On Geographers and sport.
A personal rumination.
I could never grasp the notion that coming
first, winning, and triumphing were what sport was all about. I was quite
happy running about for 45 minutes in an energetic and friendly sort of
way. If there was any competition, it was only personal - to run faster or
further than last time. Same in academia - chasing success too
vigorously requires too many dubious shortcuts, and too much pushing
others aside. Pushing yourself on, and cooperating with others, is much
more satisfactory I think.
Later in life, what continues to trouble me is
a) the pernicious effects of the competition drive - this is a social
and psychlogical characteristic, which finds a handy outlet in organised
competitive sport. It also accounts for some of the ageist and gender
stereotyping that my sister and others referred to yesterday. It excludes
a majority.
b) silly money in sport - transfer fees, poaching, buyouts, stadium costs.
I think anybody of a leftist pursuasion with interests in a less
capitalist system, will be troubled by this commodification of a fairly
basic and unproblematic form of social interaction between human beings.
In Africa I found
identification with a 'team' takes peoples' minds off grinding poverty and
other problems they face. Here and in the US it is the Murdoch deals and
ridiculous salaries I have trouble with, not that people enjoy sport and
want to keep fit.
c) representation of sport. The media are quite capable of hyping sporting
achievement more than, say, encouraging critical discussion on Yugoslavia.
Sports pages in my paper are just wasted ink, at least in our household.
Most radio and TV interviews with sports personalities are inane, and
frequently caricatured by the interiewers themselves. Yet sporting heroes
are elevated to demigod status. Only twice in my life have I been to a
'stadium' event. The second was to see Chicago vs Philadelpia play
basketball. Michael Jordan did his usual leaping about. Inspiring, but his
prowess is given most of its power by a social construction - how many
people would have been amazed by such acheivement if he had remained
outside a bloated and overpaid professional system, that appears on TV
every night, shooting hoops in the neighbourhood? And have he and his
colleagues really used their success and money to act as good citizens?
I never know who is playing in the British Cup Final, and I care even
less. I appreciate 90% of the British population do not feel this way. But
if you are renting a sports channel to watch the game, buying expensive
tickets or a soccer uniform, or misbehaving on the terraces you are
complicit in a sporting machine that is feeding the pockets of too many
corporate interests - in the media and sports management.
Sorry if this
seems like snobbish anarchism - but the task starts with teaching children
that winning is not all, and that being 'gutted' when your team loses is a
passing phenomenon.
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Dr Simon Batterbury
Dept. of Geography & Earth Sciences
Brunel University
Uxbridge Middx. UB8 3PH, UK
http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/geo
tel +1895 274000 fax +1895 203217
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