Assessing the sociology of sport: On the hopes and fears for the sociology of sport in the US

Reflections on the trajectory of the sociology of sport

It is, perhaps, the best of times…As we use the 50^th anniversary of the International Review for the Sociology of Sport’s inaugural issue to reflect on the state of the field more generally, I am prompted to ask whether the sociology of sport has ever been more productive or diverse. In 1965, IRSS was the sole refereed journal outlet specifically for the sociology of sport research. Today, it now competes with, amongst other serial scholarly publications, the Sociology of Sport Journal, Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics, and the Journal of Sport & Social Issues. These journals collectively produce 28 issues per year, and when combined with the outpourings from sport-related journal special issues (recent examples including the British Journal of Sociology, Cultural Studies-Critical Methodologies, Ethnic & Racial Studies, Social Inclusion), book series, edited anthologies, and monographs, there is clear evidence of an expansive and generative research platform advancing the sociology of sport as a flourishing field of intellectual inquiry.

Within the US context, one of the compelling myths of origin for the sociology of sport depicts the field’s formative (and unapologetically sub-disciplinary) phase from the 1960s into the 1970s, as little more than an unresolvable tussle between structural functionalist and conflict theory approaches to sport (Loy and Booth, 2000). As well as being steeped in a form of academic Americocentrism, this dualistic characterization is largely inaccurate since it obscures the diversity of approaches and theories mobilized during that period. Nonetheless, previous levels of scholarly heterogeneity within the sociology of sport have been confounded by the current climate, characterized as a multiplicity of theories, methods, and even objects and scales of study informed by sociology as but one of a number of disciplinary influences (Dart, 2012). If not wholly shorn of its capacity to derail a promising academic career, sport would also appear to have become a more palatable topic to researchers, tenure and promotion committees, and perhaps even hiring authorities, outside its customary worlds of kinesiology, sport and exercise science, and/or sport studies.

Over the past decade or more, there has been a discernible sport creep, whereby the inalienable social, cultural, political, and economic magnitude of contemporary sport has infiltrated even some of the most intransigent academic minds. Coupled with the breakdown (indeed, one could consider it to almost be an inversion) of traditional academic distinctions between high and low culture forms as legitimate objects of analysis, sport (broadly construed to encompass the wide array of physical cultural forms, including organized sport, in addition to dance, exercise, health, leisure, movement, recreation, and rehabilitative-related practices) has increasingly energized the critical gaze of scholars from fields as diverse as American studies, anthropology, architecture, gender studies, geography, Latin American studies, media and communication studies, race and ethnic studies, and urban studies (cf. Jones, 2012; Paradis, 2012; Smart, 2005; Trimbur, 2013; Wesolowski, 2011). While many of these researchers may be blissfully unaware of the field as they gleefully discover sport—oftentimes contributing to the rediscovery of various sporting wheels, with little or no recognition of the work that preceded theirs—nonetheless, they are contributing to the body of knowledge within the field.

Both internally and externally, it is evident that—if indeed it ever was ever the case—the sociology of sport is no longer dutifully beholden to either the impulses of a parent discipline fraught with debilitating schisms and intransigence, or to an imprecise yet nonetheless restrictive object of study. Put differently, much (but by no means all) of the work that currently falls under the sociology of sport label would not generally be considered to be sociological in a traditional sense, nor does it necessarily interrogate sport (narrowly construed). To some this development may be seen as being regretful and debilitating. However, I consider it to be wholly the opposite. That the sociology of sport has matured into an unapologetically interdisciplinary, empirically diverse, and beneficially contentious field that eschews orthodoxies of any kind is surely something to be celebrated and nurtured.

Assessing the challenges of the sociology of sport

It may become the worst of times…Having painted a positive picture of the present state of sport sociology, I have to admit to being considerably more apprehensive regarding its future. For despite what I would characterize as its rude intellectual health, there are very real institutional structures and logics that look to threaten its very existence. In this vein, I have been accused by various constituencies of something akin to a scaremongering regarding the future of the sociology of sport. Nonetheless, I happen to think that it is irresponsible to consider the field as being other than in the early throes of a potentially terminal crisis. Put differently, the abundance of sport-related published research at the present time should not belie what are systemic challenges to the field’s very existence.

In a recent tweet (March 8, 2014), the British sociologist Roger Burrows (@rjburrows) provided what one would hope to be sound advice for aspiring academics: “Study the subject you love at an institution that loves your subject”. The questions for sociology of sport scholars are plain: which institutions love your subject; and precisely where, in that institution, is your subject loved? From my experience, I have to surmise that within the US corporate university there exists no surfeit of love for the sociology of sport. Indeed, I am hard pressed to name a university in the US where the sociology of sport is fully supported and valued, as it was in times past at institutions such as the University of Iowa, the University of Illinois, Miami University (OH), and the University of Massachusetts, to name but a few.

Within the US context, if indeed they exist at all, sociologists of sport increasingly tend to operate in perilous isolation, either within departments of kinesiology/sport science, sociology, sport management programs, or, as nonconformist eccentrics in less customary disciplinary homes. The idea of an institutionally concentrated critical mass of sociology of sport scholars has thus been rendered an all too easily abandoned academic luxury, by administrators driven by fiscal efficiencies and managerial exigencies, as opposed to scholarly and social democratic advancements (Giroux, 2009). However, from an outsider’s perspective, the US scenario would not appear to be replicated in the rest of the world. Sizeable and productive assemblages of sociology of sport-related scholars presently exist in institutions located in Canada (i.e. the Queen’s University, the University of Alberta, the University of British Columbia, and the University of Toronto), New Zealand (i.e. the University of Otago, and Waikato University), and the United Kingdom (i.e. the University of Bath, the University of Brighton, and Loughborough University). Perhaps there is something unique about the American higher education context that is responsible for the seeming demise of the sociology of sport therein? Or, more forebodingly, the scenario within the US may presage that within the rest of the sociology of sport world. Given the spatial constraints of this discussion, I will focus on one such element of the US context that has, I believe, potentially negative implications for the broader sociology of the sports community.

The emergence of kinesiology as a de facto science of physical activity has had an unintended yet nonetheless debilitating influence on the sociology of sport within the US setting (Andrews, 2008). Originally imagined as a truly comprehensive and interdisciplinary project, the grant-driven scientization and biomedicalization associated with the rise of the corporate university more generally has led to a questioning of the social sciences and humanities place within kinesiology (Ingham, 1997). Hence, the resources (faculty lines, physical space, internal research funding etc.) allocated to the sociology of sport are routinely purloined in favor of those areas of inquiry more attuned to the foci and methods of major funding sources. As a consequence, within many institutions, adjunct professors or non-tenure track instructors now increasingly teach the sociology of sport. If this trend were to continue, it has significant consequences for the field, since kinesiology departments have been an important (if by no means the only) fulcrum in the sociology of sport’s formation and development in the US. First, the decline in tenure track faculty in the area negatively impacts on the future development of sociology of sport research. Second, and allied to the first, without tenure track faculty mentoring graduate students, there is no capacity to train the next generation of sociology of sport researchers. Without kinesiology as a stable and generative institutional home for the sociology of sport, we are reliant on (in a disciplinary sense) disparately located, and oftentimes only loosely networked, sport scholars to further the field’s body of knowledge. To place the onus on researchers who customarily derive their academic capital through more disciplinarily legitimate pursuits, while focusing on sport as their other thing, is an unfair burden, and for that matter, an unsustainable condition for the field.

The seemingly systematic dismantling of the sociology of sport within the US kinesiology context thus creates a situation in which the field’s evisceration—its “intellectual closure” (Subramaniam et al., 2014)—is a very real possibility. As well as resulting from a rampant institutional and epistemological retrenchment that justifies, as it normalizes, the programmatic evisceration of the sociology of sport, the attendant climate of intellectual insecurity and professional paranoia constrains the individual agency and the independence of aspiring—and in some cases fully established—sociology of sport academics. Many are thus compelled to make “day-to-day choices about what to study, how to collect data, what/where to publish” based more on the reward structures of the corporate university than the desire to advance knowledge production related to the sociology of sport for academic and societal advancement. Under such pressures, individuals may benefit, yet the sociology of sport as a collective and enduring enterprise becomes unavoidably, and perhaps fatally, impoverished (Subramaniam et al., 2014: 17).

Future directions for the sociology of sport: on the hopes and fears for the sociology of sport in the US

The fact that the current state of the field is characterized by distinctly positive and negative tendencies, places the sociology of sport at an important crossroads in its development. The choices would appear to be plain. Either we can allow impressive levels of research productivity to blind us from the institutional marginality of the field and, in doing so, potentially be accused of sleepwalking into academic oblivion; or, we can confront the field head-on with the goal of advancing the place of sociology of sport projects within the current higher educational context. Not being, by nature, the most proactive of individuals, even I am convinced that the only way forward is the latter option. However, this will necessitate collective thought and action on how best to realize this goal. In other words, rather than working in what could become a hopeless isolation, I believe that those within the field as a whole need to initiate an open and constructive dialogue regarding the best strategies for realizing a sustainable and meaningful future for the sociology of sport.

The irony of the sociology of sport’s institutional decline within the American university over the past three decades derives from the concomitant expansion (in cultural and economic terms) of elite organized sport within American society more generally, and on American university campuses more specifically. One would hope that sport’s increased societal significance alone would release its widespread acceptance as a forum for critical inquiry and pedagogy. However, only the most optimistic soul would anticipate this being the case, so we cannot leave the field’s continuance to chance. Adopting a different tack, a distinguished colleague and friend of mine (though not someone located within the sociology of sport per se) regularly opines that people simply need to do “good work” to secure their own futures, and that of the field more generally. However, as I routinely respond to this assertion, the sociology of sport abounds with truly excellent work yet we are still confronted by the field’s marginal status. So, evidently doing “good work” is not sufficient. We need a different approach and course of action, and one that is at odds with the institutional logics of the contemporary university.

The tenure track system within American universities encourages the worst type of competitive intellectual individualism, eschewing meaningful collective actions and affiliations focused on the development of anything other than the scale and impact of our published research. While we as individuals may benefit, in purely careerist terms, from this form of hyper-individualized scholarly logic and efficiency, the very precarity of the sociology of sport demands a more conscious commitment to it as a collective project; lest future junior professors awake from the maelstrom of the tenure process to find the field in extremis, if not worse. In other words, I am suggesting we need to take seriously, very seriously, our individual and collective responsibility for the future of the field. Yet, how to collectively realize the sociology of sport as a more coherent and sustainable project? To be blunt, I am only beginning to think through this crucial problem, and am certainly looking to others more steeped in this discussion for inspiration and direction. One approach could be to open conversations focused on those national locations in which the sociology of sport is—in relative terms—thriving, to consider, and learn from, the contextual reasons for its success. Equally, the demise of the sociology of sport within the US context needs to be acknowledged and critically dissected in order to attempt to reverse the process, and to also provide constituencies in other settings with knowledge and insight needed to avoid a similar decline.

In more specific terms, we need to engage in extended and doubtless contentious dialogues that consider, amongst other things, the following issues. How can we re-envision the sociology of sport in order to extricate it from its contemporary crisis (for one such offering see Silk and Andrews (2011))? How, following Vertinsky (2009), do we formulate more productive cross-disciplinary relationships with colleagues in our home departments or programs (be they kinesiology, sport and exercise science, sport studies, sport management, or sociology), so as to underscore the centrality of the sociology of sport to the departmental and institutional mission? How do we negotiate the very real opportunities and threats for the sociology of sport posed by the healthification of departments of kinesiology in the US? How do we forge closer ties between the sociology of sport researchers located in disparate disciplines? How do we realize the better promotion and dissemination of extant sociology of sport research, in order to avoid the tendency to reinvent the (sociology of) sport wheel? Finally, in Burrows’ terms, and without wishing to sound trite, how do we make the US corporate university love our subject? I do not have what I would consider to be in any way satisfactory answers to these questions, but I know each of them needs careful consideration. Moreover, collectively they point to conversations over the future shape and viability of the sociology of sport that must be had, and soon.