Social Class and the Nature of Leisure and Sport Participation - Essay Example

?Social and the nature of leisure and sport participation Introduction The system in Britain has affected the ways in which leisure and sports are experienced by the various social groups within the nation. In examining the nature of social class, the extensions of gender and race naturally begin to form the various definitions of roles that affect the choices of members of those classes. The argument of whether or not identity is formed through individual choice or through acculturation into the social class in which one is born, provides context for the nature of sports and leisure as they are pursued through different social groups. However, in the 20th century, the consumerist culture has added another element to the defining characteristics of sports and leisure as they have related to the social classes. Thus, the classes are not as distinct as they once were, their nature more developed along consumerism that provides an equalizing element to the nature of choice. While social class and related issues of gender and ethnicity still have powerful influential context for the individual, consumerism also plays a role in the way in which choices about leisure time and sports activities are concerned. Despite the highly influential consumer society that presents equalities of opportunities to the classes, in the end it is still the nature of what is presented as an opportunity, in combination to how a community has developed their identity around leisure and sports that will have the greatest influence on the choices that are made by the individual. Spectator sports, in particular, create large communities of followers that can be explored for the way in which their social class relates to their choices. Social Class The social class systems in Great Britain were originally based on finite criteria that placed people into social groups according to birth, occupation, and accomplishments. These social groups were finite in that once inside a specific group, even though most often through birth, it was difficult, if not impossible, to find a way up to the next social class level. With growing globalization that begun with the industrialization of goods and services, creating a wealthy middle class who were not associated by birth to nobility, the social class structure has changed dramatically. Social classes are defined by a series of criteria that place a person into a certain strata of social grouping. In order to be a member of the upper class, one is born into the group of landowners who bare titles of the aristocracy. Even if one marries into this group, full integration will more than likely not occur. These families have long histories that are well documented, giving them position and prestige merely from being born into the right family. The upper middle class is defined by the well-educated, although most people are born into this class as well. Through higher educations and academic pursuits, the incomes are high and the perpetuation of this level of achievement is the common way for the perpetuation of the families as they continue their traditions of attending the more prestigious educational institutions.1 The middle class is the group of people who work as doctors, lawyers, architects, teachers, and those who have attained a position of respect through the means of their education and accomplishments. The nouveau rich are the people who have attained new money, their lifestyles altered by the increases in wealth that comes, not from family, but from entrepreneurial or inventive efforts. The nouveau rich is a relatively new class that was not in existence pre-industrial communities.2 This type of self-made wealth was not possible during feudal configurations of society and has only emerged with the consumerist society that has accompanied industrialization. The lower middle class consists of white collar workers without extensive educations working in jobs that are still cerebral, but not high paying and without much in the way of earned respect due to their professional pursuits. These types of jobs can be as rail ticket agents, hotel personnel, transportation dispatchers, and other various low labor, but low skilled jobs. The skilled working class consists of people who have skills, but work in blue collar jobs. People in manufacturing, construction, and other contracted types of work fit into this class. The unskilled workers work infrequently and in jobs that can be done by anyone willing to do the work. The jobs are hard and back-breaking, but take little to no skill to accomplish. The underclass usually does not work and has little to no income. This class consists of those who are unemployed for long periods of time as well as the elderly who on pensions that are so low they do not have an adequate living wage.3 Social class is often not discussed in terms of the relationships that the classes have to one another. However, the social class system is highly interrelated, each class dependent upon the others in order to retain their unique characteristics. According to Kuchich, “What is particularly striking about the British imperial culture is how often it mythologized victimization and death as foundational events in the teleology of the empire“.4 The nature of defining the social classes is often times textual development of this mythology, the classes always in conflict and tension with one another as they both need and resent the differences that exist between them. Without these mythologies, the ideologies would have a different context, the nature of how the energies and social constructions are framed would have a very different perspective. Social Class and Identity as they Relate to Sports and Leisure Social class determined how leisure time was defined and encountered. This has not changed much, even with the more loosely defined parameters of the classes. Where some leisure and sports activities require higher investment, it is likely that the upper classes will more often participate in those events. Where community pride and high levels of emotional displays are involved and where little investment is necessary, lower classes will naturally gravitate towards those activities. According to Tranter, “a concern for the stability on the part of society’s elite made some contribution to the spread of organized, codified forms of sport among the working classes of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain”.5 Team sports was, in part, an invention designed to focus the working class on an identity that was created in association with the success of the teams. According to Smith and Porter, the concept of ‘we’ connected the English identity to the accomplishment of a unifying adoration for a team associated with a region. The discourse of ‘we’ becomes a group in which ‘we won’, ‘we were cheated’ or even ‘we are ashamed’ creating meaning to the achievements or defeats of a specific team.6 The collective has a purpose, a drive in which to focus energy, thus diverting energy from social problems and political points of view that might otherwise cause distress. In this way, organized sports has become a method by which to focus energy that might otherwise be focused towards radical reforms or riotous protest. This use of sports as a unifying identifier has supported the needs of the elites, gaining a way in which to avoid the populace. The theory of hegemony, as described by Hargreaves, has a depoliticizing impact as it will make the working class more enthusiastic about entertainment which makes them far more vulnerable to consumer exploitations through the commoditization of sports.7 MacIntyre, on the other hand, has presented an argument for the good of sports, that in defining an arbitrary and meaningless goal, excellence in the means to achieve that goal serves as a representative of the nature of the supporting population. However, in comparing these concepts to Marxian theory, what Marx missed in his discourse on the nature of sport is that in the rise of capitalism and consumerism, the dominance of the upper class shifted from a repressive state to a state dependent on the mollification of the middle and lower classes. The growing consumerism that has evolved around spectator sports as well as leisure activities is relevant to the way in which families and communities, social class groups that form different sectors of society, make choices about how they will frame their leisure time and sports loyalties. The working class, as their disposable income has risen, so has the amount of money available to spend on leisure activities raised. During the early 20th century, the consumer driven merchandising of sports formed a symbiotic relationship with spectator sports which seemed to be highly attractive to the working class. Therefore, the relationship between retail sporting goods and spectator sports created an avenue of influence where by social class became relevant to the spending capacities of the classes.8 No matter what the class, in truth, it is what presents itself as an opportunity that will provide the choice in activating identity. Pfister and Hertel discuss the way in which national identity is a performance, a practice that has the effect of creating the nature of a culture through the every day and the traditions of celebration, which includes the performance of regional events such as sporting events in which national identity is fashioned.9 As Harry Cleaver describes his experiences with sports, he made assumptions and decisions about sports according to what he saw from his perspective on the subject, but when given the opportunity through his college experiences to try something outside of what the rest of his community was trying, he was able to find something deeper than that which he assigned to the sports activities that were supported in the educational institutions he attended.10 However, this does not discount the importance of social class in influencing the nature of sports and leisure choices. In first understanding the many ways in which it is more often male participation in both spectator and activity based sports, it must be understood that being male provides the context in which sports loyalties are most often built. The male gender is built upon the prescribed practices, values and dispositions that create the nature of the gender.11 Therefore, the first designation that will influence the way in which leisure is approached will be through the defined role of being male or female, the gender having definitive frameworks from which to create a role within the social structure. The nature of the social class system in England is that it has been complicated by the infusion of a multi-ethnic culture that has created new divisions that do not specifically relate to the old class system. Back calls it a state of “attrition and fragmentation” which has created a discourse on authenticity and absolutism. He discusses a choice between a fixed set of cultural norms in contrast to “a vision of cultural processes as in a constant state of flux producing creative and promiscuous route ways of identification”.12 Therefore, in discussing social class, the addition of the diversity of ethnicity and the multi-cultural complexity of society becomes relevant to understanding social class discourse. Hargreaves discusses the way in which community has become a resource in which to find identity. Communities are chosen in order to associate with the structures in which the community has been built.13 As an example, people who are gay have a community in which support is provided. This is the same effect that takes place where sports and leisure are concerned. In affiliating with a sport, whether as a spectator and fan, or as a participant, one builds an identity born of these resources of community affiliation and support. Hargreaves discusses this as a modern invention, the idea of choosing a series of identifying communities in order to construct the individual identity.14 Football Hooliganism Football has been defined as uniquely violent, the nature of the game and the cultural history of it creating a formula that results in many violent incidents that occur over the results and activities of the games. Therefore, the topic provides rich context for understanding choice, social class and the culture of a sport as it is explored through the social classes. The oddity of the event is that the violence occurs within the spectators as much as it occurs during the games. Ironically, the incidents of spectator violence, which have often times resulted in large scale riots and devastations in injuries, damage and death, have increased since the games have begun to be televised.15 According to Schachtebeck, “hooliganism” is male form of civil disobedience which has to be interpreted as a non-political rebellion against authorities and the boredom of everyday life”. 16 This brings the discussion directly into a connection to social class, the nature of the events relating to the position of the working class, the events providing an outlet for indirect dissent against the system. Hooliganism has developed into a highly organized set of groups in which going to the pub and meeting with the rest of a hooligan ‘crew’ becomes a ritualized cultural tradition in which the official crews are in contact and gathering in order to drink, watch the game, and then come into conflict with opposing crews. The events are such that the events of the game are used to create reasons, rather than catalysts of real conflict.17 The nature of the ‘hooliganism’ suggests that the social class divisions as they relate to sporting and leisure activities have a deeper meaning. The opportunity that is presented by the sporting events becomes a cultural emotional event in which expressing more than satisfaction or dissatisfaction about the events themselves is immaterial. The opportunity to express social dissatisfaction takes a precedence over the event of the game, thus the game itself having no real catalytic power upon the events of violence that are involved. If it is a social discourse on class dissatisfaction, then the sporting event is tied merely through tradition, rather than by its power to move the mobs. Sport Choices through Social Class Upper class leisure choices are often centered around their activities during their education. Sports such as polo and rowing require expensive equipment which means that those with the means to attend the schools that can afford to have the teams, and who can afford to supplement the equipment costs will more often participate in those types of sports than will the lower classes. When in 1835 sports that included cruelty to animals were outlawed, the working classes turned to quoits and bowls, which allowed for the real sport that they desired, which was gambling. According to Halladay, “some working men recognized that they could exploit fitness and strength to provide additional income and, in a few cases, escape from dull and repetitive work”.18 The evolution of sports in England became interlaced with culture, work, and traditions, some of which were transformative and exhibited aspects of social commentary. The issue of football extends beyond the event of hooliganism that is associated with it. In the late 19th century, there was a concern that the amateur leagues were being shoved out of the social intercourse of athletics with business replacing the elitism that had previously been the nature of the game. As consumerism, once again, provided an equalizing structure, the game fell from being a strictly elitist activity to becoming a game that had national participation because of the spectator aspects of the event. From the outside perspective, the game has become a resource for equalized participation, the working class having access to it as easily as the upper classes. Conclusion There are a great number of factors that contribute to the overall nature of the connection between social class and the choices made about leisure and sports activities. On a very basic level, choices are made due to socio-economic conditions that provide for the affordability of choosing to participate in a sport. More importantly, however, the way in which sports and leisure activities are engaged can be defined by the culture connections that are traditions within a social class group, the ideologies being passed from one generation to the next. Theories about the nature of sports and identity provide a framework in which it is clear that association with a sports team or as a participant supports an aspect of the individual identity as it is publicly created. In addition, on a larger scale, the elite have shifted their dominance from repression towards commercialism, taking the consumer’s focus off of social issues and placing them on the pursuit of entertainment, creating identifying associations through team fandom and support. Identity in the modern social construct becomes a combination of both personal construction through association and imposed commercialism. The duality of the association of the personal identity as individuals become a part of a collective provides for a way in which the upper class can impose its control while appeasing the masses through sporting conflict. Bibliography Back, Les. 1996. New ethnicities and urban culture: Racisms and multicultural in young lives. Abingdon: Routledge. Carrington, B. and McDonald, I. 2009. (Eds) Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport, London, Routledge. Cashmore, Ellis and Ernest Cashmore. 2003. Sports culture: An A-Z guide. London: Routledge. Edwards, Tim. 2006. Cultures of masculinity. Abington: Routledge. Fox, Kate. 2009. Watching the English the hidden rules of English behaviour. Boston: Brealey. Frosdick, Steve and Peter E. Marsh. 2005. Football hooliganism. Cullompton, Devon: Willan Publishing. Halladay, Eric. 1990. Rowing in England: a social history : the amateur debate. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hargreaves, Jennifer. 2000. Heroines of sport: The politics of difference of identity. London: Routledge. Holt, Richard. 1990. Sport and the working class in modern Britain. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kucich, John. 2006. Imperial masochism: British fiction, fantasy, and social class. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lowerson, John. 1995. Sport and the English middle classes, 1870-1914. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Nayak, Anoop. 2003. Race, place and globalization: youth cultures in a changing world. New York, N.Y.: Berg. Pfister, M., & Hertel, R. 2008. Performing national identity: Anglo-Italian cultural transactions. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Schachtebeck, Thomas. 2007. Football hooligans in England: A subculture struggling for power, respect, and male identity. Norderstedt, Germany: Verlag. Smith, P. and D. Porter. 2004. Sport and national identity in a post-war world. London: Routledge. Tranter, N L. 1998. Sport, Economy, and Society in Britain, 1750-1914. 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