a broad stroked "problem"

As early human records show, civilizations have played games, acting upon people’s desires to compete—and to be victorious. Societies have been captivated by athletes, their skillful performances, and the contentious battles they wage within the sporting arena. For example, the Mayan people played Pok-a-tok, a game on a stone court with sloped walls and stone rings hung high that served as goalposts. Pok-a-tok was filled with ritual, religious, and mythological significance; its winners treated as heroes, its losers facing harsh penalties, even human sacrifice, a practice that was thought necessary for the peoples' continued health and prosperity. The Greeks had their games that also carried great cultural importance, as did the Romans, and scores of civilizations throughout history. In fact, we could trace any society’s histories of sport, and understand something about its social order, and about that society’s connections between the physical body, power, knowledge, and social management.

Yet within the 20th Century, we witness the rise of a new cultural phenomenon: the sport-industrial complex (SIC), a complex, adaptive system that cultural critic Dave Zirin calls " a sprawling, overly influential industry that has impacted all of our lives," whether we like it or not. The SIC (like the military-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex) exists not as a secret conspiracy, but rather, as a network of bureaucratic, political, and economic interests that encourages spending on professional sports to advance particular agendas . Consisting of private businesses and corporations that regard professional sports as a vast and profitable market, politicians who saber for public investment in pro franchises, and local communities that count on sports to sustain the local economy, to name a few, this vast global network implicates all of us in some ways.

I realize I am painting this "problem", or socio-dynamic, in broad strokes. I do promise to hone in and to illustrate an argument by localizing the problem/s, but for now, please allow me to continue casting a wide net... So connected to my research with Hargreaves in the sectors of education, business, and sport, I have begun playing with questions related to the interactions and effects of professional sports organizations across communities. I am curious about the diverse ways that these sport organizations, which operate as for-profit businesses and corporations, transact with the communities that they are linked. Within this, I have a particular interest in how youth are impacted and implicated.

First, a bit on what I mean by ‘communities.’ This can refer to the locale that hosts the pro team. For instance, the city of Paris hosts several pro football (soccer) clubs, one being Paris Saint-Germain F.C. (PSG), whose training grounds are just outside Paris and stadium, in the uber-wealthy 16th arrondissement of the city. PSG, its worth estimated around 41 million euros (BBC News, 2006), receives substantial support from Paris’ municipal government in the form of subsidies, financial incentives, and public services offered. Public support for these subsidies stems, though not exclusively, from expectations that the host community will reap certain economic and social benefits.

At the same time, current PSG players hail from communities in France, Brazil, Benin, Mali, Serbia, the Republic of Congo, Armenia, and Cameroon. PSG, as well as Paris and French society more generally, are connected to each of these communities in similar and dissimilar ways. Historically, France established and operated colonies in four of these respective nations. In our post-colonial (neocolonial?) world, in what ways can we hear any echoes of the past? Somewhat recently, investigative journalists began reporting on what has been called the ‘football slave trade’ (e.g. BBC News, 2000), whereby pro football agents travel abroad in the hope of “poaching” young talent in African and other developing nations. The teams are looking for the next star players that can be signed on the cheap. The young boys, some of them reported to be 15 years old, dream of the opportunity to play in the European leagues, and frequently enter into contractual obligations that are not in their interests. Families have been given significant cash loans in exchange for the rights to represent their son, loans that then can sink the family into deep debt and leave the athlete bound to the agent’s company. And if the player cannot hack it in the pro’s, they are shown the door, now displaced from their home community and usually without working papers. It can be said that social and racial formations from the past can be seen in present-day circumstances (Collins, 2005).

I am open to a number of research angles at this point, and am just getting my feet into the literature. I feel like I need, to some degree, to wait and see where it leads me. My rough intent would be to conduct a sociological case study on 1 pro sport organization (or possibly 2?), to examine its interactions with and impacts across communities--and with youth, in particular. I see this project, like my weird little brain, as a theoretical hybrid, drawing on historical perspectives, structural-economic research, critical pedagogy, postcolonial studies, political science, philosophy, pop culture... To start--embedded within this inquiry are matters of power--in Foucault's (1980) words: "What are the various contrivances of power, whose operations extend to such differing levels and sectors of society and are possessed of such manifold ramifications? What are their mechanisms, their effects and their relations?" (p.88).

Citations:

• BBC News (2000, Feb. 14). Africa’s football ‘slave trade.’ Accessed online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/639390.stm
• BBC News (2006, April 11). Paris Saint-Germain changes hands. Accessed online at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4898746.stm
• Collins, P.H. (2005). Black Sexual Politics. Taylor and Francis.
• Foucault (1980). Power/Knowledge.
• Zirin, D. (2007). Welcome to the terrordome: The pain, politics, and promise of sports. Chicago: Haymarket Books.