Sociology: What are SPORTS for? (video)

Mark Wilson; WTD; Sociology of Sport (iResearchNet) trans. into English by Wisdom Quarterly

Vainglory (false glory) in vicarious (yours not my) victory (rankonesport.com)

"Ideology" and sports refers to the way in which sports, as a leisure activity, impacts the body of ideas that reflect the beliefs of a social group or system of politics.

Indeed, the ideological capacity of sports can be considered so great that it may now be appropriate to rework Karl Marx’s saying ["Sports is the opium of the masses"], in that sports, rather than religion, is the new "opiate of the people."

Without question, explicit links between ideology and sports have their roots in the work of the thinker Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School.

To summarize, Adorno argues that sports, like many other forms of popular culture, is a frivolous activity that reinforces the inequalities of the capitalist system and prohibits critical thought.

At the heart of Adorno’s evaluation lay two defining principles, participant competition and the consumption of spectacle.

 

As for participant competition, Adorno argues that sport emits dangerous social messages that resonate with the sports playing working class or "proletariat."

For example, sport is ultimately tied to ‘‘instrumental reason,’’ meaning that it serves a purpose of getting us (those in subordinate social positions) in the habit of accepting the demands of material life without questioning them.

Therefore, Adorno’s accusation specifically aims at the means justifies the end rationale of decadent consumer (bourgeois) society, in that sport creates the message that if the sports player works/trains hard he or she would have more success.

This is the ideological communication from the capitalist system. Building on this, Adorno saw that the value of sport is in permitting competition between members of the same social class -- even though they risk physically damaging themselves and each other by participating.

Adorno argued that this is a miserable (anti-utopian, dystopian) reality: As members of the oppressed class we should be getting together against the power structures rather than indulging in enjoying our pain (masochism).

So, in this sense, sport creates a false way of thinking (ideology) as if instrumental reason is central. And it carries a strong capitalist work ethic message that hides the ‘‘real’’ decadent (bourgeois) enemy.

However, the ideology that sport creates does not stop at sports competitors. Adorno saw that spectators will pay for the privilege of watching competitive sports.

So Adorno and Horkheimer (1992) argued that sports, like much of popular culture, were part of the "culture industry."

They argue that sports, like the other institutions that create popular culture, is owned by members of the ruling class (bourgeoisie). But it is uncritically consumed by the working class (proletariat masses). 

Taking the view that popular culture numbs the working class’s thinking (faculties of critical thought,) Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the differences between the propaganda of the Nazi party and key agents in popular culture (including sports, music, movies, and print news) are minimal.

Indeed, pop culture and Nazi propaganda are alike in putting consumers into a false sense of security. In the process, this limits their ability to think critically.

Essentially, the message is that as long as we (the preoccupied proletariat) have access to popular culture, we will not challenge the existing power structures.

Furthermore, the culture industries have rich (bourgeois) owners who, for entry into sports events or access to the media spectacle, charge entrance fees for their products.

Inevitably, like any profit-making activity, this creates a surplus (an excess or something extra). Therefore, popular culture like sports pacifies us (the proletariat) while producing a profit for the them (the bourgeoisie). More