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Sport as a means to political and social influence/change

  
 
Goodness Gracious Meme
16:25 / 16.06.05
This is something that I've been thinking about for a while. Apologies if it's a little broad to start with, perhaps if there's interest we can have sub-branches of this thread opening out.

I'm particularly interested in looking at the possible political and social power of sport.

A few thoughts to start with. As someone who would probably self-define as a 'sports fan', I've always been fascinated by the power that sport seems to have to construct and maintain grand narratives.

At any time, it seems to be sport(s) embodies/gains its impact from in various aspects of the cultures it lives within as well as setting up networks beyond cultures:

for example, as per Duncan's example in the 'football, football' thread, in what other endeavour would you expect to find Sweden and Senegal encounter each other in front of a world-wide audience? And for the Senegalese to walk away winners'.

-Consistent with this is the importance of sport to many political regimes as a means of sending out messages to the world. See eg: 1936 Berlin Olympics, sporting sanctions against South Africa/the 'Rebel Tour', Use of the Olympics as Cold War procession grounds by both the Eastern Bloc and US etc etc

-Then you have the many ways in which sporting organisations make productive interventions at a grass-roots level: eg many UK football/cricket teams after school clubs in deprived areas, councils offering sporting activities to promote healthier life-styles amongst kids, and an example that crosses both the strands here mentioned and that I want to plug:

Gerry Storey has run the Holy Family Gym in Belfast for decades, training, amongst others, Barry McGuigan.

The gym has always been non-denomenational and has been one of the few places in Belfast that young kids from both sides of the divide would meet on friendly and social terms. In a bbc article, Storey describes how:

"It's a place that has saved lives, taking boys off the killing streets and offering them the controlled aggression of the ring - an alternative to the cycle of murderous sectarian violence."

Thoughts?
 
 
astrojax69
22:15 / 16.06.05
you made most of the relevant points meme!

there is much good sport does, especially in the playing. some of the aspects of the watching [fans] is being discussed elsewhere in this forum, so let's stick to the playing, and the social implications from manipulating the event of sport by authorities, etc.

i played football (soccer, as it was/is in australia) from about five or six after doctyors told my parents sport would be good for a chronic bronchial kid. i chose football because i hated league - still do - and was too small for those rugby type sports anyway. so health has been an important element of my understanding of, and appreciation for, sport.

i am still inspired when i hear of eleite sportspeope who have chronic health issues that must be monitored while they participate, but do so anyway, overcoming what is seen by the wider community as a 'disability' of sorts. this sort of example is inspirational and is a good use of the 'sportsperson as role model'.

the imposed 'role model' arguments (usually in the press when elite sportspeople are caught doing something underhanded or immoral) more often gall me. i don't think athletes should be held up for their 'whole life' behaviour. i am not interested in a chef's out of kitchen interest in whatever turns them on, but may rave about their food. same for authors - so what they spend their non-writing time watching brady bunch re-runs if their novels are captivating, inspiring and entertaining to me? this non-sport associations that press and community leaders seem to push is antithetical to what the athleticism message of their behaviours, their playing the game, should signify.

broadly, we should all do some exercise, and as many people lack motivation to pursue solitary pursuits - we are a social animal after all - it seems entirely logical that we should organise activities. this is what sport generally is. even solitary pursuits like running, golf, swimming, etc are done in communal environments. i would suggest that this has been the case since time immemorial.

of course there is also the competitive aspect of sport, which again plays on the animal instincts. if we have to compete with the fellows of our species and we have to get exercise, eureka! let's put the two together and get them out the way at the same time so we get on and watch brady bunch re-runs in peace... seems a logical explanation for the ubiquitous nature of competitive sport across the globe.

i will leave politics and sport to others, or other posts in this thread. have to get back to work, dammit! (wonder if the boss might be in for a kick about...?)
 
 
Jake, Colossus of Clout
19:30 / 19.07.05
Any discussion of sports and social change should include Jackie Robinson.

Quick summary for those not from the U.S.- Jackie Robinson was the first player to break the color barrier in baseball, in 1947. This was when the South was strictly segregated, and the rest of the country was pretty much informally segregated. This was also when baseball was more popular than any U.S. sport, before or after. Almost every kid in the U.S. played ball, and baseball players were treated like royalty. The vast majority of Americans followed baseball and ballplayers. Major League Baseball was also all white. However, there existed Negro League baseball, which had stars who were at least as good as their Major League counterparts (particularly Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige). Branch Rickey, the GM of the Brooklyn Dodgers, while being against racism and segregation, also saw an opportunity to access a vast pool of cheap talent (Rickey was cheap as hell when it came to salaries) and an exciting, fast-paced style of play to get people to the ballpark, and signed Robinson to be the Dodgers' second baseman, which caused a HUGE controversy in the U.S., as baseball was sacred to a ton of people, including racist fuckheads.

So this was huge. Millions and millions of people were exposed to Robinson's crazy baserunning, but more importantly to his great personality- Rickey picked Robinson not only for his abilities, but because he needed to be a class act, because a lot of ballplayers were racist hicks. Satchel Paige would have literally killed somebody. It was the first exposure a lot of insular white people had to a black man on such a grand stage, and he changed a lot of people's attitudes. He also inspired a whole generation of black people. In my opinion, and I'm totally biased because he's one of my heroes, Jackie Robinson did more to get whites and blacks to see eye to eye than anyone else in his era. Baseball was the most pervasive form of entertainment in the U.S., and he was the biggest story. Rickey had his word not to react to the people who gave him shit for the first few years, but after that he gave better than he got, and by then there were more people on his side than against him. He became a preeminent civil rights speaker and was just generally a kick-ass guy. He also wom six pennants with the Dodgers before they moved to L.A. and turned into a fucked-up right-wing organization.

He was definitely the most culturally influential athlete in U.S. history, and he's a prime example of how sports can be effective vehicles for social change. Sorry to go on and on about the guy, but he was awesome and I had some chronic earlier- that stuff makes me into an even bigger baseball nerd than I am normally.
 
 
astrojax69
20:27 / 19.07.05
rugby and cricket playing nations not playing against serth effrika while it ws dominated by apartheid policies was a strong motivator for internal change in that country. not a singular cause, but a player, nonetheless, in the eventual disintegration of the segregation [that rolls off the tongue, eh?]

that said, i am always in two minds about this. yes, there was a strong effect here, and there is certainly an attempt at this ploy with the current regime in zimbabwe, with cricketing nations coming over to not playing them. but in some ways, i agree with some of the sentiment zimbabweans expressed when the australians threatened not to play, that this was entertainment that they craved and was a very rare highlight of otherwise bleak lives, and please could we come play with them. the people, not the government, were the ones most hurt (at some levels - i know this is a complex issue) by australia's stance.

we eventually relented, but some players made individual choices not to play. this seems to be the best solution - let the players decide. let history damn them for it one way or another, but let it be on their own shoulders.


sport seems to galvanise nations, witness brasil and football, but there doesn't seem to be a great social effect from this, other than short term solidarity. there is little long-term social change. what to make of this?
 
 
The Falcon
00:28 / 24.07.05
Actually, the other example I used in Football Football was Roberto Carlos' belief that Brazil had been saved a revolution or two by the sport - I presume this was meant by him as a beneficial thing; it seems to galvanise to the extent of an (for the most part, given how wonderful the country largely is at the sport) enjoyable day off.

My knowledge of Brazillian politics is limited roughly to Max Cavalera (of Sepultura and, latterly, Soulfly) interviews, but they certainly seemed to tend toward the notion that a revolution might well be an idea. Though he still went with Kerrang! journo Steffan Chirazi to see their triumphant 1994 final. So...
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:28 / 25.07.05
Elsewhere in South America, the 1978 World Cup in Argentina was intended to legitimise the Junta - which I think also feeds into South Africa and situations like the German Olympics where a repressive régime sought to use the international participatory community of sport for political ends.

The 1978 World Cup was meant to be a showcase of how the Junta was a respectable government leading Argentina to prosperity. Part of that was the creation of new stadia and public works. However, to do that they demolished and dispossessed thousands of their own people, bulldozing the shanty-towns within sight of the stadia. With a foreign press they could not browbeat or intimidate arriving in Argentina in numbers, it was impossible for the Junta to conceal their brutality, torture and murder of political opponents, and the event became a disaster for them, setting in train the pressure and isolation that led ultimately (arguably) to the fall of Galtieri's military government. Interestingly, los Monteneros (Argentina's largest anti-Junta group) twigged this, and called on footballers not to boycott the World Cup, because the World Cup would result in so many journalists arriving in Argentina looking for stories that the Junta couldnot possibly control them all.
 
 
The Falcon
12:59 / 25.07.05
And there's the infamous Football War between El Salvador and Honduras, of course.

Football's culpability here is debatable, but that's what they called it.
 
  
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