SPORTS IN SOCIETY:
SOCIOLOGICAL ISSUES AND
CONTROVERSIES
CHAPTER 4
SPORTS AND SOCIALISATION:
Who Plays and What Happens to Them?
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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What is Socialisation?
• An active process of learning and social
development.
• Occurs as we interact with others.
• Involves the formation of ideas about who we are
and what is important in our lives.
• An interactive process.
• We make decisions that influence our lives and
social worlds.
• Contexts are often out of our control.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Becoming and Staying
Involved in Sports
Sports participation is related to:
• a person’s abilities, characteristics and resources
• influence of significant others – parents, teachers,
siblings, peers, role models
• availability of opportunities to play in ways that are
personally satisfying.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Becoming
an Elite Competitor
Stevenson, 1999
•
•
•
•
The process of introduction and involvement.
The process of developing commitment.
Continuity linked to social recognition.
Socialisation process is interactive.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Becoming
a Surf Lifesaver
•
•
•
•
Light and Nash, 2006
Training – beach sprinting, paddling, flag races,
watching specialist videos.
Patrolling and competition with patrolling
understood to be the ‘core’.
Fundraising activities.
Incidental learning.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Clear and Particular
Differences between Government Schools
and Private Schools
•
•
•
•
•
Wright and Burrows, 2006
Contrasting ideas about the ways that sports participation
was related to other interests and goals in their lives.
Their desires to develop and display competence so they
could gain recognition and respect from others.
Private schools emphasise and support participation and
incorporate sports as a mandatory element of the extra
curricular program.
Memories of past experiences with physical activities and
sports.
Sports-related cultural images and messages that they had
in their minds.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Changing or Ending Sports
Participation
• People don’t drop out forever, nor do they cut all
ties with sports.
• Many play different or less competitive sports as
they age.
• Dropping out is usually connected with
developmental changes and life transitions.
• Dropping out is not always the result of
victimisation or exploitation.
• Problems may occur for those who end long
careers in sports.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Burnout Among
Young Participants
Coakley, 1992
Burnout was most likely when:
• high performance sports were organised so that
competitors had little control over their lives
• sports involvement was perceived to interfere with
accomplishing important developmental tasks.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Changing Personal
Investments in Sports Careers
Wheeler, 1999
When competitive sports careers ended, the main
challenges faced by competitors
with disabilities were:
• reinvesting time and energy into other spheres of life
• reconnecting with family members and friends
• going back to school and getting on with
occupational careers.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Factors Often Overlooked in Research on
Character Building in Sports
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Different sports offer different experiences.
Selection processes in organised sports favour
some characteristics over others.
Different people define sports experiences in
different ways.
Meanings given to sports experiences often
change over time.
Social relationships mediate sports experiences.
Many activities other than sports can provide
character-building experiences.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Sports Participation is Most Likely to
Produce Positive Effects When:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
New non-sport identities are formed.
Knowledge is gained about the world beyond
sports.
Experiences go beyond sports.
New relationships are formed that go beyond
sports.
Lessons learned in sports are applied to
situations outside of sports.
Participants are seen by others as total human
beings, not just competitors.
General competence and responsibility are
learned.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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General Summary
• If playing sports constricts or limits a person’s life,
expect negative socialisation effects.
• If playing sports expands or diversifies a person’s
life, expect positive socialisation effects.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Power and Performance Versus
Pleasure and Participation Sports
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Pleasure/Participation
Emphasis on
connections between
people
Ethic of expression,
enjoyment, health
Body = source of
pleasure
Inclusion and
accommodation of
differences
Democratic structures
Compete with others
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Power/Performance
Use power to push limits in
pursuit of victories
Excellence proved through
winning
Body = tool and weapon
Competence-based
inclusion/exclusion
Hierarchical structures
Opponents = enemies
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Real-Life Experiences: Sports
Stories from Participants
The voices of sports participants indicate that:
• people define and give meaning to their sports
experiences in connection with their social
relationships
• meanings given to sports experiences are
grounded in cultural definitions about gender, race
and ethnicity, social class, sexuality and other
characteristics defined as socially important.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: The Moral
Lessons of Youth Baseball
Fine, 1987
The moral socialisation that occurs in
Little League Baseball:
• depends on how the boys 'hear' and apply the moral
messages from adults
• emphasises masculinity as involving toughness and
dominance.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Lessons in
the Changing Room
Theberge, 2000
The locker rooms of women’s ice hockey teams
are key places in which:
• women bond with each other and form a sense of
community
• the players use relationships with each other to
develop meanings for their sports participation and
apply those meanings to their lives.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Stories of Gay
and Lesbian Competitors
Symons, 2002
Gay sports participants are especially cautious
about coming out in sports
• Combining a gay identity with a sports identity is often a
challenging process.
• Individual sports and 'cosmopolitan' sports are more gayfriendly than team sports and 'macho' sports.
• Being out in sports is liberating, but it can also be
dangerous.
• Being out is easier when friends, teammates and
organisations provide active support.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Social Worlds: Living in Sports
• Social world refers to a way of life and an
associated mindset that revolves around a
particular sport.
• Sports experiences and the actions of people in
sports can be understood only when placed in the
context of the social world in which they occur.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Maintaining
Croatia in Sydney
Hughson, 1992
• Young men of the Bad Blue Boys (BBB) became
deeply engulfed in their supporter identities.
• Social world of soccer support became the context
in which the young men identified themselves, set
goals and viewed the rest of the world.
• No evidence to suggest that the BBB applied these
lessons to other aspects of their lives.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Realising
Image is Not Everything
Klein, 1993
The lives of bodybuilders revolve around issues of
gender and sexuality
• Men and women learn to project images of power while
experiencing doubts about their identities and selfworth.
• The social world of bodybuilding fosters a desperate
need for attention and approval.
• Ideas about masculinity are so narrow that male
bodybuilders develop homophobic attitudes and selfpresentations based on caricatured ideas about
manliness.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Findings: Living in
the Shadow of a Man’s World
Crosset,1995
The lives of women competitors in the LPGA were
influenced by gender relations in U.S. culture.
• The women developed an 'ethic of prowess' – a
mindset highlighting a commitment to physical
competence as a basis for evaluating self and
others on the tour.
• This ethic existed to neutralise the negative effects
of traditional ideas about femininity.
• Conformity to the ethic helped the women legitimise
their roles as professional competitors.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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The Politics of Socialisation as a
Community and Cultural Process
• Sports are sites for struggling over how we think
and what we do.
• Sports are sites where people create and learn
'stories' they can use to make sense of the world.
• Sports consist of vocabularies and images that
influence ideology.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Socialisation and the
Formation of Ideology
• Hegemony is the process of forming agreement
about particular ways of viewing and making sense
of the world.
• Sports are important sites for hegemonic
processes because they provide pleasurable
experiences to so many people.
• Corporate sponsors use sports to establish
'ideological outposts' in people’s heads.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Sports, Socialisation
and Ideology
• Research shows that none of us live outside the
influence of ideology.
• The stories that emerge in connection with sports
and sports experiences generally reproduce
dominant forms of ideology, but they also can
challenge and even transform dominant ideology.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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Research Examples: Socialisation
as a Community and Cultural Process
• ‘Blackfella’ Basketball – Hallinan and Judd (2007)
connection between sports and identity
socialisation of an Aboriginal based team.
• Glass Backboards – Burke and Hallinan (2006)
reasons underpinning the overrepresentation of
male coaches in junior girls’ basketball.
• Learning Anatomy – Pronger (1995) the
objectification of the human body in exercise
science labs.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
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The Most Informative Research on
What Happens in Sports Deals with:
• The everyday experiences of people who play
sports.
• The social worlds created around sports.
• Community and cultural processes that are related
to the ideological messages associated with sports
in society.
PPTs to accompany Sports in Society 2e by Coakley, Hallinan and MacDonald
© 2011 McGraw-Hill Australia Pty Ltd
4-26