Exploring the Significance of Sport and Leisure in Contemporary Society

1. Chapter Fifteen Sport and leisure

2. Objectives • To explore the significance of the difference between ‘leisure’ and ‘work’. • To examine how social rituals associated with sports contribute to the social construction of masculinity and national identity. • To discuss the ways in which local expressions of sport and leisure are connected to global processes. • To discuss how social divisions of class, ethnicity, age, gender and ability are reproduced through sports and leisure activities. • To compare the figurational and postmodern approaches to theorising sports and leisure.

3. Leisure and work • Leisure and sport are vast and important areas of social and personal life • Leisure and sport are activities that are considered distinct from work • Distinction sometimes problematic • People increasingly have more time and resources to put into sport and leisure activities

4. Models of sport and leisure • Two different models of sport and leisure • ‘Power and performance’ • Extension of competitive, individualistic world of work • ‘Pleasure and participation’ • Based on holistic perspective, need for relaxation, sociability

5. Sport, leisure & ritualism • Promotion of social values and ideologies in and through sport and leisure • Sport/leisure and other ‘sub-systems’ linked • Occasions for social ritual and solidarity • Variation related to social divisions • Examples of sport as ritual • Masculinity • Crucial importance of sporting image and success to men • Nationalism • Function of sport to ‘bind’ the nation together

6. Leisure globalisation • Sport and leisure have ‘gone global’ • Multi-national corporations and sponsorship deals crossing state boundaries • Global ‘mediafication’ of big sport and leisure events • Tourism and travel as an example leisure globalisation • De-differentiation • Tendency in contemporary culture to blur boundaries such as the local and the global, representations and reality, the past and the present, politics and culture

7. Sport, leisure & social divisions • Class • Leisure as a measure of success (‘the good life’) • High culture/popular culture defined by those with economic and cultural capital (Pierre Bourdieu) • Age and generation • Largely determines preferences for leisure pursuits • Ability/disability • Increased visibility • Emergence of the Paralympic games • But also serves to underline the greater advantage and visibility of the able-bodied

8. Sport, leisure & social divisions • Ethnicity • Cultural differences produce different leisure patterns • Participation of Maori and Polynesians in some sports but not others • Linked to class • Gender • The mis-attention and mis-represenation of women and sport (Clare Simpson) • Women receive less media coverage than men • Women feminised and stereotyped by the media

9. Theorising leisure • ‘Structural’ perspectives • Marxism • Class as an explanation for the social division of leisure • Feminism • Gender as an explanation for the social division of leisure • Figurational approach (Norbert Elias) • The ‘civilising process’ • Emotionally charged and ‘vulgar’ activities become regularised according to evermore redefined conventions • Sport as a ‘ritualised quest for excitement’ • Forms of sport/leisure dependent on ‘figurations’ • Class, ethnicity, gender

10. Theorising leisure • Postmodernism (Jean Baudrillard) • Unnecessary to distinguish between ‘real’ social processes and their supposedly ‘superficial’ representations in contemporary society • No simple division between work and leisure • World mediafied to the extent that it is difficult to tell what is ‘image’ or ‘reality’ • Hyper-reality • A clear distinction can no longer be made between communication about reality and reality itself

11. Summary • It is often problematic trying to distinguish between leisure and work but more time and resources are being put into leisure activities • Social values and ideologies are promoted through sport and leisure • Sport and leisure are reflective of both social solidarity and social divisions • Sport and leisure are becoming increasingly globalised • There are different ways of considering the role of sport and leisure in contemporary society • Postmodernism vs Figurational approach