The History of Sport Flashcards
Why study the history of sport, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, the Olympics, Medieval Britain, folk games, public schools, codification, amateurism vs professionalism, women in sporting history.
What can history tell us about sport?
Coakley and Pike (2014), to understand sports today, we need an understanding of what physical games and sport activities were like in the past. Few cultures had physical games that resemble sports as we know them today.
Critical theory: This can be used to examine how people with the most power have the greatest impact on the ways in which sports are defined, organised and played. This approach allows us to consider the existence and consequences of social inequality in societies (Coakley and Pike, 2009).
Polley (2008) examines what the study of sport can gain from history:
- Sport has been played differently in different settings across time. The term sport is relative and variable.
- Work on the history of sport has shown up ways sports in the past have been linked to wider contexts, both through the opportunities and constraints that fenced the events, and through the forms that sports took
It can also overcome myths e.g. William Webb Ellis and the development of rugby. How rugby came to be, has a much more complex history than simple tales instigate. (Division of the rugby league and rugby union).
What were sports like in Ancient Greece?
The games were linked to mythology and religious beliefs. They were often held with festivals that combined prayer, sacrifices and religion with music, dancing and ritual feasts. Warrior sports were usually played at festivals. Serious injuries and death was common. Nudity. The locations and dates of Greek festivals were linked to religious beliefs e.g. Olympia and Greek Gods. The games at Olympia were held every four years (the Ancient Olympics). Sports events were based on the interests of able-bodied young men. Women were prohibited.
What were sports like in Ancient Rome?
Physical contests and games were used to train soldiers and provide entertainment.
Events were taken from Greek games, but training was focused upon preparing obedient soldiers. Thus, contests increasingly took the form of circuses and gladiatorial combat. Focus on entertaining the masses and control. Women were usually excluded.
What is Guttman’s (1978) criteria he uses to compare modern and ancient sports?
1) Secularism
2) Equality
3) Specialization
4) Rationalization
5) Bureaucratization
6) Quantification
7) Records
What were sports like in relation to folk games?
Games/sport activities in Europe and North America began to resemble forms of sport that are popular today. But these were not organised activities. It is often assumed that ‘modern’ sport was invented in the mid-Victorian years (1850s-1880s) and sport before this was ‘traditional’. ‘Folk games’ or ‘traditional’ sport was played by peasants from the medieval period.
No stipulations about the number of participants, or that there should be equal numbers. No written rules. No clear demarcation of the playing area. Parts of a wider pattern of amusement. Part of the calendar to celebrate religious festivals. Often involved very high levels of violence.
Fighting was the most popular individual sport (see Holt, 1990). Women = usually excluded. Folk games could involve the killing or baiting of animals. There were a number of attempts to ban folk games.
According to Holt (1992), why did folk games decline?
Cilvilising processes
Enlightenment project
Labour discipline and organisation
Culture of respectability of labour
Public schools
How did public schools influence sports?
In the 18th and early 19th century the English public schools were transformed from charitable institutions into boarding schools for fee-paying pupils. This resulted in a power discrepancy in terms of social class (Dunning & Sheard, 2005). Types of sport played by public school boys were adaptations of the folk tradition.
Led to an expansion in sports.
- The development of a new middle class ‘manliness’.
- Character building? (Walvin, 1994)
- Sexual promiscuity?
- Sport and manly energy? (Crosset, 1990)
What other reasons are there for the expansion of sports?
- Changing attitudes to health.
- The rise of the Muscular Christians.
- Social Darwinism & the survival of the fittest.
- The ideology of competition and fair play.
How did public schools lead to the codification of sport? (rule making)
1845: Rugby school produced the first written rules of football: No hacking with the heel or above the knee is fair. A player standing up to another may hold one arm only, but may hack him or knock the ball out of his hand if he attempts to kick it or go beyond the line of touch. No player may wear projecting nails or iron plates on the soles or heels of his shoes or boots.
In 1847, Eton created its own rules: The ball may not be caught, carried, thrown, nor struck by the hand.
As young men left public schools and universities, their favoured football codes left with them thus leading to a spread in different forms of football and the expansion of the game.
Confusion over rules of ‘football’ (Dunning & Sheard, 2005). Meetings held in London in 1863 to try and establish a definite code of rules. Clashes between supporters of what would become the rival national games (football and rugby union).
What is the concept of amateurism?
Amateurism and fair play. An ideal type. Amateur values were threatened by professionalism. The amateur code as: ‘a means of excluding working-class players from high-level competition. Moral arguments were a means of class exclusivity’ (Holt, 1992: 104).
This division between amateur and professional was used historically as a means of social class distinction. Sports have variously defined professionals as anyone who worked for a wage from the ‘gentleman amateur’ to separate the social classes (Coakley and Pike, 2009: 355).
Cricket is a good example.
What role have women had in sport over history?
Social Darwinism proves ‘scientifically’ to the Victorians that women are biologically inferior to men. Maternity = the highest function of womanhood (Hargreaves, 2002).
Women’s involvement in sport does not challenge their inferior status. The bourgeois lady remained, even on the tennis court: ‘the wifely ornament of beauty, a physically incapacitated player, inhibited and subdued by convention’ (Hargreaves, 2002: 55).
Contradictions in societal beleifs that saw exericse and sport as something that is good for health but if a woman engaged in it, it was damaging to her and her ability to reproduce. Physicians saw women as the prisoner of their reproductive system. The ‘conservation of energy’ theory. Claimed that: ‘strenuous games, especially during puberty and menstrual periods, drained energy from vital organs, thus damaging women’s bodies irreparably and threatening the survival of the race’ (McCrone 1987: 97).
Activities to be avoided for women e.g. cycling, swimming, riding, games and athletics. Only exercise of ‘a suitable kind, in moderation, without overindulgence or risk of strain, was considered to enhance the health of women and their potential to conceive healthy children’ (Hargreaves, 2002: 57).
