Introducing Sociology Using the Stuff of Everyday Life

Second Edition

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Chapter 6 – Sports

Chapter Summary

Billions of people around the world love to play sports, watch professional athletes compete, and adorn themselves with team logos. Sports are not only fun to watch and play, but can help us better understand how social groups and social boundaries are formed. Knowing about and talking about sports provides a form of bridging and bonding social capital, allowing us to make friends and connections at school or work. Being a sports fan also fosters a sense of belonging, generating bonding rituals as well as in-group and out-group distinctions. Sports can be used to engender projects of cultural assimilation and create imagined communities that link us to fans in distant locations whom we will never know personally. The study of sports is a particularly useful lens for understanding race, and allows us to debunk popular essentialist ideas about the certain “natural” physical talents of racial groups. Sociologists typically view race from a social constructionist perspective that presents racial categories as social creations rather than objective biological categories. This approach sheds light on the social nature of racism and racial segregation in the case of sports and more broadly. Studying the sports world also illuminates social ideals of meritocratic fair play—and our aversion to cheaters. We discuss the sanctions that cheaters face when their deviance is discovered, as well as the ways that sports can help us understand processes of social control.

Further Reading

Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 2014. “Introduction: Racial Formation in the United States.” In Racial Formation in the United States (3rd ed). Routledge.

The introduction of Racial Formation in the United States by sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant explores how race and racism remain central to U.S. society, despite claims of moving beyond race, particularly after the election of Barack Obama. The authors critique the “post-racial” narrative, arguing that structural racial inequality persists, as seen in areas like housing, healthcare, and criminal justice. They emphasize that race is a socially constructed concept, constantly shifting in meaning over time and space. At the same time, the concept of race is deeply ingrained in American political, social, and economic structures.

Discussion questions
  • Why do the authors argue that the “post-racial” narrative is misleading? How do structural forms of racial inequality persist in the United States?
  • What does it mean to see race as a social construct? How has the meaning of race shifted over time and place, and how does it continue to impact contemporary U.S. society?
  • How do marginalized groups navigate and resist racial categorization, and what impact does this resistance have on broader understandings of race?
  • How do the authors use Malcolm X’s metaphor of the “knife” to describe racial progress in the United States? How effective or limited are civil rights advancements in addressing racial inequality?
  • What are the political implications of treating race as an evolving and socially constructed category?

Hartmann, Douglas, Alex Manning, and Kyle Green. 2023. “Postgame Analysis: Qatar 2022 and the Social Significance of Global Sport.” Contexts 22(3):62–64. doi: 10.1177/15365042231192501.

Drawing on an analysis of the 2022 Qatar World Cup, this article argues that sporting events are increasingly global spectacles where social, political, and cultural issues are dramatized for the world to see. While Qatar used the World Cup to present itself as a modern and influential global player, the event also amplified international criticism regarding its human rights record, exploitation of migrant workers, and allegations of corruption. The authors suggest that while Qatar gained global visibility, the controversies surrounding the event cast a shadow over its efforts to improve its image.

Discussion questions
  • What do the authors mean by the “cultural politics” of sport? What social messages and cultural meanings were embedded in the World Cup?
  • How does the 2022 Qatar World Cup exemplify the concept of “sportswashing,” and to what extent do you think it succeeded (or backfired) in reshaping Qatar’s global image?
  • How do global sporting events serve as both platforms for bolstering nationalism and corporate interests and spaces for contesting social issues?
  • What political challenges and opportunities are generated by global sporting events?

Wong, Lloyd L., and Martine Dennie. 2021. “‘I Feel More Canadian with Hockey.’ Identity and Belonging via Ice Hockey in a Diverse Canada.” Canadian Ethnic Studies 53(3):183–217. doi: 10.1353/ces.2021.0025.

This article explores how participation in organized ice hockey influences immigrants’ and racialized minorities’ sense of national identity and belonging in Canada. Using a Bourdieusian framework, the authors argue that hockey serves as both a space of inclusion and exclusion. While hockey offers immigrants and racialized minorities opportunities to engage with Canadian culture, the sport also maintains exclusionary practices, particularly through high participation costs and the dominance of white, male, and upper-middle-class players. Hockey can be a space for cultural integration, but it also reproduces social inequalities.

Discussion questions
  • How does hockey participation shape immigrants’ and racialized minorities’ sense of Canadian identity, according to the findings of this study? How does hockey enable the formation of an “imagined community” of Canadians?
  • In what ways do national sports promote cross-cultural interaction and integration among diverse communities? In what ways do they reproduce social inequalities?
  • How does the participation of immigrants and racialized minorities in Canadian hockey reflect pressures to assimilateinto the dominant culture?
  • How does Canadian hockey provide opportunities for integration, allowing immigrants and racialized minorities to participate while maintaining their own cultural identities?

Quizzes

Test your knowledge with the Chapter 6 quizzes!

Quiz

Active Learning – Further Online Resources

Mapping racial segregation:

“Race in the US by Dot Density” (created by Lisa Berry at the ArcGIS Living Atlas Team) uses different colored dots to represent the geographic distribution of people in the US coded by race. Explore the map to see how cities and regions can vary in their levels of racial diversity and racial segregation. https://hub.arcgis.com/maps/arcgis-content::race-in-the-us-by-dot-density/explore?location=47.303445%2C-120.537117%2C6.00

Constructing racial categories:

One way to see the social construction of race is through the racial categories presented on the census. Visit Racebox.org to see images of the American census from 1790 to 2010. What key changes do you notice? How might these be linked to shifts in race relations at particular moments in American history? http://racebox.org/

Who really wins and loses at the World Cup?

Global sporting events are celebrated as a source of national pride, as the world’s top athletes fight for their countries. However, such global sporting spectacles incur significant social costs, which are often borne at the expense of a country’s most marginalized groups. In this clip, late night host John Oliver pulls back the curtain of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMqLDhl8PXw

Flashcards

Refresh your knowledge of key terms with this chapter’s flashcards.

Essentialism

The (false) belief that all members of a given social group share a set of innate, unchanging, or " essential" characteristics that make them different in nature from other groups

Social capital

The number and intensity of the social relationships one possesses as well as the resources that members of one’s social network have available and are willing to share

Social location

An individual’s position within various overlapping social groups, such as gender, age, race, class, sexuality, religion, and language

Symbolic boundaries

Cultural lines of inclusion and exclusion that distinguish some people/groups from other people/groups; used to construct insider and outsider statuses

Bridging social capital

Robert Putnam’s term for resources that help people relate to and build social bonds of trust and reciprocity with people who are socially different and distant from them; enables people to advance their social position ("get ahead")

Bonding social capital

Robert Putnam’s term describing resources that can be used to strengthen a sense of connection, shared identity, and cohesion among people who are already similar and socially close; enables people to maintain their position ("get by")

Ritual

A cultural practice in which individuals and groups behave in stylized and symbolically meaningful ways to connect with the sacred and/or reaffirm group membership, social order, and shared values

Imagined community

Benedict Anderson’s concept describing a large social grouping whose contours and characteristics derive from the sense of commonality and connection its members imagine (commonly applied to the nation)

Collective effervescence

The intense emotional experiences that arise during social rituals; involves a break from everyday life through identification with shared symbols (or "totems")

Totem

An object, animal, force, or phenomenon used as an emblem to represent aspects of a group’s shared identity. Totems that are collectively revered serve to foster group solidarity

Assimilation

Process by which members of an ethnic minority group shed their distinct social, cultural, and economic practices and adopt those of the dominant group

Minority group

A subordinated group within a particular society. Members of minority groups have limited access to social, political, and economic power and resources, and often experience lower levels of control over their own lives relative to a dominant group

Integration

Process by which members of an ethnic minority group contribute aspects of their distinct social, cultural, and economic practices to the broader national culture (cf. assimilation)

Gender binary

The classification of gender into two distinct, opposite, and mutually exclusive categories (male/masculine and female/feminine); also involves the idea that all people should fit neatly into one of these categories

Patriarchy

A system of inequality that differentially privileges men, and organizes difference by positing masculinity in a hierarchal relationship relative to femininity; both a belief system and a form of social organization

In-group/out-group distinctions

An in-group is a group or category a person belongs to, identifies with, and regards as " we" or " us" . An out-group is a social unit with which individuals do not associate or feel they belong, and instead regard as " they" or " them" .

Stereotypes

An oversimplified portrayal used to make gross generalizations about the members of a particular social group

Social constructionism

A perspective that questions whether many taken-for-granted features of our social world are natural or inherent; suggests that individuals, groups, cultures, and organizations are shaped by social processes that vary over time and across contexts

Social construction of race

The idea that racial categories are created and maintained by social norms and institutions, rather than rooted in biological differences; the fact that racial categories change significantly over time is evidence for this perspective

Racism

The hierarchical ranking and differential treatment of racialized groups of people; goes beyond individual prejudice and is backed by institutional power and authority

Racial segregation

The practice of physically and culturally differentiating and separating people by perceived racial identity in order to maintain racial hierarchy

Racial discrimination

Differential treatment on the basis of race

Field experiment

A technique in which researchers apply the experimental method of comparing outcomes in the presence and absence of a condition of interest within a real-world setting rather than under artificial laboratory conditions

Scientific racism

The pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to justify racial discrimination, inferiority, or superiority, often used historically to legitimize racial hierarchies and social inequalities.

Norms

Often informal, but widely known and accepted ways of doing things within a particular culture

Laws

Social norms that have been formalized by the state. Laws are written in precise language and approved by a governing authority

Deviance

A violation of social norms, as defined by a particular culture

Sanction

An action that indicates the approval or disapproval of conduct relating to a social norm; may be positive (i.e., reward) or negative (i.e., penalty); informal or formal

Social control

The process of regulating individuals’ behavior to ensure that it conforms to group expectations

Cultural capital

Knowledge, skills, attitudes, and preferences that are highly valued within a particular culture and allow individuals to consume in a high-status way; can be embodied in our tastes and self-presentation, objectified in our possessions, and conferred by institutions (institutionalized)