Page 38 - Sport Culture and the Media

UNDERSTANDING SPORT AND MEDIA || 19

development of the division of labour in capitalist and industrial societies,
as the new complexity and profusion of mass-produced goods and available
services demanded a much wider range of occupations, skills and tasks
(Durkheim 1960; Marx 1967). Furthermore, the now rigid and carefully calcu-
lated segments of work time in factory (and later office) labour created its own
alternative – leisure time – that demanded an equivalent level of planning and
organization to be utilized to the full (Brown and Rowe 1998). This ‘rationaliza-
tion’ (Weber 1968) of the rhythms of work and leisure in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries was accompanied, as we have seen, by the growing
standardization of the rules of various sports and strong pressure from the
authorities to stamp out the most dangerous and destructive pursuits – in the
name both of propriety and also of labour force efficiency (a gin-sodden or
injured worker is also an unproductive one). This process, which he links to a
more general ‘civilizing process’, is described by Elias as the ‘sportization of
pastimes’, whereby:
The framework of rules, including those providing for ‘fairness’, became
more precise, more explicit and more differentiated. Supervision of
the observance of the rules became more efficient; hence penalties for
offences against the rules became less escapable. In the form of ‘sports’,
in other words, game-contests involving muscular exertion attained a
level of orderliness and of self-discipline on the part of participants not
attained before. In the form of ‘sports’, moreover, game-contests came to
embody a rule-set that ensures a balance between the possible attainment
of a high-combat tension and a reasonable protection against physical
injury.
(Elias 1986b: 151)
This ‘figurational’ perspective judges the development of organized sport to be
evidence of a general shift away from the unrestrained bodily expressions that
left the participants in some physical jeopardy (ranging from pub brawls to
‘knock down’, bare knuckle fighting) to a more disciplined activity in which a
clear division existed between spectators and performers. In the case of fist
fighting, for example, it evolved under the 1867 ‘Queensbury Rules’ and sub-
sequent restrictions into a boxing contest in a ring of prescribed size over a
specified number of rounds of limited duration between only two fighters of
similar size, both wearing padded gloves, permitted only to strike particular
parts of the body (‘no hitting below the belt!’), and so on. Bouts are now
quickly ended by the referee when one boxer becomes defenceless and risks
(even more) serious injury, while medical staff closely monitor the boxers’
health. The efficacy of these measures is disputed – Eric Dunning (1999: 59),
for example, cites research that gloves enable boxers to punch harder and more