OUTSIDE NORTH AMERICA

SOCIOLOGY OF SPORT JOURNAL, 1986.3.333343

Radical Theorists of Sport:

The State of Play

Chas Critcher
Sheffield City Polytechnic

The recent and exceptional attempts of Gruneau and Hargreaves to develop

a radical theory of sport are evaluated. The considerable advances they make
to appropriate sport as a cultural formation are offset against the need to inte-
grate consideration of gender, leisure, and the institutional conservatism of
sport into the analysis.

Sport in 1984: Caught in the Slips

Others may not share my need to have confirmed the continuing political
salience of the study of sport. It seems a self-indulgent luxury to analyze leisure
when the most pressing problems of society are those of the distribution and con-
ditions of work. The connections between the problem of leisure and that of work
may be transparent in theory but in practice are often obscure. I am therefore
grateful to the media for producing tangible evidence of the ideological centrali-
ty of sport. For example, a Manchester Guardian editorial (June 8, 1984) on
the miners' strike mentioned the following:

The crowds of young miners on the television screen last night and every
night, showering their adulation on Mr. Scargill and their hatred on the police,
may owe more to the tradition of the football terrace than that of the miners'
lodge; but the odds are that the process is politicising them, just as Mr. Scar-
gill always hoped and expected it would. @. 12)

Clearly, in the social democratic model of society, leisure behavior is

unconnected to industrial militancy, much less to class consciousness. That the
miners' lodge and football terrace may belong to the same tradition of working-
class culture eludes Guardian writers. Restoring that connection and understanding
its importance is politically pertinent. Sport's relevance to sexual politics is, or
ought to be, no less acknowledged. The media again provide the connection. Asked
by Desmond Lynam on BBC television to comment on the prospects of Annabelle

Direct all correspondence to Chas Critcher, Lecturer in Communication Studies,

Sheffield City Polytechnic, Sheffield S17 4AB, United Kingdom.
Croft, the rising star of British women's tennis, Gerald WiUiams replied that her
main problem was her prettiness: "there are too many distractions for pretty girls
on the tennis circuit." Williams should know; the accuracy of his observation
is not in dispute. The questions are, what kinds of activities are covered by the
euphemism "distraction," could or would the same ever be said about a male
tennis player, and if not, why not? What's actually being said is that for a woman
a sporting career is indivisible from a sexual career. They are in an inverse rela-
tionship: the more there is of one kind of success, the less there will be of the other.
Such comments indirectly inform this paper; they are the subtexts for
today. My direct concern is with two academic works offering a way to over-
come the several false starts in developing a radical theory of sport. They are
Richard Gruneau's Class, Sports, and Social Development (1983) and John Har-
greaves' Sport, Culture and Ideology (1982) in the book with the same title edit-
ed by Jennifer Hargreaves. Both authors have written extensively on the sociology
of sport. These texts are taken as symptomatic of their approaches, and no com-
prehensive review of their work is intended, much less of radical theories of sport
as a whole.
I want to use them as a base from which to work through some of the
issues I have been encountering while lecturing on sports and writing a book on
leisure with John Clarke, The Devil Makes Work (1985). In the following six
sections I shall summarize the essentials of the two arguments, characterize and
evaluate their projects, raise three key unresolved problems, and comment briefly
on their implications for my own academic practice.

Summaries of Gruneau and Hargreaves:

Attacking Down the Left
Gruneau's objective is to rescue for the study of sport that focus on sport's
relationship to social development he regards as having been typical of classical
lines of inquiry. The study of sport has come to be dominated by varieties of
empiricism, idealism, or vulgar Marxism. As a consequence, three areas have
been neglected that are discussed in the opening chapter of Gruneau's book.
The first is a definition of sport as a cultural practice. It neither transcends
the society that produces it nor is it a simple mirror reflection. Sport is one of
the ways in which a society comes to create and maintain a sense of itself, what
Gruneau calls a "cultural practice constitutive of human experience." There can
be no analysis of sport and society, only one of sport in society. As a form of
cultural expression, sport embodies wider possibilities of human experience but
also places limitations on it. Integrating sport into society, as well as determining
the balance between possibilities and limitations, is the way sport is structured
by, according to Gruneau, "the constitutive boundaries of rules, traditions, be-
liefs and organisations. "
Understanding this complex process may help to rectify a second unresolved
tension in the analysis of sport: how the independence and spontaneity of play
can be dependent on cultural regulation. One answer is that regulation is the means
by which dominant classes seek to impose their own values and ideals on sport.
Class relations depend on inequality of symbolic as well as material resources.
In the continuous process of constructing class relations, the regulation of cultur-
RADICAL THEORISTS OF SPORT 335

a1 life is central. Hence sport, again, is not above class relations or simply reflecting
their origins elsewhere. Sport is constitutive of class relations. It belongs to a
general effort of dominant classes to establish cultural domination through the
imposition of their own systems of signification and institutional regulations as
normal and taken for granted.
This process is never finished. It responds to changes in society and its
relationship to sport. Hence any analysis, and this is Gruneau's third major point,
must be historically specific. He provides a model in his analysis of Canadian
sport. Its forms and ideals have been made to appear natural and universal, but
they actually represent the historical interaction of influences dominating Cana-
dian cultural life as a whole.
Dominant here are the three tendencies toward commercial commodifica-
tion, state bureaucratic rationalization, and the definition of human achievement
in measurable competitive outcomes. Sport has been incorporated as a continu-
ing process, into this rather limited set of class practices and beliefs.
For Gruneau, then, the way out of the dichotomy between liberal idealism
and vulgar Marxism lies in a model of sport as a relatively autonomous cultural
practice within more general hegemonic class relations. Having established its
class domination, Gruneau ends by stressing the elements of this relative autono-
my. Sport is genuinely set apart, in time, space, and dramatic form, from the
rest of life. There is an inherent tension between its ordered and sacred nature
and the more anarchic and profane elements that keep bursting through. Metaphor-
ically it states ideals that run counter to the actuality of everyday life in, for ex-
ample, its attempt to create fair conditions of competition. Starting from the
inadequacy of existing analyses of sport, Gruneau develops a theory of sport as
part of the general pattern of contestation between classes over the imposition
and creation of meaning.
Hargreaves' is a parallel attempt. He doesn't quite start or end in the same
places as Gruneau, but the trajectory is remarkably similar. Hargreaves roots
his argument much more in a straight sociological tradition. Even radical theory,
he argues, has failed to acknowledge the centrality of sport to 20th-century capital-
ism. Such attempts as have been made to apply sociological models to sport have
largely failed, whether the perspectives adopted have been those of functional-
ism, symbolic interactionism, or varieties of Marxism. Quite apart from the in-
trinsic validity of these theories, such approaches either reduce sport to an
integrative mechanism of the social system or inflate it into a totally voluntaristic
creation of meaning, uncontaminated by influences from the social structure. The
way out of this, argues Hargreaves, is to establish a more comprehensive and
flexible theory.
Three pairs of conceptual tools are required. The first is to understand
the concepts of culture and ideology and the relationship between them. Culture
is not to be synonymous with society but specific to habits, customs, pastimes,
rituals, styles of life, and the achieved state of knowledge and learning. This is
distinct from, though it may be penetrated by, ideology, the representation of
dominant groups and interests as universally valid. The second pairing is an ap-
preciation of the centrality of sport in the whole culture and its specific appeal
as a cultural form. It is part of a wider pattern, yet makes a distinctive contribu-
tion, drawing especially on elements of drama and ritual. The third pairing is
that sport must be understood historically, as integral to the social development
of industrial capitalism and in dialecticalterms. Sport is the outcome of the inter-
play between material and cultural forms and between dominant and subordinate
groups.
It is thus the place of sport within the struggle over hegemony that Har-
greaves seeks to establish. This cannot be a theoretical approach alone, and he
concludes by stressing the need for empirical research into a number of crucial
issues in sport-the roles of capital and the media, state involvement especially
through education, and the activity of the voluntary sector and its youth organi-
zations.
Evaluating the Project: Passing Shots
Taken together, these two analyses represent a fundamental break with
existing theories of sport. They have the potential to transform academic study
in this area. Here I want to indicate briefly the similarities between the two and
how they are complementary, before outlining the difficulties that remain un-
resolved. Four similarities are evident.
First, both are seeking to create an alternative perspective through a cri-
tique of existing analyses. The traditions they dissect are rather different. Gruneau
is concerned with texts that culturally evaluate sport (Huizinga, Veblen, Gutt-
mann), Hargreaves with texts that sociologically theorize sport and culture (Ed-
wards, Mead, Althusser). This is a fine distinction and there is in fact much overlap
in the works considered, especially if their other writings are taken into account.
The essential point is that both arguments proceed through a critique of attempts
to situate sport as culture in society.
Second, each writer wants to hold both human agency and structural deter-
mination in the analysis of sport. They are not undermined by the tension be-
tween structuralist and culturalist approaches. They are helped here by the En-
glish school of cultural studies (Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, and E.P.
Thompson) and continental neo-Marxist theory, notably Gramsci's analysis of
hegemony. Sport, as an element of culture, is part of the contestation of mean-
ings that arise in class societies.
Third, there is an emphasis on sport as a form of representation. Gruneau
emphasizes that sport is metaphorical activity that tells a story, Hargreaves sees
it as a unique combination of drama and ritual. Sport simultaneously reveals and
obscures cultural relations between classes.
Finally, both argue for a more explicitly and directly theoretical and his-
torical analysis of the specific relationships between sport and the development
of industrial capitalism. There is no a priori way of characterizing the autonomy
or determination of sport. It is intimately affected by prevailing class relations.
The measure of the achievement of this work is that it moves the study of
sport from quaint side interest in crowd behavior, folk heroes, or the phenome-
nology of everyday life to a pivotal position in the analysis of class cultural rela-
tions. This is not, as it has so often been in the past, mere exhortation or
preliminary sketch. The drawing on various traditions in the analysis of culture
and the provision of a theoretical model, while insisting on historical specificity,
clarify the nature of the project. In independent but complementary ways, they
RADICAL THEORISTS OF SPORT 337

have substantiated and validated the analysis of sport within a perspective com-
patible with radical breaks in other areas of social science.
It is a project with which many of us would like to be identified. Therefore
if I am now going to raise a number of problems that arise from these analyses,
I do so in the sense that it is we rather than "they" who must face up to them.
These problems are threefold. First there is the need to establish conceptual levels
of analysis intermediary between those applicable to sport and those relevant for
the whole social formation. Second is the need to recover gender relations as
so fundamental to the analysis. Third is the need to recognize the inherent con-
servatism of sport and the severe limitations on its oppositional qualities. Each
will be discussed separately before indicating its interrelationship with the others.
Sport, Leisure, and Society:
A Hop, a Step, and a Jump
There are subtle but significant differences in the ways Gruneau and Har-
greaves seek to explore precisely how the relationship between sport and class
relations is mediated. To substantiate this would require more time and space
than are available. A crude formulation will have to suffice. Whereas Gruneau
emphasizes how the boundaries of sport are defined by those who dominate soci-
ety as a whole, Hargreaves is more concerned with situating sport in competing
definitions of culture as a whole way of life.
We may need both the precision of boundaries and the diffuseness of
culture. What isn't clear is how we can move the analysis between the levels.
I want to suggest that, despite its ambiguity and roots in conventional wisdom,
leisure may remain a useful bridging concept. It may be useful in this particular
context because it can link the level of analyzing the boundaries of sporting prac-
tice with the level of culture in general as the creation and contestation of meaning.
If we take boundaries first, Gruneau incorporates into this term the defi-
nitions of time and space, institutional form and cultural meaning, given to sport
by class relations. Or, in plain language, when and where you do sport, what
counts as sport, and which ideals sport expresses are decided outside of sport.
The point I wish to make is that these boundaries of sport exist within the bound-
aries of leisure. The wicket has an outfield. For if leisure is defined theoretically
and historically, then allocating time and space to do it, making provision for
it, and imbuing it with positive values are how capitalism has socially construct-
ed leisure as a whole. The past and present of sport at any level of analysis is
indivisible from that of leisure.
In considering culture, the usefulness of leisure may be in its demarcation
of a particular segment of culture. As Hargreaves suggests, some of the nebulous-
ness of culture is removed if we see that we can talk about work culture, school
culture, family culture-and leisure culture. It may help us to see sport as a cul-
ture within leisure in the context of culture as a whole. More prosaically, sport
exists for many people as part of a set of relationships and experiences at work,
in families and neighborhoods. For example, what the insatiable demand of the
media for popular televised sport means can only be understood in terms of the
social uses and cultural meanings of television viewing. Seeing sport as leisure
may also help us to avoid overconcentration on highly institutionalized top-level
338 Critcher

sport at the expense of informal and local levels. Wimbledon may be similar to
a knockabout in a park tennis court, but the connection is not satisfactorily traced
by the category of tennis alone. Finally, and I shall return to this point, situating
sport as leisure may enable a distinction between areas where cultural contesta-
tion is present and those where it is absent. Before considering that, let us con-
sider a form of cultural contestation which is frequently marginalized by a
class-based analysis: that of gender.
Sport and Gender Danger, Men at Play
The radical break in the sociology of sport I have suggested to be repre-
sented by the work of Gmneau and Hargreaves is conservative in its treatment
of gender. Gmneau recognizes the omission and, in a footnote to chapter 2,
declares an intention to rectify it:

I recognize, of course, that there are a great range of social relations which
might influence people's collective powers to 'structure' play, games and
sports and 'finish off the range of meanings commonly associated with them
. . . . Gender in particular, seems to be an important dimension of this struc-
turing, and its significance is readily implied in such stereotypical notions
as the idea of sports as 'male preserves' . . . . In this study I have emphasized
the role of class as a central consideration in understanding this totality. It
is clear, however, that far more needs to be taken into account and I hope to
do this in future work on the intersectionsof class and patriarchy. (1983:165)

Hargreaves uses several instances of gender typing as examples of the

social construction of sport, notably that physical education is the only item on
the secondary school curriculum in which gender segregation is regarded as ob-
ligatory.
I remain unconvinced that either kind of acknowledgment of the importance
of gender is enough. This judgment is based on two considerations, one princi-
pled and theoretical, the other practical and empirical. The principled and theo-
retical point is that we cannot and must not produce a supposedly radical theory
of sport that is as gender-blind (in some cases, more so) as the conventional wis-
dom we seek to supplant. There are criteria to apply. In the first chapter of The
Sociology of Housework (1974), Ann Oakley formulates three questions to iden-
tify the presence of sexism in sociological analysis: whether the experience of
women is actually presented, how far this presentation accurately reflects wom-
en's real presence, and the extent to which the subject categorizations themselves
make sense from and of women's experience.
The radical sociology of sport may be in danger of failing to meet any
of these criteria. The implication is not only that we shall lose the feminist con-
stituency for our argument but that we may be missing half-in empirical demo-
graphic fact rather more than half-of the picture.
In principle then, we should not be perpetuating sexist sociology. The
general principle is particularly applicable to the case of sport. It may be a com-
monplace observation, though it cannot then be taken for granted, that sport is
a predominantly male sphere of activity. The theoretical implication of this em-
pirical fact is that sport is one of the most powerful representations of gender
RADICAL THEORISTS OF SPORT 339

relations in contemporary society. The very absence and marghakation of women

gives expression to their subordination.
Anecdotes of sexism in sport are not hard to come by. My own is the
advice given to new members of my local cricket club on what to do when their
name comes up on the tea rota: "If you're not married and haven't got a girl-
friend, ask your mother." This is a particular example of a wider process evi-
dent in sport: the exclusion of women except in servicing and supporting roles.
Where exclusion becomes unviable, segregation is employed. Women can play,
as long as they play against each other. There are very few sports that success-
fully integrate the sexes, mainly those involving mastery of animals (showjump-
ing), some forms of handball and softball on the continent, and others whereby
sexually mixed sides make the activity less serious (mixed hockey and tennis).
The denigration of women's sporting achievements is a third process. Women are
seen as naturally weaker, slower, and not competitive or ruthless enough. (A
recent undergraduate seminar discussion came up with the conundrum of whether
women are barred from the pole vault in case they get above themselves.)
More important, female participation in sport is taken to be a contradiction
of conventional feminine identity. Female athletes have to demonstrate, often to
male sportsjournalists, that their interest in sport does not detract from their com-
mitment to heterosexual relationships, marriage, and family life. It's a sort of
cultural sex test. And of course if women fail it, for instance by "confessing"
to lesbianism, this confirms that they're not really women after all. Often com-
petition in women's sport seems to be between orthodox and deviant models of
female sexuality, obvious examples being the comparisons between Chris Evert-
Lloyd and Martina Navratilova or between Mary Decker and Jarmila Kratoch-
vilova.
The problem of negotiating a compatibility between involvement in sport
and a socially acceptable definition of femininity is probably easier at lower than
higher levels of sport, though the stigma of the stereotypical image of the P.E.
mistress is always potentially there. What such observations imply for the soci-
ology of sport is a requirement to recognize the social construction and represen-
tation of gender as fundamental to sport. This cannot simply be an effort to add
or incorporate gender as a variable. It involves recasting the theoretical frame-
work. If that must involve encountering the unresolved antagonism between
Marxism and feminism, then so be it.
In a more detailed discussion I would extend this argument still further.
The social divisions represented in and through sport are not exhausted by the
categories of class and gender; race and age require additional consideration. The
danger of collapsing the analysis into a matrix of sociological variables is real,
but we cannot on that basis wish away social divisions other than that of class.
It has to be fundamental to our analysis that sport is effectively defined as an
activity of young, white, middle-class males. Substantial incursions into sport
have been made by other groups but the conditions of entry are always laid down
by this dominant group. And those terms are deeply conservative.

The Political Potential of Sport: Choosing Sides

Both Gruneau and Hargreaves agree that hegemony is a process, not a
state. Hence cultural domination is always open to contestation. The problem,
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RADICAL THEORISTS OF SPORT 341

of the ghetto of women's leisure. The position assigned to women inside or out-
side sport is evidence of its conservatism as a bastion of male supremacy.
The implications for the kinds of theoretical enterprise represented by
Gruneau and Hargreaves are more difficult to discern. Take for instance one way
of summarizing what I have been saying about the politics of sport: that it is in-
herently conservative. A number of questions arise over whether this applies to
all levels of sport, refers to implicit values or explicit ideologies, or implies that
any kind of organization of sport can only be conservative. And note the difficulty
with "inherently," with the assumption that this means all sports in all societies,
at all times. Whether the conservatism is defined in class or gender terms or both,
the same problems occur. Is sport irredeemably bourgeois and sexist? Does the
pursuit or analysis of it by self-confessed radicals indicate their own false
consciousness?
Too many questions, I fear, for one short paper. All I can suggest here is
that the principles of the kind of analysis offered by Gruneau and Hargreaves
have the potential to solve the problems to which they give rise. For what they
offer is a way of understanding what Gruneau calls the "limitations and possibil-
ities" of human self-realization through sport. Crucial here is the notion of so-
cial practice. It is not just the values or the ideologies or the organizational form
of sport that need to be understood, but how, severally and together, they consti-
tute sport. What we call sport is an historically inherited set of practices. They
have not always been quite like this in capitalist societies. They are significantly
different (though not necessarily any better) in communist countries. In previ-
ously colonized or currently underdeveloped countries there are yet more varia-
tions. The question is not and cannot be whether sport is progressive. This is
no more useful than the characterization of opera as bourgeois: it hasn't always
been so and is not so even now on the mainland of Europe. The real question
is whether it can be changed and can contribute to a wider process of change.
The judgment is relative, not absolute. The contextualization of sport within
leisure is again helpful. The class and gender conservatism of contemporary sport
is not so evident in other leisure activities. The same judgment cannot be simply
made of, for example, popular music, the public house, or paperback fiction.
In all of these, the pressures toward conservatism may be intense but their values,
ideologies, and institutional forms are all much more available for contestation.
They are relatively more open as social practices where sport is more closed.
If a central part of cultural analysis is the identification of potential sources of
contestation, then sport may not deserve a central place. If there is to remain
a focus on sport in contemporary society, its validation may be as a study of a
set of social practices that conserve and do not challenge the existing social order.

Rethinking Sport: How to Improve Your Service

I have suggested that the next steps in developing a radical theory of sport
are the reintegration into the category of leisure, the recovery of gender relations
as central, and the recognition of sport as a conservative influence. There is al-
ways legitimate pressure to convert theoretical discussion into practical prescrip-
tion. For those who instigate or organize sporting activity, the need is particularly
acute. It cannot easily be met, especially by academicians who are often by defi-
nition highly impractical. Practice has different forms and each practitioner can
only translate abstract theory into the kinds of concrete practices relevant to his
or her situation. Mine has recently been that of co-teaching a sociology syllabus
during the final year of a sports degree and co-writing a book on leisure. The
points I've been making emerge directly from those experiences.
The validity of contextualizing sport as leisure has for me taken particular
forms. Teaching first-year sports studies students of varied background a course
called "Introduction to Sociology" had to become a review of sociological the-
ories of leisure. A history section of the final-year course automatically became
a history of sport as leisure. The significant processes and periods in the history
of sport are precisely those of leisure: origination in the early 19th century, trans-
formation in the mid-19th century, dissemination in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, incorporation in the middle-to-late 20th century. In my teaching and
writing, leisure falls naturally into place as that necessary level of analysis, in-
termediary between sport and society.
Recovering gender has proved more difficult and been less successful. The
first draft of a chapter on the history of leisure was returned by my co-author,
with the terse comment, "why is it all about men?" One answer is that the books
it was based on were all about men, but we have to get beyond a ritual and self-
perpetuating apology for the absence of women. Historical material on women
in sport and leisure may in due course be delivered for us, though it seems un-
likely to be delivered by us. We tried to write women back in. Predictably, the
result has been less than satisfactory. Another kind of solution is to study sport
as a form of male domination. Radical approaches have some work to do here.
In the study of football hooliganism, for example, social psychologists stress rnas-
culinity while Marxists stress class; the only approach that uses both is firmly
in the Durkheimian model. That football hooliganism is a distorted expression
of both class and gender identity seems beyond the grasp of radical analysis.
The conservatism of sport becomes evident, as I have indicated, when
compared with other leisure forms. This does not lessen the need to understand
it. Hindrances as well as aids to the instigation of change need to be considered.
The pressure over whether there can be a socialist strategy of sport comes from
political quarters. Our sports studies students have become much more attuned
to class, gender, and racial bias in sport, seeking more to know as practitioners
how it can be reformed. The only answer I can offer here, with an apology for
its glibness, is that the only way to reform sport is to convert it into something
else that ceases to be sport. In my experience, it is not well received.
We all live, as personal inconsistency, the cultural contradictions of capital-
ism. I happen to like playing and watching sport; it's one of the things that keeps
me going. But then I like cowboy films too. Despite some ambiguity in the myth
of the West, it is, no more than sport, a repository for alternative ideals of social
relations and social practices. In a recently published collection of essays-Towarh
2000 (1983), Raymond Williams notes how the incorporation of popular culture
by capitalism is obliquely resisted by the sense of irony and reality sustained by
some expressive forms:

It is in this very general area of jokes and gossip, of everyday singing and
dancing, of occasional dressing-up and extravagant outbursts of colour that
RADICAL THEORISTS OF SPORT 343

a popular culture more clearly persists. Its direct energies and enjoyments
are still irrepressibly active, even after they have been incorporated as diver-
sions or mimed as commercials or steered into conformist ideologies. @. 146)

Williams habitually marginalizes sport, but that is not the main reason for its
omission from this grouping. Sport is no longer, if it ever was, a major area of
cultural contestation. It may be that the challenge of female and black competi-
tors will modify its practice and that "anti-sports" may yet take hold. Change
and tension are always evident, but these are principally within rather than over
sport. Understanding how and why this has happened remains an important ques-
tion to those interested in understanding how capitalist culture works. The analy-
ses of Gruneau and Hargreaves have started to deliver some answers.

References
Central Council for Physical Recreation
1983 Committee of Enquiry into Sports Sponsorship: The Howell Report. London:
CCPR.
Clarke, J. and C. Critcher
1985 The Devil Makes Work. Champaign: University of nlinois Press.
Gruneau, R.
1983 Class, Sports, and Social Development. Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press.
Hargreaves, J.
1982 "Sport, culture and ideology." In J. Hargreaves (ed.), Sport, Culture, and
Ideology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Oakley, A.
1974 The Sociology of Housework. London: Martin Robertson.
Williams, R.
1983 Towards 2000. London: Chatto & Windus.

Note

This is the transcript of a paper delivered at an international conference on leisure

held by the British Leisure Studies Association at Sussex University in the U.K. during
July 1984.