all and a
confusing, if not meaningless, term. Whether taken from past practices and assimilated into
a coherent body of knowledge, skills and competencies that enable or dictate the strategic or
operational ways of doing, modern management presents organizations with a face of
rational detachment (Reid and Saunders, 2002; Betts, 2000; Kreitner, 1996).
This chapter does not examine management as the detached strategic or operational
processes of business or organizational administration but more critically as a discursive
process that produces and impacts upon organizations and the embodied states therein
(Alvesson and Willmott, 1992; Parker, 1992; Watson, 2002). It provides a critical evaluation
of the primary discursive forces that, as forms of knowledge, have produced the terrain of
‘management’, which has ‘gradually developed and spread to cover neighbouring areas of
enquiry’ (Hoy, 1988: 14). Sport and recreation, or more importantly the PSSR, represents a
cultural field where the ‘gaze’ of management has spread. For this study, it is important to
consider how management came to be, how it emerged to take its present form, both
theoretically and practically. The contention here is that modern management is so
assimilated within the PSSR that it is fundamental to its discursivity. The embodied practices
of management act to support and sustain this discourse (Dale 2001) and, as argued within
the PSSR, reinforces distinction and domination (Bourdieu, 1986a) within this public space.
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This chapter, like those previously, is segregated into various sub-sections. It begins by
questioning any teleological representation and progressive development of management
into its modern guise. Rather than developing along a causal evolutionary route
management is conjured into an institutionalized rational discipline from an amalgam of
prehistoric economic, social and institutional forces. Set against a disparate, unsophisticated
and immature prehistory, modern management partitioned itself through, and mirroring, the
knowledge claims of the Enlightenment. From this, the second section focuses upon the
development of the early management schools. At a time of capitalist growth and
technological innovation, the managerial medium accelerates the segregation of time and
space and heralds a new order of objectification and normalization. Premised upon
scientific objectivity, a series of controlled and contained embodied states are produced.
Subtly, this includes the state of the manager supporting the legitimacy of the managerial
discourse, knowledge and the embodied practices it advocates. In the final section the early
classical and humanistic approaches, while challenged, find reinforcement for the discourse
of management through contemporary quality systems (Kehoe 1996; Waters 2002), cultural
models (Handy 1993), the rise of the managerial gurus of change (Covey, 1991; Peters, 1994)
and emotional intelligence (Goleman, 1999; Fettes, 2005). By this point management has
become an accepted given of global significance (Baird, Post and Mahon, 1990). However,
rather than being rational, objective or ethical it is argued that the knowledge, procedural
principles and the performance practices it advocates carry distinctive and distinguishing
cultural capital. As the governmentality of management rationalizes space, time and bodies
the performances expected of embodied positions are not a given, but encrypted, with the
cultural codes of a privileging managerial discourse. As this discourse feeds and governs the
social spaces of the PSSR, segmenting, objectifying and normalizing its spaces, bodies and
their performed practices, it is essential to present a discursive account of management.
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Management: modern pariah or panacea?
Contemporary management practice is pervasive in every aspect of human life within
all types of organizations.
(Pindur, Rodgers and Pan, 1995: 59)
Within the western world, organisational development and the field of management has
become a common phenomenon. Managers are found almost everywhere plying their
managerial knowledge and skills within organisational areas such as health, housing,
business, banks, retail and, central to this study, sport and recreation. Even as an area of
study it now traverses many areas such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, political
science and economics (Feldman 1996; Watson 2002). These often relate to the theoretical
and practical considerations of organisations and have spawned a host of subject specialisms.
These include holistic Strategic Management; more technical/systems approaches in the
planning, organisation and delivery of Operations Management; the selection, recruitment
and appraisal of Human Resources Management; or the individual, group and cultural
dynamics of Organisational Behaviour (Kempton 1995; Legge 1995; Robbins 1998).
Therefore, while such diverse developments have accelerated management into an accepted
given within global capitalism it has, paradoxically, become increasingly contentious or
discipline bound.
As this study argues, what constitutes management, that is the embodied state of the
manager along with the principles, procedures and practices management uses to target the
working and consuming body within organisations, is open to question. Although cluttered
with specialisms or new modes of management (discussed later), Scientific Management and
the Human Relations movement represent a managerial focal point for this study. As the
titans of organizational theory (Hancock, 2001) and given their rational focus on the body
(Dale, 2001) management is not a seen as a neutral given. Rather, management is presented
as a historically relative, culturally specific material construct (Rosen 1984; Rorty 1988) that
can be challenged or unmasked as a self-serving discourse engaged in moral, political and
77
epistemological promotion (Fores, Glover and Lawrence, 1991; Alvesson, 1993; Grenz,
1996).
According to Feldman (1996) organizational theory has been plagued by decades of critique
that has focused on either the practical internal and external efficiency of organizations or
the academic tendency to concentrate on understanding organisations along banal
functionalist and positivist lines. The instrumental productive body was of primary concern
rather than the critical implications of such early disciplinary approaches directed at
embodied practice (Baird, 1990; Townley 1993; Watson 2002). More recently, this has led to
the offshoot area of Critical Management Studies (Fournier and Grey, 2000), which attempts
to apply ideas of Critical Theory and Foucauldian epistemology to managerial activities
(Parker, 2002). The advocates of Critical Management Studies attempt to locate, recover and
relate the subject within both the structural and cultural confines of the organisation and
wider society. As Alvesson and Deetz (2000) put it the aim of critical management research:
…is to reduce the pre-structured limitations of thinking, feeling and relating to
established values, practices and institutions. Ideals such as de-familiarization (authors
emphasis) – making the well known, natural and self-evident into something strange,
arbitrary and possible to redo or undo – and dissensus – disruptions of consensus and
seemingly harmonious, robust meanings – may then work as overall methodological
guidelines. (208)
In resonating with the political concern of Bourdieu (Chapter Two) much of this approach is
concerned with the emancipatory politics of organizations (Watson, 2002). However, here
emancipation is a future step to be actively initiated, or not, by the other or in this case those
actors of the PSSR. Management is a discourse to be unmasked by revealing its anomalies,
‘acts of resistance’ and, in so doing, ‘temporarily weakening [its] power’ (Alvesson and
Deetz, 2000: 208). The emergence and representation of management from, and against, a
prehistorical background is useful to initiate the unmasking of this discourse and its integral
relationship with the PSSR.
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The Road to Modern Management: comfortable teleology or discursive complexity?
White (1972) reminds us that the tapestry of history is woven from a series of inter-relational
historical facts that do not objectively reveal themselves. Accounts of historical events are
often fraught with controversy being subjective representations that are not only culturally
contaminated but require such contamination in order for history to speak (Gay and
Cavanaugh, 1972). In other words, since much of what stands for history requires an
enabling ‘fictional matrix’ it is difficult to claim a complete narrative, epistemological purity
or teleological entity as the process of history is ‘a purely discursive one’ (White, 1976).
Given this study presents an exploration and re-conceptualization of the PSSR as embodied
discourse, with the discipline of management central to such a discourse, it would be safe to
assume that management charts a discursive trajectory. However, on examination historical
representations of management thought tend not to reflect this. Instead a tidy historical
picture of management is presented:
Open any introductory American text in organization studies and, if it contains a
history of management thought, the story will almost certainly be linear, progressive,
teleological and truth-centred. (Jacques, 1996: 14)
According to Zald (1993) this springs from the rather disinterested or ambivalent attitude of
many management theorists to prehistory and its place in management. George (1972),
Osigweh (1985) and Rutgers (1999) all evidence this and the adjacent teleological or
progressive trait found in modern management. Typically they retrospectively ‘tip the hat’ to
past cultures, such as the Sumerians, Venetians, Hewbrews, Egyptians and Romans, before
providing expansive chronological chapters of modern management. Rather than
highlighting complex representations, the likes of Robbins (Robbins, 1998) and Bowditch
and Buono (Bowditch, 1994) (as with those above), selectively ‘cherry pick’ from the
prehistorical practices of the past, thus, presenting a comfortable, rather than discursive,
path to the present (Alvesson, 1992; Jacques, 1996).
As both Wolf (1996) and Pindur (Pindur et al, 1995) point out, the prehistorical past, even
though demonstrating a high level of organizational and managerial sophistication, gets
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token recognition at best or is conveniently side-stepped, ignored or demeaned. For the
most part, past practices tend to be represented more as uncouth lay traditions that
functioned in a form of fumbling pragmatism. For the likes of Reid and Saunders (2002)
management practice can only be discussed in a modernist present as the past is a pitifully
poor relation to modern management. Baird et al (1990:5) substantiates this, arguing that
wide scale mass/collective and coordinated task orientation and achievement are
fundamental ‘characteristics’ of ‘modern society’ and its organisations. Kreitner (1995)
exemplifies this by representing the management of ‘early cultures’ as inadvertent or chaotic
being ‘learned by word of mouth and trial and error’ and, differentiating prehistory from the
modern as ‘not something one studied in school, read about in textbooks, theorised about,
experimented with, or wrote about’ (39). For him, the lack of a managerial epistemology,
that is clearly documented, rational and experimentally developed means that ‘management’
can be seen to have ‘a history but not a pedigree’ and should, therefore, be considered as
purely ‘twentieth century development’ (Kreitner, 1995: 268). Evans (1999) echoes this
arguing that ‘the art of management is relatively recent’ claiming that only now can a
‘coherent picture’ and ‘common strands’ be discerned (61). Finally, Wren (1994) betrayed by
his title The Evolution of Management Thought, pictures the prehistorical or ‘early management’
as ‘dominated by cultural values’ which are ‘antibusiness, antiachievement, and largely
antihuman’. Unsurprisingly, this contrasted with ‘modern management’ with its ‘rational,
formalized, systematic body of knowledge’ (33).
This rather uncomplimentary take and process of demeaning differentiation is not unusual
or exclusive to management. As Foucault demonstrates in areas such as madness and
sexuality, discourse advances knowledge and power that not only produces normative
statements but also objectified subjects (Foucault, 1973; 1979). Discourse is not distant
history, rather it is living in the present evidenced in categories of embodied subjects such as
‘doctor’, or in this case, ‘manager’. More importantly, any discourse activates a normalizing
gaze (be it medical or managerial) that constructs, through the imperfection of its power, the
resistant other (e.g. types of patient or worker) that, being categorized, require remedial
treatment, organization and control. Having produced its binary poles of subjects (i.e.
doctor-patient, manager-worker) such discourses become self-perpetuating and legitimating.
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Management can be seen to play this slight of hand or creative historical accounting being
rather forgetful of other prehistorical forces that upset its tidy teleological trail.
A cursory glance at a host of disciplines or fields reinforces this. In philosophy the nature
and content of what we can term management (Higgins, 1991), and its differentiation from
other areas of practical and artistic expertise, have long been debated (Plato 1974; Honderich
1995). This resonates within theological circles as seen in Augustine’s City of God
(Augustine, 1945) where the hierarchical organization, span of control, content and task
specialisation of the church is critiqued.
Again, with Machiavelli, the hard and soft side of management is opened up within the
political realm. Here, within the Prince (Machiavelli, 1961), philosophical and theological
strands are drawn upon to demonstrate how power and control (with the Prince modelled
on Cesare Borgia) are sought and maintained in a hard amoral and instrumental manner
(Townley 1994). In the Discourses (Machiavelli, 1979) a more holistic, moral and culturally
encompassing managerial approach is expounded.
Finally, the structure and operation of the military is intrinsic to many modern management
techniques. Operations management, sophisticated logistics and tactical awareness are
clearly discernable in Greek and Roman military campaigns (Umstot 1980; Stoner, Freeman
and Gilbert, 1995). When coupled with the Sun Tzu’s Art of War (Tzu 1963) and the
strategic, theoretical and critical writings of Miyamoto Musashi, heralded by Time Out as ‘the
supreme book on strategy’ (Musashi 1988), modern management is indebted to thousands of
years of military tradition and practice.
Undoubtedly, prehistorical practices have been the subject of critique often because
‘authority was essentially an aspect of personal property’ (Gephart, 1996: 90) and premised
upon elite trans-generational privilege and divine ordination (Hetherington 1993). However,
the tendency to ignore, patronize or demonize the past against a progressive, democratic and
ethical present (Bowditch, 1994; Wren, 1994) is rather suspect. Moreover, the apparently
casual representation and legitimation, of the present as being scientific, formally taught,
critical, professional and, thus, progressive (Bowman 1990; Rawlins 1992; Kreitner 1995;
Clark and Salman 1998; Galloway 1998) against a regressive past may have a covert agenda.
81
According to Betts (2000) and Boje, Gephart and Thatchenkery (1996) such representations
are not theoretical oversights or disinterested accidents of history but mask the political
project of theoretical positioning. Essentially, this is a case of paradigmatic positioning
which, in this case with modern management, emerge, establish and sustain their legitimacy
through a process of partitioning and differentiation that often involves negative or
demonizing representations (Clegg 1990; Boje 1995). With this and the contributions of a
variety of prehistorical cultures, any comfortable, teleological, progressive and, therefore,
superior perception of modern management and the practices it advocates is questionable
(Alvesson, 1992; Jacques, 1996; Egan, 2000). Given modern managerial practices are integral
to and inhabit the development, operation and consumption of sport and recreation within
the public sector the classical to contemporary guises it takes are important to this study.
The Classics of Modern Management
The birth of modern management represents and differentiates itself from a prehistory
where social organisation was seen to rest upon the maintenance of a social structure
premised on autocracy, mysticism or metaphysical religion. Life followed a ‘pre-determined
order of things’ (Hancock and Tyler, 2001: 12) with worldviews dominated by destiny and
duty and legitimated through ‘magico-religious’ narratives (Thomas, 1993: 75). Of course
not all ‘magico-religious’ narratives have been totally demeaned. The rise of 16th century
Protestantism, the Calvinist brand in particular, being famously targeted for the development
of modern capitalism through Weber’s Protestant Work Ethic (Weber, 1976). Although,
Weber’s2 work is open to critique, from the mid-fifteenth through to the nineteenth century
revolutions ‘great social and economic upheavals’ (Thomas, 1993: 30-31) had extended into
the religious, political, and scientific arenas science of, primarily, European cultures.
It is stressed here that although Weber’s work is clearly relevant to management, organizational
development and the working body (Clegg, 1990; Hancock and Tyler, 2001; Watson, 2002) his impact on
leisure and, thus, the PSSR is significant. Therefore, as the following section on leisure touches on the
development and organization of sport and recreation its management and working body Weber will be
developed in this section.
2
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For Kumar (Kumar, 1995: 82-84) this revolutionary energy established the ‘roots’ of the
Enlightenment Age of Reason where ‘modernity receives its material form’ heralding history
and Progress; Truth and Freedom; Reason and Revolution; Science and Industrialism’.
However, Kumar, being quick to differentiate modernity from modernism points to the
‘split in modernity’s soul’ with ‘on the one side science, reason, progress, industrialism; and
on the other a passionate denial of these, in favour of sentiment, intuition, and the free play,
imagination’. This ‘split’ between scientific, technological instrumental rationality and a
culturally subversive order echoes Foucault (1986), Fox (1993) and Grenz’s (1996) concerns
over the drive of dogma over that of ethos. It is with this revolutionary backdrop and
scientific, ‘techno-economic order’ (Kumar, 1995: 83) of modernity that what comes to
constitute the ‘classics’ of modern management are found. This refers to those titans of
organizational theory, namely, Scientific Management and the Human Relations movement
(Robbins, 1998; Wren, 1994). More importantly, given their scientifically rational premise
the longevity and influence of these classics are, as will be demonstrated, central to the
management of the PSSR.
As the pioneer of ‘scientific management’ and, typifying the Enlightenment quest in reason,
F.W. Taylor (Taylor, 1964) is seen as the ‘initial carrier of the discourse of objectivity’
(Jacques, 1996: 12). Asserting itself through the vestures of science and so ‘equated with
progress’ (Parker 1992: 3) Taylor sought to instrumentally apply scientific principles to the
organisation, its practices and, thus, the working body (Pindur et al, 1995). Evident in the
mind/body dualism of Kant (Sim, 1998a) and persisting through to Hawking (Hawking,
1988) today, Taylor mirrored scientific attempts to progressively uncover, categorise and
control the social, political and economic world (Bauman, 1992) within organisational
activity. The transformations of industrialisation and urbanisation demanded rationally
planned practices that were not only economical and efficient but also necessitated a bodily
compliant workforce. Taylor’s Scientific Management inherently carries social Darwinist
traits with an elitist suspicion of the labouring classes (Robbins, 1998). Taylor, indicative of
a Darwinist attitude and believing economic reward to be the primary motivator, assumed
workers and the minutia work had to be systematically controlled from loading, resting, to
the shovel size and how to most efficiently swing a pick (Evans, 1999). Empowering labour
was an ideological anathema believing that if ‘left to their own devices, workers will do as
83
little as possible and engage in ‘soldering’ – working more slowly’ (Bilton, Bonnett, Jones,
Lawson, Skinner, Stanworth and Webster, 1987: 361). This reinforced the need not only for
partitioned, hierarchical jobs that were deskilled and incremental but also for these to be
under constant surveillance.
For Taylor, labouring bodies were no more than functional
instruments to be rationally controlled and contained in pursuit of superior and reliable task
execution and performance. Taylorism parallels well with Foucauldian notions of
governmentality with the gaze of surveillance permeating though to the embodied states of
managers and supervisor all reporting and controlling tasks, and with such management
inculcated into the embodied states, becomes a normalized way of working (Clegg, 1997).
Although often regarded as an anachronistic school of management, for many, Taylor’s
scientific management is alive and well having been merely modified to new settings
(Braverman, 1974; Alvesson, 1992). The PSSR represents just such a setting. However, the
operationalization of Taylorism has an organisational history that precedes the development
of the public sector.
Although clearly discerned with Samuel Colt mass manufacturing munitions and directly
utilised at Bethlehem steel works in 1899 (Baird, et al, 1990) Taylor’s approach is empirically
associated with the Henry Ford motor company of the inter-war years. Here, motor cars
were mass produced and standardised through large, labour intensive plants (Cook,
Hunsaker and Coffey, 1997; Galloway, 1998). Managed and operated through a hierarchical
structure with a low skilled workforce performing repetitive and routine tasks reliable
productivity was maximised whilst the capricious nature of human capital is minimised
(Hancock and Tyler, 2001). Fordism did not begin and end with the organisation but
extended its surveillance and influence into the private lifestyles of its workers (Gramsci,
1973). With a specified Sociology Department, Ford was keen to direct discretionary
incomes and leisure activities in to areas that were, like work, deemed productive.
Interestingly, this lifestyle management of Ford’s Sociology Department is mirrored
(developed in detail below) in the historical use of sport and recreation regarded by the
moral elite as appropriate and civilising pastimes (Bailey, 1989; Coalter, 1990a). Moreover,
the instrumental productivity drive behind both Taylorism and Fordism is echoed, both in
the past and present, in state supported sport and recreation consumption (Clarke and
Critcher, 1985; Rojek, 1995; Roberts, 1999).
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Nevertheless, the underlying positivism and functionalism (Alvesson, 2000) as well as its
dehumanising and alienating potential (Watson, 2002) of Fordism has been heavily criticised.
However, out with academic circles, Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times captures, with
comedic pathos, the impact of Fordism on the embodied state of the workforce by ‘satirising
mass production and the treadmill of industry in a factory of nightmarish efficiency’
(Newbold, 2004: 15). The emergence of the Human Relations movement was heralded as a
potential remedy to Taylor’s scientific principles and Ford’s and a new direction in modern
management.
In an attempt to challenge or overturn the ideological assumptions and embodied impacts
implicit in Taylorism (Dale, 2001) Professor Elton Mayo conducted a series of experiments
at the Hawthorne works of the Western Electric Company. Adopting the tenants of
humanism Mayo, like Durkheim before, believed that rational science and technological
progress had, paradoxically, produced irrational loss of sociability. For Mayo the
dehumanising individualism, typified by Taylor and Ford’s organizational approach, could be
countered through the development of social skills, worker/group sensitivity and job
satisfaction (Kreitner, 1995). Therefore, humanistic managerial developments that target
personal meaning, fulfilment and social stability were viewed as a remedy to the anomic
impacts of the industrial process (Jary and Jary, 1993). For the Human Relations movement
labouring bodies were more than instrumental vessels to be constantly contained believing
that there is ‘no conflict between the pursuits of productivity, efficiency and competitiveness
on the one hand and the humanisation of work on the other’ (Rose, 1990: 56). However,
when potential conflict is remedied by developing personal ontological anchors through
organizational social groups and job satisfaction this softer side of management is
questionable.
The Human Relations approach has been critiqued for its taming of labouring bodies
through humanism making them all the more tied to the industrial labour process (McKinlay
and Starkey, 1998a). Sociability, sensitivity and satisfaction merely mask processes of
control, containment and coercion. According to critics Human Relations approaches are
about the ‘subtle exercise of managerial authority through the manipulation of sentiment –
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encouraging venom against competitors…encouraging the feeling of team struggle [and]
loyalty-inducing perks’ (Bilton et al, 1987: 362). While permeating the emotional being of
the labouring body the Human Relations movement retained industrial characteristics of
hierarchical power, profitability and competitiveness. Rather than claims of radical reform it
maintained the ‘technologies and mechanisms of management in the pursuit of improved
efficiency’ (Hancock and Tyler, 2001:42). By developing a ‘scientific knowledge of the
worker’ through ‘new interventions’ designed to produce ‘contented productive worker’
Mayo’s project was one aimed at penetrating the emotive and social core of the worker
(Rose, 1999: 80). Therefore, the Human Relations movement exerts a governmentality that
is far more sophisticated in producing obedience by associating embodied identity to work.
Exerting a ‘tutelary role with respect to organizational members’ the organization disciplines
labouring bodies ‘and categorizes them through diverse and localized tactics of ratiocination’
(McKinley and Starkey, 1999a: 38).
The PSSR, as this study demonstrates, reflects such subtle tactics and the process of selfimposed discipline. However, just as staff identities are heavily invested with organisation
such identities are in dissonant flux, torn by organisation of objectives and incongruous
managerial procedures that struggle with the working and differential bodies of conflicting
customer groups. More importantly, just as ‘Mayo built on Taylor rather than refute him’
(Parker, 2002: 53), and with the establishment of a client and contract managerial split, the
PSSR reflects aspects of both Taylorism and the Human Relations movement. The scientific
principle lies at the heart of both these classical schools of management. With the rise of
modern gurus of management (Handy, 1994; Peters, 1997) this principle or ‘faith in reason’
(Parker, 2002: 3), how working bodies are perceived and used through ‘micro-techniques of
power that inscribe and normalize not only individual bodies but also, collective
organizational bodies’ (McKinley and Starkey, 1999: 38), continues to be of critical concern
for management thought.
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Management for Today: Apollonian vision and Dionysian critique?
It is clear that, framed within the bastion of science, management aligns itself with the
civilizing, moral, and democratic agendas of the Enlightenment (Du Guy, Salaman et al.
1996). Following Kuhn (1970) modern management evidences a paradigmatic shift from
mysticism to reason as it ‘explicitly position their ideas about management in relationship to
the past’ and, thus, claim that ‘their ideas are new, superior and reversionary’ (O’Connor,
1996: 30). Management has become a pervasive given reflecting not only ‘the desire to
rationally manage life’ (Grenz, 1996: 81) but also to do so through an ‘increasing celebration
of a managerial class’ who are keen to see the ‘application of managerial language to more
and more ‘informal’ areas of life’ (Parker, 2002: 184). The development of managerial theory
and practice becomes a keystone in modernity’s Apollonian vision of an ordered, controlled
and regulated social world (Du Guy, 1996a). Management, its power and legitimacy, has
become so ingrained in society that there is now an ‘essentialist view of management and
managerial practice’ (Townley 1993: 223). For Watson (2002) such essentialism is not to be
written off as the naive or elitist works of the classical theorists. Instead he highlights how
such views persist to this day, being inherent within much of managerial thinking and
practice:
A belief in a ‘foundationalist’ knowledge of this type has been a key tenet of
mainstream modernist thinking. It is what some management academics hope for in
the ‘body of management knowledge’ they want to create.
(Watson, 2002: 52)
With this background and an increasing body of theoretical and practical knowledge,
management has become a self-legitimating competative process that has heralded the birth
of the expert. From the early twentieth century, and following Taylor and Mayo, an array of
management experts has emerged. This includes Fayol’s universal functionalism, Gantt and
the Gilberth’s modified scientific management (Kreitner, 1995), Folett and McGregor’s
developments of industrial humanism (Robbins, 1998; Bratton, 1999) to Deming’s quality
process over product approach (Baird et al, 1990). Championing the productive process,
and affiliating themselves with particular blends of scientific management or human
87
relations, each of these experts trod and maintained the rational route of management. This
trend has been critically described as the growth of ‘managerialism’ (Grey, 1996; Hancock
and Tyler, 2001). With the inherent traits of expert direction, separation of physical practice
from higher and detached control, coupled with legitimating academia ‘managerialism [is] the
generalized ideology of management’ one that looks to apply ‘a generalized technology of
control to everything’ since it views ‘management as the universal solution, not a personal
assessment of a local problem’ (Parker, 2002: 10-11). According to Watson (2002) the given
of ‘managerialism and managism’, and its expert claims, are disturbing:
Why the managerialist asks, allow all the debate, time wasting and inefficiencies of
voting on how a modern society should be run when we have experts with scientific
knowledge about how affairs can be run – on purely rational grounds and for the
benefit of everyone? (52)
Interestingly, as Watson alludes, management here is not only presented as rational but
draws upon an ethical basis in order to support or legitimate the discipline and, inevitably,
those of the expert. While once regarded as a bit of an oxymoron ‘the subject of ethics is
receiving serious attention in management circles these days’ (Kreitner, 1995: 144). There is
economic currency in ethics as equitable, just and fair organizations, and their management,
become associated with the trust and loyalty of both employees and consumers alike
(Kitson, 1996). As such, organizations in the modern era are keen to be seen as ‘ethical’
with managers playing a central role in the deployment of their moral compass3.
Moreover, even making reference to ethics is revealing, as the ‘usefulness of such language
should not be underestimated, since it is sufficiently arcane to impress’ and so demonstrates
a ‘substantial piece of cultural capital’ (Parker, 2002: 95). This is another worrying level of
‘managerialism’ that not only follows ‘the principle of technocracy – the principle of putting
experts in charge of human affairs’ but also ‘like religious faiths, they take a set of beliefs
3
The issue of ethics, and its normalizing power, are central both to the legitimacy of managerial practices
in the PSSR but also to aspirations of prossionalism. However, as the following sections examines ethics,
its meaning and relation to the welfare service of the PSSR and its professional claims, it is best to develop
this later.
88
about how the world is and, on the basis of this, advocate what people should do’ (Watson,
2002: 53).
Armed with such ‘faith’ it is unsurprising that the manager, their identity, notion and
authority of the expert have become entwined with the organization and its productive
processes. The surveying power of the organization is no longer bound within physical
walls. Instead, echoing Fordist or Human Relations attempts, the organization has insipidly,
and increasingly, deteritorrialised into the life and lifestyle of the labouring worker. The
manager is central to this as, being the organisations ‘ethical advocate’ (Kreitner, 1996: 153),
he/she administers the moral agenda, arbitrates and enforces the normative standards of
conduct. This is not only about word and deed within the internal environment of the
organization but also about actions, attitudes and tastes that ethically should be replicated and
displayed in the external world. This is the ‘guiding aim’ of organizations ‘to win the ‘hearts
and minds’ of employees: to define their purposes by managing what they think and feel, and
not just how they behave’ (Parker, 2002: 22). Being the organizational life blood, both in
terms of production and perception for consumers, the organization exerts a pastoral power
extending its tentacles of crusading codes of conduct into the labouring body. Here,
management functions as embodied transmitters of capital. The labouring body is
infiltrated, the constitution of capital in dispositions of movement, language, dress or tastes
such as food, drink or activity (Jermier, 1994) are organizationally advocated not only within
the internal confines of the organization but literally internalized. The organization being
manifest in management conveys capital that, being rationally objectified, normalized and
ethically legitimated, is to be inscribed upon the labouring body. By ‘shifting the emphasis
of managerial control from behaviour to attitudes and norms’ the working body is both the
productive force and subjective product of the organizations, with managers promoting ‘the
regulation of the employee’s self, rather than the work they are engaged in’ (Grugulis, 2000:
97). Managerialism, with its essentialist faith and quest for a universal solution, can but view
the labouring body, the organisation and, thus, itself as an ontological unity, an identity
inseparable whether in the social, operational or personal space.
This highlights another layer of the ‘said’ of discourse as the materiality of management,
bound to its principle of technocracy, produces a normalizing language where the ‘concepts
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we apply to the world…can be seen as a framing of reality that, to a certain extent, bring
about that reality’ (Watson, 2002: 4). It is for this reason that Du Gay et al, (1996b), echoing
Foucault (1970), views management and the notion of the ‘manager’ ‘as a fiction’ a ‘materialcultural process’ and ‘category of a person’ made-up in and through discourse. With a
history of champions and theoretical texts management has been promoted, and repetitively
articulated, establishing its discourse and centrality in organizational and social life. By
advancing ‘types of statement, concepts or thematic choices’ that ‘define the regularity’
(Foucault, 1972: 38) a discursive formation is produced, thus, framing the ‘conditions of
possibility’ for management.
However, as ‘management operates through people, rather than being a disembodied
practice’ (Townley, 1993: 223) its discourse, in a Bourdieusian sense, is manifest and
translated through the practices of actors in the field. Moreover, in order to name the
‘manager’ a series of attendant competencies, skills and abilities need to be prescribed for,
and inscribed on, the managerial body. Today this is the function of governing national
bodies and academic institutions that design and develop academic, professional and
technical qualifications and standards. Within the scope of this study the governing bodies
of ILAM, ISRM and sportscotland impact upon the PSSR being seen to configure, construct
and advance knowledge of the field. According to Grenz (1996) this is a violent process for,
as such bodies operate through such managers, the standards they advocate are not
objective. As Du Gay et al, (1996b) point out ‘it is important to note that the dispositions,
actions and attributes that constitute ‘management’ have no natural form’ (264). In this, the
PSSR can be seen as a microcosm of consumer capitalism where the ‘centrality of an
increasing division of labour’ is the ‘crucial hallmark of modernity’ and one that thrives on ‘a
process of differentiation’ (Clegg, 1990: 2). Moreover, Foucault (1979) helps demonstrate
how, as management is central to the ‘panoptical machine’, structure and maintenance of
consumer capitalism as spaces and practices become synonymous ‘prisons resemble
factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons’ (228).
Again, through the concepts of enclosure, partitioning and ranking, he unveils discursivity of
organizations and the pivotal role management plays. Through enclosure, time and space
are segmented, constructing an array of privileging binaries such as work over leisure
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(Townley, 1994). However, enclosure requires further segmentation (e.g. health club), which
in turn is divided into locations (e.g. reception, office, gym, pool). In this way, partitioning
produces spaces each fixed in their place, differentiated and objectifiable and each space with
its subject (e.g. leisure manager, sports development officer, lifeguard). Finally, these
subjects are organizationally ranked and rewarded. This translates to wider society as such
spaces are ‘idealized spaces’ being ‘constituted in terms of their function, their relationship to
other spaces, and their rank within the power hierarchy’ (Hopper, 2000: 130). More
importantly, this segmented, spatio-temporal location and creation of subjects requires
maintenance and governance. Management not only plays a central role here but, being one
of many subjects, the manager requires management, thus, legitimating and reanimating the
process all over again. However, although this appearing rather negative and oppressive, the
growth in new wave management and its gurus may provide a credible challenge to the
instrumental rationality and dehumanising practices inherent with managerialism (Alvesson,
1993).
Following on from the likes of Peters (1997) management has taken a cultural turn
(Willmott, 1993), which accentuates the humanistic face of management attempting a holistic
integration of organizational and employee goals, values and beliefs. Here old school
management abandons its macho, aggressive and functionalist undertones feminising for
individual empowerment as much as organizational transformation. An approach earmarked
in the field of leisure (Henry, 2001) the feminised, transforming individual and organisation
form a bond or reciprocal corporate welfare (Whitefield, 2001). Again this works well and is
seen in Handy’s (1994; 1998) corporate citizen, and stress on the principle of subsidiarity.
Likewise Covey’s (Covey, 1989: 207) ‘win/win is a frame of mind and heart’ and trust
centred organization (Covey, 1994) appears to champion organizational citizenship, as an
alternative to managerialism and the inherent competitive zero sum game of positivist and
functionalist paradigms. More recently, this cultural perspective has been advanced through
calls for organizations to embrace the notion of emotional intelligence (Dulewicz, 2000;
Fettes, 2005). Such developments would indicate a backlash against managerialism.
However, these developments or alternatives have been greeted with scepticism from both
the anti-capitalist writings of neo-Marxists and post-structuralists (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000;
Watson, 2002).
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The neo-Marxist fraternity presents a hegemonic analysis (Gramsci, 1971; Bocock, 1986)
arguing that the cultural turn in management is no more than sugar coated managerialism
(Du Guy, 1996; Watson, 2002). Processes of productivity still lay at the core of this cultural
take with active compliance of the employee the primary objective. The Janus-faced
organizations of capitalism and their management practices are to be unmasked and
employees emancipated from an oppressive hegemonic ideology. However, while
organizational practices drove the work of Marx and Engels (Lancaster, 1978) the
emancipatory politics of neo-Marxist analysis still smacks of replacement metanarratives
(Grey, 1999; Alvesson, 1992; Hancock and Tyler, 2001).
Post-structularists, while eschewing any meta approach, are keen to disrupt the Apollonian
aspirations of managerialism in favour of looking for productive alternatives [McKinlay and
Starkey, 1998a). For them, the cultural turn and attendant notions of organizational
citizenship are problematic since citizenship is ‘definitionally constructed by white, ablebodied, heterosexual, middle-class, employed, middle-aged males (Parker, 2002: 58). To
overcome this, and the homogenising and dehumanising effects of managerialism, they argue
for a generalist conception of history, with the need to revive ‘a multitude of alternative
voices’ (Hussard, 1996) where rationality is ‘decentred’ and ‘pluralized’ rather than
‘abandoned’ (Gephart, 1996: 364). Therefore, the organization and its management are open
to a continuously Dionysian challenge through the activity of actors. According to Parker
(2002) this is where the organization, its managerial and labouring members, become an
‘orgunity’ one where:
Members would drift in and out according to their own interests and make no
distinction between their identities in the organization and their identities outside it
(207).
Against the cultural turn, and mindful of accusations of clone-like compliance, organizing
activity and management itself is under constant scrutiny. The grip of managerialism is not
totalising but one that can be loosened through appeals to the marginalized notions of
inclusion, non-hierarchical structures and culturally empathetic forms of organization and
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management. While these attempts may appear tokenistic, and, pandering to idealism, what
this does indicate is that, theoretically and practically, there is a tension within what
constitutes management. Practitioners within the field of management, academic or
otherwise, whilst serving to inscribe and support the discourse of management (Alvesson,
1992; Parker, 2002) do not simply replicate the field. Labouring bodies, operational as well
as managerial, are not empty vessels, pliable clay shaped and coloured by the capitals of
organizations. Instead discursive resistance is ever present (Kendall and Wickham, 1999)
evidenced through the competition of capital (Bourdieu, 1990). More importantly, the
presence of resistant cultural competition is essential as it reveals the rich complexity of
embodied discourse and, therefore, discourse itself.
As this study will demonstrate, from managerial approaches advocated nationally, to those of
client and contract managers through to the interactive practices of operational staff, the
joust for legitimacy is found in clashes over what constitutes capital. The organization,
management, operation and consumption practices of the PSSR inexorably reflect attitudes
towards, and forms of, capital within the field. However, in order to add substance to this
discursive process, it necessary to examine the rise, development and politics of the PSSR.
Therefore, the following sections turns to consider those forces that have enabled,
developed and demarcated the modern emergence and public space of sport and recreation.
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4.0
Sport & Recreation: the disciplining of time, space and self
Introduction
In exploring and reconceptualising the PSSR as a discursive and privileging site, this study
focuses upon how discourse works, being animated in and through the embodied states of
those actors that operate within this public space. Rather than adopt a singular or
segmented approach, often witnessed in organization studies (Ransome, 2005), it examines
the dynamics of discourse within the holistic processes of production and consumption.
Whereas the previous chapter presented management as central to the enabling operational
production of the PSSR, this chapter addresses the rise, material development, embodied
production, containment and control of sport and recreation. It is important to stress that,
rather than engage in a convoluted exegetical definitionary discussion of sport and
recreation, this chapter is more concerned with how sport and recreation has been made,
objectified, normalized, used over time and translated into the institutional arrangement of
the PSSR. It is keen to open the disparate origins and ideas of a socio-historical past that
have enabled the production of the spatio-temporal boundaries of the PSSR and the subjects
who inhabit this social space.
It also charts how sport and recreation of the past echoes in the present and has become a
mass consumption space and experience where facilitized and managed forms of sport and
recreation offer opportunities for spectacle, display and status. This is seen from ancient
rite, through revolutionising religion, civilizing industrialisation to welfarism and ideological
contestation that has formed the institution of the PSSR (Malcolmson, 1973; Cunningham,
1980; Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Roberts, 2004). Moreover, the politicised consumption
space of the PSSR not only offers ‘leisure choices and leisure activities in constructing self
and place identities’ but in that such identities need to be maintained and defended it
provides the basis for analysing ‘how exclusionary processes are both bodily and embodied’
(Hague et al, 2000: 9). In keeping with the metaphorical journey of the study, this chapter
delineates into five sectional steps to highlight the importance the ancient past, religion,
industrialisation, ideological contestation and present policy practices. Through the content
of these chapter sections, as with the management chapter, sport and recreation is presented
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as a primary component in the discursive assemblage of the PSSR. Moreover, this will
provide the basis for moving to consider the importance and impact of professionalism as
the final part of this discursive assemblage. As a normalizing foundation for modern sport
and recreation the trajectory of history plays a central role. It is apposite that the first
section opens such a trajectory.
Ritual and Rite: Historical echoes in the making of modern sport & recreation
The development of sport and recreational forms, with their markets, commodities, facilities
and mediatised entertainment spectacles are now a central part of experience economies of
21st century global capitalism (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). The wide range of sport and
recreation forms find it ubiquitously, engrained in the lifestyle experiences of many.
However, while this casual acceptance of ‘modern sport’ is often presented as something
‘invented in the mid-Victorian years’ and, thus, ‘suggested that there was a gap, a ‘vacuum’,
between the decline of ancient forms of play and the spread of new ones’ (Holt, 1992: 12)
sport and recreation today is indelibly linked to the past:
Despite shifting rhetorics, the past exists in a reciprocal relationship with the present.
Just as the past is seen through the eyes of the present, the present is judged in an
unending dialogue with the past.
(Bedeian, 1998: 4)
Representations of modern sport and recreation are often marked by differentiations from
ancient/old barbaric past to the new/modern civilized present. While distinctions are clear,
such as mass markets and economies, technological sophistication, global mediatization and
governance (e.g. International Olympic Committee, Federation of International Football
Associations), sport and recreation still retain historical echoes. Many modern sports (e.g.
soccer, hockey, basketball and tennis) ‘entered the lives of primitive adults in conjunction
with some form of religious significance’ (Guttman, 1979: 19). Sporting activity was central
to the religious rites and fertility ceremonies of cultures such as the Mayans, American
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Indians and Chinese (Bale, 1994) with their attendant festivities of music, dancing and
feasting.
The Greek and Roman civilisations not only evidence this process but the religious
connection established the first sporting calendar highlighted in the unofficial Greek
sporting contests documented in 776 BC (Blanchard, 1995). Coinciding with, and
celebrating, the summer solstice, such events were formalized into a four-yearly Panhellenic
Games (the basis of the modern day Olympic movement). These religiously orientated
ancient games not only formalized sports (such as athletics, boxing and wrestling), instigated
a sporting programme of events that ‘drew crowds of spectators, estimated to be up to 40,
000’ but also established specific facilities:
Each of these Panhellenic Games honoured a god, awarded token prizes and was
held in a permanent, purpose-built location.
(Toohey, 2000: 10).
This highlights that the production and consumption of mass sporting spectaculars is not,
necessarily, a modern phenomenon as the ‘transition from ancient to modern sport occurred
irregularly and over centuries and was neither exclusive to the West nor linear’ (Scambler,
2005: 30). Again, early civilizations, such as in the Socratic era, not only displayed a level of
wide scale facilitization but also the penchant for creating the sporting hero as ‘ordinary
citizens emulated the most gifted and no city was without its athletic facilities’ (Guttmann
1979: 23). These are not isolated points in history as the cultured practice of developing
sporting activities, locating and facilitizing them in time and space can be discerned across
the Hellenic and gladiatorial era through to medieval Europe (Bale, 1994). Of course the
shift from sporting practice as pastime to modern rationalized, codified, and globalized sport
or process of sportization is important (Ellias and Dunning, 1986; Maguire, 1999).
However, while this process is essential to the PSSR, and developed later, the point here is
that across cultures sports were materially developed, spatially demarcated and conveyed
meaning through sophisticated rituals all with categories of embodied subjects adhering to
designated roles (Guttmann, 1979; Bale, 1994).
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Moreover, given the gravity of religious association and the formalized structure of facilitized
environments, sporting practices were anything but chaotic, debauched events. Certainly,
times of festival and the sport and recreational practices surrounding them have long been
associated with violence and bloody activity (Malcolmson, 1973). While, as will be seen,
such practices facilitated civilising and moral agendas (Bailey, 1989 Haywood, Kew,
Bramham, Spink, Capenerhurst and Henry, 1993) sport fulfilled other socially functional
roles. Sporting events were often socially and politically functional being ceremonial displays
of hierarchies of person and position (Brailsford, 1992). The sporting spectacle, as a
collective gathering, enabled the overt display of social structure, accepted or ordained
culture (Toohey and Veal, 2000). Casting a Bourdieusian analysis, the sporting event/games
afforded opportunities not only for cultural competition and domination but also a process
for legitimating and maintaining the privileged position of priest, sovereign or master and
their performative power (Bourdieu, 1993; Blackshaw and Crabbe, 2004). However, whilst
the religious functionality of sport declined, the economic and social growth of the feudal
Middle Ages produced a shift and accelerated the development and use of sport.
With growing wealth formalized sport and recreation practices became new, fashionable and
attractive to the nobility and socially privileged (Bailey, 1989; Horne, 2000). Sporting activity
increasingly fulfilled not only a socio-political role, since they were not only ‘closely
connected to issues of power, control and the ‘serious’ side of life’ but also took on
important cultural significance being seen to ‘confer and/or deny prestige and status to
different social groups’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994: 60). Particular forms of sport, and more
importantly, their objectified consumption through facilities or specified spaces, rules,
technical or specialised equipment, formal dress and etiquette had become transmitters of
meaning, markers of position and social distinction (Tuck, 1999). European court society
exemplified this process with the likes of falconry, jousting, horse racing and court-tennis all
‘limited to the nobility…forbidden to servants or labourers’ (Guttmann, 1979: 30). From
their cultic, ritualistic heritage and expression of sovereign and institutional power ‘games’ or
sporting events had become discriminatory and the bastion of cultured society (Birley, 1993).
This does not mean peasants or labouring vassals did not engage in sporting or recreational
activities. Rather, theirs was more seasonally driven and organic, less formal or facilitized,
often being competitive spectacles between villages. As with the festivals and fairs of the
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day, where the proclivity for blood sports and games was accepted, such gatherings were
often violent affairs. For the socially elite, this more boisterous, often alcohol fuelled and
aggressively rough sporting conduct, which persists in the more sanitised traditions of some
villages today, were indicative marks of the less refined and uncouth masses (Golby, 1984).
Moreover, by the 14th century the privileged nobility and authorities not only clearly
distinguished themselves through their sport and recreational consumption but also regarded
the development of early sporting practices, such as street football, as distracting from the
functionality of work and warfaring practices (Malcolmson, 1973).
These processes highlight the emergence, appropriation, cultural divisions, meanings and
competition surrounding sport and recreational practices. They provide the early beginnings
or discursive relations that lie behind the practice and consumption of sport and recreation.
Accompanying sporting forms, events, facilities and contents a sporting body can be seen to
emerge. This body is a genealogical product contained in time and space, adorned with
specialised dress and equipment, engaging in performative action (be it supportive religious
ritual, expression of privileged position or culture) and, thus, is both a doxic subject of, and
in subjection to, the disciplinary ‘gaze’ and logocentricity (Fox, 1993) of the arena/formative
field it finds itself in. These may be seen as the birth pangs of future fields of consumption
as sporting practices, facilities and embodied categories emerge revealing an extension of
disciplinary mechanisms (Burrell, 1988). Rather than representing a passing fad or fashion
such sport and recreational forms and embodied practices evidence a deterritorialising effect
(Deleuze and Guattari, 1984) out of the religious temple or military barracks into the cultural
arenas of stadia, gymnasium, estate, greens, courses and courts. Cultic rite and ritual gives
way to the beginnings of cultural consumption. Following Sibley (1995), what comes to
constitute sport and recreation is increasingly cut from the cloth of space and time, a
facilitised and formalised spectacle that conveys meaning and distinction.
Nevertheless, while such processes represent historical echoes the taken-for-granted,
normalized and objectified production and consumption practices of sport and recreation
were far from the finished, discursive modern-day article. Much of the modern discourse of
sport and recreation is centered on geographical migration, social and economic upheaval
and scientific developments associated with industrialism. This industrial period, as with the
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development of sport and recreation and its future inclusion and use as a welfare medium, is
ironically, indebted to the rise of Western Christianity or, more specifically, the Calvinist
brand of Protestantism. The following section traces the role of these forces as they
converge to produce sport and recreation in its modern and embodied state.
Religion & Industrialism: revolutions of time, space and identity
Undoubtedly, the ancient and pioneering civilizations of the past initiated both the material
and embodied production of many forms of sport and recreation. From times of
developmental flux, forms of sport and recreation have become increasingly demarcated,
facilitised and important in the body politics of identity (Sibely, 1995; Jarvie and Maguire,
1995). Many studies have focused on the importance of the body, the sporting body or
politics of embodiment (Bordo, 1993; Glassner, 2001) including Foucault (1979; 1980) and
Bourdieu (1978; 1986a; 1992). This is significant given that today the visible institutions of
sport and recreation have a host of productive and consuming subjects whose bodies have
come under the critical and governing gaze of organizational management, political and
social agendas (discussed below). However, given ‘leisure theory has been noticeably silent
about the body’ (Rojek, 1995: 61) there is an epistemological gap about the role embodied
states play in the institutional development and politics of consumption found in the
organizational development of sport and recreation (Hague et al, 2000). While this
‘epistemological gap’ resonates with this study, the institutional development, organisation
and embodied politics of the PSSR is interrelated to modernising processes:
Sport and the body tends to address a wide range of questions related to the
stabilization of modern state formation, industrialization, urbanization,
colonialization and normalization. It draws attention to the place of sport
in…securing ‘our’ sense of ‘selves’ as particular kinds of individuals, people and
nations…including multiple expressions of the normal and abnormal
(Cole et al, 2000: 440).
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As Cole continues the emergence of sport and recreation and the sporting body illustrates
‘modern moral discourses and corporeal norms’. Within the British experience this is
demonstrated from the 16th to 19th centuries. This period provides a series of discursive
events from political and religious tensions to the economic and scientific development that
fundamentally transformed sport and recreation within Britain. More importantly, it
witnessed the functional and ideological use of sport and recreation in governing the body,
thus, setting in motion the progressive civilising and social agendas that resonate today.
Interestingly, the rise of Protestantism, while often advanced as a major factor in the
paradigmatic shift of industrialization and capitalism (discussed below), is often forgotten as
being involved in one of the most overt and political uses of sport and recreation.
The production of the Kings Book of Sports highlighted the power struggles between
protestant Puritanism and the, predominately, catholic English gentry and Kings James1 and
Charles 1. Periodically advanced by James 1st, then later in 1633 by Charles 1st, Ministers
were commanded to declare the Book of Sports from the pulpit. The intention was to have
congregations subjected to a list of, not only appropriate forms of sport and recreation, but
also how they ought to be practiced (Brailsford, 1991). In direct opposition to Sabbath day
observance the political rationale was to divert subjects, or vassals, from the Puritan doctrine
(Hetherington, 1993; Loland, 2000). This event is significant as it provides a foundationally
British example of an attempt to use sport and recreation to direct, contain and normalize
the behaviour of citizens.
Moreover, while unsuccessful, the Book of Sports can be seen as one of the first attempts to
use sport and recreation as a diversionary, substitutionary, or even hegemonic, tactic (Clarke
and Critcher, 1985). Unlike the more subtle policy pronouncements of today the Book of
Sports was an unashamed attempt to articulate and repetitively prescribe a sport and
recreational code. Taken in this sense sport and recreation are used as an ideological vehicle
consciously mobilised and directed for political ends. Nevertheless, in fluidly discursive
post-structuralist terms, the Book of Sports does highlight a repetitively articulated, physical
manual that, in appealing to the performativity of the sovereign (Blackshaw and Crabbe,
2004), attempted to authoritatively inculcate and normalise conduct. It represents one of the
first and clearest British examples of the production of the embodied subject of sport and
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recreation. Of even greater significance was the resistance of the Puritan and
Parliamentarian lobbies. The political appropriation of sport witnessed a counter thrust as
Sabbath day sport and recreational practices came under the gaze of the new power elite.
Activities such as ‘card-playing, football, stoolball, hawking, hunting, fishing’ even ‘leaping’
on the Sabbath ‘were to be prosecuted’ (Brailsford, 1991: 36). These events indicate an early
discursive use of sport and recreation embodied in docile subjects and resistant others. This
use of sport and recreation has ‘never been rivalled in Britain, and seldom anywhere in the
world’ as it demonstrated the clearest ‘ambition of government to control its citizens’ bodily
movements’ (Brailsford, 1991: 36). Nevertheless, the Protestant contribution has been
attributed with an even greater revolutionizing impact that, contingently, further accentuated
the emergence of modern sport and recreation.
Classically, the work of Weber takes centre stage here. Following Weber the inherent
discipline, dedication to work and pursuit of godliness in the value code of Protestantism
provided the most influential impetus for the vision and development of Western capitalism
(Weber, 1976; Poggi, 1983). Typified by Calvinist dedication to a rigorous and rational
approach to work, the Protestant work ethic produced the wealth creation that would bring
economic and social transformation. Building upon scientific and technological innovations
space and time became increasingly segmented and rationalised. Developements spanning
the long sixteenth century, Act of Union (1707) through to the second wave of the industrial
revolution (circa 1750) witnessed Great Britain emerging as an industrialised, urbanised and
entrepreneurial empire. With such transformations, developing market economics and the
emergence of the modern urbanized cityscapes, many of the organic pre-industrial practices
and pastimes faded (Guttmann, 2000). The modern birth of sport and recreation was being
defined within the parameters of work, its more privileged counterpart. More importantly,
developing capitalist economy not only demanded spatial and temporal rationalisation but
also that of embodied practice (Cunningham 1980; Rojek 1995; Henry, 2001). With the
establishment of the factory, mine or mill came the emergence of the contained and
organized working body. The old sport and recreational pastimes were a hindrance as the
capitalist spirit of these new entrepreneurs needed to be matched by a new working and
disciplined body and so they:
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…were anxious to get the most out of their machinery and this in turn meant
instilling regular habits of work into their employees [and]…The clock and factory
hooter were after all no respecters of ancient amusements.
(Holt, 1989: 37)
Like the prison, asylum or clinic these new factories and their organization effected a
disciplinary gaze (Foucault, 1979) defining and segregating the working body as much as the
literal spaces of production. Unlike the softer humanistic managerial processes of today
such working bodies, including those of children, were harshly governed, something which
would later infuriate and inspired Marx (1976):
Children of nine or ten years are dragged from their squalid beds at two, three, or
four in the morning and compelled to work for a bare subsistence until ten, eleven,
or twelve at night, their limbs wearing away, their frames dwindling, their faces
whitening, and their humanity absolutely sinking into a stone-like torpor, utterly
horrible to contemplate. (353-4)
However, the modern capitalist epoch had not only produced, organised and rationalised
time and space, along with new working bodies, but also, simultaneously, produced the
residual time, spaces and embodied states of leisure. As enterprise and economy grew so did
social divisions, consumption patterns and tastes (Brailsford, 1991). In such a climate a
growing gentrified elite looked to distinguish and differentiate their identities from those of
the masses and sport and recreation provided an ideal mechanism. Initial attention was
turned upon the sport and recreational practices that were popular entertainments from the
more communal pre-industrial festivals, fairs and wakes (Cunningham, 1980; Bailey, 1989;
Coakley and Dunning, 2000). Often a concern of the authorities, large gatherings associated
with mass/folk football, wrestling, bare-knuckle boxing and the rather sexualised female
smock races, were frowned upon (Brailsford, 1991). In their common state such activities
were not only signs of unsophistication but also regarded as an outward display of the
uneducated, undisciplined, typically violent conduct and low moral state of the masses
(Scambler, 2005; Young, 2000). Moreover, in times of growing economic activity and
empire, and with the revolutionary events taking place in France and America, the conduct
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of the leisure body of the masses could no longer be tolerated. By 1850, a series of
processes established by the authorities, moralising religious and educational institutions and
the new distinction seeking entrepreneurial middle and upper classes had a transformatory
impact (Holt, 1989).
The gentrified public school system is regarded as central to the development of ‘the formalstructural characteristics of modern sports’ (Guttmann, 2000: 250-251). A key plinth in the
sportization process (Ellias and Dunning, 1986) of shifting from traditional pastimes to
modern sport, public schools appropriated many of the sports of the masses. As part of the
‘cult of athleticism’ and ‘epitomized by the concepts of ‘manliness’ and muscular
Christianity’ (Scambler, 2005: 36) public schools set about systematically rationalizing,
codifying and organizationally governing sporting practices:
The rationalization of sports took many forms. As the passion for sports spread
throughout English society, rules were codified…[also]…Rules were useless without
the means to enforce them. Two of the most important organizations in modern
sport were the Jockey Club (1752) and the Marylebone Cricket Club (1787).
(Guttmann, 2000: 251)
More importantly, while reflecting the rationalizing tide of the times, this process heralded
opportunities for gentlemanly distinction, promulgation and ‘means of fostering the virtues
of self-discipline, deferred gratification, teamwork and the subordination of individual
interest to the greater collective good’ (Coalter, 1990a: 7). The newly codified and organised
sports were virtue and value code transmitters as they had taken:
…the scions of the ruling classes absorbed a uniquely British ‘bourgeois ideology’
and rehearsed the practices that were necessary in order to integrate successfully into
the social order. It was in games primarily that one learned how to be a gentleman
and through them the model of gentlemanly behaviour was exemplified and spread.
(Hargreaves, 1986: 43)
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Following Hargreaves, the newly rationalised, codified and governed modern sporting forms
are encrypted with the cultural codes ‘necessary’, not only for the successful reading and
participation in sport, but also are essential markers of a gentleman within society. Sport in
this instance plays a culturally utilitarian and privileging role, being of and for the gentrified.
Sport not only transmits the ‘bourgeois ideology’, it demands this code for its appropriate
participation. The true gentleman is distinctively revealed through the embodied operation
and deployment of the sporting code. Moreover, a panoptican process is engendered as
gentlemen not only play out and are conscious of the sporting gentleman but also
consequentially are directed to those without or deficient in the sporting cultural code of
gentlemen.
However, whilst ever keen to promulgate this ideological code and civilise the masses, the
gentry were not so keen when it came to inter-class competition. Labouring classes such as
oarsmen were excluded from sporting competition on grounds that they were professionals.
This was in contrast to the value code of a gentleman, which was resolutely amateur
(Heywood et al, 1993). The physical prowess of labouring classes, the incorporated capital
of their habitus (which would accelerate competitive success or records and so attainment of
symbolic derivative) was not the cultural cashe of a ‘gentleman’. While this was not always
the case (e.g. Amateur Athletics Club) an ‘amateur was a gentleman’ and so defined ‘by
listing the universities, schools and institutions that nurtured these superior beings, ending
with the absolute exclusion of tradesmen, labourers, artisans or working mechanics’
(Lovesey, cited in Scambler, 2005: 39). This plays well with Bourdieu’s (1986) distinction
between gentlemen and scholar where the amateur is the gentleman endowed with the decoding cultural capital rather than physical capital of the potential labouring scholar.
Following the gentrified appropriation and development of sport a series of influential,
although incongruent, legislative and philanthropic voluntary organizations emerged to effect
a governing gaze upon the labouring masses. This was known as the Rational Recreation
movement (Coalter, 1990a; Heywood et al, 1993). Premised upon a merit good ideology,
social welfare outweighed the choices of the individual, which were perceived to be misjudged. However, rather than eradicate popular pastimes the Rational Recreation movement
was driven by a rational substitutionary agenda. The intention was to replace the violent,
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morally debased recreations of the masses for more moral and wholesome alternatives.
Through the substitution of wholesome activities the labouring masses would undergo a
form of cultural re-education (Bull, Hoose and Weed, 2003). The likes of Sunday Schools,
Mechanic Institutes, Working Men’s Clubs, choral societies and brass bands were classic
rational recreation approaches. However, while these ‘philanthropic societies’ were not
totally successful in ‘their civilising task, creating a fund of working class hostility (among
men and women) to moralising intrusion’ the ‘real success was the ‘leisure explosion of the
1880s’ (Clarke and Critcher, 1985: 64-65).
By this time authorities, through a permissive legislative framework, were purchasing land
and developing parks, museums, libraries, baths and washhouses. These ‘facilities’
represented both the early, if not reluctant, manifestations of state provision and social
concerns over moral welfare, health, economic productivity and crime (Hargreaves, 1984;
Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Henry, 1995; 2001). Although disjointed, the Rational Recreation
movement collectively represented an attempt to civilise ‘docile bodies’: controlled, healthy
and regulated bodies’ (Cole, et al, 2004: 213). Of course, as mentioned above, such attempts
produced a resistance. However, the cultural elitism of the rational recreational movement
facilitated and flamed such resistance due to their habitus and inherent codes of cultural
taste.
It is ironic that while many of the social and moral elite viewed leisure activities as a means
to ‘civilise the working class’ and ‘remake society, to halt the drift towards atomization’,
many facilities excluded these class factions or ‘improper persons’, often by charging
(Cunningham, 1980: 28). Also, the ‘normative purposes’ of such provision was ‘reflected in
the rules and regulations defining the ‘proper’ use of facilities’ (Coalter, 1990a: 6). While
such facilities were evidence of ‘the principle of public provision of leisure’ (Clarke and
Critcher, 1985: 65) they not only prescribed the content of activity but also the
acknowledgement, assimilation and practice of codes of embodied conduct. Therefore, the
physical materiality of facilities and leisure practices advocated therein, reflected not only the
cultured and civilised tastes of the social and moral elite but also conveyed distinction.
Ironically, the distinction of place and practice then can be read as uncomfortably excluding
or alienating those groups such provision is directed towards. This reading and exclusivity
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of place is not restricted to the early provision as ‘the nineteenth century ideology of rational
recreation lives on’ (Roberts, 2004: 53). Also, in highlighting the racial, class and gendered
skewed in sports participation, Heywood (1994: 128) reinforces this point out that the ‘ideal’
and values associated with the civilised ‘gentlemanly conduct’ of ‘late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries...is still reflected in the rules of most sports’. This is not just an academic
observation but has been reflected in the social commentary of Irvine Welsh, when
highlighting the experience of his character (Spud) on entering the Central Library in
Edinburgh, exemplifies this:
Aya, ah goes through the big wooden doors n suddenly ma hert wis gaun: bang bang
bang. It felt tae ays like ah wis breakin in, man, like some cat hud rammed a load ay
amyl nitrate up muh beak. Ah felt aw faint, ken, like ah wis gaunnae pass oot or
something, jist crumple tae the deck oan the spot…So ah wis shaky, man, jist pure
shaky. Then when the security cat in the uniform comes ower, ah jist sortay pure
panics. Ah,m thinking thit ah’m gubbed here; aw naw, man, ah’m huckled here
awready and ah’ve noeven done nowt, wisnae even gaunnae dae nowt, jist look at
some books…ah could tell thit this boy kens what ah am: tea leaf, junky, schemie,
ghetto child…ah jist sortay ken, man, cause this boy’s a Jambo Mason, a rotary-club
gadge, ah mean ye kin jist tell.
(Welsh, 2003: 95)
Although extensive this quote is worth commenting upon as it illustrates the embodied and
reflexively negative experience the subject (Spud) encounters within social space. Whether
imaginary or not, it is real to the subject whose lack of capital is not detached but associated
with identities formed and played out in other social spaces. Spud enters, moves through
and engages with the library space and those subjects therein as an embodied totality; one
that interprets and integrates the space and places of the past with the present ‘they
encounter, embody, recall similar places and trigger other experiences’ (Crouch 2000: 71).
Welsh illustrates embodied culture, the habitus, suffering and domination felt through a lack
of capital. The character of Spud is aware both of his lack but also interprets a reaction,
possible grounded in previous experiences, culminating in the ‘ah mean ye kin jist tell’.
Discourse is found in the body triggered or productively played out in the material facilities,
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practical content and embodied competition of this public leisure site. Most interestingly,
just as modern provision conveys a historical legacy, normalized prescription or code of
governance, Spud, simultaneously acknowledges resistant or other status and, by entering to
‘jist look at some books’, a wish to self-govern. He is in a catch-22 situation, a fish out of
water keen to fit in but unable to do so due to his cultural disability.
As disparate provision and practices of early civilising agendas emerge and were resisted they
represent the discursive biopower of a privileged and cultured elite. In enlightened and
progressive times the embodied assimilation or resistance to such discourse has not been
distracted or derailed. On the contrary, the attempts to shape and govern both the working
and leisure body have intensified. Unsurprisingly, the embodied practices of the working
class body would vex the state and continue to be the focus of attention:
The concern of both state and the middle class with the moral welfare of the
working class contained an ambiguity which is also present in contempory social
policy for leisure – a humanitarian concern for social welfare and the quality of life
was combined with a class-based concern with social control.
(Coalter, 1990a: 7)
The discursive cut and thrust within, and between, industrial, institutional, economic and
social transformations between the 17th and 19th centuries witnessed the normalisation,
bureaucratic organization and embodied production of modern sport and recreation
(Guttmann, 2000). However, while sport and recreation within Britain has been politicised
there was never clear and coordinated policy agendas linking central and local government
with voluntary and philanthropic organizations (Bull et al 2003; Horne, 2006). Nevertheless,
framed within this historical backdrop, provision and, more importantly, state provision
increasingly developed. The next section focuses on this ad hoc process, the institutional
development of the PSSR and its ambiguous policy environment.
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Sport and Recreation for All: welfarism and the PSSR
According to Clarke and Critcher (1985) capitalist economy and the ideological agendas
represented by the new entrepreneurial gentry, muscular Christians and rational
recreationalist reflected a ‘continuous struggle between dominant and subordinate, groups’
(49). In enlightened and industrial times the working, and later leisure, body had become the
subject of various gazes of governance. The rationalization and segregation of space and
place produced embodied states scrutinised in terms of their productivity, health, moral
virtue and civilising behaviour. However, while the state, religious, voluntary and
philanthropic organizations attempted to produce and govern embodied states, there was no
clear and coordinated set of practices and policies. Embodied states had become central to
class ‘struggle’, being rationalized, codified and disciplined through the practices of the elite
and educated classes, but their production was more a process of disjointed paternalism and
philanthropy than through strategic design (Henry, 2001). Nevertheless, the industrialising
effects and cumulative impacts of permissive legislation, philanthropy and voluntary
organizations had produced a vast array of leisure provision. Even though central
government had been unwilling to directly develop provision legislative directions in work,
health and education had produced a ‘hotchpotch’ of provision at local level and ‘by the
1930s there was extensive public sector provision’ (Roberts, 2004: 43).
Political developments in the liberal and labour movements had not only grown to challenge
embodied exploitation of work but cries for equality and demands for better life chances
were turning to leisure. For some time the conspicuous consumption and celebrated leisure
lifestyles (Veblen, 1912) of aristocrats and the upper middle classes provided a ‘sense of
identity’ and allowed ‘different status groups to establish their position or rank in contrast or
distinction to others’ (Horne, 2006: 121). However, this had not gone unoticed as such selfevident embodied differentiation between the classes became a target for reformers. Social
reforms were demanded that looked outside the traditions of work, education or health. The
state began to get directly involved with the leisure life of the working classes. While the
establishment of the Forestry Commission in 1917 represented a tentative organizational
step the Physical Training and Recreation Act (1937), although concerned with
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unemployment and the nations fitness for war, was the first ‘landmark legislation in terms of
leisure’ (Bull, et al 2003: 170).
With the Labour landslide of 1945, and echoing Bevin’s belief that leisure was a right to be
enjoyed by all, the Attlee government began the long road of extending welfarism into the
leisure lifestyles of the masses. Although incremental and piecemeal, this government laid
the political foundations for the development of the PSSR. From this post-war period and
extending through to the mid-1970s a general philosophy of social democratic consensus
reigned, which translated into an implicit democratising policy direction that would insipidly
spread and develop into the various areas, or sub-fields, of leisure (Bramham and Henry,
1985; Henry, 1993). Essentially, and ironically, the egalitarianism of social democracy, in
championing choice and opportunity for all would find that, in opening the Pandora’s box of
leisure to its citizens, free choice and expression was more about normalizing prescription,
self-disciplining constraint and rationalized control. The philosophy of social democracy did
not enter the world of leisure objectively but arrived with a cultured gaze and set of
embodied tastes that would seek to direct, and later manage, the leisure practices of the
nation (Bourdieu, 1988; Jarvie and Maguire, 1994, Eitzen, 2000).
While concerned that everyone should have a ‘right’ to leisure the state had clear cultured
tastes and did not sanction or indulge just any form of leisure. This was most clearly
represented with the establishment of a quasi-autonomous, non-government organization,
the Arts Council, in 1946. Rather than celebrate the cultural diversity of class groups, a
democratisation of culture policy that sought to articulate traditional, elite or high culture
was promoted (Heywood et al, 1995). Again, and still a bone of contention, higher art forms
were perceived as educational and uplifting. The political left, champions of the working
classes and developers of the new welfare state still gazed upon the embodied development
of the masses with the civilising concern and tastes of bourgeois ideology (Hargreaves, 1986;
1987). While the field of the arts represented a clear and direct expression of the gaze of the
state upon the condition of the leisure body this was to insensify and spread with the
development of countryside recreation and sport.
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Unlike the Arts Council and creation of a national parks network through the National Parks
and Access to Countryside Act of 19494 urbanized sport and recreation had to wait a while
longer. This wait for sport and recreation to catch up is interesting. For while participation
rates in sport and recreation continue to receive critical attention (Roberts, 2004) both the
Arts and Countryside have traditionally been the bastion of class struggle and skewed
participation (Sidaway, Coalter, Newby, Scott and Rennick, 1986; Shoard, 1987; Urry, 1995).
Nevertheless, it was not until the Wolfenden Report of 1960 that modern and urbanised
sport clearly appeared on the political radar. This provided the impetus for the
establishment of the Advisory Sports Council in 1965 and later in 1972, through royal
charter, the Sports Council. Now segregated into Sport UK and the sports councils of the
other home countries, furthering fragmentation between the sites of public leisure provision,
the ‘rationale’ for the Sports Council was premised on ‘the emergence of youth subcultures,
which it was felt, could be directed away from anti-social tendencies’ (Bull et al, 2003: 171).
As in the past social control, as well as moralising agendas are themes that persist. The
historical perception and belief in the universal benefits of sport and recreation has long
been a legitimating tool for public provision (Roberts, 2004). This continues to filter into
present policy (discussed more below) as sport and recreation is used as a diversion from
crime (Taylor, Crow, Irvine and Nichols, 1999) of tagged with transformatory potential in
education or health (Stewart, 1998).
Nevertheless, the establishment of the Sports Council brought sport into political alignment
with the Arts and Countryside. Working with the legacy of permissive legislation, and in
part by demand and civic aspiration, the new Sports Council began funding and adding to
existing local authority provision. With the Heath governement (1970-74) Conservative zeal
drove the reorganization of local government. Under the Local Governemnt Act 1972
(England and Wales) and its Scottish equivelent (1973), two-tier systems were not only
established but, with surplus resources, many new unifed leisure departmens emerged
(Henry, 2001). With old and new build, previously disparate provision (such as parks,
labaries, museums, swimming pools and sport and recreation centres) was brought under
new leisure departments (Torkildsen, 1999; Henry, 2001). More importantly, such
This did not include Scotland. Ironically, regarded as possessing Britain’s most beautiful landscapes and
the first political target for access, Scotland did not receive enabling legislation until the new millennium
with the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000.
4
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reorganization and facilitisation coincided with the landmark White Paper Sport and Recreation
(DoE, 1975). With another swing to a Labour government, this paper asserted sport and
recreation as a ‘need’, which witnessed public sector provision becoming part of institutional
welfare and ‘part of the general fabric of social services’ (DoE, 1975). With this
reorganisation, and new leisure departments, developing ‘leisure provision’ had become ‘a
beneficiary of the rush of spending’ (Coalter, 1990a: 14). Although varied through the
country the physical materialisation and institution of a public sector had arrived (Aitchison,
1997).
Given that these new unified leisure services were ‘related to the social project of the welfare
state, rather than specifically to physical structures’ (Henry, 2001: 149) the institutional status
of sport and recreation was gaining in credibility. As with other areas of public sector
provision sport and recreation had become part of the institutional ‘fabric’ of welfare and
was now physically manifest. With a new-found institutional authority a democratising and
universalising cry of Sport for All was advanced (McIntosh and Charlton, 1985). Policies of
recreational welfare were adopted with sport and recreation participation presumed to be the
new badges of citizenship (Coalter, Long and Duffield, 1988; Coalter, 1998). By uncritically
presuming, and confusing, citizenship with participation, the new leisure services set upon a
reproductive and persistent path that sees society in leisure (Coalter, 2000). Whilst
resonating with past fears of the masses, particularly the youth, much of this was associated
with a welfare heritage that appeared at a time of economic gloom, high unemployment
social and inner city unrest (DoE, 1977; Guttmann, 2000). Sport and recreation presented as
a ‘need’ and, thus, part of citizenship suddenly becomes heralded as a panacea for social ills
being functionally targeted as a means to ameliorate the externalities of ‘boredom and urban
frustration…hooliganism and delinquency among young people’. Again the paternalistic
state was focused upon the ‘need to provide for people to make the best use of their leisure’
(DoE, 1975: 2). Coalter, while reminding us that such an approach and equity of
opportunity was ideologically naïve as it ignored ‘social class and gender differences’, points
to the automatic ‘othering’ involved the citizenship process:
However, once it was accepted that access to recreational opportunities was a right
of citizenship, continuing inequalities on participation led to the definition of certain
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groups a ‘recreationally deprived’ and to the production of policies of ‘recreational
welfare’.
(Coalter, 1990a: 15)
Not only would sport and recreation ameliorate the social problems but also, with inclusive
participation a sign of citizenship, the recreationally deprived, and potential deviant, is
produced. Provision and policy focuses become self-legitimating as the recreationally
deprived groups, by their absence, are objectified as the ‘other’. The ‘other’ now produced
must come under the gaze of recreational welfare policies, and needs to be assimilated into
that normalized category of citizen. Moreover, given the deprived status and assumed
destructive potential of the other, the association of citizenship with participation in the new
public leisure services was both bolstered and justified on the premise that participation
would benefit both the other and society (Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Roberts, 2004).
Paternalistic cultured tastes, while contingent and ideologically naïve, confirm ‘the historical
evidence highlighting that social engineering, rather than social citizenship, has underpinned
much leisure policy’ (McPherson and Reid, 2001: 2). Of course, such social engineering was
rapidly rationalised under the guise of benevolent utilitarianism.
The recreational welfare policies that emerged out of an era of social democratic consensus,
and the extension of citizenship into leisure, produced categories of subjects, and so targets,
for sport and recreational control (Eitzen, 2000). The justification for such policies, such as
assumed economic obstacles, have proved false (Coalter, 1993), and produced criticism that
such approaches were not only evidentially barren but also were never opened to
‘widespread political, public or even theoretical debate’ (Coalter, 1998: 27). Even in wake of
economic depression and a policy shift from recreation welfare to recreational as welfare (i.e.
sport centres and services as opposed to jobs, better education or housing) claims to reach,
include and inculcate the civilising norms and so produce the ‘citizen’ persisted. As Roberts
(2004) laments, while such paternalistic production has been ‘tested to destruction’, the
‘social control arguments still appear to be an excellent way of unlocking public funds’ (53).
The politics of paternalism not only historically lies behind the professionalizing process it
also, working with policy communities, is used to legitimate present professional claims
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(McNamee, Sheridan and Buswell, 2000). However, this is best left here as the following
chapter has been given over to such processes.
While this section has laid the trail and issues that emanate from post-war social democracy
and the building blocks of the PSSR, the election in 1979 of the neo-liberal government of
Margaret Thatcher brought public services into critical relief. Specifically, the purpose,
rhetoric of policy pronouncements, social remit and management of public provision was to
undergo a seismic shift with the policy of Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT). This
final section examines this policy and the managerial approach it spawned. For it not only
reoriented perceptions and attitudes, with the citizen being replaced by the customer, it also
brought the policy reaction of Best Value Regime (BVR) with the New Labour government
of 1997. Therefore, while this section highlighted the policy approach emanating from the
period of social democratic consensus the following section examines the neo-liberal policy
swing to the right and on to, arguably, its realignment through New Labour’s BVR.
Panoptican Policy and Embodied Production: from the gaze of CCT to BVR
Given sport and recreation had been born out of a series of disjointed historical, ideological
movements, voluntary organizations and legislative traditions, public sector provision has
never been systematically and politically championed. Even with post-war welfarism, and
the civilising or substitutionary medium of leisure policy, the PSSR has never carried the
political weight of health or education. With the segregated sectors weakening the political
standing of the public sector, no party has pursued nationalising or privatising agendas.
Rather, it is because ‘public leisure services have developed incrementally over the last 100
years or so’ that ‘all the parties have always accepted a mixed economy of leisure’ (Roberts,
2004: 47). Therefore, while formally included and institutionalised as part of the welfare
state the development of provision and embodied practices were not subject to the same
level of scrutiny as those of health or education.
While sporting facilities and embodied subjects have a historical tradition they have not
enjoyed sustained state recognition and support. Although today planning and development
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of sport and recreational provision tap a body of expertise as evidenced by the Facilities
Planning Model (sportscotland, 2004) the material form or physical facilitization of sport and
recreation was guided by the Local Government Act 1972. Here planning, influence and
development was, predominately, through educated elites, paternalistic associations and
pressure groups:
Facility planning was organised at local…with the involvement of local councils,
educational authorities, local sports clubs and other voluntary and statutory interests
(HMSO, 1983: 14)
As a new public area, and with its global representation making it an area where everyone is
an expert, sport and recreation was more malleable than its educational or health
counterparts. This more accessible and amorphous production and governance of the PSSR
and its embodied subjects is significant on two counts. Firstly, it plays a key role in
professionalizing aspirations and claims of the PSSR (discussed later). Secondly, and of
interest here, with the political transition and emergence of neo-liberalism the PSSR and its
embodied practices would be increasingly objectified, normalised and moulded.
With its commitment to an unbridled market, small government and non-interventionism
the neo-liberal ideological position of Thatcherism viewed public sector leisure provision
with suspicion (Henry, 1990). Viewed by Thatcherism as blurring ‘need’ and ‘want’ and an
area of free choice and expression there was real concern over the future of public leisure
provision (Bennington and White, 1988). However, although such concerns were fuelled by
the precarious ‘statutory base for most local leisure provision’, weakened unions or ‘coherent
client or consumer lobby’ (Bull, et al 2003: 201) the Thatcher government were focused on
the need for economic efficiency. Central government would no longer tolerate the
inefficiency, poor management, lack of accountability and excessive subsidy found in local
government services (Lister, 1995). With the production of the Audit Commission report
(1989), local authority leisure services were not only criticised for their lack of economic
efficiency and poor customer satisfaction but also for not having ‘a clear idea of what their
role in sport and recreation should be and have not reconciled their social and financial
objectives’ (7). Basically, given that ‘public sector facilities were failing to meet the needs of
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the general population, and specifically of disadvantaged groups’ (Henry, 2001: 152) the
position of the PSSR was severely challenged. This paved the way for the introduction of
compulsory competitive tendering (CCT)5. From 1992, local authorities would have to
compete, in contract management style, for their own leisure services. CCT represented a
three-fold assault by neo-liberal central government on local government services. Politically
it aimed to ‘reduce the powers and scale of local government’, economically it attempted to
curtail and ‘reduce spiralling costs’, and or organizationally the aim was to remedy
inefficiencies perceived as ‘a result of bureaucratic giganticism’ (Haywood, 1994: 45-46).
Although fears of privatisation were mis-placed, given most tenders were won in-house,
leisure services departments were split into a client/monitoring-contract/administrating
structure (Ravenscroft, 1993; Coalter, 1995).
However, what CCT did was to engender a market ideology and ‘new managerialsim’
(Coalter, 1990b: 156) with policies of economy and efficiency replacing those of social
effectiveness. Capacity would be maximised, service streamlined and made more responsive
to customer demand increased whilst management would develop peripheral workforces,
rationalise work practices and trim the conditions of staff (Coalter, 1990b; Ravenscroft,
1998). Neo-liberal managerialism had encouraged ‘a strategic shift from producer-led to
customer-orientated services’ (Stevens and Green, 2002: 126). Social democratic consensus
was revised through the market resulting in a mixed economy for public leisure services
(Coalter, 1990a; Henry and Bramham, 1990). Old recreational welfare policies legitimating
the PSSR on the social grounds of equity, deprivation and citizenship had moved in favour
of market economics, efficiency, customer demand and satisfaction. As Bull et al (2003)
point out the managerialist legacy of CCT produced competitive managers dedicated to
managing facilities and services ‘in a manner that emphasised commercial goals, financial
objectives and economies’ (206). In placing a policy spotlight upon the PSSR, CCT would
produce a level of governance that not only challenged the purpose and social remit of the
PSSR but also one that would translate into the embodied management and operational
practices of public leisure provision.
5
Although initially introduced to other serevices as early as 1980 leisure services were not targeted for
CCT until provision was made via the Local Governemnt Act 1988 (Competition in Sport and Leisure
Facilities Order 1989)
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With CCT leisure departments were compelled to review practices and, although often
poorly done, produce leisure strategies along with contract specifications and monitoring
procedures. Overall, with the implementation of CCT, the PSSR was to undergo both a
philosophical and managerial overhaul (Nicholas, 1996). In light of the Audit Commission
(1989) attempts to secure equity and increasing participation through strategies of low cost
provision were challenged as ineffective (Coalter, 1993). As Ravenscroft (1993) highlighted,
rather than reduce barriers to participation, such strategies merely augmented and subsidised
the leisure activities of the traditional, high participating middle classes. Armed with this the
neo-liberals had ‘evidence that universal subsidies’ were not only inefficient but were
generating ‘artificially high levels of demand among groups who place a high personal value
of the activities’ (Stevens and Green, 2002: 127). The more market facing ‘managerialism’
advocated through CCT was seen as a potential remedy as it ‘would stress increased income
from facility charges and a reduction of public subsidies’ (Coalter, 1990b: 156).
Managerialism was fuelled by an ‘entrepreneurial discourse’, one that believed in the
universal application of rationality, which promised the ‘best use of public resources based
on the deployment of calculative power’ (Henry, 2001: 155).
Rather than homogenous subsidies, ironically with the non-participating poor taxed to fund
the leisure lifestyles, the affluent middle classes, pricing and programming would be socially
targeted. Inherent within, and an often forgotten aspect of CCT, is the control and
monitoring client-side that ensures that the market managerialism does not go unchecked
and social objectives ignored (Coalter, 1995). The translation of neo-liberal philosophy into
the policy of CCT did produce a policy switch and managerialist approach to the PSSR but,
if annoyingly for many contract managers, a commitment to social objectives remained.
With clients monitoring the performance indicators, outcomes and outreach programmes,
managers were held to account as to their ability to attract and retain non-participating
groups within the community (Bull et al, 2003). While this tempers Ravenscroft’s (1996;
1998) ideological, practical and economic criticisms of CCT, this does not mean that social
objectives were successfully achieved. Stevens and Green (2002), in addressing this ‘claim
that CCT prevented the achievement of desired social goals’, argue that this was more about
the ‘implementation of the policy by local authorities than the policy of CCT itself’ (130).
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Nevertheless, CCT had introduced a market consumer-focus into the PSSR. Ineffective
policies, mass subside and poor services were challenged and changed by managerialist
approaches. With the client/contract split, managerialism became embodied in contract
managers as it not only ‘changed the that public sector facility managers thought’ but also
how they practiced management as ‘hard-edged ‘macho’ management styles were employed
in imposing tough decisions on downsizing and flexiblising the workforce’ (Henry, 2001:
156). The decentralised partnership working approaches of community recreation
(Haywood and Henry, 1986) were eroded and replaced by a managerialism that was
translated, engrained and enacted in the post-fordist operational practices of service delivery
(Bull et al, 2003). Neo-liberal government had not only applied a transformatory gaze of
governance to the structural form, function and focus of the PSSR but also brought and
accentuated its embodied discursivity. With continuing low participation among target or
minority groups, leaving the efficiencies, subsidised provision, quality improvements and
service developments of CCT to be enjoyed by traditional groups, social objectives appear
neglected and continue to vex the PSSR (Aitchison, 2002; Roberts, 2004). The dilemma of
the PSSR to reconcile market imperatives with social objectives and the citizen/customer or
customer/citizen (Coalter, 1998) position would be accentuated with the arrival of New
Labour in 1997.
Prior to their landslide victory in 1997 New Labour’s had targeted CCT in their manifesto.
Critical of service quality, questionable efficiency claims, demoralised staff and the overall
confrontational process of CCT (Bull, et al, 2003) New Labour published its alternative in
the White Paper Modernising Local Government: In Touch with Local People (DETR,
1999). As the title indicates a Best Value (BV), in removing the element of compulsion, was
concerned with developing not just efficient but also effective public services that would
communicate and respond better to the needs of those most local to public service
provision. BV was a new broom of New Labour and all authorities, regardless of political
affiliation, were targeted for BV:
Would succeed where CCT had failed. It would reach into the darkest corners of
‘old Labour’ authorities, it would control costs, constrain producer interests, refocus
local parties on the delivery of services and provide and inspection infrastructure.
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(Entwistle and Laffin, 2005: 207)
Citing the mantra of continuous improvement, local government was asked to undertake a
BV review of service provision and practice and ensure the four Cs. Public services were to
be critically examined and asked to ‘challenge why, how and by whom’ of service provision,
provide ‘comparison’ of performance, ‘consult local tax payers, service users’ and, finally, adopt
‘fair and open competition’ (DETR, 1999: 6). Of these ‘challenge’ and ‘consult’ are the most
probing, for as Filkin (1997) points out if public services fail the test of being ‘better on the
ground’ and ‘fail to meet the needs of local communities’ the question arises as to ‘why they
should exist’ (41). This not only invokes a call away form the ‘traditional ‘standards’
approach used by most local authorities’ for ‘a better matching of people’s leisure
needs…based on community involvement’ (Dower cited by Bull et al., 2003: 247) but, more
specifically, to design services that ‘engage’ communities and ‘relate directly to individual and
community identity’ (DCMS. 1999: 31). The implementation of BV resonates with the
scepticism that produced CCT. However, in attempting to review and remedy the flaws of
CCT, New Labour’s BV inherited, the problems CCT not only attempted to address but,
with the transition CCT engendered from social democratic consensus to mixed economy
has, arguably, accentuated the dilemma of the PSSR.
The problem with BV is that ‘despite operational differences, in ideological terms Best Value
shares much in common with the CCT regime’ (Richardson, Tailby, Danford, Stewart and
Upchurch, 2005: 713). The BV approach was driven by Third Way political pragmatism,
keen on governmental modernization through partnership, with collectivism re-established
through the active citizenship communities of consumption (Giddens, 1998). However,
given that ‘the new Labour Government has stressed the importance of civil society and the
need for citizens to become more involved with their local communities’ (Bull, et al: 247), in
the case of the PSSR, attention turns again to the involvement or participation of local
communities in their most local public services. Again the gaze of governance is spotlighted
on the ‘poorer communities’, their ‘involvement’ (Giddens, 1998: 80), which brings the PSSR
into critical focus. Nevertheless, the move to BV was not the death of CCT’s managerialism
but an attempt to herald a shift from hard macho management to the feminising, people
over process practices, of transformational ‘new managerialism’:
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The repeal of CCT and its replacement by the Best Value regime should not be seen
simply as the replacement of a New Right policy approach; it also implied a
modification of the approach to new managerialism, a rejection of the
unidimensional nature of competitive management. Unlike competitive or contract
management, corporate goals (social or environmental as well as economic) were said
to be at the centre of the process establishing which policy solutions had given best
value.
(Henry, 2001: 157)
Therefore, as BV places the consultation and involvement of service delivery staff alongside
that of local communities (Whitfield, 2001) it provides a rounded perspective into the
problems of achieving market/social objectives. Essentially, BV reignites the questions over
those non-participating communities or lower socio-economic groups. BV represents an
attempt to address the excesses and global expansion of 1980s neo-liberalism and the preeminence of the consumer citizen typified in the movie Wall Street where Gordon Gekko
asserts ‘greed…is good, greed is right, greed works’ (Wall Street, 1987). In parodying a form
of Handy’s (1995) unselfish, but essentially selfish management, BV emphasises the ‘Blairite’
conception of active citizenship’ (Houlihan, 2001: 8). In line with New Labour rhetoric BV
seeks to target the reality of those defined as the socially excluded:
a shorthand label for what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a
combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes,
poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown.
(Scottish Executive, 1999: 5)
Interestingly, this definition reflects New Labour’s more holistic understanding that
exclusion is a multi-faceted problem. It is this view that has implicated the PSSR in other
policy directions such as health, education and crime (Stewart, 1998; DCMS, 2002;
sportscotland, 2003; Scottish Executive, 2003). Rather than sport for sports sake the
excluded, more deprived communities are of greater concern and, with echoes of the past,
find themselves the targets or beneficiaries of the positive aspects that can be gleaned from
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sport and recreation (Long and Sanderson, 2000; Houlihan & White, 2002; Collins, 2003).
Under the New Labour policy agenda the paternalistic use of sport and recreation has been
affirmed. Although its uses for reducing, or diverting, youth from crime or attracting and reengaging the educationally under-achieving are debatable (Scottish Executive, 2000; Kirk,
2004), the social, psychological and physical benefits health agenda provide a firmer
foundation (Scottish Executive, 2003; Donaldson, 2004). Of course before any benefits can
be gleaned the participation of the excluded, renowned for low participation (DoE, 1989;
Coalter, 1998; Roberts, 2004), needs to be secured. Interestingly, the gusto witnessed in
pursuing these holistic policy agendas needs to be tempered as embodied transformation is a
long-term process going thorough stages of contemplation to change. Gaining sufficient
compliance from excluded groups to produce sustainable changes is difficult, which ‘point
towards a niche rather than foundational role for sport within health policy’ (Roberts and
Brodie, 1999: 141).
Nevertheless, these health, education and crime associations in particular, and movement to
join-up the public services, point to an intensifying gaze of governance into the totality of
everyday life. In pursuing the ‘promotion of active citizenship as a replacement for the
active consumerism of the Conservative period’ Houlihan, 2001: 8) work, leisure and lifestyle
have become inseparable under new New Labour. The benevolent concern for health has
found the ‘judges of normality’ (Foucault, 1977: 304) insipidly deploying their objectify and
normalise power in the home, sport centre or organization (Grant and Brisbin, 1992). This
governmental benevolence is now matched with the ethical organization and the public
sector has not missed out, as employee health and lifestyle choices become part of an overall
concern for abuse, intimidation and workplace violence (Budd, 2001). However, whilst
lifestyle health is a clear issue for workplace violence, which is seen to impact upon the
physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of employees, it is a phenomenon ignored within
the PSSR. Traditionally workplace violence (including verbal and physical intimidation) has
been restricted and studied within the PSSR’s more powerful counterparts of health and
education. Many governmental and national advisory/training organisations have
deliberately targeted health and education sectors, which now employ defensive, technical
and rational coping strategies for employees (HSE, 1996; Robbins, 1998; Krechowiecka,
2002). However, whilst these public service professionals have been deemed most at risk
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(Geldman, 2002) no spotlight has been placed on the PSSR. As will be seen in this study
this is a real issue for the embodied working reality of staff.
Nevertheless, whilst workplace violence resonates with joined-up policy and other areas of
the public sector the association with health, educational re-engagement and crime reduction
agendas raises new and important issues for leisure or PSSR. These new policy agendas
linking exclusion with health, education and crime provide a window of reinvention for the
PSSR. Moreover, this holistic view of exclusion can be seen to aid challenges to postmodern
interpretations that view participation within the PSSR as acts of privatised choice
consumption (Bramham, 1994; Henry, 1995). Exclusion here, rather than fall into the mire
of structural constraints or agency choices, is more complex involving a host of interrelated
issues. More importantly, conceptualised as an amalgam of individual problems associated
with health, housing, education, employment or even sport (Oppenheim and Harker, 1996)
exclusion is firmly an embodied issue. BV, and its association with social exclusion critically
refocuses market/social remit dilemma of the PSSR. Choices to participate, to consume, or
not, are more complex than simple economics:
the ‘defense of welfare’ position is often based on over-simplified assumptions about
the nature of constraints on participation in sport and cultural activities. Although it
must be acknowledged that entrance charges are one component of the participation
decision…they have a relatively small influence. Cultural capital is more important
than financial capital and entrance charges constitute only one element of the
‘composite price’ associated with participation.
(Coalter, 1998: 30)
As highlighted earlier Coalter has been critical of public leisure and its normative citizenship
associations. However, his recognition of ‘cultural capital’ and the notion of a ‘composite
price’ in participation points to the embodiment of exclusion. In advocating a holistic
review BV places the PSSR front and centre with those other welfare services as it asks
whether ‘leisure can play a key part in enhancing quality of life…in a range of policy related
areas’. Of course, while ‘this is a challenge that local leisure service provision has always
faced’ (Bull, et al., 2003: 209) leisure services are afforded an opportunity surf on the back of
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these new policy agendas and readdress old social remit issues within a wider exclusionary
context and, more importantly, from an embodied perspective. Sport and recreation is now
paternalistically championed (McNamee, et al: 2000) as a gateway service providing hope for
‘stigmatised neighbourhoods’ and young people in particular who express a concern to
develop ‘their relationships outside their neighbourhoods and their desire to be included in a
world beyond the community’ (Scottish Executive, 2000: 15). With this BV, and the notion
of social exclusion and its association to other elements of social policy, may allow the PSSR
to reinvent itself and reaffirm its professional value status to those communities they exist to
serve. Given the centrality of professionalisation to the PSSR the following chapter
examines the professionalizing process and, in light of the above, its applicability and impact
upon public leisure.
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5.0
Professionalism and the PSSR: an old paradox
Introduction
Having critically considered the historical factors behind the construction and institutional
development of management and sport and recreation section this chapter concentrates
upon the professionalizing process, its politics and embodied implications when applied to
public leisure services or, specifically, the PSSR. Framed within past professionalizing
traditions it focuses upon attempts to differentiate and establish the PSSR as a profession in
its own right (Laffin and Young, 1994; Coalter, 1998; Houlihan, 2001). It highlights the
traditional route of professionalism, emergence and formation of governing bodies and
construction of bodies of knowledge and training that, being embodied and performed, are
seen to constitute and legitimate the PSSR professional. Here the discourses of management
and sport and recreation (discussed above) are assembled, internalised and bodily performed,
which allow PSSR, similar to other semi-professionals, to exert claims to professional status.
However, given its history, welfarist position and attachment to social policy professionalism
and the PSSR has been consistently problematic. From its formal institutionalisation, early
years of bureau-professionalism, governing body development and educational objectivity
are seen as the basis for professionalizing hope. Nevertheless, the impacts of neo-liberalism
(discussed above) not only challenge professional claims but also redirect attention towards a
managerialist route. With divisive governing bodies and a politically challenged policy
community the PSSR finds itself in a weakened position (Haywood, 1994; Bull, et al, 2003).
Moreover, with the social/market dilemma re-intensified under New Labour’s BV and
inclusive agenda (Giddens 1998; DCMS 2002), the gaze of legitimacy is amplified and
brought the professional status of the PSSR into question. However, the chapter ends by
highlighting that paternalism may provide and apposite premise for reinventing the PSSR
and its professional claims (McNamee et al, 2000). New holistic policy agendas and a
widening policy community avails the PSSR with an opportunity to reaffirm inclusive,
community-focused citizenship and re-establish professionalism on the basis of productive
paternalism.
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Therefore, this brief chapter not only concludes the areas of literature but also spotlights the
professionalizing process as a keystone in the discursive journey of PSSR. The
professionalizing process forms part of the discursive assemblage central to the production
of both the institutional material and embodied subjects that constitute, inhabit, manage and
maintain the PSSR.
Professionalism and Professionals: experts and gatekeepers of exclusion
The professionalisation of given terrains of work is not a new phenomenon. However, it
does follow a pattern that relates well to that discussed earlier in relation to the discursive
trajectory of management and, as will be seen, embarked upon by the PSSR. Historically the
professionalizing process, whereby occupational groups make specialist claims in order to
gain a distinguishing social status, greater privileges and rewards and so become regarded a
profession, is witnessed in traditional occupations such as law, medicine, religion and the
military (May and Buck, 1998). Given the nature and development of ancient cultures and
societies and the centrality of religion, military, legal order and health it is unsurprising that
these occupations have become the established professions of our time. However, the
politics, characteristics or what constitutes a profession follows a pattern that has been
accentuated since Enlightenment times.
The reason of the Enlightenment heralded an anthropocentric order upon the world. With
the technological advance of western capitalism and the rational structuring of time, place
and people the new civilising world order demanded a hive of occupations. In the white
heat of economic boom and urbanisation a burgeoning middle class was emerging with
occupations (e.g. accountants, teachers, police and architects) keen to establish and solidify
professional status (Perkin, 2002). At the core of the professionalizing process lie claims of
specialist expertise. All professions point to and argue for the development of a body of
specialist knowledge that drives and makes their skills, competencies and practices exclusive.
Professions often premise their status upon long periods of education and training, which
often demands regular periods of maintenance. Moreover, at the vanguard of the
professionalizing process, and championing such claims, is a professional body. The
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professional body (e.g. the British Medical Association, Association of Chartered Certified
Accountants) represents the mobilising of occupational bias. They advance unique
competences, establish and maintain educational and training standards and, more
importantly, govern and discipline its members through codes of ethical practice and
behaviour. Professionalism involves exclusion rather than inclusion, the normative control
of knowledge, markets and members:
The process of occupational closure will also result in the monopoly supply of the
expertise and the service, and probably also in privileged access to salary and status
as well as in the definitional and control rewards for practitioners…the concept of
professionalism as a normative value system in the socialisation of new workers, [is
used for]…the preservation and predictability of normative social order in work and
occupations
(Evetts, 2003: 404)
The governing or institutional body adds to the exclusivity of professionalizing process.
Claims of specialist knowledge, unique competencies and practices provide professions with
an essential air of exclusivity. By their nature professions are exclusive clubs demarcating
themselves from others and the professional governing body is the gatekeeper. Professional
governing bodies not only act and advance the interests of members but also function like a
nightclub bouncer barring entrance to non-members as well as disciplining and evicting
offending members.
More interestingly, the ethical code and governance of professions can be seen to enhance
external legitimacy. Just as specialist knowledge and practices are articulated within a form
of self-legitimating language (a professional phrase regime) ethical codes and governance
can, though not always, provide an objective distance, which aids legitimacy and public
assurance. Governance and ethics enhance public confidence but, more importantly, this
appeals to the notion of public service. Professions often present an altruistic face
promoting themselves as operating for the good of community and society as a whole. This
idea of the valued, hard working and selfless professional has a long history and resonates
well with functionalist interpretations (Jary and Jary, 1995). However, this altruism and
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servile attitude has been called into questions. Professions have been challenged as selfinterested with professional bodies acting to sustain a monopoly of power, status and
position (Grenz, 1996). Aspects of governance and ethical conduct are questioned when
governing bodies use authoritative positions and their inherent phrase regime for
exclusionary self-protection. The very features and unique competences that enable the
professionalizing process, ironically, become criticised as facilitating an incestuous
relationship between professional body and professional. This is a critical point made by
both Foucault and Bourdieu. In the Foucauldian senses the professional is a clear product
of the power/knowledge/subject with the said and seen mutually sustaining one another but
to the ultimate benefit of the professional group rather than, as claimed, society. Likewise
for Bourdieu professionals (including university lecturers) can be seen to occupy a habitus
and embody capital that maintains the field, institutions and practices.
With the centrality of governance professionalisation necessarily involves governmentality
where a technology of the self is deployed and embodied through education, training and
ethical codes. The professional working body is one contained and partitioned within the
professional institution (e.g. junior doctor, surgeon, consultant within the hospital) and
cloaked in capital. The professional not only embodies professional features, carries,
displays, and within the field, competes with its capital. To be included, and conferred with
the nomenclature of ‘professional’, demands a set of ‘rights and responsibilities’ that need to
be embodied. Mediated through the governing body the values, aspirations and practices of
the professional are to be manifest through embodied actions (Hancock and Tyler, 2001).
The professional working body is one immersed in the illusio of the field it is caught up in,
consumed by the professionalizing game. The aspiration to professionalism demands the
assimilation of all that professionalism entails into the habitus of the individual (Bourdieu,
1998; Folwer, 1998). Today the professional understands, appreciates, embodies and enacts
the values the profession.
More importantly to be regarded as a professional, and to maintain the status and privilege it
brings, means that an individual must be an exemplar of the moral, disciplined and selfregulating ‘productive subject’ (Townley, 1994:126). The professional body not only selfregulates but it also willingly places itself under the surveillance and jurisdiction of the
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professional governing body (Leichter, 1997). As with the knowledge, values and skills
institutional governance is found in ‘the very grain’ of the professional body as it ‘touches
their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes’ (Foucault, 1980: 39). The
PSSR, in claiming or aspiring to join the ranks of the new professionals, evidences these
marks of professionalisation. The next section takes the historical features of
professionalisation and focuses upon their application or otherwise to the PSSR.
The Professional Institution of the PSSR: policy communities and the problems of
governance
As highlighted in Chapter Four sport and recreation has not only become an area of mass
global and economic importance but also finds itself rooted within the public sector. This
public positioning of sport and recreation, as with other areas of leisure, has ‘since the 1970s’
witness movement towards professionalisation through ‘an aspirant, emergent association of
(mainly) public sector leisure professionals’ (Roberts, 2004: 45). However, the emergence of
the PSSR and its professional journey is implicated within the forces of industrialization,
urbanization and development of local government structure and authority (Heywood, et al
1994). With the drive of capitalism and emergent modern cityscapes local government
demanded reforms. However, the need for reform also demanded that the reformers
distance themselves from accusations of nepotism and corrupting influence. This inspired
the call for the ‘appointment of officers of superior scientific attainments…a competent,
scientific and efficient management’ (Chadwick, cited in Laffin and Young, 1990: 14). By
the middle of the nineteenth century the ‘proto-professional’ was a public official committed
to guarding and serving the public interest. Taken with the traditional professions in law and
medicine the ‘proto-professional’ of public life established the professionalizing process to
the point now where ‘there is extensive agreement about the appeal of the idea of profession
and professionalism and its increased use in all work contexts’ (Evetts, 2003: 396).
Interestingly, this has led to a situation where past semi-professions (e.g. accountancy,
teaching and engineering) are more grounded in the professionalizing process, which is now
occupied with a host of new occupational groupings including the cultural spheres of
entertainment and leisure (Olgiati, Orzack and Saks, 1998). However, in leisure (or more
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sport and recreation here) the professionalizing process is not a fait accompli but is a
continuing discursive process.
Although formally brought within the family of welfare and, as highlighted in Chapter Four
above, the substantially facilitized PSSR has never really been the protected child of any
political party. As seen earlier, and developed here, while the PSSR has been variously used
and challenged by party politics it finds itself of low priority in relation to other aspects of
welfare. This has meant that at a national level the interests and importance of the PSSR has
not enjoyed consistent and coordinated representation. Unlike the health and educational
big hitters of welfare, and even with the present Department of Media, Culture and Sport
(DCMS), sport and recreation today lacks political weight being one cultural voice among
many (Rojek, 1994). Therefore, as the baby of welfare, the professionalising of the PSSR has
been rather disparate and disjointed.
The professionalisation of the PSSR has, largely, been left to the emergence of policy
communities, which are networking core institutions (e.g. DCMS, sportscotland) with other
groups such as government bodies, pressure groups, academics or authorities (Marsh and
Rhodes, 1992). Although today it may appear the likes of the DCMS and sportscotland
provide a tight policy circle or exclusionary core of the PSSR policy community (Weed,
2001) new policy agendas, alluded to above and discussed more below, have brought health,
education and even crime concern into and widened this policy terrain. Nevertheless, it is
important to stress that it was the more secondary groups that played a key role in brining
the PSSR together and linking its professionalisation to policy.
The professional push for recognition gained impetus through the Cobham report of 1973,
which related the professional claims for social workers in the Seebhom reports of 1968 as
similar to that of leisure (Henry, 1990; Heywood et al, 1993). This, with local government
reorganization, the 1975 White Paper Sport and Recreation and establishment of the new
leisure departments, found sport and recreation knocking on the professional door. Soon
the amalgam of educated and semi-professionals groups from ‘baths, parks departments and
so on’, witnessed an opportunity in 1979 and ‘merged’ to create a ‘umbrella professional
organization, the Institute of Leisure and Amenity Managers (ILAM) (Roberts, 2004: 45).
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As with governing bodies before them ILAM highlighted the professionalizing process of
emergent post-industrial service sectors claming ‘knowledge has replaced metal’ (Leadbeater,
1998: 12) with sport and recreation and area of knowledge specialisation and skill. Again,
following the trajectory of traditional professions new academic courses emerged facilitating
professional claims through standardised long periods of training. Through further
education and later higher education degree programmes the field becomes more solid, being
demarcated with institutional capital (Bourdieu, 1986) as the said and seen of the
professional discourse appears normalized knowledge and practices (Foucault, 1977; Kendall
and Wickham, 1992) for speaking and doing sport and recreation. The educational sector
feeds the formation of policy communities providing the objective distance of
professionalisation. Even today ‘the rising tide of higher education that is carrying
recreation, park and leisure studies’ is increasingly seen as providing the ‘certification of
professionals’ or ‘tickets that received critical attention:
Degrees and certificates have become commodities one buys because, like a car, they
can get you somewhere and, like a suit, they make you presentable.
(Dunstin and Goodale, 1999: 483)
Nevertheless, whereas a professional governing body is an institutional keystone for the
strategic development, governance of protection of professionalism ILAM has never
managed to galvanise the field. Governing body infighting has historically weakened the
influence and development of a sports policy community. Even today with the DCMS,
sportscotland, lottery redistribution, network of national to local authority relationships for
the development of facilities and initiative based posts (Houlihan, 1991; Jackson and Burton,
1999) and a large educational sector governing bodies’ impact upon the professionalizing
prospects of the field. The attempts to unify the field, through membership, educational
links and courses the body of knowledge and training of ILAM has been challenged by the
more technical governing body of the Institute of Sport and Recreation Management
(ISRM). Therefore, while ILAM moved with the policy context with professionalism
realigned or ‘redefined’ with the ‘right of citizenship in the early 1970s’ to the ‘urban/youth
problems’ of the ‘late 1970s to the mid-1980s’ and on the managerialism and ‘best value in
the late 1980s and during the 1990s’ (Henry, 2001: 152) ISRM have been a constant
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problem. Although ‘active lobbyists producing a wide range of policy briefings and
submissions for government’ the continued refusal of these bodies to amalgamate has
impacted on professionalisation of the field:
Neither ILAM nor ISRM has been able to establish itself as the authoritative voice
for the sector…Since 1997 the policy process has become more open and both
ILAM and ISRM have been able to use their influence and expertise to better effect
although both still operate in competition with each other.
(Houlihan, 2001: 6)
With this divisive ‘competition’ it is difficult to make an authoritative claim to be the
‘guardians of theoretical knowledge’, those ‘professionals…[or] dominant social class’ who
‘control access’ and shape the field through their ‘codified, systematic, abstract systems of
knowledge’ (Goldblatt, 2000: 122-123). It could be said that the professionalisation of the
PSSR had been stalled by neo-liberal suspicion of professions in general and the impact of
CCT and shift to managerialism. Professional bodies and professionals, as self-regulating
institutions and knowledge workers able to powerfully negotiate better terms and conditions
for its members, does not sit well with the Thatcherite programme. Certainly the
professionalisation of the PSSR found itself in the wrong place and time. Even with
governing body competition, policy realignment throughout the 1970s and into the mid1980s as well as the positive high from the publication of the Yates Report in 1984 (DoE,
1984) professionalism and the PSSR was under attack. Unfortunately for the PSSR the
economic realism of neo-liberal agendas meant that professionalism was backgrounded. The
field of the PSSR was not to be reconfigured with professional identity constructed around
the knowledge, skills and attributes of managerialism (Bull et al, 2003). Traditional
professionalisation was derailed with managerialism the new judge of normality, (Foucault,
1977) a superior category of subject with the valued managerial capitals of the field
(Bourdieu, 1986b). Nevertheless, the weaknesses that challenged the professional claims of
the PSSR and made it an easy target for neo-liberalism would, by the mid to late-1990s, bring
professionalism back on the agenda.
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Renewing Professionalism through new policy agendas
In Chapter Four above the various historical and topical elements were highlighted that
produce the PSSR as it is today. Also noted was that the professionalisation of the field has
been a long running and problematic episode. It appears that the professionalizing premise
of the PSSR is unequivocally tied to policy. However, the welfare status and social
objectives of the PSSR have been consistently challenged. From the time of early bureauprofessionalism the PSSR has found itself criticised as an institutional Robin Hood in
reverse as ‘we find that it is nearly always the better-off who make the most of free-to-use
and subsidised facilities - national parks and sports centres, for instance’ (Roberts, 2004: 50).
To claim professional status ‘professionals identify problems in public policy, propose
definitions and argue that they are uniquely equipped to deal with these problems’ (Laffin
and Young, 1990: 20). Unlike other professionals the PSSR has not been able to do this or
deliver on its promises.
Nevertheless, even with this longstanding problem the critical gaze that it has brought may
prove the professional makings of the sector. For the problems in achieving social
objectives has restricted the power and exclusion of others from policy communities. The
field has never been able become a tight ‘policy circle’ and ‘define its own agenda’ due to
‘other more powerful policy agendas’ (Bull, et al, 2003: 179). However, the more powerful
policy agendas of education, crime and, more importantly, health have become central to the
PSSR and its professionality.
Much of this still relates to the move to community-practice models of delivery. Early
developments in community-practice represented ‘indications in new directions in alliances
in health and leisure’ advocating ‘trans-departmental policies that cut across departmental
boundaries’ to overcome old ‘centralised bureau-professional policy’ (Haywood, 1994: 64).
Prior to New Labour and BV this pointed to a way forward where the ‘powerful policy
agendas’ such as health could save, rather than sabotage, the PSSR. Moreover, and as
highlighted in Chapter Four, while the traditional ‘culture of professionalism’ in the public
sector was challenged by CCT and the ‘philosophy based on managerialism’ (Slack, 1999:
404), under BV, aspects of managerialism can be woven into a new professional model.
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Third Way pragmatism looks to merge the language, skills and market focus of modernising
management with policy directed at democratic renewal through an active state and civil
partnership (Giddens, 1998). However, this positive ‘enabling role and partnership, while
also promoting competition and market testing’ of BV is no panacea:
At best, relational management approaches and New Labour’s promotion of them
may seem as attempts to mediate some of the worst excesses of competitive
management. At worst, New labour’s adoption of this approach to management
might be regarded as a kind of ‘feng shui’ of discourse, ensuring that management
and political statements are all appropriately ideologically aligned, without necessarily
providing definitive guides for action.
(Henry, 2001: 159)
Nevertheless, with active citizenship at its core and services relating and responding to
individual and community identity (DCMS, 1999) New Labour’s BV may provide a way
forward for professionalism and the PSSR. The governing gaze of Third Way politics into
the work, leisure and lifestyle habits of the masses (Bunton and Macdonald, 1992; Howley
and Franks, 1997) has sanctioned a return to the paternalism of professionalism. With
Western concerns over obesity (Grundy, 1998; Campbell, 2000) and decreasing physical
activity (Mintel, 2001; McGillivray and Frew, 2002) paternalistic interventions receive
justification with health and physical wellbeing a marker of active citizenship. When sport
and recreation is associated, even though debatable, with crime reduction and educational reengagement (Collins, 2003) the PSSR, and its professional stance, is strengthened.
As with traditional professions that claim superior knowledge, skills and abilities (Bayles,
1988) New Labour’s BV and revision of the excesses of managerialism has emboldened the
PSSR. This ‘revision’ has altered the longstanding challenge and relationship that client
authority and customer groups required for professional status within leisure services
(Coalter, 1986). BV and new policy agendas go some way to answering the questions of
whether ‘these people are defined as consumers, consumer/citizens or citizen/consumers’
and whether ‘leisure service personnel’ will ‘adopt the positive aspects of consumerism and
choice without abandoning or undermining the democratic and participatory values central
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to local government’ (Coalter, 1990c: 117). Surfing on new policy agendas the PSSR asserts
a new professionalism where its ‘authority’ is ‘guided by ethical ends…is both moral and
technical’ (McNamee, 2000: 203). Regardless of historical challenges (Roberts, 2004) and
recent concerns that ‘the instrumental use of sport…is fraught with dangers’ (Coalter and
Allison, 1996: 8) the PSSR advances as a ‘social trustee’ with ‘civic-professionals’ who
attempt to ‘unify personal and social responsibility…[and] …act as stewards of the good just
society (Lawson, 1998: 6). BV and new policy agendas provide the basis for
reprofessionalisation and the production a new subject within the PSSR a ‘civic professional’
(Houlihan, 2000: 12). This new professional, armed with technical and moral authority,
paternalistically seeks out the excluded to effect embodied transformation:
The paternalistic leisure professional must have authority over the client and the
client must be in circumstances of need. There are a number of groups widely
recognized by local authority professionals as being ‘in need’ such as the
unemployed, the elderly, and single parent families…leisure providers have the
means to enhance the quality of their lives through leisure. Leisure professionals
have power over clients ‘in need’.
(McNamee, et al, 2000: 204)
Interestingly, McNamee concludes that ‘in order to retain professional status, it must be that
the customer is not always right’ and that ‘the leisure professional has superior knowledge,
skills and experience to know what is best for the client and that they act accordingly
underwrites their moral and technical authority.’ (207). The emergence of new policy
agendas adds fuel and driving rationale for this paternalistic reprofessionalisation. Old
aspects of traditional professionalism, and its performative power, are now bolstered
through a benevolent morality. The ethical codes of governing bodies (e.g. ILAM, ISRM)
and their members are reinvigorated as the new civic professional, the ‘ethical advocate’
(Kreitner, 1996: 152) and paragons of public service. Mediated through this new civic
professional the transformatory power and utilitarian benefits of sport and recreation are
prosecuted with moralising vigour (Kitson and Campbell, 1996). Of course this deflects
from the vested interest of the professionalizing process itself:
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The traditional professions (medicine and law) have been very successful in
establishing status and power in advanced industrial/capitalist societies, and the
semi-professions are seen as attempting to achieve similar ends by emulating aspects
of the strategies employed by the traditional professions, Thus, both Weberians and
Marxists argue that although professions may promote and ideology of altruism and
service, they are essentially pressure groups operating in ways which assure their
members of privilege.
(Henry, 2001: 153)
Therefore, in concluding this final section of literature, and before turning to the methods
section, it appears that New Labour’s BV and new policy agendas provide a paternalistic
opening for the reprofessionalisation of the PSSR. However, and in ignoring the past, this is
only premised on the successful embodied transformations of those excluded communities
and groups. The performative power of the new civic professional will rapidly dissolve
without results. The professional legitimacy of the PSSR, and its capitals of knowledge, skill,
technical expertise and moral authority, is now rolling in a high stakes policy game of
Russian roulette. All bets are off as time will determine the winner or looser in this
discursive game.
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6.0
Action and the PSSR: Researching the embodied practices of work
and cultural consumption
The difficulty with research is that it is not ‘tidy’ or ‘straightforward’ but a process that works
‘continuously in an interwoven fashion’ (Gillham, 2000: 22). This study highlights such a
process due to the multi-methods approach used. With the data linkages, relations and
reflections (as will be seen) such multi-methods mirror an emergent process akin to action
research (Gustavsen, 2001; Borda 2001):
Action research attempts an integrative cycle between practical struggles, the
formation of research questions and the reporting of research findings in a way that
informs further practical study.
(Searle, 1999: 10).
In accordance with many critical theoretical approaches, action research is more concerned
with inherently political research and its impact (Miles, 2001; Bottomore, 2002). With its
steeped interventionist tactic of empirically investigating or uncovering the dimensions of
struggle that are embodied and lived, the action approach marries with the Bourdieusian and
Foucauldian coupling. Given action research is ‘participatory’ and ‘draws on the
constructivist perspective in acknowledging that as soon as we attempt to articulate this we
enter a world of human language and cultural expression’ (Reason and Bradbury, 2002: 7) it
provides a reasonable methodological fit with Bourdieusian and Foucauldian analysis.
Specifically, this study responds to Wacquant’s cry for a constructivist analysis that can fill
the ‘abysmal gap in our understanding of the concrete practices and organizational
arrangements through which real bodies are actually produced (1995: 173). However, as
discussed earlier (Chapter Two) this action approach and the form of Bourdieusian and
Foucauldian constructivism attempted here do not sit ‘perfectly’ within the study. This is
due to the emancipatory ‘project’ often attributed to constructivists (such as Bourdieu) and
many action approaches/interventions (Danaher et al, 2000; Parker, 2002).
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This is worth reviewing given the emancipatory line is evident within many action
approaches, which strive to enlighten and awaken ‘common peoples’ (Fals-Borda, 1991: vi)
into political action. Action research of this ilk most often carries or reinvigorates the
hegemonic undertones pioneered by Gramsci (Gramsci, 1971; Bocock, 1986). The
argument against such approaches is that they tend to form replacement metanarrative views
and, as such, often pander to possibilities of consensus (Watson, 2002). Foucault steadfastly
challenges action approaches of this nature due to their normative and, thus, normalising
undertones. Even Bourdieu’s overt politics would not countenance such emancipatory
meta-positions. For, as echoed by Bauman (1992) emancipation by this name reveals the
dark side of modernity as rational quest shifts towards universalising dogmatism. The metapositions of emancipation can too easily confuse cultural difference with the processes of
domination that Bourdieu would seek to unmask. Therefore, this study rejects such
emancipatory claims as it directly challenges those forces that construct consensus in order
to legitimate a meta positions.
However, action approaches can be used to explore paths of empowerment where research
interventions focus on opening or uncovering marginalized voices (Watson, 2002; Reason,
and Bradbury, 2001; Rowan, 2001). Here action approaches help open local discursivities by
providing an enabling platform for resistant knowledge and practices. With a view to
uncovering as many voices/dimensions of a social system as possible, and through reflexive
and participative interventions, empowerment is about raising consciousness, exploring
perceptions and alternatives as to how a social system, and the actors that inhabit it, works.
This study does this through its exploration of the PSSR. Through an examination of its
historical and institutional development, its mission to its operations management and
practices of service delivery and consumption the discursive historical, political/policy,
practical and cultural dimensions of the PSSR are explored. The core of this being mediated
from the ethnographic participant observational position of those whose embodied working
reality lives on the intervening plain between management and the culturally
empowered/privileged and the culturally dis-empowered/marginalised. It is at the
operational delivery of services where mission, management, cultural consumption and the
hidden world of privileged and resistant voices and practices are seen. In bringing these into
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relief the case for reconceptualising the PSSR as a discursive network, or revealing the
dimensions and embodied dynamic of this power/knowledge/subject triad, will have been
made.
Therefore, having discussed the philosophical positions of all research and with the analytical
coupling adopted (see Chapter Two), the action approach and the methods deployed (see
below) within this study provide an ‘interaction cycle’ that critically explores the ‘practical
struggle’ found within the everyday reality of the PSSR. Figure 1 below illustrates the overall
philosophical to practical approach of the study.
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Figure 1: Researching the PSSR: a Philosophical and Practical Journey
ONTOLOGICAL
COMMITMENTS
EPISTEMOLOGICAL
COMMITMENTS
ACTION
METHODOLOGY
METHODS
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With this process the notion of discourse, how it works, is embodied, reproduced, sustained
and legitimated will be revealed in the practices of cultural consumption. In action style the
richness or enabling substance of data takes the abstract and historical narrative of
Foucauldian discourse, and through Bourdieu, locates, operationalises and animates it within
the embodied context and cultural field of the PSSR. The following sections elaborate the
methods used to reveal this process in detail.
Researching the embodied discourse of the PSSR
The use of an action research approach applies a methods base that is flexible, with methods
developed or adapted over time, rather than a fixed or linearly administered approach
(Lincoln, 2001). Even though it is difficult to demonstrate this dynamic through a
systematic presentation of methods this section will attempt to reflect this, whilst
maintaining clarity. To that end the intention is to represent methods through a series of
sections that take the analytical coupling of the study and operationalise it at nationally and
locally. Although sub-divided here each section, in action style, is interwoven, which is
illustrated through the methods it draws upon and adapts over the research timeframe (see
Figure 2).
Figure 2: Action Cycle Timeframe & Methods
Research Methods
Jan –
Dec
1998
Jan –
Dec
1999
Jan –
Dec
2000
Jan –
Dec
2001
Jan –
Dec
2002
Jan –
Dec
2003
Jan 2004
– Nov
2004
Literature Review
National Policy Community
Interviews
(i.e. sportscotland, ILAM,
ISRM)
Local Authority Documentation
(e.g. strategies, reports, policy
and customer care statements,
procedural manuals)
Ethnographic Case Study:
observations, quotes, interviews,
operational procedures.


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
Case Study Management
Interviews

Self Reflexive
Interviews/operational field
diary notes

Strategic Practitioners’ Forum
Operational Staff Interviews




Final Staff Forum

As can be seen, given the length of the study timeframe, it is important to address the issue
of data freshness or relevance. As with most ethnographic case studies the one within this
study involved the researcher embedding himself in ‘people’s daily lives for an extended
period of time’ (Hammersley, 1992: 2). Although this longitudinal element spanned a period
from Jan 1998 to Aug 1999 a series of supplementary and reflexive research interventions
(mentioned earlier), both during and after this period, were initiated. Detailed below these,
with the ethnographic work forming the study core, provide the action cycle with the final
piece of fieldwork (i.e. case study staff forum) being concluded in November 2004.
Therefore, the total data-gathering period of the study extends from January 1998 to
November 2004. The critical section at the end of this chapter considers the positive and
negative aspects of such a protracted research timeframe.
Nevertheless, in keeping with an action approach, data elicited, both from ethnographic
observations and other methods, provided interim analyses that were reflexively recycled in
returning individual interviews and staff forums. This means data were returned to and
reflected upon, thus, providing the opportunity to gauge accuracy of representations, air,
question the relevance of and develop analyses. Here, in typical action fashion, participants
are actively engaged in generation of analysis as they ‘play an active role in the process, rather
than being passive subjects’ (Johnson and Duberley, 2000: 139). The reflexive cycle of the
action approach not only works as an antidote to data freshness but also ameliorates or
replaces the problem of unfocused ‘thick descriptions’ with focused and enriched analyses
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(Flick, 1998: 142). However, as Searle, in paraphrasing (Rosaldo, 1993) points out, such a
research strategy addresses classical epistemological and research issues of objectivity, the
contextualization of case study ‘truths’ and dynamic of ethnographic work:
In place of the confident pronouncements by anthropologists of the truths of
‘objectivism – absolute, universal and timeless’ are the ‘truths of case studies that are
embedded in local contexts’. Here, he argues, it is crucial for social analyses to
‘grapple with the realization that its objects of analysis are also analyzing subjects
who critically interrogate ethnographers – their writings, their ethics, and their
politics.
(Searle, 1999: 64)
Although the Figure 2 above provides a visual aid to the timeframe, methods and phases it
cannot demonstrate the development of methods, data linkages, relations and critical
reflection implicit with the dynamics of the research process (Yin, 1989; Reason and
Bradbury, 2001). More importantly, it does not reflect the change within the Ph.D. process
from full to part time (part time as of September 1999) or the time commitment, critical
complexity and density of data gathering of participant observation. As with issues
concerning the timeframe of the study, and rather than clutter the methods phases presented
here, it is felt that critical issues are best dealt with in the final critical reflexion section.
Uncovering the PSSR: the historical positioning of practice
As the PSSR frames this study it was essential to establish a historical context for its
institutional and professional development prior to focusing on present practice. However,
such a platform must be positioned within the wider context of leisure. The rationale being
that the emergence and development of what is practically and theoretically referred to as
‘leisure’ is central to the development of public sector leisure provision of which sport and
recreation is a part. To that end, a review of literature was developed. However, this review
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did not take the standard overview but was developed in a manner that would reflect
Foucault’s archaeological perspective.
Each section of the review is taken as providing a snapshot or slice of general history
(Kendall and Wickham, 1999). That is, it attempts to open events, language and ‘things’ that
have enabled, demarcated and allowed a discourse to be and speak (Foucault, 1974; Flynn,
1994). In this way an ‘archaeology of knowledge’ (Grenz, 1996: 124) is presented where
historical knowledge claims have emerged, spilled over and merged (Hoy, 1988) to enable,
form and legitimate the discursive territory of what can be presently termed the PSSR. In
this instance the historical emergence and development in areas such as management, sport
and recreation, social, moral and physical welfare and professional legitimacy/status are
highlighted. These demonstrate a network or discursive assemblage (Kendall and Wickham,
1999; Danaher et al, 2000) that forms the institutional arrangements or ‘general system of the
formation and transformation of statements’ (Foucault, 1972: 130). They provide the
historical and epistemological legitimacy both for prescribing the substance of provision but
also the embodied management, operational and consumption practices of the PSSR.
Essentially, such forms of knowledge are presented as working, more contingently than
conspiratorially, to objectify, discipline and normalize and, thus, produce what we know as
the PSSR.
Therefore, the review of literature attempts to show a ‘general’ history by revealing a series
of ‘divisions, differences of temporality and level’ that can be seen to specify ‘its [PSSR] own
terrain, the series it constitutes and the relations between them’ (Dean, 1994: 93). At a
practical level, Kendall and Wickham (1999: 26) provide seven Foucauldian methods that
can be used for identifying and analyzing the archives of discourses:
1. to chart the relation between the sayable and the visible;
2. to analyze the relation between one statement and other statements;
3. to formulate rules for the repeatability of statements (or, if you like, the use of
statements);
4. to analyze the positions which are established between subjects – for the time being
we can think of subjects as human beings – in regard to statements;
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5. to describe ‘surfaces of emergence’ – places within which objects are designated and
acted upon;
6. to describe ‘institutions’, which acquire authority and provide limits within which
discursive objects may act or exist;
7. to describe ‘forms of specification’, which refers to the ways in which discursive
objects are targeted. A ‘form of specification’ is a system for understanding a
particular phenomenon with the aim of relating it to other phenomenon.
These not only guided the identification, description and analysis of areas of literature but
also, given that Foucauldian histories are perpetual and live in the present, they guided
discussion themes for interviews and forums. For as the literature review presents and
opens a discursive terrain it is essential to locate such ‘archives of discourse’ (Kendall and
Wickham, 1998: 26) within present practice. Therefore, the abstract history of discourse
needed to be located, linked and problematised within, the lived experience and embodied
practices of practitioners. In so doing those institutional arrangements that have historically
constituted the PSSR can be examined for levels of embodied docility and resistance
(Bourdieu, 1992; Cheek and Rudge, 1997). Abstract historical archives are located and
explored to see how they resonate are internalized, legitimated, reproduced and resisted in
practice. Here Foucauldian abstraction is empirically animated through Bourdusiean
concepts with the past explored as a ‘history of the present’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1999:
29) through the performative power of embodied practices. In action fashion this was done
by oscillating between observed practices, interviews and documentation at local level (i.e.
ethnographic case study) and practice advocated at national policy level (i.e. governing body
interviews, strategic documents and practitioner forum).
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Institutional Representations of the PSSR: relating the historical to the strategic
scene
As literature provided the historical context and discursive assemblage (Kendall and
Wickham, 1999; Danaher et al, 2000) of the study, and working in tandem with ethnographic
work, the issues and themes therefrom needed to be located and reflected upon strategically.
Any exploration or analysis of practice demanded contextualization within those national
institutions and strategic practitioners with a historical responsibility for and understanding
of the strategic development of the PSSR. The rationale for this being that national
institutions and strategic practitioners bridge the historical past to present as they provide a
view of how the PSSR was constituted in policy, provision and practice. Therefore, it was
necessary to identify a series of national organisations that could be seen as constituting a
national policy community.
Organizational selection was premised on organizations that had a direct strategic
responsibility for the provision, education, training and professional development of sport
and recreation within Scotland. To that end, sportscotland, the Institute of Leisure and
Amenity Management (ILAM) and the Institute of Sport and Recreation Management
(ISRM) were interviewed (Bill, 2005). Contrastingly, bodies such as the National Association
of Sports Development (NASD) and the British Association of Sport and Exercise Sciences
(BASES) were excluded due to their physiological and performance based focus. The only
omission of substance excluded was SkillsActive. However, as this body was in transition
during the study (moving from the National Training Organisation for Sport, Recreation and
Allied Occupations (SPRITO) to the Sector Skills Council of SkillsActive) and given the
depth of material it was thought best to exclude SkillsActive in this instance.
Prior to targeting these organisations for in-depth interviews (Gillham, 2000) an information
gathering process was instigated across all Scottish unitary authorities to obtain strategic
plans or customer care documents (as they often provide details on provision, staff training
or those standards/codes advocated). Initially formal requests by mail for strategic
documents were frustrated by cost as some authorities requested a fee. However, this initial
problem was resolved as local governments’, commitment to transparency following
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reorganization and the introduction of Best Value Regimes (Scottish Executive, 1999,
Whitfield, 2001) published such material via their web sites. Additionally, policy
documentation was compiled from national organisations, all of which provided a
background to the nature and focus of those policies and practices being advocated.
Coupled with data elicited from ethnographic work such documentation guided themes for
in-depth interviews (Appendix A provides an overview of themes and process). Essentially,
supplementary literature and national documentation, reviewed in light of ethnographic data,
revealed those repetitively articulated statements or content of discourse, which could be
explored and analyzed through in-depth interviews with actors at national policy level.
However, and to reiterate, to explore or analyze a discourse should not be confused with
conversational analysis (Smart, 1988) or represent a pure focus on language. Rather
discourse analysis here refers to the Foucauldian sense where ‘systems of thought…inform
material practices’ and are, therefore, ‘not only linguistic but are also practically…visible in
prisons, psychiatric hospitals, schools, factories and so forth’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000:97).
Hence, those repetitive statements of content found in strategic documents etc. (e.g.
‘decentralisation of decision making’, ‘social inclusion’, ‘best value’, ‘community needs’
‘empowerment’ and staff ‘knowledge’ ‘attitude’, ‘competencies’, ‘skills’ and ‘appearance’) are
brought to light and paralleled through practical ethnographic observations, interviews and
documents (Silverman, 1998). Moreover, they point to elements of cultural capital through
codes or manner of conduct, acceptable or appropriateness within the social space of the
PSSR. Such capital being mirrored by management and operationally governed through staff
and customer practices.
Again this reveals the action approach where strategic and national policy documentation is
reflected upon against practices at local level, which then feeds and loops back to interview
themes to be explored with those actors at national policy community level. In doing so, it is
argued that the discourse, or a distinctive representation of the PSSR, how it is conceived of,
talked about, its ‘phrase regime’ (Sim 1998: 10) and the practices it promotes can be opened
and explored. The level, consistency and repetitive articulation of statements are not only
highlighted and explored for their resonance to national actors through to managerial
language, policy and procedures but also examined as they reflect or impact upon embodied
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practices. In this the assimilation, as much as the resistance, of discourse can be ‘said’ within
‘phrase regimes’ and ‘seen’ in the physical space, provision and bodily practices of the PSSR.
Discourse takes embodied form, witnessed through ‘the articulation of dispositions in social
space’ (Letche, 1994: 47) with cultural capital advocated and translated from the institutional
to local level (Collins, 2000). Moreover, in advocating those dispositions of discourse
necessary for operating and consuming the social spaces of PSSR, the strategic and national
policy community facilitates the demarcation and exclusionary nature of its
professonalisation.
Through an exploration of the national scene the notion of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault
1979) is revealed as it advocates and legitimates those ‘techniques and procedures designed
to direct the conduct’ that engender ‘obedience and submission’ (Macey 1993: 416). As
institutions with a strategic responsibility for sport and recreation, this national policy
community directs and develops provision and prescribes practices, the performativity of
which resonates within the embodied actions of management and staff at local level. This
strategic scene provides a network or visible hierarchy of discourse that dynamically
advocates, demarcates and develops the ‘field’ (Bourdieu, 2000, Collins, 2000), or sub-field
of the PSSR and its enabling forms of cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984; Fowler, 1997).
More importantly, along with the ‘surfaces of emergence’ those social spaces and physical
bricks and mortar and provision of the field (Kendall and Wickham (1998: 26), the PSSR
the manager, in name and practice, is conceived of objectified and normalized as a ‘subject’
(Hoy, 1988; Jackson and Carter, 2000). Having been named defined and assimilated the
institutional/constructed form of management; the manager becomes the primary actor in
the control, surveillance, prescriptive operation and maintenance of the PSSR. Both in a
Foucauldian and Bourdieusian sense the manager is central to the PSSR discourse as they
lead, legitimate and perpetuate its operation and modes of consumption. As they embody
and perform the PSSR they are not only the docile subjects of but also in subjection to the
discourse of the PSSR (McHoul and Grace, 1995; McKinlay and Starkey, 1998). That is the
PSSR discourse is part of their being, which can only be reproduced. Therefore, the national
scene strategically transmits and sustains discourse, which in being embodied and enacted
through local practitioners mutually conditions the said and seen of discourse. National
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institutions strategically mediate the ‘techniques of the self’, those manuals of discourse that
local practitioners embody being demonstrated through those ‘intentional and voluntary
actions by which men (sic) not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to
transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life an
oeuvre’ (Foucault 1985: 11).
In effect, from historical archives to uncovering the voice of national institutions through to
local strategies working with ethnographic data an attempt is made to chart the development
and transition of discourse from the macro to micro scene. The governmentality of
discourse is seen networking and mutually conditioning between the external population of
policy institutions and strategic practitioners to the embodied management, operational and
consumption practices witnessed at local level. It is argued that this helps locate, identify
and recover actors, placing them centre stage in the dynamics of local discursive struggle. It
enables the empirical transition from archaeology to genealogy as local discursivities or the
lives of actual actors are explored as they reveal the microphysics or embodied substance of
discourse (Kendall and Wickham, 1998). This minutiae or richness of data were gleaned
from the ethnographic case study, to which the following section now turns.
The microphysics of the PSSR: an ethnographic exploration of local practice
Throughout this study reference has been made to how core or primary study data were
collected via an ethnographic case study. It is essential at this stage, before illuminating the
process, that this is addressed. Since ‘ethnography usually includes several methods
(techniques), of which the most important are (participant) observations over a long period
of time’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000: 75) it would appear that this works well with action
approaches. However, the difficulty is that for many, traditional ethnography has sought to
develop processes that will allow then to 'argue that their time spent in the culture did not
influence the culture, hence their data could be trusted to be 'objective' (Schein, 2001: 230).
In this form ethnography yearns for that unbiased foundation and, thus, panders to
positivism. As this would be inconsistent for this study, ethnography here refers more to its
newer, post-structuralist or autoethnographic form (Patton, 2002).
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Although spawning and encompassing a large number of associated terms (Ellis and
Bouchner, 2000), at its core this approach to ethnography accepts and is self-aware about the
embodied dynamic between the personal and cultural. Here, traditional elements of
ethnography, such as exploration against hypostudy, the subordination of quantification over
qualitative meaning and deep small/one case emphasis (Atkinson and Hammersley, 1994),
are contextualized. The research process is about 'creative narratives shaped' with and
between 'personal experience within a culture' (Goodall, 2000: 9). For Saukko (2003) it ‘aims
to unravel discourses that mediate our understanding of both the internal lived and the
external social worlds’ (56). However, in qualifying this Saukko continues that, just as such
ethnographic approaches attempt to capture, be true, reflexive and attentive to the
polyvocality of lived realities, they are in constant ‘tension’ recognizing that they are ‘always
partial and political’ (Saukko, 2003: 56). Therefore, attempts to reveal the discursivity of any
social phenomenon, to open, represent the voices, emotion or embodied reality of the
disenfranchised, marginalized or excluded, through ethnography are, in and of themselves,
discursive. Given the analytical coupling this ethnographic approach should be unsurprising.
Again, there are ‘problems’ here that are ‘not only valid for ethnography…but are relevant
for all research’ (Alvesson and Deetz, 2001:78). As usual, and in terms of the ethnographic
approach, these will be addressed at the end of the section.
What follows is a presentation and discussion of those methods initiated at the service
interface between management, staff and customer groups within a Scottish local authority
community sport and recreation facility. As this encompassed observations of the operation
and consumption of the external and internal physical/material and social space,
management, staff and customer accounts, documents, formal interviews and Final Staff
Forum (all discussed below) this formed the ethnographic ‘text’ or enabling data for the
reflexive action cycle (Flick, 1999).
Case study profile: understanding the physical space and provision
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As has been mentioned this study places the case study approach, or more specifically a
single case study, at its core. The intensive longitudinal ethnographic element, critically and
level of theoretical complexity sit well with case studies (Yin, 1989; 1994). Given the
discursive focus of this study critically interrogates the taken-for-granted of the PSSR the
single case study approach is apposite (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2000). Of course this
acknowledges that although case studies are ‘often seen as prime examples of qualitative
research’ examining ‘things’ within their context and considers the subjective meanings
people bring to their situation’ (de Vaus, 2001: 10) is not exclusive to qualitative approaches.
Nevertheless, while single case studies provide in-depth or saturation of data the ‘crucial
question is not whether the findings can be generalized to a wider universe, but how well it
demonstrates connections between different conceptual ideas’ (Bryman, 2001: 51). Given
the ontological and epistemological commitments of this study are more directed at
conceptualising the embodied idiographic processes of local discursivities the application of
a single case study marries well. The depth of a single case approach enhances the
opportunity to open the polyvocality and rich narratives of everyday practice. Moreover,
such approaches have been advocated at organizational level (Boxall, 1992; Gummesson,
2000), have a tradition within Bourdieusian analysis (Bourdieu, 1986a; 1999; Wacquant,
1998) and have also found Foucauldian applications (Townley, 1998; Rose, 1999; Tretheway,
1999; McKinley and Starkey, 2000). This does not mean that there are not problems with
the case study approach. As alluded to earlier such criticisms will be discussed in the final
critical reflections chapter. At present it is best to turn to the detail of the case study and the
series of methods used therein.
In profiling the case study it is important to provide an overview of the physical space,
externally and internally, as much as the social profile of the catchment area of the facility.
The rationale being that the institutional spaces of the PSSR, its physicality, provision,
differentiation and consumption practices therein are not only rationalized and normalized
spaces but they are also physically and procedurally policed. As an apparent secular public
space the PSSR represent an ‘expression of power relations’ that can be seen to be
‘concerned with domination’ (Sibley, 1995: 72). As material space, its content and conduct
comes to be embodied, is operated, consumed and defended such materiality is worth
considering.
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The case study facility was constructed in 1985 with capital investment from urban aid
funding and revenue costs being met by the local authority, East Ayrshire Council (prior to
1996 reorganization Kilmarnock and Loudon District Council). Named the Hunter Centre,
after a local dignitary and carrying the strap line ‘A Sports Facility for Your Locality’, it is
located in North West, Kilmarnock. Situated in the residential area of Onthank, the facility
shares the immediate grounds with the local Wellness Clinic (facility entrances are
approximately 20m apart) and Morven Centre (a mental health centre approximately 100m
away). Given the depressed and dilapidated environment (see Appendix B for digital
images) the type and proximity of these facilities, as data will show, is important in gaining
an understanding of the area and customers encountered by staff.
Externally the Hunter Centre is a rectangular brick building, with no windows, an arch
walkway leading to the only and main entrance/exit and car parking to the right and rear.
The importance of this relates the transformation of the building from its original design.
Unlike the functional and standardised community sport and recreation builds the Hunter
Centre was aesthetically as much as functionally designed. This was reflected from the
facing brick finish, full front glass entryway, and hanging flower basket along the archway
and front, side and rear shrub gardens. Most of these aesthetic touches have been
removed/transformed to reflect a security focus. Shrubberies at the front are now filled
with concrete, archway flower baskets removed, the building now sports surround cagescreened floodlights with surveillance tower and a metal shutter screen covers the glass
entryway, which sounds a loud buzzer on opening. Such external changes have been
mirrored internally.
Originally, the facility was open plan with a foyer area filtering customers to access to all
areas unhindered. As the supervisor who has been ever present ‘from day one’ attested ‘it
was smashing inside and out…punters could go everywhere right to the main office’
(Supervisor, interview). The facility has undergone a number of changes with the foyer
leading to a reception that is totally enclosed by a glass safety screen with speaking point and
a slot for exchanges. The foyer area, reception and front door are all covered by internal
video surveillance with TV screens and recording equipment for both internal and external
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cameras located in the main office. From here a hallway leads past toilets, through a safety
door, to both male and female change and shower facilities. This safety door can only be
opened from the main office where staff ‘buzz through’ all customers, thus, restricting
access to the changing area.
With regard to actual sport and recreation provision, the facility comprises a multi-purpose
games hall and gymnasium. The games hall caters for sports (e.g. football, badminton,
basketball etc), classes (e.g. sports, martial arts, aerobics/Step/Spin, trampolining and Kids
Clubs), children’s parties (e.g. Themed, Disco-Bounce and Soft Play, and events (e.g.
International Powerlifting, football and badminton tournaments and Snooker). The
gymnasium comprises of a range of free-weight and resistance machinery and cardiovascular equipment. In addition to changing room lockers the gymnasium provides small
‘valuables lockers’ designed for car and house keys, wallets, watchers and jewellery.
Finally, due to the absence of windows, natural lighting is compensated throughout by soft
lighting and pastel décor, which with posters boards, information sites and vending, provides
a general account of the internal aesthetic and provision of the facility (see Appendix B).
However, this physical profile needs to be contextualized with that of the local area and
customer groups accessing the facility.
Contextualizing consumption: the social space of sport and recreation
Although, case study data provides the rich text of the embodied lives (Shilling, 1993; Dale,
2001; Reason and Bradbury, 2001; Hunter, 2004; Lewis, 2004) of those who work and
engage in sport and recreation in the area, there was always the problem of contextualization.
This is more apparent since the facility was designed to serve the ‘locality’ of the North West
of Kilmarnock, which comprises four main wards (i.e. Altonhill, Onthank, Hillhead and
Wardeneuk). In other words, just as above, there was a need to profile those within the
catchment area as much as those who participated in sport and recreation within the facility.
Without doing so it would be difficult to picture, understand and appreciate the problems
faced in the operation and consumption of this social space. Therefore, geodemographic
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information, of the catchment and facility users, was compiled using booking systems,
informal discussions with users and staff knowledge (Appendix C summarises the
geodemographic profile (i.e. category, group and type) of customers).
Although this may appear contentious or even contradictory given discussions above, it
should be understood that this ‘tool’ of quantification only sketches a contextual map upon
which the rich ethnographic text is located. Rather than universalistic or naïve positivism
(Bourdieu, 1996) it provides a backdrop canvas to the objective regularities or conditions
(Johnson and Duberley, 2000) of those who live and work around, and participate within,
the case study facility. More importantly, the form and extent of such a profile should be
put in perspective. Typically, geodemography, as a ‘fusion of geography and demographics’,
in this case merging census and National Household Survey data, is used for ‘the analysis of
people by where they live’ (Sleight, 1997: 16). However, although an incessant market
segmentation and surveillance mechanism (CACI, 2001), geodemography is unable to
account or categorize all lifestyle differences and, more importantly, explain why individuals
act or consume (Voas, 2001). Therefore, taken with the booking information provided by
customers (i.e. home address) the main benefit of geodemography was that it enabled the
profiling of the objective conditions or environmental context of customers (Goss, 1995).
Having been post-code located customers could then be cross-checked to see if they fall
within the North West wards/catchement. Also geodemographic categories, groups and
types highlighted aspects economic and employment status, housing category, car
ownership, family size and education. When coupled and with qualitative evidence gleaned
within the ethnographic case study, patterns of objective differences between users could be
highlighted.
However, although useful it is stressed that without the rich text of ethnographic data such
geodemographic profiling would be rather barren. Unless the individual is brought into an
embodied text, in this case the meanings underpinning the cultural consumption of public
sector sport and recreation, the identification of objective conditions remain in meaningless
abstraction. Only through associating such conditions, seeing and reflecting upon how such
conditions are embodied and impact upon individuals as they engage in sport and recreation
(or not), take meaningful form. Moreover, the internal ethnographic data provided a critical
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counterbalance to the external geodemographic profiles offered via the ACORN system
(Appendix C provides the map of categories, groups and types) as geodemographic
information could be examined for accuracy against details elicited by customers themselves.
It is stressed that such profiling focused, primarily, upon regular or block booking users
(including adult/child coaching and clubs, main hall activities and gymnasium) rather than
what is procedurally referred to as casual bookers (i.e. customers booking one off sessions).
The rationale being the regular/block bookers took up most of the time available, were
easily tracked and provided the richness and depth of data of the study as opposed to
sporadic casual users. The ability to profile such customers and locate customers, as data
will demonstrate, bore an essential relation to the immediate catchment area, the rationale
Therefore, it is worth outlining the history of the catchment area.
The four wards that constitute the North West catchment (mentioned above) have been
designated as ‘areas of severe deprivation’ (East Ayrshire, 1998: 2) for some time. Such
deprivation being reflected in 32% (16-19 years) unemployment rate compared to the
authority average of 13% (HMSO, 1991), ‘high percentage of lone parents 57% of which
have pre-school children’, one of the ‘highest drug, crime and vandalism rate of all Unitary
Authorities’ (East Ayrshire, 1998: 4-5). Geodemographic profiles support this, categorizing
the area as ‘hard pressed’, predominately grouped as struggling families of ACORN types
(44-49) that indicate low income families, many children, poorly educated, high percentage
unemployed, single parents and rented accommodation. Internal reports from East Ayrshire
and interview evidence verify such hardship with Hillhead having ‘the highest uptake of
school meals in Scotland’ (Kelly, Leisure Development Manager, interview).
Unsurprisingly, the catchment area comes high on the Scottish Index of Multiple
Deprivation (SIMD), is second highest overall in East Ayrshire (Scottish Executive, 2003b),
a main social inclusion partnership (SIP) area, which, as of 2005, have been replaced by
Regeneration Outcome Agreements. Such a designation demonstrates central government
recognition of the associated problems that the objective conditions of unemployment, poor
skills and housing, low incomes, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown
bring (Collins, 1998; Scottish Executive, 1998; 1999; Collins, 1998). Again this links to the
Third Way politics of New Labour (Giddens, 1998), Best Value, which now with healthy
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public policy, active lifestyles and lifelong learning initiatives arguing for joined-up policy
(Stewart, 1998; Foley, Frew and McPherson, 2001; Scottish Executive, 2003), finds leisure
and, thus, sport and recreation, politically reinvigorated. Sport and recreation is again seen
as an intervention, or transformatory mechanism, in areas of deprivation (Collins, 2003;
sportscotland, 2002). However, unlike the 1975 White Paper (DoE, 1975) sport and
recreation is no longer taken as abstractly transforming in an of itself but affiliated with the
outcomes of health, education and crime agendas (sportscotland, 2000; Ibbetson, Watson
and Ferguson, 2003). As a SIP with such a severe deprivation profile the case study was, and
remains, an ideal target for such agendas.
Nevertheless, with regard to the case study it is contended that although the facility, the area
it serves and the operational issues staff face may be regarded as atypical, other sport and
recreation facilities and SIP areas (e.g. Drongan) within the East Ayrshire report similar
issues. This does not refute the assumption that the case study facility and issues of this
study are atypical only that it could be argued that such assumption be reversed and that
other such facilities, the daily operational lives of staff and customers have gone unnoticed
or been ignored. Regardless, as this study will reflect via data, even extremes are only
accentuated versions of more subtle tensions and conflicts between management, staff and
culturally conflicting customer groups. The following section turns to such research
methods used and issues of access and assimilation with staff, management and the
operational delivery of services to customer groups.
Working in Sport and Recreation: an ethnographic exploration
It is worth noting that the research focus of this study was driven by a personal interest and
work experience in public sector sport and recreation (an involvement spanning fifteen
years) and the lack, or neglect, of longitudinal ethnographic research in this area (Boxall,
1992; Hague, et al, 2000; Rojek, 2005). This was reinforced on encountering Foucault’s
abstract theory of the dynamic historical development of the subject (i.e. within the
power/knowledge/subject matrix) and Bourdieu’s empirical and ethnographic theory of
practice (i.e. practices are embodied being competitively formed and reproduced within
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sociocultural contexts). Essentially, as these theorists were seen as providing a
complementary analytical perspective, the study of the operation and consumption of public
sector sport and recreation emerged as a research area of genuine untapped and novel
potential.
With this background and research rationale the ethnographic aspect of fieldwork saw the
researcher assume the role of a Recreation Assistant (RA) within East Ayrshire Council’s
Hunter Centre sports facility. Securing such a position was facilitated due to having worked
with the former Kilmarnock and Loudon District Council, which involved a period of work
(1987-1991) at the Hunter Centre. With prior knowledge and understanding of the
organization, area, facility and staff joining the compliment of staff (i.e. Recreation
Supervisor, Assistant Recreation Supervisor, four full time Recreation Assistants, an array of
Relief Recreation Assistants and Cleaner) was unproblematic. From the perspective of
management, initially, during the first three months of research, an Area Operations
Manager (departed June 1998) from the Direct Services Organization (DSO) would ‘drop in’
throughout the week for face-to-face briefings, provide resources and manage operational
issues with the Supervisor on site. However, by May of 1998 such managerial contact was
drastically reduced due to the inter-related impact of local government re-organization, the
second round of Compulsory Competitive Tendering and impending transition towards Best
Value Regime (as above referred to as CCT and BV). Contract side management was
restructured and centralised, which initiated occasional managerial presence from new
Community Recreation Managers (initially two managers with one departing in April 1999)
and Assistant Area Manager (two posts). Added to this was the continuing and extensive
contact with the Leisure Development Manager and her team. Therefore, and layering with
the national and strategic interviewees mentioned above, this mass re-structuring between
client and contract provided the core facility staff and managerial compliment of the
ethnographic case study. It should be stressed at this point that all national, local managerial
and operational staff interviewees and participants within the field are listed in Appendix D.
In line with the research process and ethical sensitivity (Flick, 1999) all names have been
replaced by titles of abbreviations to preserve anonymity.
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Nevertheless, from May of 1998 till the end of the study management followed the national
decentralization strategy (DETR, 1998; 1999; Stevens and Green, 2002). However, (as
Chapter Seven highlights) the managerial and technologically centred (using fax, phone or
Public Access Terminals) approach was decentralization in name only. A larger leisure
service department emerged with both the client (responsible for community and leisure
services development) and contract (responsible for facilities maintenance and management)
being centralised in the, aptly named, Central Office of Kilmarnock. Other than the need to
enhance efficiency, re-address the market/social remit and local responsiveness of public
services (Collins, 2003; Roberts, 2004) a primary rationale from such re-structuring was to
ameliorate previous divisions between client and contract caused by the compulsion element
of CCT. However, as field notes and interviews with client/contract management
demonstrated such transitions accentuated historical divisions and managerial styles and
policy approaches. These will be reflected in the various sections of findings (Chapter
Seven) and analysis (Chapter Eight).
Previous ethnographic research views such familiarity, as in this case with the facility
operations, staff, management, customers and local community, as essential if the researcher
is to become ‘part of the landscape’ and be seen to have been ‘paying their dues’ (Wacquant,
1995: 493). Given past experience of the facility, its management, operations and customers,
or someone who ‘knows the score’, ensured credibility and fit among staff. However, the
importance of such was essential due to staff suspicions of graduate management or ‘uni
folk’ that the supervisor referred to as ‘stepping stone people’ who ‘ken everything about
nuthin…dae their stint and move on’ (Supervisor, field diary). Of course it is acknowledged
that acceptance and immersion within the working, and social, scene of these leisure workers
carried the classic issues of data contamination, interviewer effect (Kreitner 1995) and ‘going
native’ (Gold 1969). Although these and other limitations of the study are outlined and
critiqued below, it is important to stress that such issues were paramount and reflected upon
prior to initiating the research process, methods adopted and mechanisms and processes of
data recording. The subsequent section details these methods and processes.
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Ethnographic methods: observations of sport and recreation operations and
consumption
Consistent with ethnographic approaches where observation is ‘practiced as a form of case
study that concentrates on in-depth description and analysis of some phenomenon or set of
phenomena’ (Jorgensen, 1989: 23) the majority of data was recording through forms of
observations. Observations, whether by direct participation, formal or informal/overheard
conversations with and between management, staff and customer groups, formed the
content of a series of five field diaries. More often than not, due to concerns over recall and
the ‘tidying’ and selectivity of the memory (Megill, 1987; Gilham, 2000), data would be
written down directly after the event. However, again due to familiarity and classic
accusations of Hawthorn effect and going native, data was selected in manner whereby the
researcher attempts to 'systematise the status of the stranger'. This means that the researcher
reflexively acknowledges their position of contamination as they look for the ‘particular in
what is everyday’ (Flick 1999). Just as this resonates with the action approach, it asks the
researcher to continuously question what and why they are recording and consider
alternatives. In other words be it Bourdieu’s criticism of the naive assumption of universal,
objective reality or a poststructural nihilism ‘anything goes’ (Du Gay, 1996: 37) an attempt is
made to apply a method that, along with researcher and researched, is inextricably linked to
the cultural construction of knowledge. Again, given ethnographic research entails ‘length
periods of ‘deep hanging out’…to be able to develop a full understanding of how social
structure including specific location corresponds with individual accounts’ McRobbie (2005:
180), self-conscious methods were integral to the research process. To that end
observations and reflections were aided by Spradley’s, (1980) three-tier ‘place, actor and
activities’ (39) approach. Here observations moved from descriptive (varied and open
description), to focused (identifying recurring themes) to selective (pursuing and follow-up
focused observation with complementary data). In an attempt to further aid the difficulties
encountered in identifying the when, where and what of observational data and reflecting
upon it Flick (1999) adapts Spradley and provides a useful nine dimensional model:
-
Space: the physical place or places
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-
Actor: the people involved
-
Activity: a set of related acts people do
-
Object: the physical things that are present
-
Act: single actions that people do
-
Event: a set of related activities that people carry out
-
Time: the sequence that takes place over time
-
Goal: the things people are trying to accomplish
-
Feeling: the emotions felt and expressed
(Flick, 1999: 143-144)
Although, every situation encountered does not offer itself to every dimension (e.g. the goals
and feelings of actors are not always clear or expressed) this model is useful to think and
work with. It helps locate and track the activities of actors to spaces and situations and,
thus, build profiles of observational data from which theoretical formulations can be made
and re-examined against other data as it arises/is observed. Therefore, given the sheer
weight and richness of data, this model aided the coding, grouping of collating of
observations as well as facilitating the essential reflexivity process (discussed earlier in
Chapter Two) when engaged in such research.
Also, in order to contextualize and supplement this observational data, a series of
organizational information was identified, collected and coded. These were separated into
‘documents’ and ‘records’ (Gillham, 2000: 21). Documentary evidence took the form of
leisure strategies, plans, Council policy statements, minutes of staff to management meetings,
customer care, health and safety (including maintenance) and supervisor statistical reports.
Records included operational procedures and staff training (via staff handbooks, which
included sport/activity coaching, programming and inductions). Of these the most
significant being the accident and incident book administered by staff since 1991.
Although this may appear low profile in the scheme of data (providing actual recordings of
incidents from the perspective of staff), the length of time and variety of data enhanced the
representation of the customer groups and staff practices. Again what was omitted from the
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incident book was of interest as much as what was recorded by staff (e.g. forms of abuse
being ignored due to their regularity). When added to the other methods such as the
literature review, national scene interviews/forum, strategies and such local case study data
can be viewed inter-relationally (Yin, 1989; Selner, 1997; Gillham, 2000) and enhances the
overall analysis. Although, adding to the rich text this, as will be seen in the findings and
analysis section, enhanced the contrast between the worldviews of management, operational
staff and representations of customer groups.
More importantly, with the theoretical coupling of Foucault (McKinlay and Starkey 1998)
and Bourdieu (Bourdieu, 1990; Fowler, 1998; Collins, 2000) providing the concepts for
analysis, the coding of findings were, simultaneously, developed into aspects of analysis.
With the concepts of these theorists (expanded in detail earlier in Chapter Two) the dynamic
embodied actions of management, staff and customer groups could be developed (when
added to the historical, external and national scene) to reveal public sector sport and
recreation as a discursive, yet, embodied process. It highlights the relations of agency and
structure in the dynamic (re)construction of the subject within discourse by laying bare the
workings of cultural privilege that enable and reproduce domination.
Ethnographic methods: dynamic adaptations to observations
Although the familiarity with the facility was beneficial for access, which ameliorated any
Hawthorne effects (i.e. due to personal knowledge of staff for many years, thus, able to
identify ‘performing’ responses), close relationships with staff carried ethical problems.
Much of this was due to the covert status of the study. On re-joining the facility as a
member of staff questions were aired as to why, following completion of an undergraduate
degree, the researcher should ‘want tae come back tae work in this shit hole’. Staff was
placated when informed that a PhD was underway, hence, a return was a financial necessity.
Given their lack of knowledge of higher education (or cultural/institutional capital) this
reason was accepted. Essentially, although suspicion had been defused staff were unaware
that they formed part of the PhD process. After a period of three months and, due to on
site recording of data (often necessitating the withdrawal to any quiet place) sustaining this
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charade became increasingly problematic. Originally, interruptions when taking notes were
tolerated or mocked as ‘daft uni stuff’ eventually questions over ‘whit yea scribbling’
increased. As the covert aspect of the study became untenable operational staff (not
management) were informed of the study.
Initial concerns that this would prove fatal to the study (as trusts had been jeopardized and
some members viewed the process as ‘sleekit’ [devious]) were not only overcome but actually
enhanced the research process. Having gained staff understanding and approval, the study
could not only move from covert participant observation to a Participant as Observer (PaO)
approach (Gold, 1969; Jorgensen, 1989; Flick, 1999) but the openness and willingness of
staff allowed aided the data gathering process and the development of further methods.
Note taking no longer needed to be a difficult, hidden process as observational data could be
openly discussed and the researcher’s interpretations challenged, modified or dismissed.
Here, rather than covert participant observation falling into some pseudo-objectivity, the
subjects generate and interact, in the reflexive style of action research, with data (Reason and
Bradbury, 2001; Rowan, 2001). This reinforces attempts to assume the notion of stranger
since in attempting to become the ‘stranger’ the researcher must try and ‘fuse’
commitment/immersion to the research with ‘distance’ by working with, rather than
studying as an object, the ‘dialogical partner’ or the research (Koeping, 1987: 28).
With the active participation of staff alternative support methods for gathering, focusing,
selecting and challenging data themes and analysis were developed. The first, and possibly
most controversial, was the instigation of self-reflexive interviews (SRI). These SRIs were
the product of concerns over misinterpretations and missing data and involved staff
deciding, describing and discussing issues that concerned them as they daily interacted with
management and customer groups. In an attempt to be as unstructured as possible staff
were each given a time diary (for a period of one month) to ‘jot down’ his or her working
experience. Additionally, a Dictaphone was left in the office with each staff member having
a tape. Staff were asked to ‘put your thoughts on tape’ or, at quiet points on shift, discuss
issues with other members. Of course not all staff were comfortable with this (with one
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refusing to participate) or equally able to articulate their views in depth (such issues will be
discussed in the final critical reflections section of this chapter).
However, with researcher observations taking place simultaneously the SRI process provided
a series of observational angles within the same operational context. It provided a platform
to air the 'lived everyday lives of people’ the meanings of their ‘activities and their
relationships’ (Coalter, 1998: 266) from their perspective. More importantly, this process
reflects the ‘bid to create more democratic ethnographic modalities’ since ‘this kind of
research typically attempts to draw in more actively the participation of respondents,
providing them with video cameras, bringing them together to report back on activities,
planning follow up events’ (McRobbie, 2005: 180).
Therefore, armed with these tapes and diaries individual in-depth interviews were initiated
with staff (five completed in total). Here points raised could be developed, clarified and
contrasted with that of other staff members and that gathered by the researcher. Rather
than seen as a form of qualitative triangulation this process was more in harmony with the
action approach (Park, 2001) and a means of gathering the rich data or small narratives
(Bourdieu, et al, 1999) generated by those who live and work in sport and recreation.
Moreover, in reviewing such data it was clear that many observations were multi-faceted
involving space, time, participants, staff, physical resources and moments of interruption.
This reinvigorates the arguments against universal objectivity as even ethnographic
observations, rather than being start-finish, causal self-contained totalities, are seen to flow
one into the other and, thus, open to intertextual interpretations (Kristiva, 1980; Sim, 1998).
Staff Forum: closing the action research loop
Having shifted from the researcher’s participant observations to PaS, to the self-generated
diaries and dictaphone discussions of SRIs and final in-depth staff interviews a final staff
forum was initiated. Given the weight of data, issues of practicality in arranging in-depth
interviews with individual staff members (so lengthening the study timeframe) this forum
was conducted in November 2004. Although, such interventions extended the association
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with the core staff within the ethnographic case study such regular contact did allow
reflection upon data gathered and issues of freshness/relevance. Moreover it allowed time
to distil and present those key data and analysis points that formed the focus of discussion
and reflection in the staff forum.
Therefore, with the variety of methods, data generated and complex interpretations,
(highlighted above) the staff forum was a final opportunity to present staff with the data
drawn from the study. To begin with involved rehearsing data derived from key themes
(Appendix A) and relating them the data derived from the longitudinal field diaries. These
were presented to the group for open discussion, clarification and accuracy of
representation. In order to avoid difficulties arising out of analytical interpretation and,
being reflexively conscious of imposing and embodying a sociological habitus (Bourdieu, and
Wacquant, 1990; Bourdieu et al, 1999), interim analysis points were articulated in the terms
of reference and data examples staff either knew of or personally provided. Although
difficult this allowed staff to question, ask for clarification and so better understand the main
interpretations of data being presented. This process, in adhering to calls for reflexivity
within the research process and the participatory principle of action research, not only
brought data and analysis before the subjects of research but also actively engaged them with
the research. The staff forum re-emphasised the philosophical approach to research with
staff seen as participatory subjects rather than mere objects of research. Therefore, the staff
forum completed the research loop and provided closure to this most arduous and timeconsuming fieldwork process. The section that follows critically reflects upon this process
and all the methods discussed above.
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Methods: critical reflections
Undoubtedly, as with any PhD, the journey of this study has been fraught with limitations
throughout. Given the aim of the study and theoretical coupling the case study approach
was the most appropriate. As discussed in Chapter Two the historical depth, sophistication
and power/knowledge/subject matrix of Foucault’s discourse demanded empirical
grounding (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998; Rose, 1999). With Bourdieu animating discourse
through the embodied reality of the everyday, the use of the case study method to release the
rich narrative of localised knowledge, experience and emergent issues, or local discursivity,
was a logical selection. Moreover, a single intensive case study is justified (Stake, 1995;
Bryman, 2001) for, with Foucault and Bourdieu’s challenge to universal dogmatism, the
multi-methods used not only releases the polyvocality of the case study it also acknowledges
a research ethos and reflexivity that views the researcher as an active part of the process
(Reason and Bradbury, 2001). As mentioned above, and evident by the methods themselves,
this does not imply an ‘anything goes’ or ‘I think’ school of sociology. Again, in line with
Focuault and Bourdieu, it philosophically challenges the research process and points to the
problem of ‘naïve realism’ (Reason and Bradbury, 2001: 5), and obsessions with objectivity
(Bourdieu, 1996), which tends to prioritise research procedure over the research problem
(Alvesson and Deetz, 2000). However, and before considering the issue of reflexivity in
more detail, the ‘intensive’ nature or depth involved in this case study was problematic.
Given the methods above and length of time in the field, the weight of data was substantial.
On reflection the ethnographic core of the study was too long making the shear volume of
data difficult to handle analytically let alone present. While calls are made for such studies
(Bowman, 1990; Boxall, 1992; Johnson and Duberley, 2000) the time, intensity, commitment
and personal impact involved are underplayed. Undoubtedly, ethnographic fieldwork
delayed progress and completion. Other elements of the research process including desk
research, interviews, forums and theoretical considerations were restricted by the saturation
needed whilst in the field. With a typical 6.45am till 11pm working day (involving university
till 3pm then onto case study) the nature of longitudinal ethnographic research is not only
difficult to sustain but unrecognised in relation to other studies and forms of research.
Moreover, the burden of fieldwork, similar to the theoretical review with the work of
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Derrida being dropped in favour of Foucault and Bourdieu, made it necessary to revise
methods.
In aiming for a discursive, more intertextual (Kristiva, 1980) reading of the PSSR the
polyvocality of the local discursivity of the Hunter Centre was presupposed. However, while
such dialogical research prompts the development of multi-methods to peel back, open and
interact with the layers of dissensus (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000), this research concern
produced an over-development of methods. The research layer with past practitioners
exemplified this problem. Past practitioners, with a career trajectory ‘moving through the
ranks’ to strategic management positions, were viewed as able to relate to the historical or
discursive transitions taking place within the PSSR, empathise with management, operational
staff and have an understanding of those customers groups encountered. This voice was
seen as a way of viewing how past archives, contingently spill over (Hoy 1988) to become
embodied and relationally condition the ‘said’ and the ‘seen’ (Smart, 1988: 49) of the PSSR.
However, to include this voice would have been counter productive in terms of having to
squeeze out the data of others.
Of course in abandoning this layer, or voice, simultaneously, reflects the practicalities of
research whilst, again, highlighting the trap of essentialism. The participatory, dialogical and
embodied approach is never pure but always wrestling with the problem of painting an
unambiguous or complete picture. Although this might be regarded as a critical weakness
(Frazer, 1989), failure to acknowledge classic interviewer positions (Kritner, 1995) or
ethnographic concerns over going native (Flick, 1999; Patton, 2002) this is not the case. The
methods above, and the analytical coupling of this study, not only take cognisance of such
issues but also reflexively challenge the nature of research, researcher and any claims to offworld positions and procedural purity. Moreover, a complete chapter (entitled Research and
the Production of Knowledge: a philosophical problem) of was dedicated to addressing such
issues in depth. However, given the coverage of Chapter Two this philosophical chapter
was edited from the final thesis. Accusations of an incomplete picture and ‘rampant
subjectivism’ (Crotty, 1998: 48) are rejected and deflect from the presupposition that a
complete picture is possible. Rather than look to essentialist totalising truth that,
paradoxically, stops, dissects, distils and objectifies life in order to study the dynamics of life,
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a concern for uncovering a cacophony of truths, more democratic knowledge and how it is
constructed and discursively contested is favoured:
No longer then is something like an organization or, for that matter, an atom or
quark thought to come first while our understandings, models or representations of
an organization, atom or quark come second. Rather, our representations may well
come first, allowing us to see selectively what we have described.
(Van Maanen, 1995: 134)
Without doubt issues of cultural contamination, problems of interviewer effect or going
native, and the epistemological problems they bring, were both conceptually and practically
uppermost throughout the research process. This was all the more so given the level of
familiarity with the case study facility, management, staff and customer groups. Whereas
such familiarity reflects with the autoethnographic use of self-aware ‘autobiographical’
experience to examine the ‘multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the
cultural’ (Ellis and Bochner, 2000:739), Bourdieu’s concept of reflexivity was pre-eminent
throughout the study. This not only asks the researcher to keep ‘cultural baggage’ (Saukko,
2003: 20) uppermost but also demands a constant self-reflexive critique of position in
relation to the field as much as academic or intellectual bias (Bourdieu, 1988; Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992; Robbins, 2003).
Therefore, past experience is questioned along with conceptual issue such as class, gender or
inclusion. Also, given the operational status of Recreation Assistant, the views of operational
staff had to be reviewed against that of management. It was essential that a defensive, them
and us, position was avoided. More importantly, and given the depth of feeling of staff
(highlighted in Chapter Seven), staff to managerial relations, operational and customer
practices needed to be considered from the past as much as the present. Finally, the
problem of forcing personal academic dispositions on respondents was a concern. Even
though familiar with the case study there was always the tendency to forget the habitus of
respondents who, having ‘extrascholastic preoccupations’, find themselves subjected to
‘epistemocentric questions’ that require ‘the scholastic disposition’ in order to respond
(Bourdieu, 2000: 59-60). Across all methods, but in particular with case study staff, the
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researcher’s habitus, which has assimilated those academic disciplines, conceptual
approaches, tools or capitals of research, was continuously in mind. Again in attempting to
‘neutralize the distortions’ (Bourdieu, 1999: 60) or traps inherent in the research process,
such as researcher bias, universalisation or the foundationalism of a definitive author
through the reductionism of subjective voices (Bourdieu, 1996; Alvesson and Deetz, 2000),
it is acknowledged that this was never a complete success.
Therefore, the oscillation between the participant as observations of the micro case study
and interviews with those concerned with macro policy brought such issues into sharp relief.
The diversity of backgrounds encountered served to highlight and question the relationship
between the research process, methods adopted, habitus of the researcher and those under
investigation. As such it was not so much about the ‘phrase regimes’ that ‘specialist language
and particularly its terminology’ (Bourdieu, 1999: 58) but the ‘relationship between the
sociological surveyor and the surveyed’. During the research process this imposition of the
academic disposition was most evident when investigating the local excluded groups.
As illustrated in the findings of Chapter Seven the use of managerial or theoretical language
(e.g. strategy, performance indicators, SIP area, deprivation, capital, exclusion) was not only
incommensurable but also the structuring of time and the delivery of questions was
impractical. These groups, unlike the policy makers, managers or even staff, did not engage
in lengthy discussion or debates. To sit, interview and probe in formal manner would have
been anathema to their embodied habitus. Discussion had to be on their terms, gather at
points (e.g. outside the facility, around the foyer) and during a break in play/rest, while
smoking or passing. Essentially quotes were gleaned peripatetically, of-the-moment with
short questions about their life or tastes. Not only was this necessary but lapses into
academic disposition got the derisory responses such as ‘swallied a dictionary’ or ‘whits wi
the big words’. Interestingly, and without any native loyalty or emotion, reflexivity was
reignited more by staff and local groups, who were quick to chastise when acting out of
Recreation Assistant character or falling into academic mode, than by any academic
disposition. The worldview of the operational and customer groups of the case study
provided the greatest reflection as they challenged the academic habitus and research process
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as much as provided the research problem for this study. The following findings chapter
will illustrate this.
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7.0
Findings: the Data Themes of Discourse
Introduction
In moving to consider and critically discuss the primary data by this chapter represents a key
landmark in the journey of this study. However, before highlighting the major themes under
which to present and discuss such data it is worth revisiting the central aims of the study.
Through the analytical coupling Foucault and Bourdieu this study aims to explore and
reconceptulisation public sector sport and recreation as a discursive and privileging site. It
reveals how the dynamic power/knowledge/subject matrix of discourse works being
assimilated and animated in and through embodied operational and consumption practices
found within the PSSR. In arguing that the PSSR represents an ongoing embodied
discourse that both privileges and dominates it challenges the notion of an open, inclusive,
and professional public sector.
Again it is stressed that this study does not intend to solve the subjectivism-objectivism or
agency-structure dualisms that have blighted the social science and leisure studies for
decades (Coalter, 1989; Bourdieu, 1990; Rojek, 2005). The concern here is not to proffer
solutions. To do so not would not only contradict the ontological and epistemological
commitments of the study but also, and ironically, run the risk of falling into the imprisoning
rationality of Enlightenment dogmatism (Foucault, 1977; Bauman, 1992; Du Gay 1996a) that
this study challenges. Rather an attempt alternative reading or reconceptualisation of the
PSSR and its subjects is offered. The purpose being that to reconceptualise the PSSR as
embodied discourse will provoke questioning, sustains debate, celebrate otherness and
reinvigorate resistance against the insipid processes of objectification, normalization and,
consequentially, demonization and domination. Nevertheless, there are undoubted critical
flaws or better holes within this study. Some of these have been acknowledged and, while
addressed, are far from plugged. This is no ‘cop out’ but echoes with a stand against
definitive narratives and, even with the best research intentions, an acknowledgement that
theoretical and empirical leakage appears both as a frustrating, yet, healthy inevitability.
Moreover, this problematic is reflected in wrestling with the presentation and critical
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discussion of data. This is not only connected to the philosophical and theoretical issues
above but also with the volume and forms of data generated throughout the various stages
of the research process (outlined in Chapter Six). Rather than adopt the traditional
approach of separating and individually presenting data findings from analysis or the
merging sections an alternative approach is offered. The intention is to present core data
under two sub-chapters with each sub-chapter disaggregating data through series of themes.
Also, it is stressed that much of the data is presented in the manner spoken by those
encountered in the field. Therefore, under thematic sub-headings data will be directively
described. Directive description means that data will be paraphrased or summarised into a
brief commentary and followed by illustrative samples of data extracted across the various
stages of the research process. In this way the intention is to thematically guide the reader
but also to provide them with the opportunity to gain a feel for and interpretation of data
before the presentation of analysis. It is for this reason that, other than the occasional
concept, phrase or reference each sub-chapter is devoid of or unfettered by primary points
of analysis. Having presented data findings in this manner Chapter Eight will turn and
critically discuss primary points of analysis.
Although, this directive description of data may be open to unprofessional fast tracking,
problems of data disclosure or forced interpretation, this approach presented the best way to
represent the rich narratives and critical commentary of the study. Following the stages of
the study the intention is not only to reflect data but also to layer such data in such a way
that maintains coherence and builds upon and sustains critical discussion points. This was
regarded as the most practical means of picturing the dynamic embodied practices of the
PSSR discourse. Essentially, these sub-chapters systematically reveal the empirical evidence
of the study (Appendix D lists all national, local managerial and operational staff represented
below and as mentioned in Chapter Six all names have been replaced by titles of
abbreviations to preserve anonymity). From this Chapter Eight presents an interpretation,
or meaning, of such data by developing critical discussion through a Foucauldian and
Bourdieusian analysis. This incremental process enables progression towards final
conclusions of Chapter Nine.
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Embodied Spaces & Cultural Tastes: ‘just’ differences or distinction?
Given that a longitudinal ethnographic case study sits at the core of this study this opening
sub-chapter, predominately, focuses on the rich narratives found therein. This does not
mean that such case study data is isolated here for presentation. The sub-chapter focuses
upon the embodied reality of those living, working and consuming the sport and recreation
services in and around the case study facility. In so doing this sub-chapter reflects the
embodied process of governmentality inherent within discourse (Rose, 1999) at the micro
level in the first instance. Rather than move back and forth from the outside/external
population or national policy arena to the internal/embodied socio-cultural politics of lived
worldviews the rationale for positioning of the case study data here is that the richness of
this data provides insight into the embodied process of discourse and also energizes the
notion of discourse (Kendall and Wickham, 1999).
However, it is stressed that given its focus this sub-chapter concentrates on aspects, issues or
patterns of difference and distinction aggregated and attributed to what has been termed
local/internal and external customers. Again, and it cannot be stressed enough, the use of
the terms ‘local’ and ‘external’ should not be taken as a display of embodied polarity. The
rationale for such terms is one driven by a pragmatic need for clarity. In arguing for the
PSSR as embodied discourse an array of embodied positions, engaged in the dynamic
assimilation, competition and resistance of capital, was evidenced. As mentioned in Chapter
Six and discussed below, while the geodemographic status (see Appendix C for a summary)
enabled the aggregation and general distinction of groups into ‘local’ and ‘external’
categories, both these groups reflected a series of embodied states with competing levels of
capital. However, to label, continuously identify and shift between embodied positions
would produce confusion and reduce the impact of the studies findings and analytical points.
This does not mean that the study does not attempt to address this. On the contrary the
final section of the analytical discussion (i.e. Chapter Eight) is dedicated to this. For it is
here that the embodiment of discourse and the distinction found in the display, affirmation
and competition of capital (Bourdieu, 1986) as much as its resistance and attempts at
assimilation (Foucault, 1988) is argued as resembling a dynamic web. Here a host of
subjective states, within and between the cultural competition of ‘locals’ and ‘externals’, are
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witnessed in various stages of transformatory change. Therefore, and given the complexity in
representing this dynamic embodied web, it is best to ‘hold fire’ and persist with the ‘local’
and ‘external’ categories until this final section of analysis. With this, and given micro-level
case study data functions as the enlightening platform and linkage between sub-chapters, the
development and rationale for the case study facility provides an appropriate starting point.
A Facility for Whose Locality?
The opening of the case study facility, the Hunter Centre in August 1985 is rooted in a series
of historic developments that contingently shaped the substance of sport and recreation, its
facilitization and mass appeal (Toohey and Veal, 2000). As highlighted in Chapter Four the
cultural traditions, religions, political, social and economic events of the past transformed
sport and recreation into the global taken-for-granted phenomenon of today (Scambler,
2004). From its origin as the bastion of an aristocratic elite, the popularity of sport and
recreation grew and with it came a raft of associated provision and practices. With spatial
containment, codification and facilitization sport and recreation emerged as a cultural
commodity with participation representing the social badges and the embodied values of a
burgeoning middle class (Veblen, 1912; Hargreaves, 1986; Guttmann, 2000). In the wake of
this, alongside the functional use and civilising value associated with sport and recreation,
post-war welfarism brought sport and recreation into the policy arena. Although a vehicle of
values and cultural privilege sport and recreation had become an emancipatory target of
egalitarianism, a right of citizenship (Roberts, 1999) and a public service open to all. As
highlighted by both long serving management and operational staff the underpinning
rationale for the Hunter Centre was linked to such agendas:
I’ve been here from the start [1985]…according to Big Dennis [departing
Community Recreation Manager] it was built with urban aid money with the Council
covering running costs wages, maintenance and that. (Supervisor, field diary)
The Hunter was one of the first traditional Comm Rec [Community Recreation]
facilities a typical join-funded project of the time plonked in a multi-deprivation area.
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It’s different but looking that is. Same wild type of place but different from the bog
standard like Muirkirk. (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
In pointing to the policy approach of the day, more recreation as welfare than recreational
welfare (Coalter, 1988; 1990), Katie depicts the overriding rationale and community focus of
the facility. This is reflected in the facility strap line ‘A Sports Facility for Your Locality’,
which remains to this day. Again, this notion of locality was important at national level for
‘if more than 50% of the people are coming from more than 2 miles away you are not
actually serving the local community’ (sportscotland, interview). Again, field evidence
indicated that the commitment to the local catchment area has been gradually undermined:
You’ve got the people that come from what would be termed as decent areas, as
good areas, you get them coming from Stewarton and Fenwick, all over but not
where they are used to drugs and violence as it is up here. They speak politer so
you’ve got people from this area and you’ve the paying customer. I’d say mainly 75%
come from outside the area. (Supervisor, interview)
It changes in here. It’s different fae the mornings tae the nights…I mean you’ve got
everybody fae yur normal punters that come in, you’re normal working guys like ma
sel. Then you’ve got yur unemployed boys that come in and the posher folk at night.
That’s been the big trend, a big change over the years between yur unemployed local
guys like Mushie. Management push it. I mean they want us doing programmes ‘n’
clubs. Its cash wi nae hassle. The unemployed guys fae 16 to 30, we don’t get
anymair. (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
I would say people like Mark Cauldwell that come in that have been using the Centre
for years but they’re no actually local...like the Raesides [regular female badminton
group]… They speak different fae anybody else, much politer. They come into the
Centre as if they are better coz they’ve got guid jobs an they own their ain houses or
whatever. (RA3, interview)
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Geodemographic data (Appendix C) drawn from the booking system (standard daily sheets
that record details of clubs, classes, block and casual bookings) substantiated the employees’
comments. Focusing on a core sample of 139 regular block bookings/users (these
names/bookings are not just individual users but include multiple users/groups booked
under an individual) revealed that the areas or postcodes of the majority (n96/69%) of users
are located out with the primary catchment area of North West Kilmarnock. Again, it is
stressed that geodemography was not used as a definitive tool for imposing meaning on
embodied states and consumption practices (Voas and Williamson, 2001). Rather, it served
only to locate groups within the objective circumstances of communities and as a basis to
highlight differential status and examine it’s embodied meaning (if any). External customers
fell under the geodemographic categories of wealthy achievers, urban prosperity or
comfortably off with a small number categorised as moderate means. Within these
categories the occupational range moved from young and affluent professionals to as retired
homeowners. In contrast, customers from the North West fell into the category of hard
pressed or, at best, moderate means. Of these groups and occupations were variously
labelled from blue collar/low income or routine jobs; struggling families/low income, many
children/poorly educated, single parents/council terraces and high unemployment. This
geodemographic data reflects the profile of the case study facility (outlined in Chapter Six)
and the history of the North West catchment area variously categorised as an area of
multiple deprivation, area of priority treatment (APT), social inclusion partnership area (SIP),
new Regeneration Outcome Agreements and confirmed by the Scottish Index of Multiple
Deprivation (Scottish Executive, 2003). However, whilst this quantitative data provides a
snapshot of the objective conditions within which residents of the catchment exist, it cannot
reflect the daily lifestyle, deprived status and social circumstances of those people. The
following qualitative data provides a window into these lives and animates the objective
conditions of the area:
This is the largest concentration of known drug users in Ayrshire. It’s like a cancer
about here…what’s wrong is folk still see it [drugs] as a stigma..it’s the smack heads
who get tagged..they hate going into the chemist for their meth [methadone] and
made to feel ashamed. (Billy, Drugs Outreach Worker, field dairy)
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Hillhead [catchment primary school] has the highest case of free school meals
anywhere in Scotland. It’s that bad. (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
Hey, it’s fuckin Zulu territory about here man. If your fae the wrong place yur
fucked.’ (Simon, local adult, field diary)
Sorry, but it’s a disgusting area. The people are just vile and the kids, well look at
them they’re wild. All you get is lip or smart comments. My car’s been broken into
twice and it’s that lot no question. (Jan, Aerobics, external customer, field diary)
We called in at wee John’s house. Paint spilt on the floor and someone’s just thrown
a mat over it. John’s lying on the floor eating his dinner with the dog eating bits
from the other side of the plate. I’m no joking, honest! Hey, and that’s nothing. It
really is a shocking place to bring up kids. (Wullie, Police Officer, field dairy)
The place is really run down, a lot of houses boarded up. Basically it’s like a war
zone, windows smashed, boarded up, doors patched up with bits and quite a trashy
area… there are a lot of single parents like, finding it difficult to bring up children, a
lot of drug addicts (Alison, local adult, interview)
Its like Beirut round here. I did a job [joinery] in Onthank the other day. There’s
folk sittin on mattresses in the garden bawlin’ an shouting across the street at each
other. Weans were running wild. The wee bastards were jumping on the back of my
van. They could’ve got killed. One drew on the side an naebody bothered there
arse. A says tae Tony ‘let’s get this done and get the fuck out a here’. (Kevin,
Boxacise, external customer, field diary)
See it all the time. They steam past here pushin prams, fags in the mouth ‘right
Brain’. Couple a years ago I wiz taking them in the kids club now they’re saddled wi
a wean. You’ll say [pointing] ‘see her pregnant before she’s sixteen’. It shit but that’s
how it turns out. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
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This area is an APT area, it’s an area of priority treatment with a lot of
unemployment, a lot of violence… the drug problem seems to have actually got a
wee bit better in the last month since they busted that house [approximately 100m
from the Hunter Centre locally known as the ‘Crack House’] (Supervisor, interview)
Policy designations such as ATP or ‘area of multiple deprivation’ carry little significance to
those locals using the facility. While the poor housing, high unemployment rate, large
number of single parent families, high drug and alcohol use and violence in the area
represented a daily operational issue for staff (as will be seen), for locals this was a given. As
illustrated here these objective conditions were an embodied reality faced by local residents
with an air of fatalistic inevitability:
Nae offence, its alright for you but I’m stuck in this shit hole. You wanny swap
place wi me? I’ll take yer, job you have ma life. (Jim, local adult, field diary)
It’s crap but whit dae ye dae? You’ve jist got tae get on wi it. I’m waitin for a move
out Longpark tae Morven [known as Morphine avenue]. At least I’ll be away fae the
maddies (Alex, local adult, field diary)
Gonna burst this tenner? They’re [parents] gonin’ daft out there [parents arguing
outside centre]. Look at them [laughs] fighin ower drink money (Debbie, local adult,
field diary)
Look what happened to wee Fishy. He got captured and dun-in [local teenager
recently stabbed/murdered]. It’s a shame but that’s the way it goes. (McNeillie,
Local Adult, field dairy)
[Local adult selling stolen goods staff] That’s a Rab pertex jacket an he’s sellin it fur
£15. He disnae recognise the name (Rab) cause it is nae Berghaus or Helly Hansan.
(RA3, field diary)
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Jist check the ‘Crack House’ [nods to flats opposite]. Tellin ye its smack city man.
Easy tae fuck your life up round here. (Sammy, Local Adult, field diary)
Regardless of the grim reality and lifestyle of locals the facility maintained a large external
customer base with some customers/groups travelling over 15 miles. With two large multisports facilities (i.e. Magnum and Galleon Centre) within a radius of 10 miles the location of
the facility was a factor. Lying adjacent to a dual carriageway, linking Kilmarnock with
Irvine, the M77 to Glasgow is on a main commuter route. While ease of access and the
fortuitous location served as a promotional attraction, the staff and personal services were a
key aspect in retaining these car owning or ‘ferried in’ external customers. These comments
illustrate this point:
This is my type of place, the centre that is. Smashing wee place, good facilities with
good staff. Matt [badminton coach] can’t see past it an so do the boys. (Jim,
Badminton Club, external adult, field diary)
It’s cheap [laughs]! No, we’ve been here so long we’re part of the furniture now.
When I phone to book I know the voice it’ll be Mary-Anne or Kenny and they know
it’s me. We’ve got Jimmy, Matt or Sam and the girls [regular customers booking at
the same time]. We all have a laugh..It’s a wee club without the club. (Margaret,
Badminton, external adult, field diary)
It’s the place, the personal touch. You know everybody by name…That’s whit I like
about it. Fae the day I got here Kenny’s pushed the coaching. The Coerver [Dutch
football method], Playways [arts, mini sports kids club], personal programmes an
training [gym] who else is doin that? The Galleon? [large multi-sports facility] Don’t
think so. (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
People like what we do. They ask for you by name. If it’s sessions in the gym or I’m
doing Step it’s the contact, the one on one. (RA2, field diary)
176
Yes, I was just thinking that they are taking, not advantage, but the opportunity to
come to a small centre, personal, cheap and they like it for these reasons that’s why
they come. They don’t have to go into a big centre where you get fucked. (Staff
Forum, interview)
The attention you get here is second to none. It would cost a fortune at a Fitness
First or Parklands. Nothing’s too much trouble. A new programme, push on,
advice…Even when you can’t be bothered, Kim, Cara or Margaret [training partners]
are on the phone, ‘going to the Centre’ (Susan, Gym, external adult, field diary)
Well you can’t miss the place can you? You see it from the road one turn and you’re
here. It’s a nice wee place, specially when floodlit at night. (Supervisor, interview)
Ironically, the flood lighting was a management response for security and CCTV (discussed
later) rather than for aesthetic enhancement and promotion. Nevertheless, the development
of provision, personalised service, familiarity with staff and low cost has aided the influx of
external customers. This growth has highlighted and accentuated the distinctions between
customer groups and their management over the years. The ‘spectrum of client groups’ has
shifted from a traditional day/locals to night/externals split, to a situation where time for
local groups has been squeezed in order to accommodate developments that attract external
groups. Such developments, as illustrated here, have not gone unnoticed by staff and locals
alike:
There’s nae dead time any mair. You’re non stop. It’s Soft Play [playgroup
sessions], Workout Lunch [gym and badminton] then its Hillhead, Craigie or Park
(schools and special needs group). Yae canny draw breath now. Soon’s the
unemployed’s bye the coaching kicks aff. (RA1, field diary)
Just sitting here it would drive me mad. What can we do next? Make things better.
Punters see that. They like new stuff. It’s nothing to do with getting in Derek’s
[Community Recreation Manager] good books. It’s just money, bums on seats for
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him. I’m always pushin even wee Jamesie (Recreation Assistant) coachin…This is
the busiest we’ve ever been. (Supervisor, interview)
[Unemployed stopped from playing football and asked to leave for badminton
booking] It’s fuckin crap so it is. Canny dae anything fur they cunts [external
badminton players]. We’re bumped soon’s they appear lukin at us like we’re shite
[shouts in] aye am talking about you’s ya snooty bitch. Shower a bastards! (McNellie,
local adult, field dairy)
Well, ages ago nights were always packed. That was a hard shift but it passed quick.
It used to be quiet through the day but now it’s just busy. Locals moan there’s ‘nae
courts’ but its better you don’t have to put up with their shit so much (RA3,
interview)
I’ve been comin here for ages…it’s no the same I mean for fuck sake the
unemployed’s [block booked hour 3-4] yer lot now. We used to get in fae the crack
[opening time] an use the place (Jinks, local adult, field diary)
See, you can never get a fuckin game for they trumpets... Coz they pay they think
they are it. I thought this place wiz for us? Well I don’t ken any of they fuck-offs.’
(Sammy, local adult, field diary)
Therefore, although established on the basis of traditional welfarist agendas (Roberts, 2004;
Rojek, 2005), the growing customer base out with the immediate catchment was an
incremental and progressive process. The aesthetic of the facility, combined with
developments in provision and attentive customer care practices (whether driven by
management or the delivery team) and competitive pricing have perpetuated and increased
external customer numbers. However, while hostility was evident between externals and
locals there were situations where positive interaction would occur. This involved those
locals who had become a regular fixture in the facility and would assist staff at changeovers
or run errands to the local shops. This put them in a positive light with staff but also
178
presented opportunities to interact with externals at times when players would fail to turn
up. However, this did not detract from the embodied circumstances of these groups:
Don’t get me wrong Debbies all right, she’s a good hand and I feel sorry for her but
she’s constantly here. Every time you turn she’s there it drive me mad. (RA2)
Check big Stevie [local playing badminton with external female group] suckin up tae
them. He’s mair a women than they are. (Tuckie, local adult, field diary)
The YM [external YMCA group] boys are a right. They come in their plush motors
an got a the gear an there’s me on the broo [unemployed] wi two weans. Aye but
they still geis a game [fill in at football when short of players]. The boys are a right,
man. (Jim, local adult, field diary).
[Laughing] You want tae see this they’ve [external football team] got daft Mark [local
adult] in goal an he’s fuckin useless. He’s flappin like a big chicken in there. Oh he’s
getting it saire fae they boys. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
Wee John’s in wi the bricks but he’s guid fur gone tae the shops. He does a’right he
gets tae keep the snash [change] so he’s no as daft as he looks. (RA1, field diary)
Nevertheless, with increasing numbers and the ‘club without the club’ factor the Hunter
Centre has been territorialsed by external customers whilst, simultaneously, squeezing
opportunities for local groups. Interestingly, as early archive documentation demonstrates,
this situation contradicts the original aim of the facility as the then manager stated that the
facility would be an ‘asset for the residents’ and that ‘our policy is to accommodate everyone
and not to allow one group or activity to dominate’ (Kilmarnock Standard, 1985: 3).
Provision and practice has developed to appeal and respond to the tastes of external
customers (data below will develop this further). Changing customer profile is a reflection
of past criticism and failure to meet social objectives (Audit Commission, 1989; Coalter,
1993; Collins, 2003) but, ironically, the erosion of time and opportunities for local groups
enhances rather than reduces exclusion. Echoing the historical policy basis of such facilities
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and the included/excluded division, customers not only reflected this divide but perceptively
alluded to its politics:
I know this place is supposed to be for the locals - it’s built for them. But I’m not
daft. Let’s face it, it’s really for people like me. The likes of me, the girls there
[Raeside Badminton group], we appreciate it. I mean they [locals] don’t use the place
anyway. (John, badminton Club, external adult, field dairy)
This [Hunter Centre] is a wee Oasis in a filthy area. It attracts good, hard working
people, gives the place a lift…It’s a terrible thing to say but the people round here, I
mean honestly, animals. They don’t deserve these things. I don’t know how you put
up with them. (Margaret, Gym, external adult, field dairy)
Although, the construction of the Hunter Centre was a policy response to issues of multiple
deprivation its provision and operational practices had, increasingly, attracted a large external
customer base clearly noted by staff and local groups. Successful marketing efforts and
enhanced quality of provision produced a situation whereby external car borne customers
squeezed time and opportunities for local groups. Effectively, the increase of external
‘paying customers’ had, in a highly partisan area, territorialized the internal environment,
provision and operational practices of the facility. Nevertheless, given the location and
social remit of the facility this situation brought these diverse customer groups into contact
with one another, thus, magnifying embodied cultural differences. However, as will be
demonstrated more below, the territorialization by externals was more an act of embodied
attraction and familiarity with sport and recreation tastes, their cultural consumption and
delivery. Rather than mark and dictate facility provision and practice these external groups
represented embodied reflections. They are physically docile and fitted the material
provision and its managed operational practices of the facility.
Kids, Clubs & Classes
In line with the development and increased rationalisation of cultural forms (Abbinett, 2003)
the Hunter Centre reflects the trend of segmenting space and service provision. Also such
180
rationalisation married well with the observation approach (see Chapter Six), which focused
on patterning actions, activities and events according to spatial locations (Flick, 1999).
Standard to the rationalisation and codification (Guttmann, 2000) of sport and recreation
(public or otherwise) the facility evidenced an extensive programme of child and adult clubs
and coaching programmes, each sited within set spatial locations (e.g. courts, hall or gym).
Such service developments, along with the reduction of casual space/booking opportunities,
produced a situation whereby the previous separation of groups, whether due to time,
employment/unemployment, economic means or taste, diminished over time. As
mentioned above, this correlated as much with the innovative attitude of facility staff as with
the policy changes, which brought about managerialist, client/contract split of CCT and,
later, the impact of a Best Value Regime (Henry, 1993; Roberts, 2004) (this is developed
more below). However, the delivery of clubs, classes and coaching programmes does
provide a window into the differential attitudes and consumption practices of groups (both
adults and children) and operational responses to them. This section opens by focusing on
the procedural and consumption practices of children as they engage with clubs and classes
of the facility, staff and others. The rationale being that children, particularly younger
groups (below 10 years), evidenced less guarded, more spontaneous and open responses,
which contrasted starkly from the point of entry:
With the Coerver kids [football coaching] you’ve likes of Callum and Stuart best of
kit, Nike, Adidas immaculate. Wee Paul bounces in wi the same tracky he’s had on
all week an the talking trainers [sole split] (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
Some have still got the school jumper an trousers on. It’s straight here and in.
Never a thought. I wouldn’t send my kids like that but it doesn’t seem to bother
them (RA2, field diary)
You’ve got the mums and dads an its ‘two please’ [children]. Nice folk coming in …
they would queue, they would just be polite …see when the other kids come in they
don’t queue they fuckin swamp the front desk. They don’t follow the procedure
(Supervisor, interview)
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I’m affronted when they [football kids] all pile in. The mums just look horrified. An
me [laughs] tryin to look all in control ‘now don’t push one at a time’. An the weans
just blank me (RA3, interview).
With their clothing, speech, movement and manner local children, or ‘wee gadggies’ (RA1,
field diary) as they were known, engaged with the internal environment and operational
administration of the facility differently from those children brought by parents or the ‘fun
run mums’ (i.e. those dropped off and picked up). Although not relating to every child
from the immediate area, ‘local weans’ tended to ‘stick out like a sore thumb’ (Supervisor,
field diary). Queuing, speaking in turn, extending a polite ‘please’, ‘thank you’, interjections
of ‘excuse me’, observing personal space and social graces tended to be bypassed or ignored
by most local children. Requests were often stated abruptly such as ‘any halls?’ (unbooked
courts). Money would be slapped down with ‘fifty’, ‘fitba’ or ‘club’. Likewise requests for
change for vending machines were abrupt statements such as ‘gis change’ with, at best, ‘ta’ or
‘right’. This disordered or ignorant use of space and ‘procedure’ produced a constant
surveillance by staff conscious of other/external parents and children. These local children,
as with many of the older youths and adults, were generally regarded as ‘wild’, ‘animals’ that
were ‘to be watched’ as ‘they’d steal the sugar out your tea first chance…gie them an inch
and they’ll take a mile’ (RA3, interview). Although there was evidence support this
perception of locals by staff and customers (data below will add to this) local children did
gain entry to the facility and did participate in clubs. However, the added gaze of other
parents and the inequitable policy that strictly controlled entry and attempted to civilise local
children, was enforced.
Unless attending clubs or classes, local children were invariably moved off the premises.
Posters announced that the use of vending machines and or toilets were restricted ‘for
customers only’. Local children ‘needed to be taught basic manners’ (Supervisor, field diary)
and would be not be served unless they said ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. While children
conformed to this depending upon the member of staff present the most evident success
was when asking to use toilet facilities. Even children playing/hanging around the facility
would tentatively enter the facility, or ask staff patrolling the front, to use the toilet. Out
with a point of internalisation and self-regulation of ‘procedure’ the issue here was one of
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surveillance. It was a case of who was allowed in and when all with a constant eye on how
they were to conduct themselves. More interestingly this procedure and surveillance was
inequitable as it only applied to local customers. Children brought to classes and clubs by
parents or those waiting for uplift were never challenged over their requests to use such
facilities. There was an assumption that children dropped off by car or brought in parents
knew how to, and would, behave better than children from the local catchment and although
much of this, as will be highlighted later, related to older youth groups and adults from the
local area, the younger (5-12 years) local children were generally categorised as problematic
and untrustworthy. This inequitable treatment by staff towards external and local children
was, on reflection, a source of tension:
Right that’s it [moving three boys for football outside], out! I’m sick of it you’ve
been telt [to behave], out! You’ll wait there tae the end, an clear the door [moving
them to the side to let other in]. Every week’s the same, they’d burst yae. (RA1, field
diary)
Its the type of folk that you were coming into contact with… you are expecting
them, even the kids, to be glad that you were helping them, but a lot of the time they
weren’t really appreciating what you were doing for them and that got me quite kind
of disillusioned…I just got fed up. It’s just hassle, constant hassle. The clubs can be
really hard work and you feel why bother?…I’d hunt most of them - save time and
hassle. (RA3, interview)
I wouldn’t take that [having refused two two local entry girls trampoline club for not
‘apologising for their cheek’] from my own kids so I’m sure as not taking it for them.
Either behave like everybody else or don’t let them in. It’s as simple as that. (RA2,
field diary)
They’re no all bad but you need to know who’s who, the ones to watch. Most are
fine. They’re jist a bit mental. You’ve jist got tae ken how tae handle them.
(Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
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The parents don’t give a shit what they [speaking of local children] do so why should
the weans give a shit?…Parent’s aren’t interested in giving them money to go to
these places so if they’ve not got the money they can’t get in and there is only so
many times you can let them in free. (Staff Forum, interview)
I used to do the manners [insist in ‘excuse me’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’] thing but
don’t bother anymore. It’s no them is it, that’s me [not them]. You know if they’re
takin the piss. Tae think I used to throw them out for the daftest thing. (Supervisor,
interview)
Operationalising and managing the intermediate spaces of administration and the immediate
exterior of the facility for groups of children, particularly at post-school hours, weekends and
seasonal holidays, highlighted differences in understandings, use and appreciation of such
spaces between groups. However, although the parental presence for many external users
was a controlling factor, their absence within actual clubs reinforced and accentuated
differences between how children utilise such spaces and how they are managed.
From the outset, the structure of formalised clubs, seasonal or otherwise, was an issue. The
standard health and safety capping of class numbers according to age groups demonstrated
insensitivity associated with the deprivation of the catchment area. Many local children were
of large families with siblings a few years apart. Participation in clubs, Easter and summer
were especially problematic. Children from the same family would often arrive in small
groups of two, three or four, which would hamper entry due to age restrictions. This was
more difficult as the younger children would be in the care of another (predominately
female) older child. Added to this collective ‘baby sitting’ or more surrogate parent role the
volume of numbers (even with the subsidised entry) proved an economic hurdle. Although
many staff would ‘turn a blind eye’ to what was summed up as a ‘classic numbers game wi
nae thought of the weans we get (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)’ such circumnavigation of
procedure (more of these issues are discussed later) contingently produced a bitter-sweet
outcome. Economic problems still resulted in sporadic attendance as children had to be
seen to ‘pay something along wi the rest’. This resulted in a ‘hovering’ presence of children
outside the facility. This was compounded by some staff who would occasionally allow free
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entry but only once parents/paying customers had left. While local children revelled in such
‘freebies’ their late entry was evidential of their embodied circumstances and a two-tier
customer status. However, regardless of such actions of pity, once these children were
inside the club context the administration, organization and rationalized progression of the
coaching process, as much as the position and authority of the coach revealed another level
of embodied conduct between children.
Popular clubs that cut across groups, such as football, trampolining and playways (weekend
club), reflected difficulties in securing standard control for the administration and
organization of space, equipment, games/coaching drills and instruction. Again, local
children would stand out as they struggled to deal with coaching restraints and attempts to
impose authority. Coaching processes such as gathering to listen for instructions, repeating
drills, waiting patiently for equipment changes or safety spotting others (trampoline) were
interrupted with sporadic play, arguments and disinterest. While retention of interest and
class discipline is a standard issue in coaching pedagogy the authority figure and demands of
the coach would normally prevail. However, the position and authority of the coach had
little impact on local children and was constantly usurped. Moreover, classic coaching
attempts at gaining compliance by designating offenders’ roles and importance were actively
resisted. The role of the ‘helper’ was viewed negatively by many local children, which
contrasted with other groups who embraced such roles positively. For local children such
‘helpers’ were tagged with the colloquialism ‘Benson’ (reference to being a slave). However,
these issues of ‘wild’ behaviour, swearing, ‘cheek’ or unwillingness to conform to the ordered
norms of coaching practices and challenges to coach authority were not common across all
clubs for children.
The Roller Hockey and Short Tennis clubs were distinct in a number of ways. Although the
Roller Hockey club was justified on the basis that it represented a novel activity and as an
inclusive recreational opportunity for all children, the Short Tennis club had been longstanding. Both clubs were run by coaches and parents with a strong emphasis was placed on
competition (competing within leagues and the facility used for home fixtures). Drilling,
skills techniques, spatial and tactical awareness training were standard with games/plays
interspersed with coaching timeouts. Moreover, competitions demanded that players travel
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for away fixtures, which drew upon the support player’s parents and their essential transport.
The heavily formalised structure, need to travel and investment in equipment (extensive in
the case of Roller Hockey - roller boots, elbow, wrist, knee pads, helmet, hockey stick and
uniform) represented strong barriers for local children. For, although the participation of
local children was high at ‘taster’ or recruitment sessions for new players, this dwindled once
children entered the formal club process. Even the long running Short Tennis club retained
only a few infrequent participants while the Roller hockey was exclusively composed of
children out with the catchment area. Although making dismissive or derogatory statements
such as ‘it’s a crap anyway’, ‘they’re pish, I’d tank them’, ‘bunch a poofs wi big daft shorts’,
local children often asked to watch from barrier guards (used at competitions). While this
was regarded as ‘an excuse to get in’ by some staff, others noted that local children attended
the roller discos and played tennis in seasonal programmes:
Even if they wanted to play there’s nae way they can play. The stuffs a fortune
(Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
Its too strict for them. It’s a stop start. Listen [coach] ‘right, gather round’, ‘gather
round’ this lot wid rip the pish oot her. No, is no their scene (RA1, field diary)
Well there’s the Short Tennis…it stick out. I mean Gus [coach] tries but its still the
Kilmarnock crowd [local tennis club]. We’re a feeder. Their kids come here then
move down the road. You don’t see any of locals kids here or down there. Same
faces different place. (Supervisor, interview).
Regardless of their exclusivity the longevity and promotion of these clubs highlighted an
ideological shift towards economic gain. This would be accentuated with the redirection of
staff away from coaching of children towards more adult/gymnasium developments. This
focus on economically effective service development, necessarily, emphasized the taxonomy
and distinction between customer groups. Again, the more overt managerial process and
service development (developed at length in the following sub-chapter) produced tensions
between staff and management, which (as seen later) challenged the professional legitimacy
of management. However, and most importantly, just as procedural structures of space and
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place, as well as codes of clubs and class, revealed embodied differences between local and
external children, adult clubs and recreational activities demonstrated not only similarities
but also greater elements of docility to the structuring of space, time and the codes of sport
and recreation.
Across clubs such as badminton, boxacise, circuit training, step and spin there were aspects
of uniformity of with external customers. Booking procedures (such as 4 week blocks for
boxacise and circuit classes) were strictly adhered to (more to ensure a place than anything);
polite and personalized exchanges from entry, greeting, payment, through to being ‘buzzed
through’ safety door to changing rooms with reciprocal waves and ‘thank you’ or ‘cheers’
were standard patterns; changing into sporting/specialised dress/equipment (of various
quality/brands) with change and shower/toiletries (other than some step/spin class
customers) was a given for these customers. Once in the class/casual use, staff would
quickly assemble the appropriate equipment (if they were unable to set-up beforehand) while
customers patiently wait by the wings. When finished polite thanks are offered and
acknowledged or in the case of a class customers assume positions and the class is
systematically engaged in. Again the following of coach/trainer instructions were received
and executed in unquestioned manner. Other than new/beginners, such as with step
routines (which, ironically, followed a structure of beginners at the back and best at the
front) customers for such set activities and clubs demonstrated an air of assurance
comfortably moving through the facility to the consumption of activities. However, the gym
space not only emphasised high levels of embodied docility and cultural comfort but also
brought the classic dualisms of freedom/constrain or structure/agency into critical relief in
relation to external and local customers.
As is the nature of the traditionally codified sports the gym represented the most rationalised
form of recreational activity. The personalised training service was a key attraction for
external customers. Other than personal training offered through the NRG initiative (i. e.
initiative funded and designed to ameliorate health and social exclusion and predominately
utilised by local women who seldom used the gym space) this service was the preserve of
external customers. Interestingly these customers willingly subjected themselves to the
processes of objectification and rationalization of this service. This is worth recounting as,
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with the emergence and operationalization of gym based health and fitness phenomenon, it
highlights a form of cultural taste and embodied subjection that produces distinction.
Personalised training service was offered ‘by appointment’. Upon booking customers would
be asked to bring appropriate dress (i.e. shorts, tracksuit and training shoes) and informed to
leave an hour for the screening and induction process. On arrival customers would be
processed undergoing a ‘health and activity history’, ‘physical activity readiness questionnaire’
and ‘body mass index’ (measuring weight, height, age and gender against comparative
norms). Following this customers enter the gym and taken through a ‘familiarization
programme’. Interestingly, upon entry customers would see large posters stating ‘Gym
Etiquette’, listing the practical and cultural rules (as these are important in situations of intergroup conflict these will be returned to below). This ‘full body’ programme consisted of a
proforma that prescribed ten exercises all performed for three sets of ten to twelve
repetitions. Customers would be systematically taken through each exercise in turn, told
how to grip, place feet, position arms, push to a count of ‘up, two, three, pause and down,
two, three’. Throughout the process weights, sets and repetitions would be written down on
the familiarization proforma headed as ‘record of achievement’. As highlighted staff this was
successful and progressive service:
It’s [personal programming] our biggest earner. They love it and its good for us.
Even Jamsie likes to take them round. (Supervisor, field diary)
I’ve got four tonight two from Fenwick and a couple from Dunlop. That’s how
popular its become. (RA2, field diary)
The gyms the best bit of the job. They [customers] appreciate what you’re
doing…I’ve got ma regulars I’ve taken through induction, familiarization to the Trim
& Tones (RA3, field diary)
Through personal training services external customers displayed and unreflexive
acquiescence to a process of constraining high rationalization and objectification. The
arrangement of equipment and the operationalization of the gym, when coupled with the
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induction process and familiarization programmes, made the consumption practices of this
space verge on the mechanical. Personal training services were literally processes of
embodied ‘training’ and reinforcement but one observed by external customers only. The
low uptake of this personal training (other than some local women) meant that gym usage by
local customers was on a casual usage basis only. Again, reflecting earlier evidence, many
local customers would appear in dress/equipped (at best some would wear jeans, shirt and
boots) without separate clothing or toiletries. Although equipment dictated the exercises
and constrained the range of movement local gym customers followed a self-made
programme or trained off-the-cuff. Rather than ‘full body’ programmes training sessions
would revolve around set body parts with sets, reps and rhythm of movement following no
set pattern. Other than occasionally staff advice/assistance was restricted to ‘spotting’ on
heavy lifts. For this group the gym/weight training was, predominately, a male space of
machismo display, which negated notions of ‘help’ or requests for personal training. With
such clear differentiation between the embodied practices of groups the gym space was a site
of conflict. However, before turning to these it is worth retuning to the experience and
interactions of children within it not only it encapsulates the objective conditions, distinction
between groups but also highlights the angst of staff, which is developed in greater depth
later.
Seasonal (Easter and Summer) programmes were traditionally developed and run by staff
and linked to weekly clubs/classes (e.g. Coerver Football Coaching) running throughout the
year. However, managerial service developments brought the introduction of mobile play
teams and national governing body coaches. For staff this reflected a lack of understanding
on behalf of management, play teams and coaches of the area and customer groups. The
Easter Soccer Skills (8-12 years) illustrated this well. This programme (run at a promotional
cost of 50p per day) attracted local and external children. Local children would appear,
mostly on foot some on cycles, on their own in various states of dishevelment wearing an
array of T-shirts, shorts, tracksuit bottoms and football tops. External children were
dropped off with the majority in full football kit (various teams) and all neatly presented.
Also, as with all seasonal programmes, externals children arrived with pre-packed lunch
boxes. These would be lined up behind the foyer safety screen with vending money placed
on top. Following the first day, and given the large numbers, coaches asked those children
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with a football to bring in for the next days coaching. This led to an illuminating incident
recounted at interview by the Assistant Supervisor:
Well they [coaches] asked them tae bring their ba’s in didn’t they. So this wee boy’s
ma drops him off, the new Rangers gear and that, wi a spanking new ba and along
comes wee Gary, black [dirty] as they come, wi a thing the dug’s been chewin
[laughing]. So they all put their ba’s together and away they go. Well come the end
of the day the wee boy’s up at one of the coaches askin where his ba is. An the
coach’s looks around an goes ‘that no it’ pointing tae the dug ba. The wee boys
about greetin ‘no that’s not mine’. Wee Gary’s nae where tae be seen he’s fucked off
wi the new ba [laughing]. (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
Although regrettable situations such as this where the distinctions between groups were so
blatant they were also inevitable to experienced staff. Rather than laboured moralising some
staff felt the issue reflected the position and plight of local children. This not only
demonstrated the failure of management to acknowledge local issues (a subject dealt with in
detail below) but also that management were complicit in accentuating distinctions between
groups due to the policy and practices they introduced. This was evident across staff:
The balls they boys are bringing in for us to blow up, I mean you would, I used to
comment, you shouldn’t call this a ba, ken. They think it’s a piece of gold because
it’s the only thing they’ve got…but whit do they [management] do run SFA courses
at £18 they [locals] can’t afford that, it’s a money, money (Supervisor, interview)
‘Football fun for all’ [quoting poster]. Ma arse. Where’s our weans? They’re nae
where tae be seen. That Margaret [Assistant Area Manager] talks pish she could nae
give a fuck. Its jist bodies and cash tae her . She’s no chasin the weans is she?
(RA1, field diary)
However, there was an area of distinction where local children excelled, namely, physical
ability. Although pejoratively qualified by some as a consequence of being ‘left to run wild’
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external coaches remarked on the general physical ability and sporting prowess of local
children:
Oh, they’re easily the best players here, naturally talented. They’ll run rings round
most of the other kids. The problems not their footballing ability its their attitude
(Michael, Play Team coach, field diary)
If you can just get them behave themselves there’s no two ways about it some of
these kids could be excellent. They’re throwing tricks you wouldn’t believe. No fear!
(Catrina, Trampoline coach, field diary)
Put a racquet in their hand or a ball at their feet and off they go. It a case of great
hand-eye coordination and these kids have got that in bundles. (Angus, Short Tennis
coach, field diary)
This sporting ability of local children was a reflection of the general emphasis placed on
physicality by those within the area. As will be seen later situations of abuse, physical
contact and violence were common to those in the area, which carried over into facility and
impacted upon staff. However, although this physical prowess facilitated sporting ability or
the acquisition of skills among local children it was inconsequential for staff. As the
following comments illustrate staff were more vexed by the inability to develop sporting
potential:
Aye, a ken they’re good but what’s the point of that when they get chucked out every
week. I guarantee ye Shaun and Gary, the best bar none in there, will no last 10
minutes. I bet ye there chucked oot. You watch an see (Assistant Supervisor, field
diary)
There is a lot of wasted talent in the area. You could dae a lot with some of weans
but where do they go? Where’s their parents they’re no backing they’re just left it’s a
shame. (RA3, interview)
191
Take the Startrac [Athletics coaching programme] that wee lassie fae Hillhead broke
every record in the book. Mary and Carol [Sports Development team] were there
and all ‘that’s amazing’. But nothing they just let her walk out the door. I mean
what chance has the kid got she should have been taken by the hand. (Supervisor,
field diary)
This does not mean that there were no attempts to cater or understanding the objective
conditions of local children. Out with allowing locals to use unbooked ‘casual’ space (a
practice staff believed was essential to gain the ‘trust’ of locals but also one, as will be seen,
that brought conflict with management) attempts were made to develop specific clubs for
locals. Of key interest were local 12-16 year old youths with females regarded as the most
difficult ‘killer group’ to attract. Although casual participants major contact with the facility
was on Thursday and Friday evenings. However, unlike other occasions this ‘bunch a wee
neds…dafties wi their trackies tucked in their socks’ (RA1, field diary) would congregate at
the front as normal but with manicured hair and wearing their best clean and always branded
‘trackies’ and trainers (e.g. Kappa, Nike, Reebok, Addidas). The girls added to this jeans,
heels, name chains and accessories. With attendant alcohol, cigarettes, general bantering and
flirting this was them on a ‘night oot’ all dressed in ‘their glad rags’ (Assistant Supervisor,
field diary) but one that usually ended in them being ‘chased’ or moved on. With this
attempts to establish clubs/provision for such groups summarised the ‘problems’ of the area
and issues face by staff and client side management. Of such attempts two clubs standout.
The first reflected classic policy areas that target increasing female activity with the aim of
developing health and social inclusion through sports and recreation participation (Collins,
1998; Scottish Executive, 1999, 2003; sportscotland, 2003). However, from the outset
problems arose as, following consultation, local females elected to name the club the Mile
High Club with the strap-line ‘getting high on miles’. The client manager recounted the
reaction to this initiative:
God, John Milgrew went mental councillors were complaining left, right and centre.
But what could I do the girls loved it they knew what they were doing. I tried to
explain [to superiors] it was just tongue-in-cheek stuff but they were having none of
it…Och, you know the area, what it’s like up there the wee souls were only having
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fun with it. It’s a real shame but that’s politics. (Leisure Development Manager,
interview)
Such reactions or ‘politics’ to the development of provision for local youth groups were not
restricted to upper management but also reflected by contract management and other
clubs/customer groups. This relates to the second example of a club developed by staff
conscious of local issues and local youth habits. Here, in an attempt to respond to the
wishes of local youth staff set aside Friday evenings from 6-8pm. Again local children were
asked to name the club with the sport and recreational content rotated or changed as
children saw fit. Just as with the Mile High Club, and in self-conscious parody, the name
‘The Misfits’ was selected. Although, an attempt to compensate for some of the issues
above the following comments highlight that this club also reflected the embodied
circumstances of local children:
They gather here anyway so it [Misfits] gets them in an saves us huntin them.
(Supervisor, field diary).
It’s oor way of breakin down the barrier…young punks night a wi their best gear and
a carry oot fae Ali’s. If we didn’t do this these guys wouldn’t come (Assistant
Supervisor, field diary)
You’re no getting in your pissed. ‘We’re alright [local boy with arm round girl] I’ve
only hud a wee drap’ [holds up a large bottle of White Lightning cider which staff
takes/holds for later return]…‘A better get that back’. Any mair crap and your oot
(RA1, field diary)
If they Shortlees bastards turn up the night they're getting fucked. They jumped
Mish [Michele a Misfits regular] last week and slashed her [across arm]. (Nicola,
Misfits youth, field diary and recorded in Incident Book)
193
Look they think they’re wee gemies wi their trackies, tucked in their socks. Fuckin
gadggies mair like. (RA1, field diary)
We’re away [round side of building] for a fag tell Dave an bring the bottle. There’s
nae talent here the night. (Becca, Misfits youth, field diary)
Regardless, of its effectiveness in attracting local youth and attempts to understand the
embodied circumstances of local children (their manner, behaviour and use of sport and
recreational spaces) the operational difficulties of this club brought it into direct conflict with
management. This was accentuated with the extension of the Roller Hockey league, which
led to its demise of the Misfits. In turning to focus on adult casual and club interactions the
following section seeks to further illuminate how customers groups view, negotiate and
embody the spatially contained and rationalized spaces of sport and recreation differently
through situations themed as cultural conflicts.
Cultural Clashes in sport and recreational consumption
The preceding sections have attempted to sketch out the case study facility the area it serves
and some of the operational issues faced in the delivery of services with the development of
differential customer groups. In particular the embodied distinction of customers, with
particular reference to the structural and embodied circumstances of those within the
immediate catchment, was highlighted. More importantly, these sections pointed to how
embodied practices, or better performances (as argued later), correspond to the rationalised
spatial locations in and around the case study facility. They represented initial accounts
whereby cultural knowledge of such spaces triggers embodied performances of consumers
that facilitate comfort/security and distinction. Moreover, just as such spaces are
rationalised, embodied, culturally negotiated and consumed staff, similarly, display a series of
embodied performances that not only relate to these rationalised service spaces but, as will
be seen more in the management sections below, that reflect the authority of staff positions.
This section builds upon and reinforces this by presenting situations where differential
groups negotiate and come into contact both within the legitimate rationalized spaces found
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within the facility and those more ambiguous intermediate spaces around the facility.
Therefore, and given the above, this section highlights situations of dynamic embodied
conflict as they relate to the cultural consumption of sport and recreational space and the
management/operational responses to them.
In beginning this, and intimated above, throughout the study there was a clear distinction
between local and external children with regard to how they engaged with formalised sports,
play or recreational activities in and around the facility. For example, young local children
(from 3 up to 12) would refer to themselves as ‘playing’ (only the small 3-6yrs would say this
it appeared distinctly uncool seen as ‘fur weans’), ‘carryin’ on’, ‘rakin’, or ‘jist hingin about’
either alone or in small groups. Often they would wander into the facility, either bored/’fed
up’, curious as to ‘whits happenin ‘ ‘whose in’, looking for ‘any free courts’ or ‘jist oot the
rain’, ‘needin’ a heat’. It is worth reiterating that these children were seldom accompanied by
parents but were often a chaperoning other, smaller children being towed along by older
children often until late evening. Children would roam and play around the facility with little
regard for time often passing by or hang around till closing (10.30pm). Such informal drop
in sessions provided opportunities to gain a window on the objective conditions these
children embodied. These field discussions with young local children illustrated this:
Here what are you lot doing out at this time?
We’re jist playin – how? (Girl A, aged around 6/7).
Where were you playing?
Doon there (pointing), an roon the back the centre’ (Girl A)
An the swings! (Girl B)
You (turning to Girl B) asked for the toilet earlier didn’t you? It’s past 9 o’clock your
mum will be looking for.
Naw she’ll no I’m nearly 5 (Girl B)
I think she will it’s late. Look at the size of him (pointing to the small boy with long
sleeved T-shirt, cord trousers, trainers, face/mouth covered with something, holding
girl B’s hand), he’s too wee to be out.
He’s ma wee brither, an’ he’s 3 (turning to him) an’t you Dylan, ain’t you 3’ (boy just
looks and nods)
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Well he looks freezing you’d better take him home.
Come on Carly, hurry-up’ (they runs off with girl B pulling Dylan behind).
[Staff conversation with regular local, Paul aged 9 years, sitting in the gym 10pm.
‘What are you doing in here at this time?] Ma gran grounded me. [How are you
grounded you’re here?] A climbed oot am runnin away, no gaun back. [Why you
grounded?] I wiz bad, I’m a bad boy, ma gran says am bad an I’m gontae the home
[She just saying that. You’ll no go to the home] a um she say’s she canny look after
me an am bad. [The home no good is it?] Dunno! That’s where ma brither’s went
he’s in the big home noo. I’m getting pit in a um ma gran canny watch me. [So that’s
it the home?] Suppose [shrugs shoulders] I’ve tae go then I’ll go tae the big home wi
ma brither [So what you going do after the home. What about then?] I’ll go tae the
jail like ma dad [No you don’t want to end there do you?] Dunno [shrugs shoulders]
Ma gran say, she says um gontae end up like ma dad coz that’s where bad boys go an
he’s in the jail. (Paul, local child, field diary)
These exchanges and the sight of unsupervised, unkempt, ‘mawket’, ‘snottery nosed’ young
children was not only common but highlighted an unconscious or fatalistic acceptance of the
everyday circumstances these local children inhabit. This was not restricted to the more
naïve younger children but witnessed in many older youths and adults who came into
contact with the facility, its services and staff. However, while locals would see little
problem with their attitude, general demeanour and behavioural practices points of
interaction brought their embodied practices into stark relief. Given the facility acting as a
popular gathering point for older youths (i.e. 14 plus) clashes between differential groups
were inevitable.
The expansion of the Roller Hockey, mentioned above, into Friday evenings provides a case
in point as brought youth groups (i.e. Hockey and Misfits) into contact. Initially this was
only at changeover (i.e. 8pm) and revealed how each group perceived and reacted to each
other as much as staff. At changeover from Misfits to Roller Hockey staff allowed and
engaged with the common and often boisterous practice of locals. The discontinuation and
continuation of activities (e.g. balls being kicked around, badminton games, chasing and
196
wrestling and other groups sitting talking) was accompanied with swearing, shouting and
‘slagging’. In marshalling the changeover some staff would ‘slag’, swear and even, in a joking
manner, physically man handle Misfit youths out of the facility. Confiscated (e.g. cigarettes
and alcohol) or deposited items (e.g. jackets, bags or money) would, occasionally, be used as
lures to speed this process up. On congregating outside, where smoking and drinking would
re-commence, Roller Hockey customers would pass the outside transitional space into the
facility the Roller Hockey. This would attract comments/’slaggin’ (some mentioned above)
from locals and, as the following account highlights, created friction:
[Three local Misfit/youths (Cunni, Baz and Yogi) sitting at front talking with
language interspersed with laughing, swearing/abuse. Cunnie, dressed in Kappa
tops, jeans and trainers, hair shaved at back and dyed blonde on top shouts]:
‘Ho dafties’ [all laughing] Come on wee man [holding out a bottle of Concord to
Roller Hockey youth] have a bang! A don’t like tae drink but it’ got tae be din.’
[Roller Hockey group filter past no eye contact made or response to Cunni made.
Once inside the coach complains to Brian (Assistant Supervisor)]: ‘That’s ridiculous,
completely out of order. These kids shouldn’t be subjected to that. It frightening
the boys are visibly shaken with this [local youths]’.
[When challenged by staff Cunni responds]: ‘Awe fur fuck sake Brian I’m only
carryin on. A wiznae noising them up honest! Fuck it’s a joke man calm doon.
Whereas there were (as will be seen below) instances of violence and abuse that local as
much as external customers and staff found unacceptable situations such this caused
confusion among locals. Locals did not regard their behaviour as aggressive or intimidating.
These, as others to follow, highlighted their embodied reality one confused by staff
responses that, on the one hand, interact and reflect their worldview then, on the other, find
themselves reprimanded for actions performed daily. The situation between the Misfits and
Roller Hockey was exacerbated as complaints by coaches to upper management. Following
a management’s ‘review of programming’ (Community Recreation Manager, field diary) and
with Roller Hockey’s application for lottery funding and the development a sponsorship
package the Misfits was discontinued. Although implicated in this process staff were critical
of management and the approach of coaches:
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The Misfits was cancelled because Hockey complained simple as that. They [Roller
Hockey] were money the kids weren’t. All they did was moan about the kids. It’s
crap! You got to know how to take these kids…Its who complains and whose face
fits. (Supervisor, interview)
Conflict between groups was not restricted to youth groups. Clashes were evident between
adult groups and individuals. As the most rationalised and self-regulating space (discussed
above) the gym was often a site of conflict. As highlighted above the docile acquiescence of
external customers to processes constraining objectification and normalization contrasted
with the sporadic, unstructured and macho behaviour of locals. Clothing, equipment (e.g.
training gloves, weight belts, personal ab mats), use of programmes and training aids (e.g.
body balls, resistance bands, ab rollers) clearly marked and differentiated externals from local
customers. However, such contrasting markers and embodied practices were overtly and
formally highlighted via the formal Gym Etiquette posted at the entrance of the gym and
issued at induction. This consisted of five rules:
All gym users must be over 16 years of age. Children are ONLY allowed under the
supervision of staff.
In the interests of safety and comfort appropriate clothing (e.g. trainers, shorts, Tshirt or track suit) must be worn.
Hygiene is important in the gym. Please towel down and wipe excess perspiration
off benches and equipment after use.
Customers are reminded that others wish to workout so please do not commandeer
equipment. At busy periods please work in and share equipment.
Please respect others by refraining from foul and abusive language.
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With the differential practices of customers this etiquette provide a focus and recourse for
resolution of conflict. The unstructured practices of locals, and following a macho focus on
thee upper body, often meant ‘hogging’ of workout stations. Other than local weight
training/body builders, and although evidencing the pattern of arriving, training and leaving
in the same dress, most locals did adhere to the dress code. However, as highlighted here
the failure of locals to adhere to the hygiene code and language, coupled with ‘hogging’,
caused complaints:
Look can you’ll have to have word here. The place [gym] is swimming they
[indicating two regular local customers] just sweat everywhere. (Kim, Gym, external
customer, field diary)
Well what’s swearing and what’s no? Like big John gets away with it because he slips
it in, in just normal conversation. (Staff Forum, interview)
Brian [two customers come to service window] that young guy is stinking. I don’t
know if his feet or just him but it really does stink. The girls are gaging we need a
spray or something…[staff enters gym and sprays air freshener]…you’d think he’ll
get the hint. God its disgusting I mean can’t he smell that. (Susan/Margaret, Gym,
external customer, field diary)
John McNight (local body builder) was the worst. He just swore constant it was fuck
this fuck that every second word. It was nae in a bad way that’s just the way he was.
He was a nice fella really… but at night the circuit lassies complained a couple of
times so I had to tell him to calm down the language. Oh but he was raggin because
they never said anything to him. He wasn’t vulgar he doesn’t think it’s just John.
(RA3, interview)
She’s just complained about Big Tam (local weight trainer dressed in vest, trousers
and boots) taking over the place an moaning about the smell. She goes (grimaces
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with high pitched polite accent) ‘Oh, that guy. He’s invading my sensory space.’ It’s
a gym for fuck sake you sweat. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
Although there were many such clashes and complaints they seldom resulted in the verbal or
aggressive sparring noted earlier. Gym clashes were mediated through staff. Also, while
locals resented and commented on gym based classes (e.g. Ladies Super Circuits) formal
complaints exclusively coming from external groups. Although the gender divide and
sensitive nature of complaints should be factored in here gym etiquette became a clear
means for justifying and resolving complaints of embodied conduct. Moreover, the
poster/display and insistence on gym etiquette was not so much a given but an overt attempt
to impose a civilising cultural code. As earlier with the management or teaching of polite
mannerly conduct of children attempts were made by staff to instil or gain conformity of
conduct across customer groups. This equity of conduct was ironic given, as highlighted
below, staff persistently challenged managerial authority on the basis of their inability to
understand or respond to difficulties in delivering to these diverse customer groups. This
civilising contradiction, in light of staff knowledge, was prominent demonstrated through the
football league.
Operating on weekly basis (rotating two groups of six) this five-a-side league attracted teams
across Ayrshire and with rebound backboards catered for spectators. Of the twelve teams
one was local (e.g. Longpark). Given this, and due to spectating of women/girlfriends and
children, the supervisor instigated a rule change whereby persistent abusive language would
result in the offending player being sin binned for five minutes. Although teams, including
Longpark, were informed of this and reminded before kick-off once in the heat of the game
the Longpark group were constantly being sin binned for breach of this rule. This attempt
to ‘clean up the game’ and provide a family spectacle through this rule caused such
frustration with the Longpark team that players were sent-off, which sparked inter-team
violence and culminated with the suspension of the league. Here a straightforward rule
designed to govern behaviour brought the habitual embodied conduct of locals under the
spotlight. However, clashes were not always so blatantly inflamed by staff or physically
violent. Others were dynamically demonstrated where operational procedure, sporting
codes, embodied cultural consumption intersect.
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With its multi-sports capability the main hall provided opportunities where groups would
clash and conflict, especially at night, during court based activities. The territoriality of
customers as much as behaviour patterns during games brought groups into conflict.
Regular and block booking customers displayed an attachment to set courts and would
complain for others to be moved. This comfort at making such complaints was an external
trait and, as highlighted, one noted by staff:
The one lot (externals) would come up to the office and be complaining about things
that weren’t up to a certain ‘standard’ or that they weren’t getting their moneys’
worth or something whereas the trouble you would get from locals would be
different, maybe sort of like they would be silly things it wouldn’t be the same, they
wouldn’t complain…The Raesides (external badminton group) would go in stop
what was happening come back out and say I see somebody is on our court as if it is
their court and then they would go in and they would get moved (RA3, interview)
Along with this territoriality, and as with Roller hockey and Short Tennis earlier, the hall
space brought forms of capital into relief. The mixing of activities with local and external
groups on adjacent courts (either playing badminton, short tennis, children’s parties, step,
dance or trampolining) followed the consistent pattern of complaints and clashes targeting
language, behaviour and the mocking of the ability, equipment and attire of others. These
points are illustrated here:
You’ll have to speak to those boys they’re going wild. We can’t hear ourselves speak
and it’s spoiling our game. I’m happy for them to play but they have to calm down
for goodness sake. It’s just not on.’ (Lynne, external, badminton, field diary)
Have you seen those two in there (laughing about two local adults playing
badminton)? Ones got a golf glove on and his partner’s wearing old sandshoes with
the baseball hat turned back. They can’t play for toffee it’s hilarious. I’ll maybe get
the boys (club players) to give them couple of tips – if they can keep a straight face.
(John, external badminton, field diary)
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That Drew’s (badminton club) a wee prick. He takin the piss out of Lauren and
Jackie’s (local youths) because they called a racquet a bat an keep missin the shuttle.
Mr fuckin badminton star, snotty wee prick! (RA1, field diary)
Caldwell lot waltz’s in with the Prince racquets and tubes of feathers (shuttles). They
change racquets coz the tensions no right. Wullie Agnews on the next court with an
old Carlton and tatty plastic shuttles. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
I don’t mean to be cheeky but these guys [two local youths] keep walking across the
court [to pick up their shuttle]. You wait till the rallies over but their ducking under
the net trying to scoop the bloody thing off the court mid-rally. Jimmy’s getting ratty
in there. (Allan, badminton, field diary)
They [party] were really posh with the little cocktail sticks and wee cups of tea…
They complained [following an altercation with badminton players over
noise/language] that Mark was waiting [outside] to fight with the brother-in-law
[party member]. The old gran came out ‘We’re not fighters you know. After all it’s a
5 year olds party’ (Supervisor, field diary)
Interestingly, and as above with youths, when customers openly clashed altercations
progressed along a distinctive route. From initiating the complaint external customers staff
would approach the offending local/group who would be asked into the office (if it got that
far) or foyer. Here external customers would adopt a reasoned approach. Similar to gym
etiquette appropriate conduct was held up against either the code of the game (including
references to dress) or the embodied behaviour of others/the majority. In making these
reasoned appeals staff would be solicited to support such arguments. Through this rational
argument and by invoking others a position of consensus would rapidly be established. In
being drawn into this debate locals found themselves occupying a weaker position. This
would result in disgruntled agreement to modify language and behaviour or ignorance and
confused annoyance regarding the nature of the complaint. This latter response often led to
frustration triggering heated arguments.
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Just as earlier with youths the more heated and aggressive the exchange the more it would
move, either by ushering staff or the locals themselves, outside of the facility. Having
physically relocated outside of the building positions would be adopted with staff and other
customers on the steps close to the doorway and locals at the front of the building.
Significantly, while externals continued their rational argument, locals would begin ritualistic
mocking, haranguing and posturing intersperse with swearing/abuse and local
colloquialisms. The incommensurability of such language with intimidating behaviour
merely served to validate the substance of the complaint. With staff requests to ‘watch the
language’ and ‘calm down’ external customers would often walk off frustrated commenting
‘these people are idiots I mean what’s that all about just thugs, animals (Jim, Badminton
Club/Coaching, field diary); ‘its pointless I’m not even going to bother talking ‘ (Sharon,
Badminton, field diary) or ‘who are these people, what are they like? They should be a
circus’ (Margaret, Aerobics Instructor, field diary).
The spatial positioning and the conduct of some staff (i.e. Supervisor Assistant Supervisor
and two of the female Recreation Assistants), during these heated exchanges is important.
Other than the football league (discussed above) no clash between customer groups
descended into violent confrontation. On the contrary most abusive and aggressive
intimidation as well as violence was perpetrated among locals. As the intermediates of
conflict staff were indirectly (i.e. in separating groups/individuals) and directly involved in
violent incidents. Whereas a common policy target for public sector workers today such
incidents were so commonplace as to have become normalised. These comments, some of
which are extensive, convey the gravity and embodied reality of staff illustrate this:
I think they [externals] are more likely tae have a heated argument without raising
their hands…even if they weren’t influenced by drugs at the time the environment
and that. They are used to being in…Well the kinda of dog eat dog kinda thing.
They’ve got tae stick up for their selves so it comes like second nature to them. The
same if there’s an argument they would nae think twice (RA3, interview)
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See that wee bastard Sean [local youth], Mushies boy I wiz that close [makes a pincer
space with fingers] to smacking the wee bastard. [asked why?] I threw them out coz
they think they can get the hall for nuthin when they like. So he’s sitting out there
[front of building] and there’s a wee lassie, she’s about sixteen or thereabouts, and
she’s haudin a wean. She’s carrying on, hauds the wean up sayin kick him son. He
pushes her away and so she kicks him. So whit dis he day? Fuckin sweeps the legs
from her! She’s still haudin the wean. I’m fur fuck sake. So I grabs him by the
throat and he’s screemin ‘whit, whit so I’ve jist tae let here kick me.’ I mean I wiz
that close tae fuckin him. Daft wee bastard.’ (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
[Staff recounting incident with local man] Baseball cap I think but I think there was
something wrapped up in it anyway. So I went into him and I said Paul due to what
happened yesterday [head-butting another local youth during football] I said you are
not even allowed in the Centre, words to that effect. I can’t remember my exact
words but I was polite. Anyway he kind of argued back and forth…basically at the
end of the day he said to me and he came out of the hall and he said to me ‘So is that
it I’m fucking barred’. And I said that’s it. At that I seen him pulling something
from his trouser pocket…I saw the yellow coming out of his trouser pocket and then
I just rushed back, instinctively, because I didn’t know it there was a bar about 10
feet away behind the office door…he did take a swipe as I was running back [to get
bar] he swiped at me and if I hadn’t went on the B of the bang I would have had a
sair face basically…it wasn’t a Stanley knife it was a box cutting knife, what would
you call that, a longer a lot longer blade… So I came out the office and I had a wee
steel bar maybe about a couple of feet long a wee steel bar facing him he’s with knife
above his head…it was kind of stand off he then bolted for the front door which I
pursued him out the front door. Em do you want me to tell you the whole truth of
this?...He throws the knife down and I put the bar down and he was for a square go
[then] he ran towards the knife so I runs towards the knife…it was like something
out of the films, the two of us are running towards this knife and I got him and I was
on top of him and I was waiting for the plunge [of the knife] coming actually
(Supervisor, interview)
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[Local adult exits football face covered in blood] A want Alex Mason [since left]
barred he jist put the heid in me fur nuthin [asked if he wanted the police phoned
and to make a formal complaint]. Naw nae way, nae cops jist get him barred [reenters hall holding tissue to nose] (Wullie, local youth, field dairy)
Andrew Agnew came into the centre and started shouting about staff…he was very
abusive towards staff and it was noticed he had a knife in his back pocket. As soon
as he left police were phoned. (Kevin, Relief Recreation Assistant, Incident Book)
Young man (David, 15yrs), whilst drunk, requested assistance after being beaten up.
Parents phoned to come and collect. Meantime, older youth appears making threats
(slash and shoot staff – usual stuff). Police appear, having responded to earlier call
out…David became very abusive to both police and staff. Taken home by police.
(RA1, Incident Book)
At the above date and time a local man (having intimated he was from Wardeneuk
and unwilling to give his name) entered the centre having been stabbed in the left
upper thigh…He requested no ambulance or police involvement but asked to phone
his father…He informed me, which was confirmed by his girlfriend, that he had
been stabbed over a ‘£20 quid deal’…his father appeared ten minutes later and said
he would take him to hospital (RA4, Incident Book and field diary)
Although these instances were clear cases of assault (the Incident Book spans over 10 years
and is littered with instances) and merited police action and formal managerial involvement
only the knife incident was progressed accordingly. This was because of personal
involvement, which with other incidents, as highlighted below, challenged managerial
authority. Staff would inform management but, and like locals, refused to pursue a formal
route. However, while violent extremes were rare, the perception of intimidation and abuse,
along with the fear of violence, differed between external and customers as well as staff.
This confusion or misunderstanding of embodied habits between customers was not lost on
staff. As highlighted each group should be read and managed accordingly:
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You put a different face on for a different person…the affluent guys speak very
eloquently use the right words at the right time and then walk away and then Sammy
White [local adult] could walk in and I’d say ‘how’s it gon Sammy, has the wife
drapped [had her baby] yet? In ye come’ (Final Staff Forum, interview)
If they [locals] come in, it’s like fuck talk with them its nae bothers to swear with
them…but then you’ve got your affluent Stewarton people that come in ken you’ve
got to be totally different with them…whereas you hear the young boys in there
swearing it’s okay if it’s contained in the hall but if it’s outside and other customers
are there you’d say fuck sake calm that down a wee bit… they [locals] swear at you as
a term of endearment they would say, all right you fucking trumpet and that’s them
saying hello to you ken what I mean (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
Listen jist crash them! See there wee Muckle [local youth] decked me [tackle playing
football] so I just got up and halved him. That’s what you’ve got tae dae or they’ll
just rip the pish right oot ye. (RA1, field diary)
Nevertheless, whilst this sub-chapter has been dedicated to presenting, or providing a
flavour of the embodied reality of staff and customer groups the difficulties in
operationalising sport and recreational services in such a conflictual climate challenged
managerial authority and legitimacy. The following sub-chapter considers such challenges
interweaving data for the national, local managerial and operational scene. Moreover, and as
stated at the beginning of these findings, although customer groups have been labelled as
external and local a web of embodied states was evident within the case study. Although,
this web is the subject to the final section of critical discussion the sections of findings
points how the managerial and operational body are implicated in this web.
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Making and Managing the PSSR: National Vision to Local Practice
The previous sub-chapter focused on contextualising the case study facility, its location,
evolution of customer groups and their elements of embodied difference and distinction
evidenced through their consumption of the rationalised spaces and services of sport and
recreation. Other than tentative indications issues of managerial and operational responses
to were deliberately left alone. This sub-chapter addresses these issues by presenting
findings that integrate national to local management with that of operational service delivery.
The area, or as argued discourse, of management, as it advocated and translated nationally
through to its local and embodied operationalisation, is juxtaposed with the operational
reality of staff charged with service delivery to the aforementioned differential customer
groups. In that the sub-chapter interweaves national to local findings it bring management,
past and present policy developments and aspirational claims of professionalism into relief in
locating them within the embodied worldview and everyday practices found within the case
study.
Aesthetics: managing place, provision and people
Regardless of location there was a consensus that sport and recreation services should be
open to all and the national bodies were there to ‘make sure everyone has access to
opportunities in sport’ (sportscotland, interview). The public sector was the egalitarian
vehicle and delivery mechanism for universalising sport and recreation among communities.
Over time sport and recreation provision and the promotion of its various forms had
become an unquestioned and accepted given. As highlighted earlier the emergence of
facilities and their management were related to historical, socio-cultural and political forces.
Interviews with practitioners and the creation of governing bodies reflected this
developmental role and dynamic:
ISRM is different from ILAM. To become a professional member of ISRM you
have to pass your Recreation Management Certificate…the fourth paper is on indoor
technology, its design and build expertise on the actual build fabric as much as what
goes in it (ISRM, interview)
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The Scottish Sports strategy would look to…I mean what we would be looking for
in those areas [deprived areas] would be basic sports facilities that could be adapted
to a number of uses…blaze pitch, plus grass pitches, plus the indoor hall
(sportscotland, interview)
If you want the technical stuff you go to ISRM, if you want the more strategic stuff
you go to ILAM…the ILAM qualifications aren’t entrenched in one sector
specialism and therefore we are encouraging and influencing people to take account
of what is happening in another aspect of leisure. Within that we affect what you’re
doing on the ground. (ILAM, interview)
It was a case then [post-1975 White Paper] it was more led by the industry rather
than the academics and the courses were being designed for what the then leaders in
the industry thought were required, say training…the academics then started
tweaking at the edges and bringing it more into what the academics thought were
required (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 1)
Interestingly, strategic practitioners reflect the shaping role of governing bodies. As
highlighted these individuals come for disparate backgrounds:
Contract Services Manager, came into local authority after 25 years in civil
engineering everything from nationalised industries, major international contractors
and small local contractors immediately before coming I was six years overseas
project management, responsible now for leisure management (Strategic
Practitioners’ Forum 2, interview)
I came from a background of degree in botany initially at Liverpool and then went
on to do landscape design vocational masters at Sheffield basically left there and
went to work in Dundee in the Parks Department (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 4,
interview)
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I suppose a traditional degree in physical education PE teaching, came into local
government in 1981 always worked in the sports side of the leisure business
(Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 3, interview)
Background, civil engineering was Dundee District Council for about 20 years or
so… On a national scene I have been involved for a number of years on the
executive committee also on the executive committee on VOCAL I don’t know if
you know VOCAL, before that it was ADRLT and there are very few of us left. I’m
also a member of ILAM and I’ve sat on a number of policy groups set up by the
Scottish Executive (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 1, interview)
This array of backgrounds was also evident with local managers coming to Culture and
Leisure Services departments from PE, psychology, engineering or recognised as a
top/national athlete. This background of development and management produced the case
study facility. Moreover, in being a ‘traditional comm rec facility’ (Leisure Development
Manager, interview) the overriding belief in the civilising, transforming or ameliorating
benefits of sport and recreation, as in the past (DoE, 1975; Coalter, 1988), as much as
openness of the PSSR was a constant given:
That’s why we are here to make sure that everyone has access to opportunities in
sport (sportscotland, interview)
Well sport and recreation, the whole package from technical training, performance
standards, CPD the lot, is what ISRM is about. For me that’s ILAM’s problem
we’ve been focused, focused on sport and recreation promoting the benefits,
developing the industry. We want to maintain that tradition. (ISRM, interview)
I certainly can go back to when I started twenty odd years ago we’ve always had the
Sport for All ethos coming from the Scottish Sport Council…we had ways of trying
to get folks who perhaps cost was a barrier…now it’s the health agenda…[now] its
not just take them into the gym and you say do 10 of that…[its] what you eat and
what you drink and you know all of that is very much part of what we are trying to
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deliver whether there has been this push on the health agenda I think we would still
be trying to deliver these messages so that’s what I’m saying…health linked into our
agenda, social inclusion needs to link into our agenda (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum
2, interview)
I slant that round to what the community are looking for as leisure, sports and
recreation…now you’re being able to push the benefits of the health and all this sort
of thing (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 3, interview)
Take myself back and rewind the Sport 20 document, Sport 21 that was my reading
for being and getting people more active and participation…we are now much more
locked into the national agenda…we sign post people… have an impact on physical
activity and life style choices, like smoking, alcohol and diet, so we’ve started to
shape things (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
The actions of the professional bodies to date is to build on the political value of
leisure and its contribution to public sector policy…I think it is the paternalists
argument on which some of the new case for leisure is going to be built. (ILAM,
interview)
Nevertheless, the Hunter Centre had been transformed over the years. The physical
evidence of the building indicates national direction of such facilities and, with its
subsequent alterations, a managerial perception and response the objective conditions of the
location. Discussions here with the supervisor, having been in post since opening in 1985,
and his assistant highlights this:
‘On opening day (Aug 1985) the place was packed with folk from around here
[showing facility press cuttings and photos]. There’s big Stevie and Pat [old
colleague] there’s the flower baskets [hanging along the archway] and the shrubberies
[two small triangular and one large rectangular area at front of building]. It looked
great [asking what happened]. The baskets got nicked and some of the roses even
the big ‘Welcome’ mat from the front step [laughs] (Supervisor, field diary)
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There are big changes since I’ve been here. The bins no even left oot. Everything’s
bricked or bolted doon. Fuck they put in they flood lights an cameras [CCTV
tower]. Place is mair like Fort Knox. Look at the keys we need just to get in and out
of this place. I’d fit right in down the road wi big Donald [ex-employee who left to
become a prison officer at new Kilmarnock prison]. (Assistant Supervisor, field
diary)
These modifications along with caged floodlighting, shutter door security screens, internal
buzzer doors, internal and external CCTV and panic alarms was a bone of contention. For
although local management referenced national standards stating modifications as ‘standard
health safety precautions for staff and customers’ (departing Community Recreation
Manager, field diary) just who such modifications were targeted at, securing and protecting
was another matter. As demonstrated earlier staff these ‘health and safety’ measures
appeared to be both a blanket responses to local issues and an inconsistent failure to address
and manage the reality of staff:
Having just confronted three drug users] ‘Whit dae ye dae? Basically ye deal wi it.
The problem is you’ve got tae watch coz their spaced oot on smack and ye don’t
know if they’re packin [carrying knifes]. [Asked about management response] Och
it’s awright fur them sittin in their wee office doon the Civic. We’re left tae deal wi
them [drug users]. An I’ll tell ye whit’s worse. At night we’ve got tae huve two on
fur safety but at the weekend yer on yer sel. I doubt they think the junkies and
psychos take the weekend aff. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
Interestingly, these physical security modifications were instigated along side projects
directed at the social objectives of national policy. Regardless of the impact of
managerialism (discussed in the next section) on the facility social policy projects were not
lost. Other than the Mile High club (discussed earlier) two overt policy based initiatives
stand out. Longstanding ‘Leisure Access’ cards were an attempt to attract under
participating unemployed/deprived groups by reducing costs to sport and recreation
provision across East Ayrshire. The NRG club (briefly mentioned earlier) was a healthy
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lifestyle support specifically targeting the immediate catchment area. This club offered free
access to gym based provision and personal training programmes with the provision that all
members undergo healthy lifestyle assessment. However, as illustrated, while practical
responses to national policy and demonstrating the juggling of commercial and social
agendas the implementation and effectiveness of these initiatives was a source of local
tension:
For example the policy, the passport to leisure, cheap access so it has done quite a
bit, in fact…to make sure that everyone has access to opportunities in sport. I mean,
there has been quite a bit of work done in some areas it depends on the part of the
country you are in, trying to get people in, in terms of development programmes,
facilities, things that are free or really cheap (sportscotland, interview)
I say what is social inclusion? That compounds our problem further down the line
because in between we have further tiers of management who haven’t fully
comprehended that and the difficulties that it means for planning and subsequently
for practice …So the leisure manager is caught right in the middle of all of these in
some respects opposing policies (ILAM, interview)
OK here’s the NRG [health and inclusion initiative] scenario. A big fat woman
comes for interview [health consultation], matted hair, nicotine stains and she’s
brought her three kids with her. She there big, fat and smelly [laughs] and that’s
what you’ve to deal with (departing, Community Recreation Manager, field diary)
That really pisses me off. Mary’s paid to take the NRG [health and inclusion
initiative] she’s in charge, doin the interviews. She’ll no even shake people’s hands
when they come in. Folk can tell. An this is supposed to get them [locals] in. She’s
the educated one, fuking ridiculous! (Supervisor, field diary)
OK it’s important that everybody gets the opportunity [to participate in sport and
recreation] but I can sympathise with facility managers. They need people in their
pools, gyms, the courts have got to be used by somebody…inclusion’s great but
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these guys (sic) are under pressure to meet performance indicators. (ISRM,
interview)
As a local initiative NRG was a demonstration of not only abstract policy but also its
paternalism as ‘there is a need for paternalism…it is the paternalists argument on which
some of the new case for leisure is going to be built (ILAM, interview). However, at
implementation, this paternalistic attitude highlighted both the value judgements of
governing bodies and their ignorance of local issues. The core personal training and class
access (mainly provided at night) of the project further illustrated this. Unlike the
external/car borne or ‘ferried in’ customers, the local environment, resources and support
mechanisms restricted usage by local women:
This is about the first time in a year I’ve come here at night. I’m jist too feart with all
that you hear about the gangs and Tourhill shops…Stevie will walk me over after.
(Elaine, local adult, Circuit Class, field diary)
Oh a think this is great but am on ma ain the noo. Ma mams got the weans so I’m a
bit stuck when tae come. (Alexis, local adult, gym, field diary)
I’d come at night but you’ve got to watch and I canny drive I’ve no got a car. Tam
says he’d gie me a lift but I don’t like tae put him oot his way. (Jean, local adult, gym,
field diary)
Naw this time [12-3pm] suits me night’s nae use. Nain a the lassies [NRG] come I’d
be masel. Is in no a posh folk an guys anyway? Trek over here in the pishin rain, in
dark wi a the junkies about ye think am daft? (Mary, local adult, gym, field diary)
I can only come through the day I’ve got tae be in fur the weans [from school]. A
came a couple of Saturdays a go an Kenny lets the weans on the bouncy castle for
nuthin. (Alana, local adult, gym, field diary)
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This demonstrates both a shift in nighttime usage and the local/external constitution or
usage of provision as well as the objective circumstances and embodied plight of local adult
women. However, those managing and operating these initiatives contingently contributed
to the local/external divide and indicate the pejorative perception of locals. Staff practices
and attitudes, paradoxically given their claims to understand and respond to locals,
accentuated this at times.
As earlier with violence staff actively governed, concealed and displaced the embodied
circumstances of locals. Along side the physical evidence, security and surveillance of the
facility staff randomly patrol the front restricting entry, moving those congregating/loitering
and marshalling anything that could be interpreted as intimidating or unsightly. This was
exemplified with youth groups, alcohol and drug use:
[Local youths/girls drinking outside facility] Get rid of that [cider] you’ve got 5min
to get that oot of here [before spin class]. An if your nippy with the women your
barred (RA1, field diary)
[Two local youths enter foyer on BMX bikes] ‘Hey, whit’s on fur us’. Look at that
oblivious. If Kenny wiz here he’d be chucked oot. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
[Adult male having gone to the toilets and taken ‘jellies (temasapan) and ‘meth’
(methadone) collapses on the front step] We’ve got to get him out of here [staff
draggin him off steps] the aerobics women are due. We can’t let customers see that.
(RA1, field dairy)
Because they’re not interested in coming in an playing sport Kenny all their
interested in is getting out and taking drugs and drinking (Final Staff Forum,
interview)
Although, staff were concerned for the welfare of this individual they were more concerned
about 'appropriate appearance' as the external customers. Here the embodied habits of
locals habits a source of embarrassment and needed to be kept out of sight of the ‘nice
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people’ (RA1, field dairy). This perception and difference of locals over other customers as
well as staff practices of governing one and sheltering the other was evident, as highlighted,
through national to local groups:
Naebody asks us its jist a case of that’s your lot. If you don’t like it then jist fuck off
(Jinks, local adult, field diary)
Hey we’re no fuckin daft. I ken they cunts look down on us. Fuck whits new.
(McNeely, local adult, field diary)
I think it’s probably just culture, I mean I was reading something the other day in the
paper saying that poor people grow up to expect less than better off people so their
expectations are always lower…we obviously have a strategy trying to reach these
people…I mean what we would be looking for in those areas would be the basic
sports facilities that could be adapted to a number of uses, the indoor hall, you know
the sort of thing (sportscotland, interview)
As with the physical facility policy agendas were influential in targeting customers (external
and local). Nationally ‘the detail of what we are doing is huge’ a vision and expertise ‘to
improve health across 20 or 30 years (Strategic Practitioners Forum 1, interview). As policy
base initiatives Passport to Leisure, Leisure Access or NRG are designed to be inclusive but
also transformatory ‘its getting them [excluded] from contemplation to change (Leisure
Development Manager, interview). Although returned to in the final section of this subchapter (focusing on the impacts of policy on managerial practices and the tensions of
embodied delivery and consumption) the working body of staff did not escape the governing
and shaping gaze of national and managerial agendas.
Systems & Subjects: the producing and governing the operational body
From national to local management through to operational delivery a clear division of
position to practice was evident. As with other institutions (e.g. health or education) the
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PSSR reflects an obvious and often ignored given, namely, the embodied states and practices
of those within. Practitioners, more national and local managerial rather than operational,
occupied and embodied positions that were self-regulatory in scope/jurisdiction and
hierarchical in terms of status. Be it Senior Monitoring Officer, ILAM Chair, Head of
Contract Services, Head of Leisure Services, Director of Leisure Services, Community
Recreation Manager, Leisure Development Manager a distinct sense of position and role was
evident. These positions, their performative authority and scope of remit were all premised
on education, expertise and vocational experience (considered below in relation to
professional claims). Of interest here is not just the docile embodiment of position but how
such subjectivities prescriptively impact upon and produce the operational body.
The introduction of CCT and was a strong contributing factor in reviewing the embodied
practices of the past. With the client/contract split and a re-focus on economic efficiency
CCT ‘influenced the journey’ (ILAM, interview) of the PSSR and left a lasting impression.
However, the influential factors shaping this ‘journey’ had a long time span, which was
highlighted form national through to the local management:
Without doubt in the first instance public policy most notably CCT…because of the
prescriptive nature of the mechanism of CCT…the specialist expertise of the leisure
professional has been threatened as well as it has been pushed into this managerialist
thinking and the public sector has adopted more and more commercial practice
(ILAM, interview)
The important thing to think about the 75 [1975 White Paper] scenario and onwards
with local government at the time was regionalisation it was all
district…fundamentally the growth in the industry was so great everybody, every
local authority wanted their own swimming pool, wanted their leisure centres…since
96 and the reorganised authorities coming into being there has been severe breaks
have been put on new developments. (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 1, interview)
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I know its all performance indicators these days. I don’t even get it the performance
indicators that are used in relation to leisure we don’t even contribute that’s Derek its
people per sq ft … It’s totally irrelevant, well it’s irrelevant to me…because we’re not
facility based we’re service based (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
With the advent of CCT, the managerialism it brought, and later BVR attention was
refocused, which produced and embedded new forms of managerial and professional
language. As such technical, training, finance and policy terms such as customer service
training, service objectives, cost centres, SMART card review, corporate standards, core,
block and casual users, social justice, social inclusion, decentralisation strategy, strategic
planning, strategic objectives, community planning, empowerment, continuous
improvement, financial, physical and human resources, programming, performance
indicators, Quest, Investors In People, customer care, C.O.S.H.H., user survey, quality
control, quality service, SIP, ATP, stat reports, lifestyle choice, Risk Assessment, Best Value
were common terms that littered documentation. These were prevalent, constantly
articulated or referred to throughout the study. However, depending upon position and
focus the weight of language changed. The filtration and weight of reference to policy and
managerial language through to local level was interesting:
I’m the Supervisor it’s me that runs the numbers. Who does the stat report every
month is no Derek [Community Recreation Manager]. A ken who comes here.
(Supervisor, field diary)
They [management] just said ‘cancel it’. They don’t care…and they talk about
customer care. (RA3, field diary)
I’ve a meeting with them [management] next week. I’ll let them have their say then
let them have it Health and Safety, staff moral, management neglect – the lot!
(Supervisor, field diary)
They’re just playing wee games. They talk about customer care and standards of
service but it’s just a game a paper chase nothing actually changes. (RA2, field diary)
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The distillation of this managerial language through to operational level points to the impact
of managerialism. This is further emphasised when managerial practices, supported at
national level, were scrutinised. From the national scene to actual management and through
to the local sport and recreational services were the subject of intensive and targeted
‘training’. This is illustrated here:
Well people can, I think, people can be professionally trained because of the
experience that we’ve had and we are influencing what they are being trained
in…Now I think the 20 odd years of being in the industry we have influenced what
is now, I think Mike mentioned as well, we are influencing what is being delivered
within the training context and we now have them specialising to minute detail
(Strategic Practitioner’s Forum 4, interview)
It has become much more operations you know procedures driven…as you know I
went there on a contract to design management development programmes for them
and the training programmes that they had at that time was about dealing with
conflict, how you recruit, dealing with absenteeism and all that very pragmatic people
management (ILAM, interview)
Within this organisation is a stepping-stone for everybody you can come in at entry
level as a motivator…we then committed to training people as much as possible so
that they can move up…Everybody is trained up. They’re taken through an
induction, given the manuals [three depending if play, sport or health team]; they
understand what’s expected. (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
Qualifications and training for the industry are all part of the professional standard
for the industry. That’s why were here to lead on this, help set the benchmark for
the industry…the right training structure is a mark of any profession and the quality
standards it sets for the industry and its members. (ISRM, interview)
The type of facilities that most people are looking for are those looking for bright,
clean, attractive places…first of all you’ve got to have your facilities well presented
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and you’ve got to have the staff with the ability to be able to encourage people to
come in but still to be able to control them good customer care, good sales service.
We have a whole range of in house training courses that they [operational staff] go
on to and we also have a very rigid series of meetings (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum
2, interview)
Basic customers care courses, which all members of staff do. These are now
formalised regardless where or who you are. Staff get the training know the standard
and so do the customers. (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 4, interview)
You are trained to be the customer care lovely guy from the start (Final Staff Forum,
interview)
However, as highlighted, staff were critical of much of this training and who it was directed
towards:
How you conduct your manners, your speech, how’s your dress and the first
impression of you, that’s all the stuff that customer care teaches, do you dress
properly, is your hair right, have you not shaved, are you looking well, are you
speaking the proper way, are you carrying the manners, are you giving the right
information, has that person who just walked in the door think that’s such a lovely
chap’. It’s crap! (Final Staff Forum, interview)
A telt them we need training fur the drugs ‘n’ abuse…they’re seein things through
their posh college no about the locals. We work in a rough environment. All am
askin is fur some training to deal wi that. (RA1, field diary)
Even my mates slag me…Steely, will phone me up an I’ll say, ‘Good afternoon,
Hunter Centre, how can I help you?’ He goes ‘You can help by takin that fuckin
toothy voice aff. (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
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See they send you on supervisory courses that know nothing about leisure or our
problems. What management thinks we should be doing isn’t what’s actually
happening or what the punters want. They’re just not in touch with reality.
(Supervisor, interview)
The only training we got wis how tae use the till cash up an the manual [customer
care manual]. It didnae help wi the people [locals or drug users] though or whit they
left behind, the needles an syringes an that. (RA3, interview)
Aye, but I think we change [behaviour/service practice] because we’re afraid the
customers will think were no doing our job. We’re forced [training and procedure]
to be something we’re not because management don’t run this place. (Supervisor,
interview)
Aye, I’ve hud customer care training but customer care training disnae help to treat
the people who are fae the unemployed background or fae the normal punters about
here, they teach ye to treat the people for all the p’s ‘n’ q’s ‘n’ all the nice things tae
say ‘n’ the proper text book things tae say. (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
That Charlie McBreen’s is a numpty. He say’s it’s [staff seeking legal advice after
being involved in stabbing incident] an over-reaction. How can he say that he’s no
been in here in 15 years. (Supervisor, field diary)
Moreover, with this managerialist legacy and following reorganisation (returned to below) a
new tier of operational staffing (i.e. assistant supervisor) was developed. This established
positional authority of supervisor, assistant supervisor, recreation assistants (four posts), and
relief recreation assistants along with a cleaner. Corresponding to differential training (e.g.
supervisory, ICTs for supervisors; personal training for recreation assistants; general
operations, customer care, health and safety for relief recreational assistants) batteries of
procedures were introduced. Reflecting on past practice the facility staff had become ‘pissed
off wi procedure this procedure that (Assistant Supervisor, field diary). As demonstrated
here with managerial re-structuring and standardisation had a restricting and divisive impact:
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It wiz never ‘awe am no dain that that’s a ‘supervisor function’ [polite accent]. It jist
happened in the past. That made the job. There wiz nae titles we all came up wi
ideas. Now folk are all tryin’ tae justify their position an the cash. Naebody trusts
anybody in here an a don’t see how ye can fix it. (Assistant Supervisor, field diary)
With the technical, standards based focus and promotion of sport and recreation by ISRM
and wider strategic concerns of ILAM standardisation was a given. This was not only
echoed through and across East Ayrshire, with all facilities and staff issued with ‘books upon
books’ (Supervisor, interview) of procedural handbooks. In seven sections these handbooks
provided detailed instructions and standardised proformas covering aspects of operation
including booking, reporting repairs, cleaning, requisition forms, use of telephones, cash
handling, recording usage/statistics, setting-up and storing equipment. Added to this were
the manuals on coaching/personal training, gym maintenance, health and safety as well as
customer care procedures covering appearance, dress and serving customers and dealing
with complaints. As highlighted here through handbooks, manuals and procedural
proformas, operational practices and customer services were prescribed, rationalised and
scrutinised:
I mean going back to Edinburgh Leisure…we have actually gone so far down the
procedural route. Basic pragmatic day-to-day running operations type training
(ILAM, interview)
Well its back to training. How else can you manage these days? It doesn’t matter
whether is basic operations, water treatment or pool plant the standards set and
management sees that through. (ISRM, interview)
The intention is to standardise everything in the facilities. (departing, Community
Recreation Manager, field diary)
They are centralising everything and to centralise us they have to have conforming
and us uniformed. (Supervisor, interview)
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[Staff running through operational duties] Well, take the bombs [locking bolts] oot,
slide the shutter up first, mat oot, in tae the office empty bins, check till, booking
sheets. Next main hall [sweep], then showers [open/bins/mats], then gym [sweep,
polish, check machine maintenance], round the building [litter pick-up] an finish wi
the foyer an front steps [wash]… there’s a tick sheet to remind you [each job
initialled upon completion] (RA3, interview)
I insist everybody follows the procedure. Log all calls and the P.A.T. [Public Access
Terminals] stays on at all times. I’ve got to deal with these [P.A.T. suppliers]
(Assistant Area Manager 1, field diary)
The changes I’ve seen since a came here? There’s much mair red tape tae go
through, there’s mair procedures tae go through tae actually set-up a class ‘n’
stuff…The coaching manual teaches ye tae deal with a robotic, fucking wee person
who will answer tae their name every single time, who’ll tell exactly whit they’ve
done, who’ll do exactly whit ye tell them tae dae. They’ll sit doon, jump how high
and dae that. (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
We need to know where everyone is at all times [staff complete and fax shift rotas].
It’s important that we know [health and safety cited] who is on at any given time.
(Community Recreation Manager, field diary)
It’s all structured now that you are no even if somebody’s got a double booking and
they’ve lost their book and you just can’t say okay I’m sorry about that I’ll give you a
free court next week, you have to say I’ll have to phone management for them to say
okay it’s like big brother watching you all the time…it’s big brother camera all the
time (Final Staff Forum, interview)
Not all standardisation and national training standards or managerial rationalization was
resisted. Health and safety training was essential ‘C.O.S.H.H., Risk Assessment, lifting and
carrying these are good things’ (Supervisor, field diary). Also new services of personal
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training were viewed as a positive addition to services ‘guid fur the centre’ (Assistant
Supervisor, interview) and generally welcomed ‘the best part of the job for me’ (RA3,
interview). However, with established managerialism and in the wake of reorganisation and
transition from CCT to BVR (this discussed below) staff, reflecting on past coaching and
community work, found themselves not only located within the facility but restricted
practice:
This is me all I do is fill in wee bits of paper all day. I’m stuck in this office dealing
with all this shit. (Supervisor, field diary)
The jobs jist no fun any mair. I used tae look forward tae coming here, fuck how
often did we turn up early ‘n’ stay late, ‘n’ we didn’t think twice. Ye worked wi the
kids, made the clubs, ye know got a buzz oot a it. Ye got tae ken the folk no just in
here but down the toon on a night oot they wid talk away ‘n’ that. (Assistant
Supervisor, field diary).
I’ve had it wi this place I’m gone as of Friday. The jobs jist become unbearable an
every day jist gets worse. Ye canny dae anything without their (mgt) say so an that
shifts carry on wiz joist the last straw…Do ye no ken they don’t need tae give
‘explanations’ they’re management…Hey, don’t get me wrang a loved this job,
working wi the weans doing the classes an stuff…Fair enough some of them (locals)
were mental but after a wee while they got tae ken ye and ye got tae ken how tae
handle them. Now ye don’t do anything a jist sit in that office like a sponge. It’s
crap it really is an I’m getting tae hate the sight a the place an that’s no me, I don’t
want tae to like that. (RA3, field diary)
I believe management are robots…We are not serving the community the best
because we are not being specific to the needs of the community we are not allowed
to now and that is the big crux of it. (Final Staff Forum, interview)
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[Speaking of the past] So I phoned up the schools from the local area to get the local
kids in, not out with the local area, get the local kids in. Phoned up the head
teachers explained who I was, that I knew the kids from the area, do they mind if I
could come up and do a taster session with the kids, head teacher, no problem at all.
Got up three school, Onthank Primary, Hillhead and Mount Carmel and did the
three sessions…had like 12, 15, 20 kids coming through that door…Now to set up a
different session again...it’d huve tae go through the Sports Development
Officer…through her ‘n’ then she’d tae go through Com.Ed… now
[outreach/working with local schools] taking away fae me, that’s noo put on tae
somebody else ‘n’ that somebody else disnae ken the area, disnae ken the kids
(Assistant Supervisor, interview)
[Complaining about relief staff] That fuckin Val ‘n’ Donna they’ll sit there a fuckin
day…See noo if I’m no in the gym [personal training] I’m bored oot ma skull. They
think this is a great job but its crap noo. A need tae get oot a here. (RA1, field diary)
Nevertheless, as highlighted, attempts to contract coaching and community work along with
the procedures driven standardisation of service were challenged by the practices of long
term/permanent staff attempts:
[Staff rebelling/refusing to wear uniform due to lack of acknowledgement of issues]
That way they’ll [management] have to take notice. (Supervisor, field dairy)
Sandy King (Kilmarnock College) wanted tae use the gym. I ken I’m supposed tae
send him down the road tae ‘negotiate’. But it’s wiz empty so a jist said aye. A don’t
care (RA3, field diary)
Yes but we raised £500 through sponsorship, sponsored bounce or whatever we
were told no but just did it…It was the same with the Mudhunt working with Parks,
we raised the money, James begged stuff and got prizes and everything. They
[management] just said no never gave us a chance. But fuck them we did it and the
kids loved it a great day. (Final Staff Forum, interview)
224
[Staff describing phone call to arrange a meeting with Assistant Area Manager] ‘Yes,
you can come tomorrow. After the kids leave’. I canny wait tae she gets here. She’ll
get them [pointing to local children]. She’ll no ken whits hit her. (Assistant
Supervisor, field diary)
Well, there’s the incident book going back years. I did that no them [management].
An going back to the booking sheet, I’ve been told I must use this new procedure its
useless so I won’t I’ve told everybody here to ignore it. (Supervisor, interview)
[staff refusing to do gym induction/personal training] Aye, they were quick tae move
there. See how they want tae talk noo we huve downed tools. (RA1, field diary)
Big Dennis called saying ‘you’ve been getting the boys to get customers to complain’.
I don’t care that will push things through. (Supervisor, field diary)
Although CCT had a national impact, establishing positions, standardising services and
rationalising practices, tensions surrounding management practices and the problems
encountered by operational staff were evident. Moreover, the reorganisation process
challenged the operational subjectivity and governance produced by CCT. Also, and more
importantly, the authoritive and professionality of management itself was questioned. The
final section of this sub-chapter, in integrating the above, focuses on this.
Dis-located management: policy, practice and professionalism?
The above sections have attempted take elements of national perception and policy and
locate their distillation, regardless of success, into the local managerial and operational
practices. This section deepens this by returning to significant aspects of past policy, the
response of local management, which, given the embodied realities faced in operational
delivery, carries implications for professional claims. Whilst the managerialist legacy of CCT
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was established across the public sector the reorganisation of local government (April 1996)
impacted the structure and services of the PSSR. This was illustrated at national level:
Public sector issues dominated the thinking of ILAM because in turn that’s what’s
dominating the perception of the leisure professionals [but] the reorganisation of
local government, particularly in Scotland, had a phenomenal effect on leisure service
departments (ILAM, interview)
Reorganisation, just before reorganisation at reorganisation and since reorganisation
there has been so many changes in how local authorities have used and adapted their
management for sport and leisure (sportscotland, interview)
Sure it [reorganisation] had a huge impact and ever since the profession has gone
through a lot of tough times. The game changed, new authorities were asked to do
more with less…a real pressure to maintain quality of services on the ground. (ISRM,
interview)
There has always been this bureaucracy and it got worse in the reorganisation,
horrific you know in terms of management infighting you know there’s just the
council that’s that department and that that’s department…compartmentalism
(Leisure Development Manager, interview)
Re-organisation contingently accentuated the managerialism of CCT as operational practices
became centred on the containment and individuation of staff, operational formalism and
economic service development. Out with economic imperatives the geographical size and
diversity of the newly formed East Ayrshire brought an expansion of facilities and services
that turned the ‘baby into a monster’ (departed Area Operations Manager, field diary).
Nationally reorganization heralded the decentralisation of services (DETR, 1999), which
with the later policy shift to the community focused best value was reflected in East
Ayrshire’s ‘decentralisation strategy’ (Leisure Strategy, 2000). This rhetoric was not matched
by reality as the challenges of reorganization provided justification for adopting centralising
226
management as the ‘only way to control the service’ (Community Recreation Manager, field
diary). However, as illustrated such practices clashed with new national policy agendas:
The managerial policies don’t actually complement the holistic
policies…Managerialism conflicts with the holistic; it conflicts with holism (ILAM)
It’s now up to local authorities to force the health agenda…it’s not the health service
it’s the illness service we [national/strategic leisure practitioners] are the health
service and will be and that’s the agenda that we’ve got to take forward now you
know (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 1, interview)
The health agendas have been a big thing for a while now. Exercise referrals were
just the start with CHD patients and rehabilitation. Problems with obesity, kids all
round lack of activity, is where the push is. (ISRM, interview)
I mean what do we mean by best value we ask its all about value what did they
[customers] think of the experience you know…what people think of the quality of
the service and is it value for money…it’s delivering services, delivering more than
the resources which we had previously…I hate to say but joining up management
you know in terms of I mean we’ve got this, I mean this government is very, very
keen on joined up thinking and joining up provision… social workers, health centres,
sports centres you know you can see this whole picture is much a much more
integrated approach now (sportscotland, interview)
We have also entangled ourselves up very nicely in the community plan so that was a
big thing for the council to do is this joint planning exercise with community
planning, planning for health are in there and our services are entrenched and we are
in the action plans in the health element and in the poverty part so I think that again
has allowed us to as you said linking policies to practice we are heavily in there in
terms of the planning now…Towards a Healthier Scotland is a massive document
for us…we had kind of looked locally, what we were trying to do is match local
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issues and that fitted with the national agenda. (Leisure Development Manager,
interview)
More importantly, given reorganization and shifts to best value were about ‘holistic’
approaches to services and ‘joined up thinking’ it also provided opportunities for the
amelioration of barriers between traditional client contract relationships. Decentralised
policy agendas that were more community facing and focused were also, as pointed out
above, about ‘joined up management’ reducing the divisive issues of CCT. The centralised
formalism at local level demonstrated a lack of understanding of policy and accentuated
division between management. This was recognised nationally and locally:
It was much more traditional leisure and there was buildings there was sports
development and that was it really. I think what happened was that there was
starting to be a very natural split between the facility stuff and the development stuff
and that crack got wider and wider…I’m a nightmare when I’m not happy and
Derek’s [Community Recreation Manager] a nightmare…it’s the same in Glasgow I
know there has been the same friction between the DSO, the client and bringing that
together for best value although they have done it on paper and their best value
review was marvellous I know people in Glasgow very well and I know the situation
there and I know on the ground that things don’t always work they way that they
appear on paper…I think things changed so fast from 1996 about how the council
operated and how it was much more evidenced based. (Leisure Development
Manager, interview)
Managerialist thinking and the public sector has adopted more and more commercial
practice then they have become, leisure professionals have become business
managers and that provides then gives them a dilemma of balancing social
imperatives as they are required to do as a public sector deliverer but with the
economics and financial imperatives that are also dictated by public policy they are
really caught in the middle. (ILAM, interview)
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We don’t work through facilities, we are not facility orientated, we’re service
orientated… I don’t really give a dam too much about facilities… we’ve got our own
direction and a lot of what Derek [Community Recreation Manager] has to do is
about income generation. (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
Interestingly, best value and need for managers to understand and respond to new policy
agendas has shifted managerial status. With leisure development ‘entangled’ and ‘linking
policies to practices’ the embodied managerialism and commercial facilities focus of contract
management came under pressure. This was illustrated by the Leisure Development
Manager:
The great thing about this Best Value…is that Derek [Community Recreation
Manager] and his gang have not got one clue. They don’t understand the process
and its great. They have had to come to me because they can’t write the reports.
Policy is another world to them…its here my undergrad and post grad works
something they used to always poo poo as irrelevant. Well irrelevant has shown
what bloody inverted snobs they are and how useless they really are…I really can’t
stand them I’ve sat there [in meetings] for years biting my tongue well this [BV] has
shown them for what they are. Their time is truly up. (Leisure Development
Manager, interview)
Prior to reorganisation and shift to best value managerial ability and status appeared
relatively secure. Even with the issues surrounding differential customer groups the
hierarchical structuring and chain of authority and control was relatively unquestioned. At
the core of this was the physical or daily presence of management. The legitimacy and ‘right’
of management to manage was for operational staff premised upon direct staff: management
interaction. Through such face-to-face contact views, ideas and opinions could be expressed
and services developed for ‘at least then they had an idea of the job and if you thought what
they (management) were doing was crap you could tell them. I mean I used to have some
right arguments with them…but I still respected them.’ (Supervisor, field diary)
229
Having become a ‘monster’ with the geographical size and spread of facilities, increased
remit and staff management found that the new service was ‘physically impossible to
manage’ (Assistant Area Manager 1, field dairy). The managerial strategy to such difficulties
was to manage and administer control of sport and recreation services via investing in
information and communications technologies. This would prove ironic given management
claims that ‘without proper order and structure in place things just wouldn’t work right
(Assistant Area Manager 1, field dairy). Computers and fax machines formed the primary
role here with work rotas, sickness, holiday and relief cover, maintenance, equipment
requests, staff queries and customer complaints, comments and suggestions all faxed to
central office for processing. Added to this an interactive communications technology
known as Public Access Terminals (P.A.T) was installed. Interestingly, rather than fulfil
decentralising commitments, provide ‘better value rather than best value’ (Community
Recreation Manager, field diary) and enhance efficiency the perception, practice and
legitimacy of management was increasingly seen as ‘management in name only’ (RA1, field
dairy). As highlighted this was reflected not only by staff but fuelled by external and local
customers:
We never see any of the management team any more its non-management. (RA2,
field diary)
See now I’ve no got a manger, I don’t know what that is. That fax machine that’s
my manager – a lump of plastic’. (RA1, field diary)
[Longstanding external customer complaining about inability, due to new procedure,
to extend block booking] It’s quite ridiculous. I need a decision one way or another.
What am I supposed to say [to club members]? Who’s running the show here? If I
run my business like this I’d be bust [staff apologises but states ‘management have
brought this in’]. Management, where, how this management it’s a joke, really! Och,
here just leave it forget it! (Jim, badminton, field dairy)
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The suits played with [installed Public Access Terminal] it for 2hrs. They never
asked us about it. It’s just a matter of time before the animals pour soup down it.
(Supervisor, field diary)
[Local teasing staff smoking at front] Ah when the cat’s away eh Jamsie boy. You
never did that wi when Dave or Big Jeff [on site ex-managers], You’d get yer ass
kicked. (Jerry, local adult, field diary)
With sport and recreation services managed along these ICT driven, procedural lines and
with staff contained and directed to economic development, social imperatives were
neglected. This is ironic, given managements ‘better value rather than best value’ claim and
that best value is designed to service the needs of local communities (Filkin, 1997). With the
objective conditions surrounding the facility, past practice of staff and the raft of national
policy agendas directed these communities (Stewart, 1998; Scottish Executive, 1999, 2003;
DCMS, 2002; Donaldson, 2004) the opportunity to re-establish managerial credibility was
lost. Staff frustrations over containment, contraction from local service development altered
their perception of management. Also, as illustrated, this contrasted with leisure
development who linked to national agendas with professional legitimacy:
They huvnae a fucking clue whit we do or whit we huve tae put up with so why
should I listen to them? They don’t gie a fuck about us. All they do is sent up this
shit [procedures] coz it covers their arses an keep them in a job...I don’t care who
they are [management]. If a think their wrang I jist tell them. Why should a keep my
mooth shut? Whit dae they ken anyway. Their posh suit an big words disnae
impress me. (RA1, field diary)
Listen its all a big game a far as I’m concerned. They (management) created the
problems in the first place then set up ‘procedures’ to solve it. It was them that
stopping us from working with the community and enforcing this new structure.
Now when the shits hits the fan they run about telling us we need to get our act
together. (Supervisor, field diary)
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I’ve got absolutely no respect for them at all. You never see them so how can they
possibly know what I do. I don’t see them as managers anymore. (RA2, field diary)
The further that you get taken away from it [coaching roles] the more you lose the
motivation…Now Katie’s teams [Leisure Development] do it. I did the coaching we
all did now it’s play teams a couple of times a week…When four five years ago when
I got promoted up here and then they start taking all the coaching off you. It’s a
waste of coaching chance to work with the kids. (Final Group Forum, interview)
We had to make ourselves more legitimate and the way that we’ve done that is to
lock into the health agenda, the social work agenda, we do a lot of work with social
work round the sport thing…It’s the new sport and future thing with the youth…the
whole youth crime scenario… it all goes down to legitimising what we do and
recognising that sport and play and a whole range of things is an excellent tool to
address some of these things, (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
The problems of managerial formalism brought staff into direct confrontation with
management. Moreover, as highlighted by the last quote, the long running failure of
management to recognise and respond to the indigenous issues left staff isolated and having
to self manage:
Look at the complaint forms. They took them away from here saying they were
making-up new ones. But they lied because I know the other centres still have them.
They took ours because we were getting punters to put in complaints and they had
to answer them. We were trouble so they lie and try and shut you up. (Supervisor,
field diary)
I don’t trust management anymore. I’ve no faith in them. They don’t fulfil their
roles and they have no idea of what I do – so I question everything they do. They’ve
tried to make us think for years that they know best and they don’t. (RA2, field diary)
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It’s as simple as this I fucking hate them [management] they are a bunch of bastards.
I think of all the years I’ve been here the things we did the Playways, Coerver stuff,
personal training, leagues, working with the Social Work, Needle exchange and stuff.
All that. We did it, the lot, off our own back. We did the courses, went and talked
with the likes of the Needle Exchange and where were they?...Managers the only
thing they’ve managed to do is fuck this place right up…It's a fucking disgrace so it
is. (Supervisor, field diary)
I’ll give you a reason. It’s a fucking easy trip for Derek [Community Recreation
Manager] that’s what it is. They are robots, robots!...get rid of the robots and get
thinking folk in there who are interested in people rather than money (Final Staff
Forum, interview)
It’s an area wi deprivation, high unemployment, low self esteem, low social skills, low
interpersonal skills…it’s people fighting against a losing battle oot there do ye know
what I mean? An leisure is a medium tae come here an do that an better themselves,
feeling better about themselves…You’ve got the triangle, you’ve got the Morven
Centre fur Depression, which is 50 yards doon the road fur folk needing
rehabilitation. So ye go in there fur rehabilitation an if you’re no getting rehabilitated
ye go tae the Health Clinic, which is 10 yards across the road. So ye get your drugs
and then ye come in here ta dae sports an we’re the last fuckin chain, we’re the last
line a command…If we can get them before they’re depressed an before they need
their drugs. You’ve got a needle exchange over there [Health Clinic] two nights a
week, we’ve got the highest rate in Scotland per head per population fur drug users
in this area. So what we’re left we’ve got to deal with that? (Assistant Supervisor,
interview)
Interestingly, while this last quote summarises the objective conditions, difficulties and
isolation of staff, as with the Leisure Development Manager above, it points to a belief in the
intrinsic and civilising benefits of sport. Although, critiqued in literature (and within the
critical discussion below) it has to be recognised that this view of sport is prosecuted at the
national arena and permeates down to local operational practitioners. Given this belief in
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the power of sport and recreation, and with the objective conditions and embodied
circumstances of local groups, it is paradoxical that management neglected or ignored the
legitimating potential surrounding them. For failure to recognise and respond to such issues
increased and intensified the gaze of staff upon managerial practices. This, as exemplified,
carries implications for those professional claims championed nationally:
It has changed from a concentration of general management and good management
to a recognised profession or industry where there are laid down standards of
achievement. (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 2, interview)
The leisure profession did have respect. There now appears to be a view that respect
is not meaning so much today… it [Leisure Profession] hasn’t achieved it’s
objectives but at least it has had objectives…and it’s tried to link those objectives to
various things (sportscotland, interview)
As it stands today I can say we are much more professional. ISRMs been around for
eighty odd years and the industry is much more developed. Look at the
qualifications, training, CPD… of course as the professional body we’re bias but the
industry is so diverse and skilled now I think it’s getting harder to argue that these
are not professionals out there. (ISRM, interview)
I think it is even more fundamental than that, the word professional industry is
coming up for a lot of debate just now…I mean everybody are calling themselves
professionals now you know but the professional leisure industry against like you
know medical people. (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 3, interview)
In 1983 when ILAM was constituted…it was a marker, as a marker for an aspiration
of traditional profession…the development of qualifications and the development of
employees within the industry…there was an aspiration for ILAM to become the
regulatory body for leisure not just sport and recreation…It [Leisure Profession] has
been pushed into this managerialist thinking and the public sector has adopted more
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and more commercial practices…Leisure professionals have become business
managers and that then gives them a dilemma of balancing social imperatives…social
inclusion is not always the resonator of leisure managers (ILAM, interview)
I would say that the profession…can be reasonably well defined…you are dealing
with a range of technical matters so you have large scale strategic change linked into
national policy as well so it is a very, there are opportunities which describe what a
professional person, you’ve got to have a range of skills and a range of knowledge.
(Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 1, interview)
Although managerialism and failure to secure social objectives were seen as ‘a weakening of
the journey towards traditional professionalism’ (ILAM, interview) professional claims,
particularly for strategic practitioners, persist. However, this perception of professional
practice was, as highlighted above, evident with the managerial divide. Just as staff had
become disillusioned at the centralised managerial formalism, economic focus and service
inequality ‘the misfits was fine they cancelled it because hockey complained…they were
money the kids [local] were not’ (Supervisor, interview) there was discomfort with such
practices within management. The practices and fact that contract management had ‘not
one clue’ and failed to engage with policy agendas was, as reflected upon here by the Leisure
Development Manager, professionally weakening and a source of concern:
We’ve got our own direction and a lot of what Derek [Community Recreation
Manager] has to do is about income generation…I’m really afraid of becoming the
kind of person that is stuck here with my calculator and I don’t know what the hell is
going on… What I’ve tried to create within this organisation is a stepping stone for
everybody… very rarely would you be able to have somebody who could walk into
that position [managerial] and not have some kind of degree…the professional needs
to be able to prove and evidence that they can think strategically, plan and
organise… one of the rules that I’ve got is that staff have to check the Scottish
Exec website at least once every fortnight…they [Community Recreation] should
also be looking at the strategies nationally we are. We are now much more locked
into the national agenda. (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
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Given staff challenges local management responded by re-affirming their legitimacy and
position through appeals to experience, expertise and education. Managerial authority and
legitimacy appear premised upon tradition, educational attainment and belief in knowledge
superiority. The process and position of management was structured hierarchically, with
management being seen as a 'natural right'. The possession of the title of management
imbues the manager with authority and the ‘right’ to manage. As illustrated, and being
associated with professionalism, this is shrouded in knowledge and qualifications:
That’s just the way it is - power comes with the position. I didn’t do four years
[university] for nothing you know (Assistant Area Manager 1, field dairy)
Look you lot forget that we're management not you. Can't you just accept that there
is a line of authority, a chain of command, and you have to follow it - end of story.'
(Community Recreation Manager, field diary).
Years ago, when I started, you could work your way up. Not now every member of
the team (management) has got something from HND, to masters. That's the trend
these days no getting away from it. (departing Community Recreation Manager, field
diary)
For years I told them about energy savings in lighting, heating and water. Did they
listen? No! Now coz some manager with a suit and tie and a degree says in some
daft bit of paper we need to save energy they now start to do it. (Supervisor, field
diary).
Just because they have been to uni and have degrees they think they know everything
well they don’t all they care about is money. Everything is down to money and
making money. Money comes first, the service comes second and it will have to
reverse to service first money second. (Final Group Forum, interview)
236
These educational and claims of expertise were counterproductive for management as staff
critiqued such knowledge and skills in relation to their operational world. Managerial
absence, centralised formalism since reorganization coupled with the retraction of
community-based services in favour of focus on commercial development merely
accentuated the flaws and inability of management. In the operational world of staff ‘what
management thinks we should be doing isn’t what’s actually happening’ highlighted for staff
that management were ‘just not in touch with reality’ (Supervisor, field dairy). The physical
and ICT security measures outside and inside the building demonstrated management were
aware of local issues. However, such measures turned the facility into a silo whereby space
and services were protected. Economically efficient services and customer care and training
practices were promoted to the detriment of training and service developments that could
respond to the operational reality of staff and the objective conditions and issues of local
groups. As exemplified here through a series of comments, such issues served to underscore
the differential service to customers, ineptitude of management, which challenged the
educational, expert premise and, thus, authority of management:
[Local youths thrown out following external complaints about behaviour]
‘We never done anythin’. That’s jist tae satisfy them [external customers].
Well if you think about it they’re [local youths] just being normal. For them
that’s how you communicate. But I can see how it upsets the nice people’s
sensibilities. (Wullie and Allan, Police Officers, field dairy)
There are big problems now…they’ve told us that all classes that don’t make
money have to be stopped. Even the Roller Hockey numbers have to be
capped rather than pay the extra for over-time (Supervisor, field dairy)
I deal with these people [local groups] and this is how we deal with it. Derek
and that [Community Recreation] they don’t deal with them, they never have.
They don’t even live in the area…its management’s job how you deal with
the difficult thing but they are never there to see it (Final Group Forum,
interview)
237
[Head of Leisure Services visit with Community Recreation Manager] That’s
management for you. He [Head of Leisure Services] has been in the job for
over a year and this is his first appearance. They don’t want to know the
issues they haven’t even the courtesy to get in touch. How can I respect
them? (Supervisor, field dairy)
If somebody asked we would be willing tae dae it tae help them but noo it’s
[personal training] been made intae a service… it’s as if somebody has jist
realised oh wait a minute we could make some money… Nothing will be free
fur unemployed people coz they [management] are taking it all away (RA3,
interview)
Because they’re [management] trying tae pigeon hole every centre exactly the
same so whit they are dain is they’re creating their ain disharmony because
they’re thinking that everythin’ the same whereas the Hunter Centre is a
totally different entity…they’ve created a whole fucking bullocks fur
themselves (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
The Centre attracts that type of, it attracts the likes of [us] it doesn’t attract
the graduate coming out of university…I don’t think it’s by accident that the
likes of us live in a certain place because just as a graduate isn’t at the Hunter
Centre he’s in Parklands or somewhere else you wont find him going to work
here because he wont be attracted to this (Final Group Forum, interview)
They’re stepping stone people. Mary [NRG exercise counsellor] they come
from college or uni use the place to get the next job and move on. Stepping
stone people they don’t care about anybody. (Supervisor, field diary)
At the end of the day I ken these folk - I’m wan a them an I ken how tae talk
tae them. Trash ken’s how tae talk tae trash. (RA1, field dairy)
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[Jordanhill Placement Student to young local youth with hot chocolate]
‘Careful now that’s burnie, burnie! [Youth] ‘It’ no burnie its hot. Fuckin
trumpet!’ Welcome tae the Hunter Centre [laughing, pats on back] ye’ll no
dae that again. Didnae get that at Collage did ye? (Brain, Assistant
Supervisor, field diary)
Michael and other people that have worked up here em what was his name
Scott, these people went to College they came from a different background
and it would be okay in a nice environment like Parklands…Well once a
threatening situation happens…they don’t deal with it in the way that they
should or could. That’s a wee bit arrogance on me…I think this is the way
that this Centre is you have to have certain people working it (Supervisor,
interview)
The only training we got was how tae use the till cash up an the manual. It
didnae help wi the people [locals] though or whit they left behind, the
needles an syringes an that… there wis a bit of first aid as well but no really
any support when it came tae like if somebody wiz aggressive or threatening
towards ye how tae deal wi that. (RA3, interview)
Listen don’t geis any pish its only a’right if that [nod towards Assistant Area
Manager speaking to Supervisor] lot say so. We’re a’right as long as we dae
whit you say. (McNeillie, local adult, field diary)
I came here years ago during the unemployed hour tae play headi [local
football game] with the boys an it wiz the same then. There wiz ey a
manager telling ye ye canny dae that, nay black trainers, nay jeans. Every
other week there wiz some new boss big Jeff, Alex White even that NRG
woman. Fuck whit dae they ken. Its o’right fur them they don’t stay here.
Fuck they’ve got a guid job, a car and everythin. We’ve got nuthin. I mean
I’m no sayin anything against the boys (Staff). You ken the score but they
239
cunts I’m no listening tae them they could’nay gie a flyin fuck. (Sammy, local
adult, field diary)
Hey, they [management] closed the place to get that award [Scottish Sports
Council award]. Dennis, Dave [Community Recreation] an the councillors
they a turn up in a fleet of cars with their big coats all suited and
booted…They walked straight past the boys [local unemployed] who’d come
for football. They’re locked oot an it’s supposed to be their centre. That’s
why I told Dennis I wasn’t wanting my photo taken with them. (Supervisor,
field diary)
Interestingly, while the proliferation or technical and academic qualifications and national
governing body affiliation was recognised as professionalizing practice nationally and at local
managerial level, even though criticised above, it was felt at operational level as staff realised
'a long time ago' that 'supervisor was as far as I could go. Even though I've worked in this
business for over 15 years…there is no way up unless you've got that wee bit of paper with
letters after your name.' (Supervisor, field diary). Although managerial practices highlighted
a neglect of social objectives, local dilemmas faced by staff and an inequitable service
approach thereby discrediting and problematised management themselves there was a
residual belief in or desire to be management. In ending on this paradoxical note, and even
though constrained by a dis-located centralised formalism, the re-invigorated, and pragmatic,
policy to integrated practice approach of Leisure Development provided an avenue to
address local issues. As illustrated, national policy directions in BVR, inclusion, health,
education and crime demanded the development of initiatives that were managerial aware
and operationally flexible in order to respond to objective conditions and embodied
practices of local groups:
To get to the excluded people, where we have objectives, it is very labour intensive.
You can’t broad brush them because they are excluded, they have excluded
themselves…the Mile High and motivator sessions ran at Hillhead [school within
case study catchement]. We ran them 5-7pm because we knew the kids would go to
the off licence for their carry outs…it’s a shame but that is how these kids live…I
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know there a chance of trouble you keep the caretakers sweet and build damage into
the budget (Leisure Development Manager, interview)
They [management] are laying down the pricing structure [for summer play scheme]
and they are giving ye no flexibility tae work with it ye know…Hopefully it will
change this year, maybe I’m naïve…but I’m not management they’ll sit down ‘n’
they’ll fucking talk tae us ‘n’, I mean, we ken the area, we ken the kids ye know whit I
mean, Katie’s [Leisure Development Manager] lot dae it whereas before we run the
play sessions ourselves no problem (Assistant Supervisor, interview)
Through these sub-chapters and sections the findings of the study have been thematically
presented. Given the weight of data the intention was to provide a feel for the physical
location, customer groups, operational practices and issues faced therein. Also, attention
was turned to management and how national policy agendas have impacted upon managerial
practices, the implications for staff management, service developments and the perception of
management itself in light of the operational world embodied by staff. The following
section turns to critically discuss these findings and the issues raised through the coupled
lenses of Foucauldian and Bourdieusian analysis.
241
8.0
Critical Discussion: the web of discourse and embodied suffering
Introduction
The preceding chapter was designed to present the primary areas of empirical data from the
study. As discussed this material was thematically aggregated, paraphrased and presented in
a manner that, whilst directing attention to areas of substantive content, was intended to
illustrate and integrate national preoccupations with the managerial and embodied reality of
operational staff and the customer groups they encounter. From the outset this study has
questioned the historical development, management and operational delivery of sport and
recreation within the public sphere. It has argued that the development, production and
consumption of sport and recreation evidences a historically disparate but increasingly
political trajectory (Bailey, 1989; Scambler, 2005). Sport and recreation, far from
representing neutral free choice and engagement, has long been appropriated as a vehicle for
ideology, as an embodied and spectacular demonstration of class position, taste, status and
distinction (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994; Byrne 2000). As highlighted in Chapter’s Three and
Four, the objectifying and normalising practices of Enlightenment rationality provided core
events and bodies of knowledge that grounded modern sport and recreation shaping its
institutionalised form and promotion as an egalitarian right of citizenship (Roberts, 2004).
With its birth and subsequent development, the PSSR carries an overt ideological agenda
(Coalter, 1998; Collins, 2003). However, in its material substance, embodied management,
operational delivery and consumption, the cultural politics of discourse lies hidden. The
purpose of this chapter is to reveal this process by integrating the content of data and
integral literature with Foucauldian and Bourdieusian analysis.
This task will be undertaken in three integrated sections below. The sectional presentation
of data in the first section will move from an analytical discussion of the physical spaces of
provision to concentrate upon the embodied consumption practices of those within the
facility. Section two will then turn its critical focus upon the interplay between the national
scene and local discursivity found in the embodied practices of the Hunter Centre. Finally,
as discussed at the introduction to Chapter Seven, section three completes the analytical
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discussion by re-focusing attention on the web of embodied distinction found in the
management, operation and consumption of sport and recreation and the dilemmas these
pose for the professional status and purpose of the PSSR. Here, a Foucauldian lens will be
used to open up the PSSR as discourse, revealing its discursive assemblage, governmentality
and technologies of the self (Foucault, 1970; Kendall and Wickham, 1999). However, only
through the application of a Bourdieusian analysis (Bourdieu, 1986; Webb, et al, 2002) is the
discursive abstraction located and animated in practices of the present. The discourse of the
PSSR, in its power/knowledge/subject matrix, is brought to life, and shown to dynamically
work as it is assimilated and resisted through the embodied realities of operational staff and
those customer groups engaged in the consumption of sport and recreation. The case study
facility and the intersection between operational delivery and consumption of sport and
recreation is an appropriate analytical starting point.
Embodied Consumption and Conflict in Cultural Comfort Zones
As discussed in Chapter Six, the Hunter Centre is a representation of the a policy approach
of its day, continuing a universalising Sport for All ethos, which brought paternalistic and
civilising sport and recreation provision to a locally deprived community. However,
although opened in 1985, this facility is a physical manifestation of policy and an echo of a
distant past. In Foucault’s archaeological terms, it resonates with past facilitization as much
as to the ‘naming’ of the forms of sport and recreation. The Hunter Centre, its bricks and
mortar and the provision it offers the community, is more than the product of post-1945
welfarism, local government re-organisation, facilitization and post-1975 policy
pronouncements. Instead, it represents a ‘reactivation’ of memory, of periods of thought
where ideas were advanced and language developed to produce the object, the ‘material
facilitization’ (Toohey and Veal, 2000) of sport and recreation. Prior to present political
whims, or post-1975 policy directions, the Hunter Centre incorporates archaeological traces
- past archives that have enabled the building to come into being (Rabinow, 1986). The
establishment and institutionalisation of sport and recreational forms, the language used, the
rules developed, administered and governed are historical products. The ideological
agendas, patronage or civilising agendas of past movements, when repetitively deployed and
targeted, provide the shaping and enabling archives of the facility. They are the ‘forms of
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specification’ that allow us to identify and speak about the ‘objects’ of sport and recreation
and, with the development of public sector policy, target the bodies of its ‘subjects’ (Kendall
and Wickham, 1999: 28). In the Foucauldian sense, without these archives the power of
policy is inept or ineffectual. As the empirical study illustrated the facility was ‘built with
urban aid money’ (Supervisor) as a ‘traditional Comm Rec facility’ (Leisure Development
Manager). The Hunter Centre is ‘living history’, a product brought into being through past
archives where the ideas, language and institutions of sport and recreation were set in
motion.
Admittedly, policy lives in an embodied and genealogical present. However, the policy
initiatives of today, the provision it advocates and practices it spawns, are given a voice, and
allowed to effect its performative power through archives of the past. The importance of
this cannot be overstated for, as Chapter’s Three, Four and Five highlighted, the archives of
sport and recreation are invested, imprinted with cultural tastes, values and aspirations
(Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Coalter, 1990; Jarvie and Maguire, 1994). Although the
embodied subjects of ancient games, events, civilising and normalising movements cannot
be seen, since archaeologically they remain in the background, their presence is
acknowledged. The subject is an ever-present, resonating through the traditional rite of
religion, barbarous festivities, individual sovereign patronage, disparate activities of rational
recreation or deliberate codifying interventions (Maguire, 1999; Guttmann, 2000). Seen
more as a network, rather than teleological, these archives are ‘snapshots’ or slices of
historical time (Burrell. 1988). They bring forward rules, codes of practice, norms and
governing mechanisms (Flynn, 1994) that have contingently impacted upon and shaped
what, for many, is now a given; namely, modern sport and recreation.
This includes the egalitarian championing of leisure for all in post-45 welfarism (McIntosh
and Charlton, 1985; Henry, 2001). This welfarism was a reaction to fears over sub-cultural
youth, inner city deprivation and a belief in the transformatory power of sport and recreation
(DoE, 1977; Bull et al, 2003). It was this that found sport and recreation pronounced as a
‘need’ and so institutionalise as part of the ‘fabric of social services’ (DoE, 1975). With
ILAM and ISRM (now added to by the Sector Skills Council, SkillsActive) a cacophony of
confusing governing body voices are layered into the bricks and mortar of the Hunter
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Centre. The PSSR is shaped or re-worked in association with policy initiatives attached to
healthy public policy and new social policy involvement in crime, education and health
(Collins, 2003). These institutions, governing bodies and policy directions, provide the
‘pastoral power’ of the ‘state and its institutions’ (Moss, 1998: 3). In working alongside the
external forces of media and commercial organisations and manufacturers these form a
present archive of the PSSR and feed into the wider field of sport and recreation. Through
this arrangement of institutions and organizational bodies the repetitive and relational
articulation of statements is authoritatively made. Notions of ‘need’, ‘deprivation’, evidence
of ‘citizenship’, ‘community cohesion’, ‘inclusion’ and associations of ‘health’, ‘crime
reduction’ and ‘educational re-engagement’ target the ‘object’ and provide the ‘forms of
specification’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 28) of the PSSR. When coupled with the
associated and protecting managerial and professional terminologies such as ‘strategy’,
‘community planning’, ‘empowerment’, ‘performance indicators’, ‘risk assessment’ or
‘continuous improvement’ the ideas, language or ‘phrase regimes’ (Sim, 1998: 10) of the
present archive of PSSR appear. Like past archives, with their arrangement and repetitive
articulation, these ‘phrase regimes’ become regimes of truth (Foucault, 1980; Grenz, 1998) the enabling ‘surface of emergence’ of the Hunter Centre, its design and build, aesthetic
provision and services. Furthermore, this repetitive articulation filters to internal positions,
procedures and practices, which brings the subject into the genealogical foreground
(discussed below) and finds the archives of discourse at work in the local and embodied
world of this study.
However, it is important to note that the mutually conditioning ideas and statements do not
simply shape the materiality of the Hunter Centre. The Hunter Centre building evokes the
politic of cultural taste as well as national references to ‘civic pride’, ‘the 75 White Paper’
(Strategic Practitioner’s Forum), ‘need for paternalism’ (ILAM) and the general consensus on
the transformational lifestyle effects of sport and recreation. Surfaces of emergence bring
more than an enabling materiality. They reflect and represent a cultural world that has been
embodied in and through the ‘professionals’ of the present who, with a voice to speak, now
‘describe the world and give it shape’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 106). It should be stressed here that
this should not be viewed positively or negatively. The materiality of the Hunter Centre
building and its provision and practice can but only reflect or carry the cultural tastes of
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those institutional, governing and professional voices of authority that links to past archives.
This highlights a central point of analysis as it raises the issue of emancipation and failure, on
Foucault’s part, to be drawn into or assert normative positions (discussed in Chapter Two).
Regardless of the findings above or what is advanced here there is no stance or emancipatory
recommendations. In arguing that discourse is imbued with and translates cultural tastes
that are internalised, embodied and privileging, this is an analytical argument of logical
consequence.
The analytical crux here is that before any customer group enters or engages with the
operational delivery and consumption of sport and recreation the politics and implications of
cultural taste are unavoidable. The Hunter Centre building is simply a microcosm of the
field and politics of sport and recreation. Placed in a commercial context, its cultural politics
would, arguably, lie silent or be difficult to detect. However, as part of public sector
provision, located in an area of multiple deprivation and charged with dual commercial and
social imperatives, the building itself is a cultural marker. The Hunter Centre is deliberately
premised and promoted as an open, and inclusive public service. However, this service,
from the materiality of building and design, provision and embodied service practice
(managerially and operationally) is not only political but also, like a virus, inherently cultural
and privileging.
The aesthetic transformation of the facility over the years, matching the increase and
territorialisation of external, more affluent, customer groups challenged any notion of ‘A
Sports Facility for Your Locality’. Sacrificing the original aesthetic for a series of security
modifications represents a material, and managerial response to the objective conditions of
the area and those of local customer groups. Security measures represent a panoptican-like
process with a constant gaze directed at the practices of local groups. External and internal
CCTV, safety screens, buzzer doors, as well as procedural restrictions on use of amenities,
were attempts to control embodied conduct. Moreover, in highlighting the cultural content
and need to conform to the structured behaviour, manners and attitudes required in service
exchanges gain conformity, these security and procedural measures spotlighted the habitus
and embodied capital of locals.
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Although built on the basis of a welfarist past and the more recent policy targets of BV and
inclusion these security measures signified suspicion and dis-trust of the local community, ‘a
bad area…a known drugs haven’ (John, external adult) where ‘they would steal the sugar out
your tea’ (RA3). By displaying their objective conditions, the local, the targets of inclusion
represented an alien ‘Other’ from another world. To be local or external reflected visible,
embodied and lived distinction. The ‘people from this area and your paying customer’
(Supervisor), ‘unemployed…and the posher folk’ (Assistant Supervisor), the ‘shite’ against
the ‘snooty bitches’ (McNeillie, local adult), the ‘vile’ people and ‘wild’ kids (Jan, external
adult) to ‘the people from decent areas’ (Supervisor) with the ‘nice sensibilities’ (Wullie,
Community Police) local and external were instantly recognisable to all. Moreover, this
embodied distinction highlighted a hierarchy of customer privilege
The replacement of the facility aesthetic with levels of zonal security, supported by
procedural service practices, not only reflected a material response and recognition of
differential habitus and embodied capitals; it also secured services for externals against that
of locals. Locals were not only the subjects of surveillance, ‘to be watched’ (RA3) whilst the
economic and objective capital (i.e. money, cars, watches, jewellery, equipment) and
incorporated consumption practices of externals were to be guarded. With its
territorialisation by external groups the Hunter Centre had become a cultural silo for the
display and embodied consumption of sport and recreation. It is here that the dynamics of
local discursivity begin to clash with past sport and recreational archives. They are embodied
but, unlike the historically codified, universally developed and taught structural rules of the
game (Coakley and Dunning, 2000), the accompanying cultural codes are not universally
open, known or taught. Genealogically, habitus and capital are brought into relief as
embodied archives are internalized and enacted. This focuses our ‘attention of local,
discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges’ and ‘knowledges of local struggles’
(Foucault, 1980: 83-85), that are to be found in the embodied dynamics of the Hunter
Centre. This was evident from the national policy rationale that established the facility.
With its designation area of priority treatment (ATP) the multiple deprivation status of the
catchment made it a prime target for public sector investment in sport and recreation
provision. However, given the traditional class profile of sport and recreation and the
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experience of the public sector (Sidaway et al, 1986; Bull et al, 2003) it is understandable that,
with the aesthetic design, location, low cost provision and personalised services, the facility
would be attractive to and colonised, by external groups. Certainly, the geodemographic
profile of externals reflected the ‘social differentiation’ and ‘linkage’ between ‘sport and the
social hierarchy’ (Sugden and Tomlinson, 2000). Externals themselves viewed the facility as a
‘club without the club’ and, in acknowledging the social rationale for its development,
reflexively pointed out that it was ‘really for people like me’ (Jim, external adult). However,
it is not just that the Hunter Centre appeals to these traditional groups. It is more important
to consider how cultural tastes, trans-generationally inculcated through a habitus (Bourdieu,
1978; 1992; Wacquant, 1998), work to attract and find these external or traditional groups
facilitating cultural comfort zones of sport and recreation. It is how the spaces and cultural
rules of sport and recreational games, found in the Hunter Centre, discursively resonates
with a habitual familiarity, cultural knowledge and embodied practices of the sporting subject
and its self-regulating conduct of conduct (Rose, 1999). For it is when local customers
attempt to engage with, negotiate and consume these cultural products that degrees of
cultural comfort and discomforting distinction are illuminated, which, in this study was most
acutely evidenced through the embodied dispositions of children.
The children of external groups presented structured readings of time and place. Their
consumption was one of trained taste being brought by ‘the fun run’ parents either to be
dropped off and picked up or to play with parents. Even older youths (in twos or fours)
would be ‘ferried in’, always pre-booked, never a casual/drop-in booking, pay, play, re-book
or go. This process was structured, ordered and coordinated, with parents central to the
spatially rationalised and codified practices clubs. Parental involvement facilitated
procedural understanding and cultured norms of polite and mannerly conduct. The parental
presence provided the conduit for authority passing from parent to coach. This does not
mean children of external groups were never impolite or disobedient. However, their
general time and place discipline, schedule of planned sport and recreation actions, and
understanding of the safety parameters of the facility, parental, staff or coaching gaze, made
them malleable to the reason and sanctions of authority figures. Just as with the home,
hospital, restaurant, factory, school (Burrell, 1988) under the tutelage and surveillance of
parent, staff and coach the external child internalizes the ‘rules, rituals’ conventions,
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categories, designations’ (Webb et al, 2002: 21) of the field of sport and recreation. The
perceptions and dispositions of cultural taste are facilitated and trans-generationally
reproduced. The cultural, as much as the literal, ‘game’ of the PSSR is internalised, archives
are genealogically and dynamically embodied in the present as ‘history’ is assimilated and
‘turned into nature’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 78) forming a lived picture of the child’s habitus. Here,
the child is initiated into the illusio of the sport and recreational field, the ‘right tastes
facilitated’ (Gartman, 2002: 257), making the game ‘worth playing’ and its ‘stakes’ or capitals
‘worth pursuing’ (Bourdieu, 1998:76).
This embodied conduct of external children contrasted with the more fluid or sporadic
actions of local children. With minimal parental involvement the bridging cultural tastes,
attitudes and dispositions of habitus are absent. Structured space and time, rationalised
procedures and norms of conduct along with the coaching instruction/drills of clubs trigger
frustration and the release of what could be argued as capitals of exclusion. The local child’s
fluid behaviour, language, ambivalence or resistance to authority are negative markers. ‘Wild
behaviour’ or ‘cheek’ demands governance, which most often results in exclusion. Adding
to this negativity, and unlike externals, local children are not furnished with the same degree
of economic or objective capital. Their embodied condition was infrequent, restricted by a
habitus of economic poverty, objective ‘kit’ or personalised equipment found in Roller
Hockey, Short Tennis or Badminton clubs or surrogate parenting responsibilities. The local
body, contrasting with the external body, is ‘read as signs’ with their behaviour, clothing and
language visible reminders of their lack of ‘refinement or moral excellence’ (Lane, 2000: 44).
The play schemes’ packed lunch box (let alone what was in it) or trip to vending machines
was symbolic of differential and distinguishing habitus.
Moreover, external children effect self- regulating consumption within the networked
governing gaze of parent, staff, coach and other children. The external child, accentuated
against the local child, reveals docility in action, even though, authority and procedural
practice undergoes challenge, on occasion. The external child, interacting with the
performative actions and administered sanctions of staff or coach, actively naturalizes spatial,
procedural and sporting practices (Sibley, 1995). From mothers and toddlers, Playways (5-7
and 8-12), Roller Hockey, Short Tennis, Badminton, Football or Trampolining clubs the
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Hunter Centre, as with other commercial or PSSR facilities, establishes as series of gateways
for the training, internalization and display of the cultural capitals of sport and recreation.
As a ‘social arena’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994: 193) the rationalised ‘cradle to the grave’
provision and services the PSSR allows the ‘perception-enabling prism’ (Lee, 1993: 31) of the
habitus and its capitals to be seen more than most. In the illusio of the field the external
child, in practicing the ‘task’, codes, ‘ceremonies and signs’ (Foucault, 1977: 27) naturalises
the field inscribing it ‘on their own bodies’ (Foucault, 1988: 105). Through the club
networks the external child is blooded with parental approval through the cultural
intermediary of the coach. Sporting tastes are trans-generationally and durably embodied in
the sporting play of the child (Bourdieu, 1993).
The coaching scenarios reveal that that the structure, procedures and cultural content are
more important that the actual sport and recreational activities they promote. With their
enabling cultural prism of habitus, the external child grates against the embodied resistance
of local children. Moreover, with the gaze of the ‘judges of normality’ (Foucault, 1977: 304),
the coach, parent or staff, the local child illuminates their own resistance. In the Hunter
Centre clubs the local child, against the docility of the external child, is a fish out of water
(Fowler, 1998) and, by their play, bring down the disciplining ‘gaze’ on their own ‘body and
soul (McKinlay, 1998: 19). The ‘wild behaviour’, ‘cheek’ even embarrassed or ‘affronted’
staff provided opportunities of mis-recognition between children and enable parents, staff
and coaches to re-affirm what stands as capital. The undisciplined, dishevelled and unruly
local child highlighted the binary of capital and provided an embodied example of how not
to dress, speak, act or be. The club, rather than being about sporting fun or performance,
literally plays out a privileged or loaded cultural competition. With their habitus, the external
child possesses an embodied template, trans-generationally steeped in sporting past
(Scambler, 2005) and as such they have the ‘bodies’, ‘gestures’ and ‘desires’ (Foucault, 1979:
98) of action and conduct. The external child ‘through supervision’ has been taught ‘to
structure life…through techniques of self-mastery’ (Moss, 1998: 3) in the sport and
recreational field. With their habitus they embody the ‘conduct of conduct’ (Rose, 1999: 3)
and, as they play with and against the local child, their ‘capital’ is revealed and ’perceived as
legitimate’ (Bourdieu, 1995:140). The emphasis is more on the ability to conform to the
cultured and codified practices than to that of sporting and recreational performance.
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Regardless of a habitus historically engrained in the archives of sport and recreation (Bailey,
1989; Guttmann, 2000) or more recently engaged with on the basis of national discourses on
health, performance or sport for all (Stewart, 1998; sportscotland, 2002; 2003), the PSSR
institutionally enables and is supported through the embodied competition of cultural
capital. The Hunter Centre, as part of the PSSR, is the established arena, demarcated space
and time where the structure, discipline, rules and cultural codes and norms of sport and
recreation meet and clash with the habitus and capitals of disparate consumer groups. In
contrast to their local peers external children possess and ‘fit’ the cultural capital prerequisites for sport and recreation, financial, objective clothing and equipment, institutional
knowledge, incorporated language, manner and behaviour.
Of course, this ignores the objective conditions which local children inhabit. While the
repetitive articulation and representation of the local catchment as ‘filthy area’ where the
people were ‘junkies’ ‘thieves’ or ‘animals’ served to bolster the moral self-worth and capital
of externals it tended to forget the plight of these local children. In the sporting confines of
the Hunter Centre the parent, coach or staff ‘define’ the field, setting what stands as
‘sporting practice and the legitimate function of sporting activity’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994:
196) but they fail to reflect upon the external environment. Setting aside aspects of
responsibility and choice that could be directed at local adults, the habitus of the local child
is forgotten at the point of entering the facility. As a venue for cultural display the local
child (particularly the 5-12 age group) does not offer much in the way of competing
objectivated capital or the institutionalised sporting (Brailsford, 1991) capital. Effectively
disabled by their habitus and displaying their objective conditions through the array of
school clothes, jeans, ‘talking trainers’, disjointed, dirty or poor sport kit, the local child is
not only sanctioned but also reviled for their cultural lack. While staff would be ‘affronted’
at the ‘blackos’ or ‘wee gadgies’ and, externals would express general disgust at their ‘neglect’,
these local children embodied these conditions. Although this misery was acknowledged by
the likes of staff and community police, the fatalistic inevitability of this life is more powerful
when articulated by the child:
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I’m a bad boy, ma gran says am bad an I’m gontae the home…Suppose [shrugs
shoulders] I’ve tae go then I’ll go tae the big home wi ma brither…I’ll go tae the jail
like ma dad…Ma gran say, she says um gontae end up like ma dad coz that’s where
bad boys go an he’s in the jail. (Paul, local child)
While the embodiment of such social suffering lies in a habitus tied to the objective
conditions of the local area, the facility, and its procedural practices underscore such
suffering through the reified atmosphere of cultural competition and clashes between older
youths and adults. The ‘ferried in’ external child/adult enacts and strategically deploys its
consumption. They effect the planned and purposively directed ‘strategies, goals and desires’
(Webb et al, 2002: 16) of habitus in the corresponding structured time, rationalised and
regulated spaces of sport and recreation. The external embodies a habitus that mutually
conditions the abstract with the materiality of sport and recreation. Time, space and future
subjectivity couple with the physical structural and embodied practices and procedures of
sport and recreation. What is argued here is that a new form of capital is at play here but,
and again, only visible in the relational and embodied dynamic of the more fluid local
consumption.
The self-regulating spatio-temporal projection of subjectivity and structured practices of
externals, against those of locals, reveals a separate form of capital that lies beneath the
internal structures and codes of conduct of the game (Giulianotti, 1999). This capital of the
external habitus is seen in their ability to link time, place and structured purpose or when
embodied practice is to happen. Essentially, they can envisage themselves in future sport
and recreational spaces where sporting subjectivities are assumed, and for a time, the codes
of conduct are performatively played out. This contrasts with the spatio-temporal shift of
local consumption. By their constant moving inside and outside the facility, breaking of
play, requesting changeovers from activity to activity, and regardless of the rules or etiquettes
of actual consumption, they display a lack of institutional capital or cultural knowledge of
spatial and structural practice.
From younger to older youth groups, club and casual bookings, the fluid consumption of
local against the timeous, located and purposeful consumption of externals highlights a
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distinguishing set of interlinked dispositions and perceptions. More importantly, this takes
the discursive matrix of power/knowledge/subject from abstraction into future planned
reality. The external habitus projects itself across time and place, and with structured
purpose, perceives itself fulfilling and enacting subjective positions. The external habitus has
a self-regulating sport and recreation subjectivity that is, initially, recognised by its
understanding, appreciation and purposeful positioning of self in time and place. Capital is
only relevant in its given field, its symbolic power associated with a subject position (i.e.
badminton player, body builder). The external, in possessing a strategic ‘field of vision’
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 21), projects or layers the subject position of the ‘player’,
deploys its capitals not only in the literal fields or spaces of sport and recreation but must
project such into the future. The external habitus can see a future ‘game’ where this sporting
subjectivity can relocate and capitals are strategically deployed.
The governing practices of staff accentuate and legitimate this time, place and structured
purpose in sport and recreation provision inside and outside the facility. The practice of
moving or ‘chasin’ the local youths from congregating at the front of the building before,
during and after activities, often pejoratively tagged as ‘loitering’ and defended as ‘this wiz
nae built fur you lot tae sit about in’ (RA1), reinforced the sanctification of spaces for
particular behaviours. With their failure to recognise and self-regulate with the same time,
place and structured purpose as externals, locals (young children to older youths) were made
visible, a form of dis-functional other (Sibley, 1995).
Again, it is stressed that this more subtle, or ‘newer’ level of capital, precedes the more
blatant clashes of capital evidenced in actual consumption. On a superficial level both local
and externals possessed the objective capital or uniforms of consumption. The Nike,
Reebok, Kappa clad and baseball capped youth; ‘tracky bottoms’ and trainers (at best) to
heels, make-up, bangles, rings and name chains of the Thursday and Friday ‘glad rag’ girls to
the jeans, trainers and T-shirt ‘headi’ playing unemployed provided the objective display of
capital for locals. Unlike the daily attire of ‘trackies tucked in socks’, jeans and ‘gutties’, on
these nights, the local youth displayed their best being neat tidy, perfumed (including the
males). Trainers, ‘trackies’, jewellery and accessories, along with aestheticised hair, banter,
posturing and posing, were the capital valued and competed for by this group. This
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contrasted with the car borne external emblazoned with a range of sports clothing,
equipment and accessories (e.g. aerobic mats, gym gloves, boxacise mitts, flannel wipes)
displayed through Badminton clubs, Roller Hockey, Step, Spin, Boxacise to gym users. This
highlighted the distinctions of both economic and objective capital of externals.
However, just as ‘social actors’ can possess and deploy capital in the likes of the ‘gym’ or
‘night-club’, likewise, the Hunter Centre is a ‘protected market’ (Charlesworth, 1997: 154).
Each field is not only protected and constituted by the appropriate capital (Jenkins, 2002) the
outward marks, signs and symbols of capital must also be appropriately articulated.
Objective capital can be bought, however, mere possession is not enough. It must be
utilised with and through other forms of capital (McNay, 1999). In instances such as adult
football, badminton or the gym, the local’s objective capital is lost due to their embodied,
incorporated capital and lack of visible institutional capital. The subject of sport and
recreation, to compete in the cultural game, requires a cultural package (Bourdieu, 1986;
Jenkins, 2002). At the point of embodied action and in the realisation of the sport and
recreational subject, a fusion of objective, institutional and incorporated capital is required.
The package of cultural capital is embodied and enacted in competitive competition. It is
the embodied ‘surface of emergence’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1998: 26) of the local
discursivity of the Hunter Centre. The cultural package of the locals was always deficient
even though some possessed physical capital and the skills and techniques of the game.
Although their attendance and participation in Hunter Centre activities indicates inclusion,
(especially in respect of the recording of users) this inclusion was always peripheral since
they misrecognise the cultural competition of consumption. The capital they deploy is
negated by deficiencies of institutional knowledge or cultural codes as well as their
incorporated language, bodily movements and behaviour. The power/knowledge/subject of
discourse is not only materialised in the Hunter Centre and its rationalised provision, but it is
also maintained in and by the sport and recreational subject engaged in cultural competition.
It is the contention of this study that the external, endowed with the institutional archives,
incorporated cultural codes and objective signs and symbols, is better placed to negotiate
and compete in the PSSR. The external possesses a fuller cultural package (derived from
his/her habitus) and their cultural competition is, predominately, with other externals.
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External on external competition is really the ‘only cultural game’ in town. The habitus and
cultural competition of externals makes them the genealogical champions of the field. It is
their capital that exerts more defining, objectifying and normalising pressure on the field.
The archives of the past, internalized through the habitus and genealogically played out in
the field, finds the external adorned with capitals that fit like a tailored suit. The field of the
PSSR is crystallised and constantly ‘marked by tension or conflict…over a field’s capital’
(McNay, 1999: 106). The field has subjects or ‘sporting bodies’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994:
197), which are variously furnished with suits of capital that enable consumption and
competition within the field. Externals, more than locals, conform to or are docile to such
subject positions and possess better suits of capital. The unstructured and fluid use of space,
swearing, boisterous behaviour, interpreted aggression, intimidation and dress of the locals is
a demonstration of misrecognised or the inappropriate deployment of capital. They are
evidence of what not to be, say, wear or do. Even when they engage with the clothing,
equipment and knowledge of the rules of the game, local adults look like ‘ill fitting suits’, and
by their participation they feed the capitals of the field, externals and their distinction. In
effect, with their crass consumption, they are the jesters of the field.
Whether in the football league, badminton courts, aerobics, step, spin, NRG women or gym
user, the locals display an unrefined consumption. This was magnified in the highly
rationalised, objectified and normalised space of the gym. Not only did failure to selfregulate to the cultural codes, overtly displayed in etiquettes and guidelines, highlight the
cultural lack of locals it also produced a recognition and denial of self. Just as a lack of
capital (e.g. training in trousers and boots; no programme and mis-use of machines;
sweat/smell, wiping down and working in) would bring ridicule and often complaints, the
locals, challenged by staff over their cultural faux pas, are constantly reminded of their lack,
which they are implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, asked to apologise for.
The local habitus, restricted through capital, struggles to compete within the field, let alone
assimilate the pre-established subject positions of sport and recreation. The local is
handicapped, excluded not through their non-participation but by their participation. Upon
entry they bring their habitus, the objective conditions they embody and witnessed in their
capital, into a discursive context where they represent the alien ‘other’. Moreover, in that
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they do not culturally ‘fit’, their position of resistant other reinforces the competition of
capitals and distinction for those (i.e. the externals) comfortable in the field. It is, therefore
unsurprisingly that the resistant other is under the perpetual gaze of governance and is
hampered by a habitus and crass capital that effects an awkward self-regulation or selfexclusion. However, with this governance or self-exclusion, locals display their embodied
distinctions. The cultural lack brings defensive responses from locals as externals are
negatively referred to as ‘posh bastards’, ‘snobby bastards’ or ‘snotty cow’ with phrases such
as ‘They think there it’ or ‘who do they think they are’. More interesting, there exists a
transition of conflict through the spaces of cultural comfort.
Situations of conflict bring the discourse of PSSR, its embodiment and cultural competition
into full view. Conflict, inevitably over capital (ignoring drugs and violence which are dealt
with in the following section), demonstrates the spatially embodied practice and the capitals
employed. In the internal environment of the facility the cultural and procedural codes
advantage the habitus of externals. However, on moving outside a transition of habitus took
place. The use of terms such as ‘trumpet’, ‘rocket’, ‘dope man’, ‘Mad Jake’ or ‘dingy’ with
associated postures (more poses), arm and hand gestures, dismissive grinning and even
disabled mimicking, demonstrated the recourse of locals to their habitus. This incorporated
capital displays the objective conditions of the local, an embodied street ‘phrase regime’
witnessed in word and deed, which serves a triple function.
Firstly, it highlights a discursive switch or flip of habitus and capitals. In the Hunter Centre,
externals embody and culturally compete over the sport and recreation subject but in this
cultural silo they can gaze upon rather than engage with the objective conditions of the area.
The local worldview is something externals pass through, an inconvenience to consumption,
visually witnessed and judged without understanding or respect of the objective conditions
embodied daily in the life of locals. The worldview of the local, its visible materiality,
embodied poverty and cultural condition reflexively reinforces the worldview and privilege
of the external. However, and secondly, as locals lure them outside, externals are shaken,
even briefly, out of their habitus and forced to engage with that of the locals. On the outside
the resistant body of the local dissipates, the awkward and crass subject viewed in the Hunter
Centre is cast off and the local habitus, capitals and performativity of the local worldview is
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assumed. The fact that the language, snapping gestures and posturing is dismissed by
externals as ‘just stupid’, ‘the boys talking nonsense’, ‘what are they on about’ or greeted with
shrugs and frowns is itself mis-recognition. Outside in the street, the habitus and capitals
encountered can be as incommensurable as those in the inside. Thirdly, and finally, this
highlights that the power/knowledge/subject matrix found in the embodied local
discursivity of the Hunter Centre has a boundary. The said and seen of this discourse is
contained, the performative power of its cultural competition restricted both by the material
place and the people, external or local, who animate this discourse through their embodied
presence, docility and resistance (Cheek and Rudge, 1997; Kendall and Wickham, 1999).
Dispositions and capitals are not only actualised in and through embodied actions but, like a
lock and key, they are specific and appropriate to time, space and place.
Nevertheless, this does not mean the end of the PSSR discourse as the habitus of externals
finds them embodying capitals that can trans-locate, allowing them to deploy and develop
their sporting subjectivities and competitions of capital elsewhere. Just as seen with past
colonising taste (Holt, 1989; Roberts, 2004), the sporting subjectivity of external is mobile.
The external habitus, its sporting subject and capitals, is a key that can be envisioned,
moving metaphysically to unlock future sport and recreational spaces of not only the PSSR
but wider field of sport. In contrast, the objective conditions, habitus, and lack of capital of
the locally resistant other restricts cultural movement, consumption and subjective
development. The strapline of inclusion, citizenship and ownership ‘A Sports Facility for
Your Locality’, paradoxically, places ‘locality’ as a disabling and dis-enfranchising category.
To be one of the ‘locals’ is a brand, a constant and automatic reminder of one’s lack of
capital. The local occupies a fixated subjectivity where embodied suffering (Bourdieu, et al,
1999) is a daily reality. Whether in the ignorant eyes of children, reflections of being ‘stuck
in this shit hole (Jim, local adult), where its ‘easy tae fuck your life up’ (Sammy, local adult) or
weighed on the shoulders of the sixteen year olds ‘pushin prams, fags in the mouth…saddled
wi a wean’ (Assistant Supervisor) this suffering is part of the local habitus inscribed on their
‘body schema’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 216). As with other minorities or poverty stricken groups
(Charlesworth, 1997) the locals here are culturally re-produced just like their external
counterparts. However, the misery of their objective conditions is embodied, wrapping
around them ‘like a garment’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 143). In that this is ‘crap’ and they ‘jist got tae
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get on wi it’ (Alex, local adult) the Hunter Centre, presence and cultured consumption of
externals should demonstrate that there is another world and that social suffering is not ‘the
natural order of things’ (Webb et al, 2002: 25). Given its welfarist foundations, national
policy direction and professional claims, it would be safe to assume that the PSSR, is
dedicated to transforming such social suffering. The following section critically discusses
this embodied discourse and the role and impact of the national scene, local managerial
practice and that of operational staff therein.
New Emperors Old Clothes and the Mythical Mantra of Inclusion
Although premised on welfare agendas (Heywood, et al, 1993: Roberts, 2004) the national
scene, past and present, as well managerial practices are contingently implicated in the
cultural colonisation, embodied distinction and domination of the Hunter Centre. As
highlighted in Chapter Four, the origins of the PSSR are not simply tied to institutional
welfarism. However, in networking with past archives, sport and recreation is still perceived
as a civilising medium (Coalter, 1990; Scambler, 2005). Even with neo-liberal suspicions,
skewed class and gendered participation (HMSO, 1989; Haywood, 1994) and fluctuating
political profile the PSSR persists and continues to pursue a civilising agenda to the masses
or, as now, reinvented as part of a paternalistic intervention strategy with transformational
lifestyle potential (Stewart, 1998: McNamee, et al, 2000). In light of its social failures, the
institutional longevity of the Hunter Centre reveals that the PSSR is a discourse premised on
faith rather than reflexive cultural fact.
The PSSR is incestuously bound to the bourgeois tastes and appreciations that have
traditionally moulded sport and recreation (Clarke and Critcher, 1985; Hargreaves, 1986;
Gutting, 1994). The Enlightened gaze of those past archives and epistemes that advanced
civilising, wholesome rational pursuits, public school codification and moralising muscular
Christians (Malcolmson, 1973; Bailey, 1989; MacAloon, 2006) are bourgeois dispositions that
have contingently networked, are internalised and continue to resonate through welfarism
and policy today. The post-45 welfare revolution was not only political and cultural but also
one that forgot that culture was a discursive Trojan horse. Ironically, in heralding working
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class emancipation and promoting leisure as a right of citizenship (Coalter, 1998) the crass
working class participation and consumption of sport and recreation, necessarily, became the
object of governance. To be a ‘citizen’, a category of subject positively and visibly
identifiable through participation in the PSSR, follows a cultural and institutional trajectory
found in the arts or countryside (Sidaway at al, 1986; Urray, 1995). The sport and recreation
‘citizen’ is not new but merely last in the line of leisure subjects. The subject position of
‘citizen’ is not a fresh or clean category as it carries cultural archives that are not only
required but also genealogically enacted, bodily displayed and deployed with and against
others in the sporting field (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994). The embodied state, be it of the
masses, working class or poor, must not only participate but must do so within a set of
objectifiable and normalised codes of cultural capital. Although this has been illustrated in
the previous section what has not been stressed is that the national scene fails to reflexively
recognise and interrogate its cultural content or, in the main, that of professional
practitioners.
Sport and recreation is consistently pushed and participation pursued in blind faith routinely
and repetitively perceived as a universal good (DCMS, 2002; sportscotland, 2003). In
echoing the past (DoE, 1975, 1977; McIntosh and Charlton, 1985; Stewart, 1998) sport and
recreation is unreflexively advanced as beneficial, open for all, ‘everyone has access’
(sportscotland); ‘we’ve always had the Sport for All ethos…now you’re being able to push
the benefits of the health’ (Strategic Practitioners’ Forum); ‘we sign post people… have an
impact on physical activity and life style choices, like smoking, alcohol and diet...shape
things’ (Leisure Development Manager). As with the past, and post-1975, the beneficial
belief and use of sport and recreation is now reanimated, surfing on the zeitgeist of new
policy agendas in health, education and crime (Oppenheim and Harker, 1996; DCMS, 2002).
These are, again, trained upon the traditional non-participating excluded groups typified with
the Hunter Centre catchment population. However, historical and policy amnesia is evident
as the cultural content of facilitised provision and sport and recreational practice is ignored.
National and local practitioners forget to reflect upon the their own habitus its ‘social and
cultural origins…position in whatever field’ and ‘intellectual bias (Webb et al, 2002: 50-51).
The ‘structure of symbolic space’ in the PSSR is part of, and reflects, the ‘lifestyles…practice-unifying and practice-generating principles’ (Bourdieu, 1986: 101) of those
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strategically and locally governing the PSSR. Such is their doxically internalized and
engrained ‘logic’ of practice (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992) that the cultural aspect of policy
and practices goes unchallenged. From national to local practitioners the archives of
discourse are ‘learned by body…something one is’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 168) making the belief,
policy development and use of sport and recreation, just as the ‘novel, film, meal, holiday
destinations and sports’, appear not as culturally loaded taste but ‘simply natural’ (Harris,
2005: 38). Regardless of this lack of reflexivity, or successful attraction, retention and
inclusion of local groups, this sporting belief is overtly and dynamically revealed in the
embodied, local discursivity of the Hunter Centre.
With the ‘push of benefits’ and signposting people to ‘impact on physical activity and life
style choices… shape things’ the inclusion agenda (McPherson and Reid, 2001; Collins,
2003; DCMS, 2003) is not simply about access, opportunity and participation. The inclusion
mantra for sport and recreation is subsumed under new policy agendas, which are
demonstrations of the bio-power of discourse whereby ‘it is the paternalists argument on
which some of the new case for leisure is going to be built (ILAM). From national policy
through to local practice the governmentality of discourse is overtly evidenced, its gaze
firmly trained upon the embodied condition of those most ‘at risk’, namely, the excluded
local of the Hunter Centre. It is paradoxical that the lack of reflexivity over the cultural
content of the field actually finds new policy agendas directed at shaping and transforming
the cultural habits or ‘lifestyle choices’ of the excluded local. New paternalistic policy openly
targets the embodied by-product of the locals’ habitus (i.e. smoking, alcohol, diet) whilst
ignoring the cultural content, those aspirations, dispositions, tastes and capitals (discussed
earlier), which are essential for participation within the field of sport and recreation. The
locals’ embodied cultural habits are to be changed through the cultural medium of sport and
recreation, yet that medium does not reflect the cultural tastes of the very locals it is
supposed to attract. The governmentality expressed in paternalistic policy is a selective biopower focused on ameliorating negative embodied traits rather than addressing the objective
conditions of the habitus locals comes to embody. The embodied consequences rather than
the causes of habitus are countenanced.
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Interestingly, this is similar to past policy and old community recreation approaches. These
also pursued a form of paternalism but one that subtly masked the suspicion and fear of the
non-participating other or local. The old agendas, in moving from egalitarian ideals to
recreation as welfare (Coalter, et al, 1988), sought to deploy sport and recreation as social
cohesion, a controlling glue for maintaining social security against the disruptive possibilities
of ‘deviant’ conduct (Eitzen, 2000). The local body evidences a new, and negatively
perceived, set of embodied behaviours. Their embodied habitus is recognised and targeted
whilst, ironically, the objective conditions of their habitus and the capitals for participation
go unchecked. However, whereas the PSSR of old pursued subtle paternalism, protecting
the social body against the embodied possibilities of the unseen non-participating local, new
policy agendas blatantly assert the gaze of governance upon the actual, visible and material
body of the individual. The non-participating other, their bodies; are again the subject of
policy but also subjected to a ‘deeper set of normative judgements’ or ‘dividing practices’
(Cole et al, 2004: 213).
The positive nomenclature of ‘citizen’ for the local requires more than participation. Their
habitus, their very embodied state must change. For them sport and recreation, regardless of
the level of enabling capitals they possess, is not an end in itself, a time of free choice and
expression. Instead it is functional, a fixing force deployed against their embodied
abnormality. Dressed in the management style of the corporate citizen or organizational
welfare (Handy, 1998; Dulewicz, 2000; Whitfield, 2001) new paternalistic policy comes over
as sugar coated benevolence, the right, and the normal thing to do. In the Hunter Centre, as
much as evidenced in the boom of commercial health and fitness (Howley and Franks,
1997), these health directed policy messages are docilely internalized, the more disciplined,
self-regulating body pursued, even if not achieved.
However, in the PSSR new paternalistic policy speaks to the local body and its resistance.
Governmentality is evidenced as national policy; supported and legitimated through national
bodies is operationalised through initiatives such as the NRG. The embodied state of the
local finds the gaze of policy, and its descending individualism (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998)
in objectified body measurements, inductions and programmes. The local NRG customer
submits their embodied state, their habitus for scrutiny and modification. New paternalistic
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policy, through a benevolence of health concern, reveals and adds to the ‘conditions of
possibility (Kendall and Wickham, 1990: 37) splicing the institutional arrangements of the
PSSR with the body of knowledge, terms for thinking, speaking and viewing the normal
healthy body and citizen. Now with the normal healthy body objectively defined and
materialised (Foucault, 1978) the embodied state of the local, becomes a visible
manifestation of poor health - an abnormal body. Here the discursive matrix of
power/knowledge/subject works. For as it produces the healthy normalised body or subject
the imperfection of power automatically finds its resistant other in the body of the local.
This is power containing the seeds of its own destruction as the objective and normalised
body creates its own resistance, which must now be worked on, fixed, normalised. More
interestingly, on those occasions when the local enters the Hunter Centre gym and NRG
initiative this normalising bio-power is deployed, enacted against the negative, resistant body.
The sins of the flesh, those irrational behaviours of embodied habitus are confessed and
purged. The discursive intentions of new paternalistic policy agendas, working against those
of the past, are revealed as the belief in the fixing force of sport and recreation is charged
with not only transforming non-participation of locals but also the resistance evidenced in
their visible bodies. Here the productive power of discourse is deployed with new policy
agendas moulding the participating, self-regulating and healthy new citizen.
However, the NRG initiative, as with other clubs, classes and provision mentioned earlier,
was relatively ineffectual, which highlights the unreflexivity towards the objective conditions
and habitus of locals as much as the cultural content of sport and recreation. While
subjecting their bodies to the objectifying and normalising procedures of the gym space and
classes in the initiative, other constraints associated with the objective conditions and habitus
of women were ignored. Their lack of economic and objective capital, personal security of
being ‘too feart’ (Elaine, local adult) to go out at night, parental status and responsibilities of
caring for ‘the weans’ while being ‘on ma ain the noo’ (Alexis, local adult) or supportive
participation from ‘the lassies’ and concerns over ‘a posh folk and guys’ (Mary, local adult)
are factors of habitus not factored into this new policy based initiative. Again, this highlights
another aspect of the local discursivity of the Hunter Centre as local women identify day to
nigh time distinctions and capitals of the local NRG ‘lassies’ and the car borne ‘posh
folk’/externals whilst embodying the economic hardship, fear and isolation of gendered
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suffering prevalent in the objective conditions of the local catchment (Scottish Executive,
2003). Regardless of their efficacy, the advent of these new policy agendas actually
accentuates the embodied complexity or ‘multidimensional’ (Gartman, 2002: 261) dynamic
of the PSSR discourse. The transition to these policy agendas, when placed in relation to
past policy, managerialist practices and the operational experience of staff opens a layer of
discourse that challenges managerial and professional status.
While clubs such as NRG, Mile High or Misfits resonate with new policy agendas their
discursive effectiveness at fixing the embodied state of locals was not simply a case of a lack
of reflexivity to habitus and sport and recreational capitals. The vagrancies of changing
government had brought CCT, widening geographical boundaries and expansion of service
under local authority decentralization and, later re-balancing of social objectives and local
accountability under BV (DETR, 1999). However, even with the move from CCT to BV
managerialism was effectively a book written in the head (Webb et al, 2002) an internalized
part of local managerial habitus. With governmental suspicion over leisure, efficiency drives
and the client/contract or spilt of CCT (Henry, 2001) neo-liberal managerialism was an
embodied and practiced reality for local contract management. Historical claims that the
Hunter Centre was about ‘serving mainly the northern and western districts of the town’
(Mackay, 1992: 157) an ‘asset for the residents in the area’ (Kilmarnock Standard, 1985: 3)
were rapidly eroded as social objectives became secondary to economic service
developments. With CCT, an engrained market and customer centred managerialism
produced services that appealed to and attracted external customer groups who, over time,
colonised the facility. Decentralization and the policy shift from CCT to BV accentuated
this embodiment this ‘entrepreneurial discourse’ (Henry, 2001: 155) of managerialism, which,
had become an embodied part of the cognitive framework, desires, competencies and
perceptions of the local managerial world (Bourdieu, 2000).
Running contrary to decentralization the centralized response of management demonstrated
an engrained managerialism unable to adapt. It employed ICTs, obsessive rationalization,
training and restriction of staff in an attempt to secure services. Attempts to ‘standardise
everything’ (departed Community Recreation Manger), to ‘centralise everything and to
centralise us…have us uniformed and conforming’ (Supervisor), having ‘it’s all structured
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now…it’s like big brother watching you all the time’ (Final Staff Forum) mirrored the
universalising appeals and governance of old managerial schools (Taylor, 1964; Kreitner,
1995). Moreover, the incremental rationalisation and managerial attempts to contain, control
and restrict staff illustrates the discursive practices of enclosure of service/work spaces,
partitioning and ranking of staff through titles and remits as well as their embodied training
through manuals of practice and consumption (Townley, 1998). With this ‘operations you
know procedure driven’ (ILAM) industry, where a training mentality is reflected nationally
through ‘formalised…good customer care, good sales service’ (Strategic Practitioner’s
Forum) to staff ‘trained to be the customer care lovely guy…how you conduct your
manners, your speech, how’s your dress’ (Final Staff Forum) the managerial discourse
reaches down into embodied operational practice. As staff ‘fill in wee bits of paper’
(Supervisor), ‘empty bins, check till, booking sheets…a tick sheet to remind you’ (RA3),
‘teach ye to treat people for all the p’s ‘n’ q’s ‘n’ all the nice things tae say…text book things’
(Assistant Supervisor) dividing normative judgements (Cole, et al, 2004) the conduct and
cultural codes of management are literally bound in manuals and in the bodies of staff.
Here, the bio-power of managerialism is not just about operational content, it reflects
perceptions and dispositions, disciplining management ‘manuals giving techniques of selfimprovement’ that demand habitual ‘self-observation and self-regulation’ (Rose, 1999: 45) to
the point that these operational habits ‘are not coerced but freely embodied a self-governing
‘automatic docility’ (Foucault, 1986: 169). The idea is to have management, as it was
observed nationally and internalised locally, written and enacted on the bodies of operational
staff. The institutional capital of management is found embodied in the managerial
terminologies of education, language, operational principles, strategic and technical training.
Nationally to local management educational bodies of knowledge, qualifications, training and
professional association were the marks of management. These were the signifiers of
legitimacy - supportive facts that ‘we’re management…a line of authority’ (Community
Recreation Manager) that demanded operational obedience and docility. The national and
local scene mutually conditions one another. The professionalizing bodies of knowledge,
periods of training, technical skills and language, all overseen and governed nationally, are
repetitively articulated and find their embodied substance in the prescriptive practices of
management. In the local discursivity of the Hunter Centre national to local the cycle of
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governmentality is dynamically embodied in the ‘rationalized schemes, programmes,
techniques and devices’ (Rose, 1999: 3) of management, which is translated into the training
manuals of operational service practices. The formative past archives, those formalised
schools of managerial thought (Kreitner, 1995; Watson, 2002) as much as sport and
recreation, are assimilated, ‘intertwined’ producing the ‘power, knowledge and the body’
(McKinlay, 1998:17) of PSSR management. This professionalizing process not only
provides the prescriptive manuals for the operational terrain of the PSSR it provides the
barer - the manager - with the symbolic badges of identity that allow entry into and across
the field of the PSSR. Education, training, technical skills and language, coupled with
experience, are the professional passports, the map and compass that facilitate movement
and career development within the field. The governmentality of discourse, resonates
through the embodied capital of national to local managers who as a ‘republic of judges’
form the ‘professionals of discourse who have the ‘competence’ (in both senses) to describe
the world and to give it shape and form…to perform a kind of universalisation…giving it
[the Hunter Centre, PSSR] a form of official recognition and the appearance of reason and
raison d’etre’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 106).
Although the professionalisation project remains incomplete, the field of the PSSR exists, as
do the ‘judges’, from the national to the local, who act as both the gatekeepers and
governors of the field. In the Hunter Centre, the doxa of management is embodied, its
rational normalised and disciplining criteria operationalized in service practices and upon the
operational body of staff. Management is the lubricant of the field maintaining and
governing the ‘institutions, rules, rituals, conventions, designations, appointments and
titles…objective hierarchy’ (Webb et al, 2002: 22). The managerial habitus mirrors and
maintains the field through its capitals, embodied in the ‘hexis’ of education, knowledge,
training, professional association a ‘political mythology realized…a permanent disposition, a
durable manner of speaking and thereby feeling and thinking’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 94). In the
Hunter Centre, management is absorbed in the illusio of the PSSR ‘caught up in and by the
game’ (Bourdieu, 1998: 76) and this game is ‘worth playing’ since the maintenance and
governance of the ‘professional modes of operation’ and ‘procedural rules’ (Fowler, 1998:
17) are self-legitimating. The PSSR and its maintaining managerial habitus, rather than an
objective and altruistic power/knowledge position, actually serves to legitimate and privilege
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the ‘professional groupings’ (McKinlay, 1998: 19) or network of normalising ‘judges’ (Grenz,
1996).
However, this does not imply a smooth process of professionalisation, from the national to
the local gaze of governance and embodied operationalization of manuals of managerial and
operational conduct. No, as the ‘counter-stroke’ (Hunt, 1998:43) of power the resistance of
staff demonstrated the embodied dynamics, rather than some deterministic agency negating
process, of discourse (Danher, 2000). Decentralization and BV merely served to accentuate
managerialist failures to engage with the worldview of staff. In light of managerial reactions
that were more neo-Taylorism than feminised transformational management (Peters, 1994)
the resistance of staff, like customers reveal not ‘clockwork’ automatons but ‘actors, and not
subjects’ (Bourdieu, 1996: 41). The weight of procedure, restrictions on developments and
training brought the discursive practice and performative power of such managerialist style
into view. With their centralisation, lack of presence and suffocating rationalisation of
service staff challenged management viewing them as ‘a lump of plastic’ (Recreational
Assistant) or ‘robots…interested in money’ (Final Staff Forum). Moreover, this extended
their client counterparts who differentiated themselves as ‘they see facilities I see people’
(Leisure Development Manager). Essentially, new policy agenda practices not only
illuminated and enflaming staff resistance to managerialist practices but also represented a
delegitimating challenge to professional practices.
Centralised managerialism, increased commercial focus, and the replacement of past
community and coaching activity with external Leisure Development teams produced a
resistant challenge to the performative power of management. Given the performativity of
the managerial position is founded upon the historical epistemes of discourse, the
establishment and maintenance of the managerial habitus, its capitals of institutional
knowledge and expertise must reflect what is happening within the field. The legitimacy of
management demanded the agency and recognition of operational staff. In other words the
power of managerial performativity is drawn from a historical power-knowledge nexus that
could only be triggered through the embodied compliance of operational staff. The
managerial habitus, that national to locally conditioning phrase regime of normalising criteria
for the production, consumption and governance of the PSSR, must ‘derive their authority’
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from the ‘loyalty’ (Poupeau, 2000: 71) of staff as they encountered the operational world.
However, in the case of the Hunter Centre the managerial habitus reflected only a partial
picture of the operational world encountered by staff. Decentralisation, and the issues
above, placed this centre stage.
The professional and procedural principals of management did not, and could not, account
for the local habitus. The manuals of operation conveyed a cultural content that, whilst
responding to the service needs of external, had no, or little application to the embodied
issues represented by locals. On the contrary, the inscription and governance of service
operations and staff conduct, as highlighted above, placed the embodied conduct into a
position of deviance and demonisation. The professional and procedural principles
operationalised in the Hunter Centre, by their inflammatory cultural content, contingently
perpetuates symbolic violence against local groups.
More importantly, just as this managerial imprint culturally privileged externals whilst
demonising locals, it ignored the embodied extremes the local habitus represented for
operational staff. The objective conditions of the operational world, the staff habitus, were
littered with issues of drug use, abuse, intimidation, aggression and violence. Management
was mute when faced with this embodied operational reality where levels of abuse over the
years had become normalised as not meriting recording. In the discourse of the PSSR the
professional and procedural principles are culturally inept. The problems of decentralization
and the shift from CCT to BV illuminated the Hunter Centre as an increasingly closeted
cultural silo, which served to undermine the performative power of management. In the
Hunter Centre the governmentality of the managerial habitus is stripped bare. The
‘domination’ of the professional normalising judgements of the field on the said and see of
the PSSR is revealed as ‘imposed meaning’ one that ‘obscures the truth of social relations’
(Poupeau, 2000: 71) of the Hunter Centre. Here managerial rationality is alien to this world
of operational staff the performative ‘illocutionary force’ (Fowler, 2000) of its phrase regime
is not only nullified but actively produces embodied resistance by staff. Given that staff
‘deal with these people [local groups]…they [management] never have (Final Group Forum)
management ineptitude is revealed and accentuated as ‘they’re creating their ain disharmony
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because they’re thinking that everythin’ the same…they’ve created a whole fucking bollocks
fur themselves’ (Assistant Supervisor).
Moreover, with BV and Leisure Development’s reinvention through new policy initiatives
the managerialist habitus, its capitals and performative power is further weakened. In
revising social objectives and the centrality of services to local communities (Filkin, 1998) the
capitals of managerial actors has changed. Rather than heal the client/contract split of old,
the Hunter Centre points to competition over the capitals of the field now associated with
the new policy agendas. In the field of the PSSR, the capitals for management have changed
and are now more weighted to output, evidenced based and policy integrated. The
managerial ‘friction’ from CCT to BV was a healing ‘on paper’ and the shift from facility
economics to integrate new policy with services and people has found old contract managers
with ‘not one clue’ as they ‘can’t write the reports policy is another world to them…their
time is truly up’ (Leisure Development Manager). As ‘managerialism conflicts with the
holistic’ (ILAM) the holistic ‘joined-up ‘ (sportscotland) intentions of new policy agendas
find Leisure Development with the new champions of the field. They embody a managerial
habitus with the capitals to understand, navigate and assimilate policy into their phrase
regime. New policy agendas have changed the capitals and champions of the field. The field
of the PSSR, its national to local embodied managerial habitus and capitals, is entangled with
and surfs upon new policy agendas. This discursive and embodied dynamic in management
leaves the field of the PSSR with new emperors and it is they who carry the torch of
legitimacy and hope of being recognised as a new brand of civic professionals (Houlihan,
2000).
However, along with the unreflexive acknowledgement of the cultural content of sport and
recreation, the local world of the operational habitus remains in unreflexive limbo. Ironically,
in wrestling with the embodied extremes of locals, operational staff embody capitals that
‘way of walking, of moving in space, of gesticulating, of swearing, joking, bantering’
(Charlesworth, 1997: 69) - recognised as rational with the objective conditions of the local
habitus. The Hunter Centre finds staff dissonant in this dual world of protective cultural
consumption and privilege against the obscured ‘truth of social relations’ and domination of
locals. It is interesting that the lack of national to local managerial reflexivity leaves the
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discourse of the field hidden and the embodied capitals of staff, those relevant to local
groups and the objective conditions of their habitus, untapped. Given the importance of
new policy agendas to the legitimacy of the field, managerial and professional status this lack
of reflexivity will leave the new emperors of the field wearing old, culturally coloured, robes
that are virally and professionally delegitimating.
The Web of Embodied Consumption: cultured consumers, transients and deviants
In Chapter Seven, at the outset of findings, it was stressed that the use of terms such as local
and external were premised on the geodemographic status of groups but also useful to
facilitate presentation of data and later critical discussion. This allowed a discussion of the
governmentality of discourse in the PSSR, how it is dynamic and embodied being assimilated
and resisted not only across these general customers groupings but also evidenced, as above,
in the managerial and operational body. However, what this brief section discusses is that,
while the discourse of the PSSR genealogically works its dynamic through the embodied
habitus and capitals of consumers and management at this general level its distinction and
domination are multiform and requiring a web (Foucault, 1979) of embodied states. The
embodied discourse of the PSSR requires a series of bodies, of subject positions, to compete
with and so work their distinction on and off of. With the cultural content of past archives
networking with welfarism, managerialism and the overt paternalism of new policy agendas,
the Hunter Centre is a repository for embodied cultural competition, display, assimilation
and mis-recognition in the consumption, management and operation of sport and recreation.
The PSSR, its sporting origins, design, provision, managerial and operational practices are
culturally loaded, privileging those colonising external groups over that of the local.
However, what is clear is that the local is present, actively participating, consuming the
culturally loaded content of the field. The issue here is that discursive assimilation is not an
either or game. Competition of capital in the field finds the embodied subjective positions,
as with levels of capital, in various stages of transition. As with any field, the subjective
position of actors is not a static, deterministic reality. The habitus of the sport and
recreational consumer of the Hunter Centre, whether categorised as external or local, is not
simply about display, competition and domination achieved via mis-recognised forms of
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capital. Over time, as is the nature of habitus, capital can be appropriated, learned and
deployed effectively, thus, allowing movement and distinction within the field. Within the
local groups phases of embodied transition were evident. Whether using the gym, football
league, Misfits, NRG or badminton clubs levels of capital in procedural understanding, dress,
equipment, language and demeanour were visible and enacted. This demonstrates selfregulation, attempted technologies of the self-assimilating, as with NRG and Mile High,
confessional responses to transform, or turn ones life around via sport and recreation.
These locals, gripped by the transformational message, though not fully understanding or
equipped with the dispositions of habitus, have bought into the illusio of the field they feel
the game is worth playing (Bourdieu and Eagleton, 1992; Bourdieu, 1998). However, while
this responds to the community service focus of BV, and gives hope to new policy agendas
and the reinvention of professional status, it does not detract from the culturally loaded and
privileged nature of the PSSR. These locals merely set up and mask the politics of
consumption as the ‘inclusion’ of their bodies is capitalised upon to maintain both the
symbolic and literal economy (Bourdieu, 1986).
New ponds of consumption and competitions of capital are established in the sport and
recreational spaces of the Hunter Centre. Here, those with rough ‘competency’, evidently
without a ‘mastery of practice’ (Jarvie and Maguire, 1994: 187) compete against each other
like a cultural sideshow. Although, they are in the Hunter Centre the local game of cultural
competition is, predominantly, against each other. Institutional capital can be learned and
objective capital bought but the incorporated capital of speech and bodily movement are
easily read markers of habitus (Bourdieu, 1977) and lack, namely, the objective condition of
locality. In the Hunter Centre, the local moves through and competes within the embodied
transitional phases and subjective positions from deviant violence or junkie, self-excluding,
crass consumption to assimilated new citizen. Even the best new citizen embodies the
scholar position all the while illuminating the fuller cultural package of the external
gentleman (Bourdieu, 1986). The token successes of governmentality (Webb, et al, 2002),
these new citizens of new policy, place a belief in PSSR. With their shift from the
demonised outside to the cultural competition and domination of the inside their transitional
body momentarily substitutes the social suffering and violence of their objective conditions
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for the vector of symbolic violence’ (Poupeau, 2000: 79) that is the PSSR. However, the
Hunter Centre is no sanctuary.
The discursivity of its cultural content and work of new policy merely implores those locals,
manifestly ‘struggling to alter their expectations’, to ‘change one’s embodied sense of the
world, to re-learn how to be’ (Charlesworth, 2000: 62) whilst ignoring and sending them
back to the cultural poverty of their objective conditions. Moreover, as the transitional local
body witnesses the embodied capitals of others in the Hunter Centre it is not only
submitting, culturally learning ‘how to be less than one formerly was’ (Charlesworth, 2000:
62) but also by its locality and the local other constantly conscious of its embodied cultural
failure and plight. Just as the Hunter Centre, the paternalism of the PSSR, provides an
avenue for the expression of new citizenship its a visible reminder of the poverty of place
and person.
Nevertheless, this notion of embodied states in transitionary phases, functioning in a
dynamic web of subjects is not restricted to the consumers. As highlighted, above,
management and staff also display levels of resistance/deviance and assimilation/docility in
relation to the changing capitals of the field and the operational world encountered. The
national to local emphasis on BV and new holistic policy emphasis has produced new
champions of the field. The understanding and appreciation of shifting national policy has
reconfigured the capitals of the field. Strategically integrated and evidence based policy,
instead of an economic and rationalising fixation with bums on seats, is the phrase regime
and capitals that must be embodied within the field. The transition from CCT to BV
likewise demanded an embodied transition within both client and contract management.
However, the holistic focus of new policy has rearranged and expanded the institutional
arrangement or communities of national policy (Bull, et al, 2003).
A new set of genealogical dynamics is witnessed as the PSSR is increasingly integrated with
education, crime and, in particular, health. But only the client side management has
assimilated the governmentality of this changing discourse. In the case of the Hunter Centre
contract management have failed to engage, understand and adapt to the changing national
and policy context leaving them clinging to a managerialist habitus. Managerialism is stalled,
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caught in a vortex that sees its embodied habitus being, increasingly, committed to history, a
back grounding archive rather genealogically dynamic. The capitals and champions of the
field are changing and the transient managerial body is that of those embracing and
embodying the new holistic policy agendas. Affirmed and advocated across the expanded
national scene, new policy is the capital that is to be embodied and competitively displayed
through policy-based initiatives. Played out with and against old managerialism the policy, or
institutional capital, of the transient managerial body reanimates the professionalizing
mantle, the new champions or ‘guardians’ charged with securing the professional status and
‘sacred spaces’ of the field (Sibley, 1995: 72). However, even as these new champions exert
their capital against and entrenched managerialism with weakening performative power the
PSSR maintains its cultural conditioning.
The lack of reflexivity over the cultural content of sport and recreation, as much as that of
the habitus of management, maintains the privilege of the field. New holistic policy agendas
have brought forth an embodied form of transient management but the reality of the
managerialist habitus is still layered on the very facilities, such as the Hunter Centre, where
policy-based initiatives take place. In its operational practices, procedures and training, as
much as by Leisure Development’s attempt to circumnavigate such, the management of the
PSSR still reflects an embodied cultural content. New policy and the capitals of transient
management find holistic policy and inclusive practice statements of rhetoric rather than
reality as the residing privileging culture of management actively sabotages the targets of
inclusion.
Essentially, the archives of management and managerialism provide a mutually conditioning
cultural platform for themselves and those external groups. The procedural principles
(Fowler, 1998) of management and consumption practices reciprocally legitimate each other
as they reflect the appropriate or given cultural capitals expected in the Hunter Centre. In
times of cultural conflict between customer groups, or when the consensus over how the
social space is to be negotiated or consumed, such embodied capital is the final arbiter. Even
with policy-based initiatives privileged capital, being embodied, appeals to archives of
custom and practice. In the Hunter Centre, the rational institutional capital and
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incorporated conduct are privileged, the more civilised signifiers of consumption, which are
managerially reflected and facilitated to sustain positions of domination.
To engage in the PSSR is to genealogically activate the archives of sport and management in
a dynamic game of capital. The past plays in an embodied present where the cultural
content of sport and that of management are inseparable sides of the same coin. Given the
web of transient bodies, this is not a context of binding structuralism or automaton
symbiosis of customer and management. The governmentality of the PSSR, its discourse, is
embodied in the Hunter Centre as disciplinarity oscillates within and across the subjective
states of those it encounters. The only difference is how the gaze of governance works. In
the case of those violent deviants or junkies the cultural content and consumption of
customers is physically secured and the crass consumption of other locals chastised,
excluded or self-excluding. Here as cultural worlds collide embodied states and their levels
or resistance are literally governed. However, the transient new citizens, like the cultured
consumers, are docile in this cultural game and, although variously equipped and competing
for distinction through capital, effect self-regulating practices. The performative power of
discourse is witnessed as the ideas, language, literal rules of the game and attendant codes of
conduct produce embodied actions. These transient new citizens, mirroring those they
aspire to be, self-govern as they effect strategies for the assimilation of capital and joust for
acceptance and position within the field. More importantly, as the institutional
reconfiguration of the national scene, new holistic policy agendas and champions of capital
highlight, regardless of their success, the field, its capital and subjects genealogically impact
and change one another. Therefore, rather than fall into the camps of subjectivism or
objectivism, and the critical hermeneutic that brings, there is a web of embodied subjects
and transients within the PSSR. From the resistant deviant, crass consumption or new
citizen of locals, to the cultured consumption of externals and on to management, the PSSR
is actively shaping and being shaped. Although, there are privileged judges of normality
these subject positions, manuals of consumption and management are not static, never
finalized but the subject of embodied cultural contestation.
Nevertheless, as a microcosm of the discourse of the PSSR, the Hunter Centre is and can
only ever be a culturally loaded environment. The crux here is that, in arguing that the PSSR
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is a discursive cultural construct where past archives are genealogically embodied,
governmentally shaping and being shaped through the capital of subjects, the field of the
PSSR cannot purge itself of its cultural content or embodied competition. Past archives are
part of an embodied habitus, its capitals dynamically and competitively played out in the
present. Just as the cultural content and contestation of the PSSR cannot be cleansed, its
distinction and domination are inevitable. Similar to habitus, this embodied cultural politics
is not something the field ‘has’ it is something the field ‘is’ (Bourdieu, 1986: 20). Therefore,
the PSSR will always have some form of local or transient bodies in its midst, scholars
struggling to assimilate forms of capital that are not their own among the cultural
competitions of gentlemen (Bourdieu, 1986). Of course it is here that the discourse of the
PSSR reveals both the beauty of its distinction and disgust of its domination. The beauty, or
more trick of discourse, is that the ‘inclusion’ of these local transients or new citizens not
only masks the embodied cultural politics of the field but actually legitimates the field and its
discursivity. By their willing presence at the bottom of the cultural heap the transient, in
confessional self-flagellation, feeds and perpetuates the cycle of domination leaving the selflegitimating cultural contents and vested professional interest of the field intact. The real
disgust of domination is witnessed as transients push at self-awareness or self-assertion
attempting to challenge their objective conditions, structural practices and truths (Foucault,
1984; 1988) with the hope of constituting the self differently (McKinlay and Starkey, 1998).
The transient body is not only different, distinct and an alien other to those externals within,
but also they are ‘othering’ themselves to those locals outside. In the Hunter Centre, their
awkward reading of space, cultural codes and display of capitals makes the promise of
inclusion, like their capital, always partial. To enter the Hunter Centre is to enter an alien
cultural worldview, undergo bodily modification and attempt to re-learn to be other.
However, upon exit the transformed transient re-enters a world of objective conditions and
subjects where they do not fit so readily. The transient, unlike discourse of the PSSR, having
reflected on their embodied habitus and its cultural content find themselves in cultural
aporia neither comfortable, a ‘citizen’, of one cultural worldview or the other. Unlike the
self-excluding or resistant body the transient is not only burdened by the cycle of domination
and symbolic violence but also their local objective conditions. The discourse of the PSSR is
a poisoned promise as the transients’ inclusion is one premised on embodied transformation
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and cultural conformity, which only serves to accentuate their objective conditions, habitus,
future domination and social suffering.
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9.0
Conclusions: Journeying to the Celestial City
Introduction
The title of this concluding chapter is apt (probably for the reader as much as personally)
given this study has been long and arduous journey. In echoing Bunyan (1886)‘I saw a man
(sic) clothed in rags…and a great burden on his back’ and it was from this ‘I dreamed a
dream’ (1). The PSSR, opened through the case of the Hunter Centre, highlighted that ‘man’
with a ‘great burden’ witnessed in the embodied world of management, staff and in the
cultural contestation of customer groups. In this field of, supposedly, open and public sport
and recreational participation, the ‘dream’ was to find a means to unmask this world, reveal
its burden, how it worked and the functions it served. It was to that end that the aim of this
study was directed. Therefore, in order to contextualise concluding comments it is worth
reiterating the aims of the study. Firstly, through the coupling of Foucault and Bourdieu, the
challenge was to reconceptualise the PSSR as discourse. Secondly, this discourse was to be
revealed and critically analysed in and through the embodied operational and consumption
practices of those within the sector. Finally, in light of its historical and institutional
development, and its embodied operational and consumption practices, the welfare premise
and professional claims of the PSSR was to be evaluated.
Given these aims the sections below summarise central points of analysis and in doing so
illuminate the studies empirical and theoretical contributions to knowledge. Nevertheless,
whereas earlier chapters have been thick with description and densely integrated analysis this
concluding chapter is more succinct and pointed. In short it summarises what this study
means and the various ‘contributions’ it makes. Moreover, with this reference to
‘contributions’ it is understood that a typical trajectory would lead to implications and
recommendations for the PSSR. Again, and as highlighted throughout, this raises the
spectre of normative positions. Therefore, the final section returns to this issue whilst
pointing to future or further research opportunities.
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The Consuming Culture of the PSSR: encrypted past embodied present
From the outset this study has asserted that, rather than a neutral, egalitarian or purely social
space of free expression, the PSSR, can be conceived of as a discursive embodied construct.
As argued in Chapter Two, in coupling the work of Foucault and Bourdieu, the PSSR is not
only formed out of a contingent past but the historical archives of the past echo in a
dynamically embodied present. Drawing upon Foucault’s power/knowledge/subject matrix
(Kendall and Wickham, 1999), sport and recreation, what it is, how it has been named,
codified, categorised, institutionalised and managed, along with subject positions (e.g.
manager, supervisor, gym or aerobic instructor, weight trainer or badminton player), is
produced through discursive power relations. Over time the ideas, language, material
provision and embodied practices of sport and recreation, the said and seen of knowledge,
simultaneously, shape and is shaped by docile and resistant subjects.
However, while Foucault demonstrates how historical archives of the past are woven into a
genealogical present it is only through the conceptual tools of Bourdieu that the dynamics of
discourse are empirically brought to life. Bourdieu takes the abstract notion of discourse and
embeds in the everyday. More importantly, Bourdieusian theory provides the missing
ingredient as the conceptual components of discourse, from past archives through the
genealogical and technological practices of the present, are encrypted with cultural content.
Throughout this study it has been contended that sport and recreation carries a cultural
content. This is the dormant trans-generational ingredient that demonstrates both the power
and imperfection of discourse as it is, simultaneously, internalized and resisted (Foucault,
1986; Deetz, 1998). In using a participatory action approach that placed the longitudinal
ethnographic case study of the Hunter Centre at its empirical core (as discussed in Chapter
Six), the analytical coupling of Foucault and Bourdieu animates the discourse of the PSSR.
This is evidenced through the embodied practices, cultural content and contestation of those
managerial and operational practitioners and consumers of the field. In the local discursivity
of the Hunter Centre discourse dynamically embodied, the politics of its privileging cultural
content lived and played out in a manner that produces and maintains embodied distinction
and domination.
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Discussions in Chapters Three, Four and Five explored and demonstrated that, given the
contingent development of sport and recreation, the PSSR is far from a new or neutral
entity. The Hunter Centre, even when opened in 1985, was not a fresh, blank canvas
appearing from nowhere. It is a product of past ideas, language, realms of thought and
events that surround sport and recreation variously appropriated as a paternalistic civilising
medium, ideological vehicle with universal or utilitarian benefits. The Hunter Centre is the
physical manifestation of culturally ladened value codes and tastes. Its external walls and
internal rationalized sport and recreational spaces are literally and symbolically boundaries of
past cultural positions reproduced and embodied in the present. Although built with the
best of recreation as welfare intentions of the day the Hunter Centre, ironically, forgets its
cultural content in an area of multiple, including cultural, deprivation. It is a cultural marker
in its ‘surfaces of emergence’ from the aesthetic design and build, sport and recreational
provision consumption practices to the managerial and operational procedures and training
designed to facilitate service. This facility, its sport and recreational spaces and practices
evoke meaning, they represent cultural taste, and as such are seen and read by cultured
consumers.
The archives of the past not only resonate within the PSSR but, as highlighted with the
colonisation of the Hunter Centre, such archives are genealogically put to work attracting
and responding to the embodied dispositions of external groups. What is stressed is that
upon entering the PSSR the latent social spaces of sport and recreation speak to those
embodying a habitus with the appropriate cultural capital. The PSSR carries a cultural
blueprint, an inscribed knowledge of the past that is triggered in and through the embodied
capitals of consumers. The inanimate spaces of the PSSR are culturally encrypted and only
lie dormant until they are brought to life through the legitimating actions of embodied
consumption. The encrypted cultural content sport and recreational spaces bring forth
performative actions of subjects as they interpret and enact the cultural codes of the game.
With a habitus and cultural capital that provides them with the eyes to see, ears to hear and a
mind that can conceive, the external locks on to the encrypted cultural content of these past
archives of knowledge, which allows them to negotiate the cultural game. Layered, like
invisible trans-generational paths of reason, cultural capital makes the cultural content of
sport and recreational spaces visible. In the discourse of the PSSR an encrypted cultural past
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is recognised, performatively embodied and reproduced. By continuously walking these
paths, their repetitive articulation, these cultural spaces and embodied subjects are mutually
conditioning. This cultural past lays in dormant abstraction until the spaces of the field are
encountered, sporting subjectivity is triggered, and capitals are deployed and competed for.
Therefore, in arguing that the PSSR is a dynamically embodied discourse, it should first be
seen as a series of culturally encrypted spaces, a past layered but performatively enacted
through embodied capitals. For it is within such culturally politicised spaces that the
‘dynamics’ of embodied competition, conflict, distinction, domination and resistance are to
be found. It is to this that the following sections of this conclusion are dedicated.
Competing Capitals: the dynamics of embodied difference, distinction and doubt
In Chapters Seven and Eight the local discursivity of the Hunter Centre was dynamically
revealed in the embodied interplay between the managed, operationally serviced
consumption practices of divergent customer groups. In Chapter Eight the Foucauldain
components of discourse were grounded and animated in the empirical reality and cultural
politics of Bourdieusian analysis (Foucault, 1977; Bourdieu, 1986; McKinlay and Starkey,
1998). Governmentality was a central concept here as the macro pronouncements at
strategic and national level are seen to filter, work upon and shape the managerial,
operational and consumption practices of the PSSR. Pictured in the Hunter Centre the
institutional arrangements of the PSSR were seen to shift along with social policy agendas
and the professional, educational and technical training of governing bodies. Essentially, as
the constitution and direction of national policy communities altered to accommodate
changes of government and new policy agendas, the task was to genealogically trace the
impact of abstract national rhetoric within the empirical local reality of the Hunter Centre.
Therefore, while the PSSR is a series of historical culturally encrypted spaces, their dormant
content is brought into the genealogical present and animated by the habitus and cultural
capitals of embodied subjects. Here the as the dynamics of discourse is empirically
evidenced through the embodied assimilation, deployment, conflict and competition of
capital.
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It was contended that the PSSR is a set of historical culturally encrypted products that,
necessarily, attracts and responds to the embodied dispositions or cultural tastes of particular
groups. As Chapter Four revealed, and regardless of the welfarist premise of the PSSR, the
historical development and participation in sport and recreation reflects elite, class-based
cultured tastes (Sidaway et al, 1986; Hargreaves, 1986; Roberts, 2004). Such groups do not
reside in the multiple deprivation of the catchment area but, as illustrated in Chapters Six
and Seven, lived outside the catchment and so were generally categorised as the car borne or
‘ferried in’ externals. Nevertheless, it was argued that the mutually conditioning cultural
content between external groups and sport and recreation was accentuated by the embodied
presence of local groups.
By its public status and welfare commitments, the PSSR actively brings divergent customer
groups into contact. Embodied states are juxtaposed, habitus and capitals revealed in the act
of sport and recreational consumption. Here, in the rationalized and ordered spaces of sport
and recreation, the literal and cultural rules of the game are mirrored in the ordered, rational
and cultural consumption of external groups. This group is able to negotiate and adapt in
the social spaces of the PSSR given they possess economic and objective capital (e.g. car,
dress and specialised equipment) and appropriate institutional and incorporated capitals (e.g.
spatial and procedural knowledge, polite speech, social manners and gestures). It is argued
that these external groups embody the PSSR, being furnished with a habitus that appreciates
and understands the cultural and procedural principles of the game (Fowler, 1998). This is
in stark and grating contrast with the embodied state of local groups, particularly, that of
children.
The bodies and habitus of local children reflected their objective conditions. These ‘wee
gadgies’ embodied the deprivation of the area evident from their economic poverty,
infrequent participation in clubs and classes, unsupervised or surrogate parenting role, lack
of ‘kit’, or personalised equipment. The disordered and dishevelled bodies of local children
matched their disordered or unstructured participation, ‘wild’ behaviour and a general
ambivalence towards the authority of staff or coach. The dress, speech, behaviour, sport
and recreational practices of locals objectively and symbolically illustrated the embodied
differentiation between these groups. Moreover, the lack of capital of locals also provided
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an embodied reference point for externals. The local body accentuated the capitals of the
field, which spotlighted the distinction of externals and provided embodied confirmation of
what to be and what not to be. The PSSR functions as an arena of cultural meaning. Bodies
are shaped inside and out as tastes are trained and the ‘individual’ it taught how one is
‘supposed to constitute himself as a moral subject’ (Dreyfuss and Rabinow, 1983: 237).
More interestingly, through the cultural clashes of children and older youths, it is contended
that the agency and structure dualism is witnessed at an early stage. In coming into contact
with the discursive spaces of sport and recreation, the embodied states of local and external
dynamically wrestle, assimilating, negotiating and resisting, the cultural content of the field.
Even though embodied positions are unequal, due to differential habitus and levels of
privileging capital, embodied states do change. The capitals of the field, those spatial cultural
codes of conduct, along with the actual sport and recreational rules of the game, are
gradually assimilated. A technology of the self is effected (Patton, 1998) and docility is
assumed as the provision and practices of the PSSR are ‘turned into nature’ (Bourdieu, 1977:
78). Although the local, by placing their embodied state in this culturally encrypted and
privileging arena, may be automatically the resistant other, that counter-stroke of power
(Hunt, 1994), some, as illustrated, do change. The fact of the local deprivation does not
detract form the fact of local agency. These are willing bodies that make willing transitions.
The privileged habitus of externals merely serves to highlight degrees of freedom, change,
capital assimilation and greater life chances. This privilege process was illustrated through
the moral compass and gaze of governance networked between parents, coaches and staff
the external. The presence of the ‘fun run mums’, unlike the local, reveals early
machinations of trans-generational training as the appropriate capitals are instilled, the ‘right
tastes facilitated’ (Gartman, 2002: 257). The cultural learning of the external child is
facilitated, assimilated into their habitus, naturalised to the point whereby they possess that
perception-enabling prism that enables the encrypted capital of the field to be read and
appropriate capitals deployed (Bourdieu, 1977). Having assimilated such gateway capitals the
external is not only unconsciously caught up in and of game the PSSR, its cultural content
and capitals are a given, worth pursing (Bourdieu, 1998). Although, varying in degree the
external body fits, it locks onto the culturally encrypted paths, deploys capital and
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performatively assumes and enacts the sport and recreational subjectivity. In contrast the
local, again to varying degree, does not fit and with limited capital displays a stumbling and
awkward sport and recreational subjectivity. Through their misrecognition, be it in dress,
equipment, speech, attitude or behavioural manner, the local is disabled embodying a form
of cultural tourettes syndrome that is all the more illuminated by the fuller cultural package
embodied by externals.
Nevertheless, as stressed in the introduction of Chapter Seven, the terms local and external
were general categories used for clarity and to avoid confusion. As demonstrated, outwith
reference to their geodemographic location, both groups engaged in contestation over the
capitals of the field. Effectively degrees of cultural fit relate to embodied cultural package,
which in turn reflect levels of cultural comfort or awkwardness. However the process of
embodied competition over the capitals of rationalized sport and recreational spaces should
be pictured more as web than a spectrum. This was important as the web best represented
the dynamics of embodied discourse, which again retains the agency or freedom of actors
even though, particularly in the case of locals, they are constrained by the objective
conditions they inhabit (Foucault, 1986). In the field of the PSSR, capital is not only
assimilated, displayed and deployed it also provides distinction and, as such, is a fluid process
of embodied competition. Therefore, although the culturally encrypted archives of the past
resonate with, and privilege, externals, the capitals of the field are not fixed, but are a matter
of constant competition. Even though it was stressed that, given their level of capital,
competition between externals was the only cultural game in town, both externals and locals,
formed the web of embodied transients that kept the PSSR in a state of dynamic tension.
Importantly though, as with the clubs and classes of children, policy-based initiatives found
the local body engaging with the cultural content and governance of the PSSR. In drawing
upon the governmentality (Webb, et al, 2002) of discourse it was argued that the welfarism,
social inclusion and overt paternalism of new policy agendas, such as health, (Collins, 1998;
Stewart, 1998) had impacted upon some of the local adult population. However, such
inclusion and the stages of transformatory change were still hindered by a habitus that
reflected an alienating lack of capital. The local adult embodies their objective conditions
displaying a lack of capital in dress, equipment, abusive, aggressive and intimidating manner.
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Although inside and participating they are ever the outsider appearing as ill fitting suits
against those externals who being trans-generational trained spatially and appropriately
perform their capitals. Even though assimilating capital over time the embodied transition
of the local is never as complete or competitive as those external. For, endowed with the
fuller cultural package having the ‘bodies’, ‘gestures’ and ‘desires’ (Foucault, 1979: 98),
external groups occupy the privileged position of guardians and gatekeepers of the field
(Sibley, 1995). Given this it might be concluded that, while the local body may be included
and assimilating transitionary capital, it will always be a jester rather than champion of the
field.
More importantly, in the PSSR the embodied state of the local transient displays an ongoing
dissonance. It is contended that, although evidence of the governmentality of welfarism and
new policy agendas, the transient is merely a token ‘new citizen’. By their participation they
find themselves in a position of dual alienation. They are alienated from inclusion within the
dominant external group (who they wish to join) and from their excluded peers (who they
now see as not quite the same). They are in a viral condition, disabled by their embodied
habitus and fact of their locality; never fully able to comply or fit with the discourse they
contemplate. Their incorporated state (those physical postures, tones and mannerism)
becomes the clearest indication of this viral condition to externals and, likewise, their new
cultural tastes and aspirations for the PSSR and its codes are viral indicators with local peers.
The transitional local body momentarily substitutes the social suffering of its external
objective conditions for the ‘vector of symbolic violence’ (Poupeau, 2002: 79) found inside
the PSSR. The local transient body may have shifted from one of the self-excluding, violent
deviant, junkie or even crass consuming local to assimilated new citizen but the economic
and cultural poverty of their locality remains. In the PSSR they are always the scholar and
never the gentleman (Bourdieu, 1986), always ‘re-learning how to be’ (Charlesworth, 2000:
62). Paternalistic policy, through sport and recreation, promises embodied transformation
but this is always partial as the poverty of place and person remain.
Therefore, given its cultural encryption and embodied competition, it can be concluded that
the PSSR is no sanctuary. It is a poisoned promise; one where inclusion is premised on an
acknowledgement of being in cultural lack and needing to bodily transform from what one
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‘formerly was’ (Charlesworth, 2000: 62). This public space is less about fun or free
expression and more about conformity to its subject positions and spatially located cultural
codes of conduct. Given the lack of reflexivity over its cultural content, it is reasonable to
conclude that the PSSR accentuates, rather than ameliorates, the objective conditions,
habitus, future domination and social suffering of the local transient body. The following
conclusions highlight how national and local managerial processes are complicit in this
process.
Governing the PSSR: performing professionalism an embodied future?
Within Chapter Three management was seen as emerging out of disparate origins to
increasingly follow the Enlightenment quest for progress to become a rational discipline in
its own right (Watson, 2002). As an important driver of capitalism the formalised bodies or
schools of managerial knowledge were seen to spill over into the world of leisure and so
become an essential component in the production and governance of the modern day PSSR.
Given its welfarist foundations and facilitized boom the sport and recreational body of the
PSSR demanded a managerial subject to effect and ensure the institutional gaze of
governance. More importantly, Chapters Four and Five highlighted that, with its
development and policy basis, the PSSR has long been engaged in a professionalizing
process.
The field now has its own governing bodies and is territorialized by managerial subjects
endowed with the habitus and capitals of specialist experience, education, knowledge and
training. Although, past and new policy shifts continue to problematise this incomplete
process the managerial subject is central to the discourse of the PSSR. It is the managerial
subject who takes and translates the discourse of the field from the national through to the
local. They represent the ‘judges of normality’ (Foucault, 1977: 304) who having the
‘competence’ to describe the world and give it shape’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 106) rationally
demarcate, mark and maintain the field. As illustrated from empirical enquiries, networking
from the national scene through to local management, management act as gatekeepers and
governors of the field. They procedurally inscribe the spaces of sport and recreation as
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much as the bodies of operational staff, through managerial techniques and training manuals
of operation. They embody the ‘lifestyles…practice-unifying and practice-generating
principles’ management and are, therefore, part of the ‘structure and symbolic space’ of the
PSSR discourse.
It is contended that the embodied habitus of management is blind to the cultural content of
sport and recreation. Regardless of old contract side managerialism or client side
professional claims premised on new policy agendas of crime, education or health, sport and
recreation is still repetitively reinvented as a civilising marker of universal good (McIntosh
and Charlton, 1985; DCMS, 2002). With echoes of welfarist egalitarianism, Sport for All, to
the more utilitarian or benevolent lifestyle benefits to be gleaned through participation, sport
and recreation is promoted and managed as a social good, something ‘simply natural’ (Harris,
2005: 38). In doing so the culturally loaded values, as much as capitals of economy, clothing,
equipment, language, gestures, etiquettes, institutional or procedural knowledge are ignored.
The sport and recreation provision, as much as the managerial and operational practices of
the PSSR, are anything but natural or impartial. Rather they represent a culturally
constructed world whereby material provision and embodied managerial and operational
practice are two sides of the same coin. As a historical, yet, culturally animated social space
the PSSR inscriptively imposes and expects both operational and consumption conformity
to spatially located structured and performatively enacted cultural codes and subject
positions. The fact that the PSSR finds itself charged with the contradictory imperatives of
economic development (Henry, 2001) and welfarist social inclusion (Coalter, 2000), and so
compelled to attract culturally divergent customer groups, merely serves to illuminate this
discursive cultural construct.
Moreover, as starkly highlighted with its entrenched managerialsm, the operational body is
absorbed into this discourse. It is trained to service and maintain the sport and recreational
consumption practices of the more culturally privileged external customers against the
culturally disabled local groups. The operational body, being partitioned and ranked
(Townley, 1998), is the subject of governmentality as managerial practices are written upon
and in them. As national policy communities translate through strategic to local
management, the operational bodies of staff are inscribed with the ‘rationalized schemes,
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programmes, techniques and devices’ (Rose, 1999:3) of management. Here, the cycle of
governmentality is revealed as management works to maintain and protect the PSSR
discourse. As argued through the local discursivity of the Hunter Centre, the PSSR
effectively becomes a cultural silo as the managerial and operational body mutually
conditions and reinforces the cultural content and essential capitals of its sport and
recreation spaces.
However, it was argued that while management perpetuates the discourse of the PSSR,
accentuating the distinction of externals and domination of locals, this only reflects half of
the operational world of staff. The embodied resistance of operational staff to management
was enflamed by the failure of management to respond to the hidden world encountered
when dealing with local groups. Just as the local body illuminated the embodied habitus and
capitals of externals, so it illustrated the failure and privileging role of managerial practices
and training. In bringing the objective conditions of the immediate area into the internal
environment, the local body unmasks the discourse of the PSSR and the central role of
management. The procedural principles and operational practices of management are seen
to ‘impose meaning’ (Poupeau, 2000: 71) and, in failing to respond to the hidden operational
world of staff, obscures the truth, privilege, cultural contestation and domination found in
the social relations and spaces of the PSSR. The managerial subject of the PSSR highlights
how the power/knowledge and capital of professional groups, rather than objective or
altruistic, actively works in a self-legitimating and self-serving manner (McKinlay and
Starkey, 1998).
Nevertheless, the managerial habitus and capitals are not sacrosanct but are open to
challenge and change. The managerial habitus and capitals of the field are witnessing such a
challenged and change with the transition from CCT to BV. Rather than facilitating the
healing of the client contract divide, new policy agendas (Stewart, 1998; Scottish Executive,
2003) and the concern over the active citizen (Coalter, 2000; Houlihan, 2001) have made
policy the capital of the day.
As discussed in Chapter Five, and empirically supported, new policy agendas have
challenged managerialism. Welfarist paternalism is now overtly charged with effecting a
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transformation gaze upon lifestyle habits, which are mostly evidenced in the embodied
condition of the local groups of the Hunter Centre (McNamee et al, 2000). As managerial
capital shift, and new champions emerge within the field, the PSSR is reinvigorated as a site
when policy can be trained upon and transform embodied states. It is contended that, as the
PSSR becomes more entangled with new policy agendas of crime, education and health, it is
presented with an opportunity to reprofessionalize. By surfing upon, and assimilating the
capitals of new policy agendas, the subject position of ‘civic professional’ (Houlihan, 2001:
12) becomes a possibility for the field. However, this may be presumptuous as the
transformational change of those embodied transients was tokenistic. The values, capitals
and conformity to the spatially located, structured and performatively enacted cultural codes
and subject positions of sport, recreation and its management, lack the weight of a sustained
reflexive critique. The contention is that, without reflexivity, the transformed, liberated and
active new citizen will not materialize and the potential for reprofessionalized status will be
lost.
By failing to reflect upon the PSSR as a discursive cultural construct, the hidden operational
world of violence, intimidation and abuse, embodied and expressed by local groups and
experienced in the everyday reality of staff, will remain unacknowledged and unmanaged. In
its present state the culturally privileging constitution of the PSSR sets a framework that can
only demonize the excluded local groups, who by their very being, are culturally handicapped
and so destined to break the cultural rules of conduct. Placed in the culturally privileged and
managed sport and recreational spaces of the PSSR these groups not only appear as fish out
of water but are also perpetually reminded of, and display, their cultural ‘handicap’ that has
‘lasted for generations’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 215). Caught in such cultural warfare, operational
staff have become cultural interpreters. They find themselves navigating the cultural
positions and clashes of these divergent customer groups by developing and embodying
Janus-faced forms of capital. It is ironic that this operational world lies untapped as it
provides a reflexive starting point for the PSSR. For it is here that the habitus and objective
conditions of local groups are countenanced, their embodied consumption of sport and
recreation, though still ‘judged’, is done so more in relation to who they are, rather than what
they should be. This reflexive, more Janused approach, to the habitus and capitals of
customer groups, provides an opportunity to weaken the discursive cultural hold of the
287
PSSR. In so doing it may, paradoxically, allow the achievement of substantial, rather than
token, transformations. With more new and active citizens the dream of
reprofessionalisation becomes a positive reality. Therefore, and in bringing these
conclusions to a close, it is contended that without radical reflexivity, the dynamic and
embodied discourse of the PSSR will remain. The cultural privilege and domination of this
discursive cultural construct will be sustained, whilst the embodied ‘burden’ and symbolic
violence of those it claims to serve will be perpetuated, by its very organization.
Further Research: new discursive journeys?
At the end of the final section a waymarker for further research was alluded to. However,
this has to be seen in the contextual light of the contributions of this study. At the forefront
there has been a concern to provide a Foucauldian and Bourdieusian reconceptualisation of
the PSSR. While the work of these theorists has been variously used (Townley, 1993;
Wacquant, 1998; McKinlay and Starkey 1998), this study marks a first for both a theoretical
coupling and its empirical application to public sector sport and recreation. Through this
coupling the embodied dynamics of the PSSR discourse have been seen to work as the
habitus and capitals of the field shift, shape and are shaped through, the embodied subjects
of management, operational staff and divergent customer groups.
In asserting this, the empirical contribution of the study stands alone in its own right. Again,
while action approaches and ethnographic studies of organizations have been done and are
valued (Boxall, 1992; Flick, 1999; Hancock and Tyler, 2000), there has been no such study
conducted within the public sector. The longitudinal ethnographic case study of the Hunter
Centre provides and empirical insight into public sector sport and recreation never seen
before. Although an arduous, and at times dangerous task, the depth and richness of data
gleaned from this window into the operational life and embodied practices of consumers is a
unique and valuable empirical contribution. Therefore, as this study has shown the
theoretical coupling and empirical approach provide an original contribution to the realm of
social and cultural studies within sport and recreation. As has been contended the PSSR can
be conceived of and reconceptualised as a dynamically embodied discourse. One where the
288
culturally encrypted spaces of sport and recreation are triggered, and privilege, the capitals
and sporting subject positions of groups whilst dominating and perpetuating the cultural lack
and embodied social suffering of others.
Nevertheless, while calling for a radical reflexivity over the discursive cultural construct of
the PSSR this is a discursive research journey in its own right. In citing Spinoza’s precept
‘do not deplore, do not laugh, do not hate – understand’ (Bourdieu, 1999: 1) Bourdieu points
to the philosophical core of this study. As has been variously addressed throughout, there is
no emancipatory recommendation here. However, that does not mean that there are
elements of the study that others could explore. In particular the national policy process is
still an area worthy of investigation. Although forming part of this study the physical and
time limitations of ethnography impacted upon the depth of investigation at national level.
An exploration of policy, how policy communities form and how their embodied politics
work and impact upon the field of sport and recreation would further illuminate the
complexities and contingencies surrounding the PSSR discourse. Of course to employ or
adapt the longitudinal ethnographic method of this study would demand high-ranking access
to national policy making circles. This, in turn, brings the need for essential cultural capital
to penetrate and reflexively explore and interrogate the field of national policy. Just as
capital was essential to navigate the operational level further research at national policy level
would demand a researcher embodying those capitals recognised and valued by practitioners
responsible for policy formation and implementation. Until such research is conducted into
this, admittedly difficult area, the embodied world, rich narritives and capricious elements of
policy making will lie untapped. More importantly, further research of the embodied policy
process and politics at national level would expand and deepen, rather than emancipate and
decide, the discourse of the PSSR.
Therefore, while of significant value, future research of this sort takes cognizance of the
Foucauldian mantra, to ‘name is to do violence to’ (Grenz, 1996: 155). It is keen to continue
to unmask the layers of discourse whilst being careful not to advocate emancipatory
recommendations, move toward advocating normative positions and, in turn, fuel processes
of objectification and normalization. For to do so would be to redirected and reanimated
the matrix of power/knowledge/subject but with a new quest to emancipate, or more, to fix,
289
which inevitably turns upon the bodies of others. As highlighted the quest of
Enlightenment management demands solutions. As soon as ‘problems’ come into view the
governing ‘hermeneutic circle of legislative reason’ is deployed, incessantly objectifying and
normalising, ‘towards infinity’ (Bauman, 1992: 131). Interestingly here the ‘problem’ fixing
discourse of management, its ‘judges…professionals of discourse’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 106) are
the real winners as a new problem is produced for them to ‘solve’.
Therefore, and conscious of being part of, but simultaneously, keen to resist perpetuating,
this self-serving hermeneutic, the discursive ‘problem’ of the PSSR is left but with a cry to
continue the exploration within the embodied world of national policy communities. While
this may feel unsatisfactory or a conservative maintenance of the status quo, it is not. The
aim was to reconceptualise the PSSR as a dynamically embodied site of discourse. This has
not only been achieved here but, as indicated with further research, this discourse is ongoing.
In echoing Nietzsche (Megill, 1987) the Apollonian mask has been pulled back to reveal the
Dionysian messiness of inequitable, privileging discourse. There is a need to continue this
work while being ever mindful to avoid replacing one god with another.
290
Appendix A – Core Interview and Forum Themes
In order to facilitate understanding of this themes it is essential to reiterate the forms and
depth of data gathered. At the core lies the ethnographic case study (i.e. fieldwork diaries
with core and peripheral staff, client and contract management, and internal/external
customer groups), self-reflexive interviews with staff and a final reflexive staff forum (i.e.
November 2004). At the local managerial level we have interviews with client/contract
managers. Additionally, through the study national governing body interviews and a
strategic practitioners forum were conducted. Collectively these interviews provide a picture
a national policy community. These data sets, it is argued, release the polyvocality of the
national to local scene that allow a discursive reading of the PSSR with the governmentality
and biopower of discourse witnessed in embodied domination and distinction of managerial,
operational and consumption practices.
Having looked at the themes used for interviews and forums, and even considering case
study data, key themes for investigation can be collapsed into five thematic categories:

The material facilitisation, spatial rationalization and containment of the PSSR

Embodied production and differentiation of PSSR subjects

Politicization of the PSSR

Management and managing differential delivery

Professionalism and legitimacy
Presented below are themes used in interviews, which in action style turn were collapsed into
those categories above. This is not the order that they were raised at interviews or forums as
a more free flowing semi-structured interview approach was adopted. This meant that in the
reality of interviews themes would be deliberately mixed (to allow the opportunity to return
to a theme and tackle it from another angle) or omitted depending upon the conversation
flow. Collectively these interviews/forums generated over 100,000 words of data, which
with the mass of case study data was, as reflected in methods, a primary burden.
291

Overview of leisure industry (PSSR) its development and direction

Development of facilities (past/present) and how managed

Main areas of provision (why those) who are these directed at

Mission of PSSR past/present (strength/weakening ‘merit good’/welfarist position)
now more commercial/market and customer focused

Future of PSSR (threat from private/H & F sector)

New BVR inclusion/exclusion agenda refocused social agenda

Profile of operational staff - (embodied/incorporated character) – (knowledge –
formal education, NTO/NGB what of cultural knowledge/understanding)

Core training/skills/knowledge for 1st management) & 2nd ops staff (Probes:
aesthetic labour: size, age, shape, mannerisms etc.)

Identify various customer groups (cultural awareness of staff/mgt in service delivery
- training, practice implications?)

View on decentralisation strategy on New Labour (empowerment following
autocracy – how will this be achieved in practice; reaction of staff and management –
increase conflict/legitimation crisis for managers

Managerial responses/approach different depending upon the customer group (wake
of resources, need to standardize; what forms of provision; type of staff to hire)

View on BVR (preparation of strategy doc; practical changes)
292

Given CCT (Managerial ethos) and now BVR’s (‘service must reach and meet the
needs of those local communities they were intended for’) foresee any transitional
impacts

How has CCT (and now BVR) relate to the PSSR being seen/claiming professional
status (same client/contract side?)

Profession & professionalism (how would you define; same as law/med/minister;
core competencies of professional; paternalism of professional – ethical legitimation,
professional body, structural/performative authority)

Has central government, with its policies directed the social ills provided an
opportunity for the political and professional reinvention of leisure/PSSR (according
to DCMS/DfEE Policy Action Team 1999 resources given if focus on ‘inclusion,
regeneration, health promotion’ ‘combat criminality’)
Theme to category linkage:
Themes 1,2, 3, 4, 5 looked at the development of facilities (sport and recreational spaces)
and how managed/practiced. Basically, this was about reflections on the progressive
development of the rationalized containment and control of space and the naming,
categorization (embodied production) of the managerial/operational worker over a period of
time. Obviously, in accordance with Bourdieu’s (1999) call for researchers to avoid
disciplinary concepts or phrase regimes, these terms were not used. Interviewees were
encouraged to talk about past provision and practice, with anecdotes of friends, colleagues
and customers, and relations to the present.
Themes 7,8 were attempts to get interviewees to think and differentiate the managerial and
operational worker. This was all about getting them to talk about capital
293
(incorporated/embodied, objective/things/signs, social and
institutional/knowledge/training/skills) but again without these terms.
Themes 4,5, 6 and 9 linked to 7,8 as they focused on identifying and differentiating
customers groups. Again differential capital comes under scrutiny here but also asking if
there are managerial implications/response to accommodate these different groups and any
assistance/training given to staff.
Themes 10, 11,12 and 13 use New Labour’s decentralization strategy and BVR to move to
management styles/practices and policy. Consideration is given to the practicalities of
internal management while discussing changes and policy impacts brought by CCT and now
BVR.
Themes 14, 15 and 16 close a loop by turning attention to professional aspirations
(past/present) linking them to the CCT/BVR impacts, inclusion/exclusion agendas and new
policies directions. This moved to reveal the divide of governing bodies and direction of a
new educated managerial or new civic professional with pastoral/paternalistic power.
294
Appendix B – Case Study Photo File
These photos were taken within a 200m radius of the Hunter Centre. They are designed to give a flavour of
the facility, its aesthetic and the objective conditions of the catchment area.
1. Front Entrance
2. View from Western Road
3. Front; Needle Exchange on right
4. Main Entrance
5. Safety screen; gym etiquette on right
6. Security door to changing areas
295
7. Needle Exchange to the ‘Crack house’
8. Housing
9. Housing
10. Social Work offices
11. Front surveillance
12. ‘A Sports Facility for Your Locality’
296
Appendix C – Geodemographic Profile
This appendix is split into two parts. The first provides the ACORN geodemographic classification map for
reference. The second table summarises the geodemographic data of the study.
Table 1: ACORN Classification Map
ACORN gedemographic web-based tool that profiles neighborhoods by coupling 1.9 million UK postcodes,
125 demographic and 287 lifestyle variables to better understand clients and so inform and target marketing
and business decisions.
Category
Group
Wealthy Executives
Wealthy Achievers
Affluent Greys
Flourishing Families
Prosperous
Professionals
Educated Urbanites
Urban Prosperity
Aspiring Singles
01 - Affluent mature professionals, large houses
02 - Affluent working families with mortgages
03 - Villages with wealthy commuters
04 - Well-off managers, larger houses
05 - Older affluent professionals
06 - Farming communities
07 - Old people, detached houses
08 - Mature couples, smaller detached houses
09 - Larger families, prosperous suburbs
10 - Well-off working families with mortgages
11 - Well-off managers, detached houses
12 - Large families & houses in rural areas
13 - Well-off professionals, larger houses and converted flats
14 - Older Professionals in detached houses and apartments
15 - Affluent urban professionals, flats
16 - Prosperous young professionals, flats
17 - Young educated workers, flats
18 - Multi-ethnic young, converted flats
19 - Suburban privately renting professionals
20 - Student flats and cosmopolitan sharers
21 - Singles & sharers, multi-ethnic areas
22 - Low income singles, small rented flats
23 - Student Terraces
Secure Families
24 - Young couples, flats and terraces
25 - White collar singles/sharers, terraces
26 - Younger white-collar couples with mortgages
27 - Middle income, home owning areas
28 - Working families with mortgages
29 - Mature families in suburban semis
Settled Suburbia
30 - Established home owning workers
31 - Home owning Asian family areas
32 - Retired home owners
Starting Out
Comfortably Off
Type
297
Prudent Pensioners
Asian Communities
Moderate Means
Post Industrial
Families
Blue Collar Roots
Struggling Families
Hard Pressed
Burdened Singles
High Rise Hardship
Inner City Adversity
33 - Middle income, older couples
34 - Lower income people, semis
35 - Elderly singles, purpose built flats
36 - Older people, flats
37 - Crowded Asian terraces
38 - Low income Asian families
39 - Skilled older family terraces
40 - Young family workers
41 - Skilled workers, semis and terraces
42 - Home owning, terraces
43 - Older rented terraces
44 - Low income larger families, semis
45 - Older people, low income, small semis
46 - Low income, routine jobs, unemployment
47 - Low rise terraced estates of poorly-off workers
48 - Low incomes, high unemployment, single parents
49 - Large families, many children, poorly educated
50 - Council flats, single elderly people
51 - Council terraces, unemployment, many singles
52 - Council flats, single parents, unemployment
53 - Old people in high rise flats
54 - Singles & single parents, high rise estates
55 - Multi-ethnic purpose built estates
56 - Multi-ethnic, crowded flats
298
The table below provides a geodemographic summary of the sample of users drawn from the Hunter Centre
booking system. As stressed this method was used to postcode locate the primary block booking/users in
relation to the facilities catchment area (i.e. North West Kilmarnock). Also, while 139 bookings/users
represented that sample, these single names were recorded with group numbers (e.g. groups of five for football,
two or four for badminton). The table highlights the various areas with 31% (n43) drawn from the facilities
catchment and 69% (n96) from external areas. Therefore, although geodemographic status correlated with the
objective conditions, embodied circumstances and capitals found in the field, the method was more to highlight
the local to external territorialisation of the facility. Names and addresses of users have been omitted for
reasons of confidentiality.
Table 2: Geodemographic Summary of Hunter Centre
Area
Postcode
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2HD
N/W Kilmarnock
Irvine
KA3 2DL
KA12
OYB
Ayr
KA7 3AX
Ayr
KA1 2ND
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2JN
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PJ
Stewarton
KA3 3AL
Kilmarnock
KA1 2HS
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2DL
Catrine
KA5 6PS
Kilmarnock
KA1 2AN
Symington
Central
Kilmarnock
KA1 5QH
Hamilton
ML3 7HD
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SF
Prestwick
KA9 1QZ
Symington
KA1 5QH
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1QP
Prestwick
Prestwick
KA9 1PZ
KA9 1PZ
KA3 1PS
Geodemographic status
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 51 - Council
terraces, unemployment, many singles
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 49 - large
families, many children, poorly educated
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 8 - Mature
couples, smaller detached homes
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys Type 6 - Farming
communities
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 28 - Working
families with mortgages
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Educated Urbanites; TYPE 16 prosperous young professionals
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 27 - Middle
income, home owning areas
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 49 - large
families, many children, poorly educated
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Post Industrial Families; TYPE 40 Young family workers
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Aspiring Singles TYPE 22 - low
income, rented flats
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent greys; TYPE - 7 Old
people detached houses
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 29 - Mature
families in suburban semis
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Educated Urbanites; TYPE 16 prosperous young professionals
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Prosperous Professionals; TYPE
14 - Older professionals in detached houses, flats
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 -
299
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AB
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AB
Fenwick
KA3 6EB
Kilmaurs
KA3 1QJ
Kilmarnock
KA3 2EL
Hamilton
ML3 7HF
Kilmarnock
KA3 7SZ
Fenwick
KA3 6DE
Troon
KA10 6PT
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AP
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SS
Prestwick
KA9 1QG
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AD
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AX
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PX
Kilmarnock
KA3 1TR
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AX
Kilmarnock
KA1 2JR
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SY
Cumnock
KA18 1QU
Irvine
KA12 0LS
N/W Kilmarnock
Troon
KA3 2AD
KA10
6HH
New Cumnock
KA18 4AH
Catrine
KA5 6PS
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AD
Cunninghamhead
KA3 2PA
Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Blue Collar Roots; TYPE - 41
Skilled workers, semis and terraces
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Prosperous Professionals; TYPE
14 - Older professionals in detached houses, flats
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Wealthy Executives; TYPE 4 Well-off managers, larger houses
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Blue Collar Roots; Type 43 - Older
rented terraces
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Prosperous Professionals; TYPE
14 - Older professionals in detached houses, flats
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 44 - Low
income; larger families, semis
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Middle income; TYPE 33 - older
couples
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Blue Collar Roots; TYPE - 41
Skilled workers, semis and terraces
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Starting Out; TYPE 24 - Younger
couples, flats, terraces
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE 34 - Lower
income people, semis
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Post Industrial Families; TYPE 40 Young family workers
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys Type 6 - Farming
communities
300
Dalrymple
KA6 6PZ
Darvel
KA17 0BP
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2BH
Dunlop
KA3 4AN
Fenwick
KA3 6DH
Galston
KA4 8DT
Kilmarnock
KA1 1UG
Kilmarnock
KA1 9SB
Kilmarnock
KA1 2QE
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2BH
Cumnock
KA18 1PG
Kilmaurs
EH16 5DA
Hurlford
KA1 5BT
Kilmaurs
KA3 2RY
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PJ
Sorn
KA5 6HU
Rankinston
KA6 7HJ
Kilmarnock
KA1 3AP
Ayr
KA7 1XA
Mauchline
KA5 6AN
Kilmarnock
KA1 1TY
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PJ
Stewarton
Central
Kilmarnock
KA3 5PF
Kilmaurs
KA3 2lZ
Kilmarnock
KA3 1TH
Dunlop
Dunlop
KA3 4DB
KA3 4AX
KA3 1SF
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Blue Collar Roots; TYPE - 41
Skilled workers, semis and terraces
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE - 33
Middle income, older couples
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Prudent Pensioners; TYPE 36 Older people, flats
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 8 - Mature
couples, smaller detached homes
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 8 - Mature
couples, smaller detached homes
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Educated Urbanites; TYPE 16 prosperous young professionals
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 5 - Older
affluent professionals
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 29 - Mature
families in suburban semis
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Starting Out; TYPE 24 - Younger
couples, flats, terraces
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE 34 - Lower
income people, semis
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 11 Well-off managers, detached houses
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys Type 6 - Farming
communities
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Aspiring Singles TYPE 22 - low
income, rented flats
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Educated Urbanites; TYPE 19 Suburban privately renting professionals
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 28 - Working
families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 5 - Older
affluent professionals
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE - 33
Middle income, older couples
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 29 - Mature
families in suburban semis
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE 33 middle income older, couples
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 11 Well-off managers, detached houses
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 -
301
Troon
KA10 6PF
Ochiltree
KA18 2PE
Dunlop
KA3 4AJ
Crosshouse
KA2 OJP
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2BU
Troon
KA10 6HJ
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SF
Kilmarnock
KA3 7SZ
Sorn
KA5 6HU
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AP
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AD
Cumnock
KA18 1NJ
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PJ
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AG
Barassie
KA10 6UN
Patna
KA6 7JG
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AD
Fenwick
KA3 6DH
Fenwick
KA3 6EF
Newton Mearns
G77 6XR
Dunlop
KA3 4AX
Crosshouse
KA2 OJP
Perceton
KA11 2DR
Irvine
KA12 0JU
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2AB
Stewarton
KA3 3AL
KA12
OYB
Irvine
Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 28 - Working
families with mortgages
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Blue Collar Roots; TYPE - 41
Skilled workers, semis and terraces
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Prosperous Professionals; TYPE
14 - Older professionals in detached houses, flats
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 29 - Mature
families in suburban semis
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 11 Well-off managers, detached houses
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Moderate Means; GROUP: Post Industrial Families; TYPE 40 Young family workers
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Prudent Pensioners; TYPE 36 Older people, flats
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; TYPE 30 Established Home Owning, workers
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 5 - Older
affluent professionals
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Secure Families; Type 26 - Younger
white-collar couples with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE - 33
Middle income, older couples
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Educated Urbanites; TYPE 16 prosperous young professionals
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 11 Well-off managers, detached houses
302
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SS
Crosshouse
KA2 0HW
Kilmarnock
KA1 2EQ
Kilmarnock
KA1 1TY
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2EE
Stewarton
KA3
Ayr
KA7 3AX
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PJ
Kilmarnock
KA2 0LR
Kilmarnock
KA3 1TU
Symington
KA1 5RU
Prestwick
KA9 2NX
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SS
Ayr
KA7 4AX
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1SS
Kilmaurs
KA3 2RS
Kilmarnock
KA1 1UH
Ayr
KA7 1DY
Barassie
KA10 6UE
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1QP
Perceton
KA11 2DR
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PX
Barassie
KA10 6TF
Newton Mearns
G77 6FA
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2EE
Ayr
KA8 8Lt
N/W Kilmarnock
Kilmarnock
KA3 2EH
KA2 0LR
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Comfortably Off; GROUP: Settled Suburbia; TYPE 34 - Lower
income people, semis
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Prosperous Professionals; TYPE
14 - Older professionals in detached houses, flats
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 5 - Older
affluent professionals
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys Type 6 - Farming
communities
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Wealthy Executives; TYPE Villages with wealthy commuters
CAT: Urban Prosperity; GROUP: Educated Urbanites; TYPE 16 prosperous young professionals
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 7 - old
people detached houses
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 9 Larger Families, prosperous suburbs
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 46 - Low
income; routine jobs, unemployment
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 5 - Older
affluent professionals
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
flats, single parents, unemployment
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 44 - Low
income; larger families, semis
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Wealthy Executives; Type 1 Affluent mature professionals, large houses
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Hard pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 48 - low
incomes, high unemployment, single parents
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 5 - Older
affluent professionals
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 52 - Council
terraces, unemployment, many singles
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 -
303
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2HD
Irvine
KA12 8SX
Kilmarnock
KA1 1TB
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PX
Symington
KA1 5BR
Galston
KA4 8DT
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 1PX
N/W Kilmarnock
KA3 2HD
Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 51 - Council
terraces, unemployment, many singles
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 44 - Low
income; larger families, semis
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Flourishing Families; Type 10 Well-off working families with mortgages
CAT: Wealthy Achievers; GROUP: Affluent Greys; TYPE 8 - Mature
couples, smaller detached homes
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Struggling Families: Type 44 - Low
income; larger families, semis
CAT: Hard Pressed; GROUP: Burdened Singles: Type 51 - Council
terraces, unemployment, many singles
304
Appendix D – Fieldwork and Interview Coding List
The table below contains the name or the study participants, their title and their study coding.
NAME
Kenny Anderson
Brian McHolland
James Smith
Mary-Anne Garcia
Fiona Andrews
Matt Frew
Donna Kinning
Carol McLean
Val Clark
David Wardrop
Dennis Craig
Derek Spence
Margaret McVicar
Robin Capperol
Katie Kelly
John Griffiths
Elaine Wolstencroft
John Humphries
Fiona Grossart
John Zimmney
Mike Hamilton
Alistair Wilson
Duncan Ingles
TITLE
Supervisor
Assistant Supervisor
Recreation Assistant
Recreation Assistant
Recreation Assistant
Recreation Assistant
Recreation Assistant (Relief)
Recreation Assistant (Relief)
Recreation Assistant (Relief)
Area Operations Manager
(departed June 1998)
Community Recreation Officer
(departed April 1999)
Community Recreation Officer
Assistant Area Manager
Assistant Area Manager
Leisure Development Manager
Head of Leisure Services
Senior Monitoring Manager
ISRM President
ILAM President
Director of Leisure Services
Contract Services Manager
Head of Leisure Services
Head of Contract Services
305
STUDY CODING
Supervisor
Assistant Supervisor
RA1
RA2
RA3
RA4
Relief1
Relief1
Relief1
departed Area Operations Manager
departed Community Recreation
Officer
Community Recreation Officer
Assistant Area Manager 1
Assistant Area Manager 2
Leisure Development Manager
Head of Leisure Services
sportscotland
ISRM
ILAM
Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 1
Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 2
Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 3
Strategic Practitioners’ Forum 4
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