KNES 293
Eye Gouging
"Biting one anothers lips and noses off, and gouging one another, that is, thrusting out one anothers eyes, and kicking one another on the Cods, to the great damage of many a poor woman"
Junction Boys Syndrome
"Bryant's failed field experiment in football training, extreme activity in a punishing environment, remains a practice pattern for success."-Anderson, 2012, p.1179
Injury
19th century medical science characterized women as the physically inferior sex, weakened and ruled by their reproductive systems.
Berenson's Rules
9 players per team • Court divided into 3 areas • Players were confined to 1 area • Players could only dribble the ball 3 times or hold it for 3 seconds • No snatching the ball away, physical contact or anything to hinder the shooter
Nationalistic Reality
Despite apolitical rhetoric and this internationalist perspective, the Olympics have been a key site in which nations attempt to project preferred narratives to domestic and global audiences and compete for symbolic dominance against geopolitical rivals.
Student-Athletes
Despite being a $10+ billion industry and the bevy of requirements placed upon them in terms of time and behavior, athletes are not considered employees. As a result, they are not covered for injuries by worker's compensation.
Mind-Body Split
Drawing from Greek philosopher Plato, early Christianity believed in dualism - the separation between mind and body.
The New Map
Due to a variety of geographic, demographic, technological, political and economic changes that were happening after World War II, many new markets become viable and were changing the map of commercial sports.
The Golden Age of Sports
During the 1920s, top collegiate football players (Red Grange) and coaches (Knute Rockne) became national celebrities due to new media forms and newspaper writers. While both profited substantially from football, they had to do it in vastly different ways.
Henry Chadwick "The Father of Base Ball"
English-born reporter Henry Chadwick, who wrote and edited several guides and books about the game, was essential to the development of baseball in the mid-to-late 19th century. Chadwick was a member of the rules committee, advocated rules changes to make the sport more "manly," and developed the first scoring system and box score.
Selling Sport Services:Entertainment
Entrepreneurs had been promoting sporting events throughout Colonial and antebellum eras. After the Civil War, the sports industry matured with professional teams playing regularly scheduled games within specialized facilities.
Women's Activities
For Jewish females, their experiences with physical activity and recreation practices existed at the intersection of geography, ethnicity, religion, and gender. With few places to play in slum areas, girls played in the street, went to dance halls and to settlement houses.
Relocating Spectator Sport
For Sunbelt cities, a Major League team was a status symbol marking its emergence and growing importance. Sports teams and leagues responded to increased demand among cities through relocation and expansion.
NCAA Enforcement
From 1910 until the 1940s, colleges policed themselves in regards to compliance with NCAA rules. With the growing popularity of college sports after World War II and rising incentives to win, recruiting abuses and other forms of cheating proliferated. This began to change in the 1950s as the NCAAA established its authority to investigate and punish violations of its rules.
Participants
Growing cities became home to large numbers of young males migrating from rural communities and foreign countries. Concerned about immigration and general morality, organizations such as Settlement Houses, YMCAs and YMHAs used sport for assimilation and as a healthy recreation alternative.
Generating Revenue
In 1862, William Cammeyer opened the Union Grounds -the first enclosed baseball field. The Grounds had seating for 1,500 people, a saloon, and clubhouse that could accommodate three clubs.
Professionalization
In 1869, Cincinnati Base Ball Club were the first team with a wholly professional starting lineup. The Red Stockings made a highly publicized undefeated tour through the East and claimed the "championship" for the city.
U.S. Commercial Empire
In 1888, Spalding sponsored baseball world tour involving leading players. The tour visited New Zealand, Australia, Egypt, Italy, France, and England. Although the game did not become popular, Spalding found local distributors for his products in many new markets
Supreme Court
In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled in the Federal Baseball case that Major League Baseball was not "interstate commerce," and, therefore, not subject to the Sherman Antitrust Act. The decision was subsequently upheld in 1953 when George Toolson challenged the Reserve Clause as an illegal restraint of trade.
The Junction Boys
In 1954 at Texas A&M, Coach Bear Bryant, who's team was practicing in 114 degree heat, would not allow his players to drink water during practice.
From Clay to Ali
In 1960, Cassius Clay won the Olympic gold medal as a light heavyweight. Clay portrayed a more expressive, candid, self-indulgent, flamboyant, immodest, confident, black cultural style that reminded many of Jack Johnson.
Banning PEDs & Doping
In 1967, the IOC added Rule 28 to the Olympic Charter, which prohibited "the use of substances or techniques in any form or quantity alien or unnatural to the body with the exclusive aim of obtaining an artificial or unfair increase of performance in competition." Despite the rule, the IOC could not test for anabolic steroids until 1976 and effective tests for doping were not implemented until 2004.
Celebrating Jackie
In 1972, Major League Baseball honored the 25th anniversary of integration by inviting Robinson to throw out the first ball at the second game of the World Series.
Bobby Riggs
In 1973, 55-year old Bobby Riggs inserted himself into the national limelight by challenging top female tennis players. Riggs, who had won the US Open twice during the 1940s, was a noted hustler and self-promoter.
Greek Sport & Divinity
In Ancient Greece, sport was part of a religious ritual celebrating the gods. Victorious athletes were often seen as embodiments of and/or favored by the gods. As such, their victories earned them significant social status and valuable economic rewards. However, only victory mattered as there were no glory or prizes for second place.
Training in Ancient Greece
In Athens, physical and intellectual education were both prized as men worked towards achieving standards of beauty and perfection. Many past Olympic victors opened their own gymnasiums to profit as they trained other athletes in the techniques that brought them victory. Athletes would imbibe any substance that could help them reach their goals.
Monopolies & Cartels
In a monopoly, there is only one seller of a particular commodity, good or service. In a cartel, several sellers collude to control prices and the market. Lacking competition, sellers have substantial economic power to set prices and/or prevent potential competitors from entering the market. Monopolies and cartels in the U.S. were declared illegal by the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
The MLBPA
In a time when organized labor began to decline, Miller was able to build solidarity among players. This unity has allowed players to share in MLB's growing revenues and in the governance of the industry. According to Briley, the MLBPA has become "the nation's strongest union."
Urban Development in the Industrial Era
In many ways, the growth of the city is both a necessary precondition for and product of industrialization. Cities provide dense populations of potential producers of goods and consumers of products. Cities also provide access to robust capital markets and serve as transportation hubs.
Economic Pressures
In professional sports, athletes have been pressured to play with injury at the risk of being replaced. According to former Washington coach George Allen, "nobody is indispensible. If he can't play, we let him know he's not going to be with us."
Challenging the Gentleman's Agreement
In response to the efforts of sportswriters and the NAACP, Major League Baseball executives claimed they would sign an African -American player "if he were good enough." Despite promises, baseball officials remained resistant to signing an African American, even many players joined the military during World War II. -Yet, political and social conditions made it more difficult to maintain the color bar.
Class as an achieved status
In the U.S., the Constitution grants all people equality under the law. We believe that people should be able to move between classes based on their individual merits and talents (class based on achieved status)
Finding 10,000 Steps
In the early 1960s, Dr. Yoshiro Hatano was worried about obesity and physical activity in Japan. Through his research, he found that people walked an average of 3,500-5,000 steps per day.
Urban America
In the first half of the 19th century, the colonial-era towns of the United States began to transform into cities with industrial-based economies. As young, unsupervised men migrated from farms and immigrated from foreign countries seeking employment, fears rose regarding public health and morality.
Rough and Tumble Fighting
In the southern backcountry and on the frontier, the practice of "rough and tumble fighting" existed on society's margins during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Fights were brutal and without rules, often starting due to minor slights and small provocations.
Structures of Power
Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci suggested that dominant groups maintain their power through coercion and consent.
Explaining African-American Success
Johnson's victory and subsequent dominant athletic performances by African-Americans led to a reassessment of racial science. In the new configuration, African-Americans were identified as being physically superior to whites, and whites were positioned as intellectually and morally superior to AfricanAmericans.
Consuming Little Leaguers
Little League created a market for sporting goods aimed at children and a forum for advertising. In 1948, U.S. Rubber created a rubber cleat for baseball and became the chief national sponsor for Little League Baseball. Little League also helped transform and train boys as consumers. According to the PR Director of US Rubber, youngsters "buy through their parents today and later for themselves. They are young, healthy, impressionable" As quoted in Carriere, 2005
Mythologized Frontier: Outer Space
Long the hero of science fiction, space travel created a new frontiersman: the astronaut, who would go into "uncivilized" space and bravely face unknown dangers - all towards the eventual colonization of other planets and explorations of the universe.
A Moral Battleground
Meanings around the body have changed over the centuries as societies present and understand the body in different ways. While ancient Greek society celebrated the body as a symbol of divinity, many early Christianity believed the body was corrupt and led towards immoral activities.
Inferiority
Men are assumed to be physically superior to women and to have a natural advantage. As such, sport governing bodies submit women to gender verification testing to prove that they are female in order to be allowed to compete.
Social Darwinism
Misapplying evolution to cultural development, at the turn of the 20th century, social theorists in Europe and North America argued that class hierarchies and colonialism were the natural products (through survival of the fittest) of the physical, intellectual and moral superiority of the white race and upper classes.
The Growth of Football
Modern football in the United States is a descendent of English soccer and rugby, with the first games being held between American colleges in the 1860s/1870s. Initially drawing very little attention, by the mid 1890s, football was popular across the United States.
Not Playing With Pain
Players who are not physically incapacitated but choose not to play risk being shamed by coaches as a 'sissy' or 'woman.' Additionally, players may be ostracized by teammates who distance themselves from the injured.
What influences Physical Culture?
Power Knowledge Space
Institutes of Physical Culture
Rather than focusing on building strength, Sandow's training techniques sought to "properly" sculpt men's bodies to provide an appearance of fitness, while not being overly muscled.
What is Physical Culture?
Rather than just focus on sport, this course will examine the myriad of movement practices including physical activity, exercise, health, and dance. This broader perspective will allow to better engage the relationship between physical activity and public health
Playground Movement
Recognizing the need to encourage outdoor recreation and with space at a premium in working class neighborhoods, the Playground Movement petitioned municipal governments to create spaces for properly structured play.
The National League
Responding to the NAPBBP's problems, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs formed in 1876. Power was centralized in the league office. Teams had exclusive territorial rights, were required to play all scheduled games, did not play on Sunday, and charged $.50 for tickets.
Sandow on Stage
Sandow toured the world performing strongman feats and giving lectures on physical culture to large audiences. People attended to admire Sandow's physique that was reminiscent of classical Greek statues.
Gymnasiums
Settlement Houses, YMCAs and YMHAs used recreation amenities to attract slum dwellers into their buildings. Once inside, visitors could receive various forms of instruction.
Spectacle
Spectacles are large-scale events using entertainment to engage mass audiences towards supporting the status quo. In doing so, spectacles are not neutral as events often transmit implicit political messages.
The White Men's Burden
Take up the White Man's burden, Send forth the best ye breed Go bind your sons to exile, to serve your captives' need; To wait in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild— Your new-caught, sullen peoples, Halfdevil and half-child. Rudyard Kipling (1899)
Berlin -1936
The 1936 Olympic Games were originally awarded to Germany under the democratic Weimar Republic. When the Nazi Party gained control, they originally were skeptical of the Olympics, but soon realized its propaganda value. The Games were placed under the control of the Ministry of Propaganda and featured highly chauvinistic, nationalistic and militaristic overtones.
Wo m e n 's L i b e r a t i o n Movement
The 1960s were a time of intense activism from historically marginalized groups who sought social transformations based around equality, opportunity and civil rights.
Argument: A Political Institution
The NCAA exists to reinforce the social privileges of the upper class by limiting competition to the wealthy and setting the terms of competition for all others.
The Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the ancient world's dominant power for more than five centuries. Some historians have estimated the city of Rome to have had a population exceeding one million people.
Scientific Competition
The Space Race provided the US and USSR an opportunity to prove their scientific superiority. The USSR took an early lead as, in 1957, it became the first nation to launch a satellite, and, in 1961, were the first to send a person into space. In 1969, the US won the race to the moon.
The Gilded Age
The U.S. economy grew substantially between 1870-1900. However, much of the wealth was enjoyed by a few "Robber Barons" --individuals who monopolized key segments of the economy, such as banking, steel, railroads, and oil. This was a time of minimal government involvement in the economy.
Promoting Consumption
The advertising industry attracted consumers with sales pitches containing ideological messages (the American dream, material plenty, the march toward modernity) and suggested that the newest goods provided consumers with status.
Abstinence
The belief that men should abstain from sexual activity during athletic training goes back to Ancient Greek times. The physician Aretaeus wrote in the 1st century, "If any man is in possession of semen, he is fierce, courageous, and physically mighty, like beasts. Evidence for this is to be found in athletes who practice abstinence"
Producers of Sport
The development of commercial sport also relied upon organizations to provide opportunities to participate, media to promote general interest, and entrepreneurs willing to invest capital to market sport to potential spectators.
Early Tests
The earliest mandatory forms of sex tests/gender verification exams were visual, called 'nude parades' - Women considered this process humiliating and invasive This quickly led to the introduction of chromosomal tests in 1968, testing the presence (or absence) of Barr bodies on the Y-chromosome and the presence of Y chromosomal material - The IAAF continued this form of testing until 1992 - The IOC continued using Barr body testing until 1991, then used PCR tests until 1999
Frontier as Spatial Expression
The idea of a westward moving frontier was central to American identity going back to the colonial era. In Europe, the frontier was the boundary line between two nations. In the United States, the frontier line separated "civilization & savagery" as it defined settled land from unsettled wilderness.Harsh Realities of Frontier Life
Local
The local level is the most tangible amongst geographic scales. Public policy decisions often have a direct material impact on people's lives related to opportunities for physical activity and shaping healthy environments.
Muhammad Ali: Black Muslim
The new name was very controversial and Ali became villainized for his connection to what many people considered a hate group. Most of the sports press and many opposing boxers insisted on calling him "Clay."
The Missile Gap
The rockets that took both the US and USSR into space were also capable of carrying nuclear weapons. With the USSR's early lead in the space race, many Americans feared a "missile gap" which would enable the USSR to quickly destroy the US.
Social Darwinism & Sport
The science surrounding eugenics suggested that sport helped identify the most physically talented people. However, as eugenics relied on Mendelian genetics people believed these talents were inherited from parents who possessed these superior traits.
Intersectionality
The theory of intersectionality takes a different perspective as it focuses on the relationships between different dimensions of identity and their impacts upon social relations. As a result, intersectionality does not consider any one dimension.
The Development of PE
These various beliefs coalesced within the field of physical education at the turn of the 20th century, as it emerged with two primary goals: "hygienic" and "educative." "Hygienic" focused on bodily health and the fitness of bodily functions. "Educative" focused on development through growth, character, and evolution.
Separate Spheres through History
Throughout American history, men and women have lived in "separate spheres" with defined roles and expectations. --Men were in the "public sphere" of employment, military, and politics --Women were in the "private sphere" as guardians of the home and morality
American Anti-Semitism
Throughout the early 20th century, Jews faced discrimination in employment, college admissions, and housing. Anti-Semitism was also present in the media as Henry Ford published anti-Semitic tracts and Father Charles Coughlin radio program reached up to 12 million listeners per week.
Building Toughness Through Dehydration
To many football coaches before the 1960s, practicing without drinking water helped to build grit and fortitude. Players accepted this attitude with one stating, "If you drank water during practice when I was playing, you just weren't tough... Only sissies drank water" (as qtd. in Schultz, et al, 2014, p. 127).
The Early Olympiads
Up until the 1930s, the Olympics were minor and frequently beset with economic and political challenges. Games in 1904 and 1908 were overshadowed by much larger World Fairs and the Olympics in 1920 and 1924 faced economic hardships remaining from World War I. The Olympics also were challenged by alternative international athletic competitions.
Quantifying Football
Up until the 1960s, scouting and ranking players was completely based on qualitative assessment. Up until the 1960s, scouting and ranking players was completely based on qualitative assessment. In 1964, the Dallas Cowboys hired IBM to develop a computer program that would improve their drafting.
Aggressive Legal Confrontation
W.E.B. DuBois helped to establish the NAACP in 1909 to aggressively pursue the cause of racial justice. Rather than being something that could be earned, all Americans were entitled to full civil rights and participation in the political process. The NAACP sought to confront and challenge segregation and Jim Crow laws through legal and economic means.
Christy Mathewson
When compared to other professional athletes, Mathewson's piousness stood out and he was held up as an exemplar of Muscular Christianity and as role model for youth. "the solid gentleman athlete, wise & spiritual, fair to a fault" (Deford, 2003)
Cold War Place Battles
While Cold War battles between the US and USSR were a typical feature of Olympic competitions after 1952, they reached their apex during the 1980s as the games were hosted in the Soviet Union (Moscow: Summer 1980) and United States (Lake Placid: Winter 1980; Los Angeles: Summer 1984).
Football & Injury
While the attention paid to football injuries in 1905 was extraordinary, the number of injuries was not. For example, in 1898 in Philadelphia, there were 15 broken legs, numerous ruptured kidney, skull, and other injuries attributable to football. Park (2012) wrote, "for many enthusiasts, the ability to take such 'shocks' could be seen as a 'manly' thing" (p. 806).
Brotherhood of Professional Base Ball Players
With declining salaries and control, players unionized in 1885 to protect player safety, increase jobs, fight the reserve clause & other schemes to reduce player costs. "Like a fugitive slave law, the reserve rule denies him a harbor or a livelihood, and carries him back, bound and shackled, to the club from which he attempted to escape."
The Decline of Jewish Basketball
With fewer courts, reduced incentives, and more opportunities to play other sports, Jews were no longer among the basketball's dominant players. However, many Jews went into coaching, management, and team ownership.
Marshall Plan & NATO
With its European Allies severely weakened from two generations of war, the US invested in the reconstruction of Europe through the Marshall Plan. In 1949, the US entered a formal military alliance as it joined 11 other nations in NATO.
Conspicuous Consumption
With more time and money for consumption, a new consumer ideology suggested that happiness was obtainable through consumer products.
Social Darwinism
With the disappearance of the spaces testing men's "fitness," new spaces were required to differentiate the strong from the weak towards assisting evolutionary processes in improving the human species.
New Regulations on Female Eligibility
• The most recent IAAF policy, titled "Eligibility Regulations for the Female Classification," were introduced in 2018 • Touts its scientific credibility as it is based on a study conducted by Bermon and Garnier (2017) • In effect as of May 9, 2019, but currently faces two challenges from Athletics South Africa and Semenya
The Sporting Goods Industry
A.G. Spalding & Brothers became the dominant sporting goods producer by purchasing its competitors, becoming the official equipment supplier of the National League, and through sports promotion.
Athletic Training
According to Beamish and Ritchie (2006), in the early 20th century, "coaches and athletes did not know they could systematically enhance physical power, speed, endurance, and agility through specific, targeted programs" (p. 53). The basic principles of athletic training were not developed until after World War II.
An Imagined Nation
According to Benedict Anderson (1983): It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the images of their communion . . . According to Benedict Anderson (1983): . . . It is imagined as a community because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly die for such limited imaginings (p. 15-16)
Producing Organization Men
According to Carriere, the general structure of Little League Baseball, which included regular practices, assigned positions, and uniforms, helped to prepare boys to fit into a corporate, professional world that required teamwork and conformity.
Corporate Versions of the Past
According to Sanello, "commercial imperatives most often fuel cinematic rewrites of history. Complex economic and social issues are pureed into easily digestible bits of information intended for consumption by Hollywood's most sought-after demographic: the lowest common denominator" (as quoted in Schultz, 2014, p. 39).
Deadly Practices
According to the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research, there have been at least 138 heat-related deaths in football between 1931-2012.
Notre Dame as Media Empire
After Rockne's death in 1931, Notre Dame football remained prominent within national culture. In 1940, Warner Brothers released a movie version of Rockne's life, co-starring Ronald Reagan. Due to their practice of not selling exclusive radio rights to games, by the 1950s, Notre Dame football was carried by 190 radio stations throughout the U.S.
Decline of the Urban Core
After World War II, urban areas went into spiral of population and corporate exodus, declining tax bases, and eroding public services. As cities were perceived as spaces of danger, decay, pollution and deviance, tension grew between decaying, evacuated and demonized urban cores and increasingly affluent suburban areas defined by conspicuous consumption.
Little League Softball
After courts upheld the right of girls to play Little League Baseball, the organization quickly established a separate fast-pitch softball program. In 2004, almost 500,000 girls competed in Little League programs with 80% of them playing softball.
From Clay to Ali
After defeating Sonny Liston for the heavyweight title in 1964, Clay, who had been studying with Malcolm X, announced he had joined the Nation of Islam.
Jim Crow America
After the Civil War, Southern states went through Reconstruction as African-American rights were actively guaranteed by the Federal government. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, African-Americans began to be systematically excluded from many areas of American society.
Sport & the Symbolic Order
Although African-Americans were excluded from many professional sports during the late 19th century, African Americans were allowed to participate in boxing. With racial discourses positioning whites as physically and mentally superior, boxing matches allowed white males to demonstrate their superiority by defeating African-Americans in the ring.
Urban Parks
Although the middle and upper classes enjoyed better living conditions, the countryside (and nature) were becoming evermore distant. Large urban parks were believed to improve public health, alleviate class conflict, improve the economy, and enhance the city's image. As these parks were focused on the quiet enjoyment of nature rather than active recreation, they tended to be the domain of the middle and upper classes, who had more leisure time and lived nearby or could afford transportation.
From Puritans to Victorians
Although the religious focus of the Puritans faded over time, the notion that actions had to have positive purposes remained a powerful idea for many people during the Victorian era.
Women's Basketball
Although these rules severely limited bodily contact and physical exertion, the notion of competitive sport for women was still controversial as an intrusion into a male space. Women were given fewer resources, played on smaller courts, and wore uniforms that emphasized their femininity.
Physical Culture: A Male Space
As a proving ground to demonstrate masculine traits, sporting spaces were considered to be for men only. Towards naturalizing and reinforcing this notion, men have received greater resources and larger spaces for participation in physical culture.
From Business to Industry
As baseball became a business, clubs were offering free memberships and jobs to the most talented players. Some of these players became "revolvers," who would frequently move from club to club (often playing for multiple clubs on the same day) in search of better offers.
Becoming the Dominant Form
As baseball became increasingly popular in New York, it began spreading throughout the U.S. due to improved transportation and communication technologies.
Professionalization
As entrepreneurs risked capital to sell the opportunity to watch baseball, they began paying the best players in the late 1850s to ensure the highest quality product.
Bodies of Knowledge
As we will discuss in Module 3, the scientific discourses surrounding genetics, health, fitness and human performance are often used to obscure the machinations of power. Despite its claims of objectivity, science has rarely been neutral as it has been used to reinforce and justify inequitable and exploitative social relations.
Claiming Space
As we will discuss in the next lecture, women fought to challenge assumptions regarding the masculinity of physical activity spaces. Despite legal and cultural changes, this contestation over the meaning of space continues.
Internationalism
At the turn of the 20th century, President Theodore Roosevelt promoted a robust foreign policy, which included the growth of empire, the building of the Panama Canal, and negotiating peace between Russia and Japan.
The Base Ball Club
Base Ball Clubs were fraternal organizations that had formal constitutions, by-laws, and officers. They had selective membership, charged dues, organized competitions and social events, and fined members when they broke rules or engaged in improper behavior.
Boxing and African-Americans
Black participation continued as boxers were perceived as being desperate young men recruited from the bottom layers of society and allowed white males to demonstrate superiority by defeating African Americans in the ring.
Walter Camp Coach & Industrialist2
Camp is perhaps the most important person in the development of American football. The most successful coach of football's early years, he developed strategies and training techniques following the principles of scientific management.
Calisthenics for Women
Catherine Beecher developed a system of light exercises for females that would allow them to improve their fitness. Beside improving posture and spinal problems, calisthenics would "promote grace of movement, and easy manners."
Evolution
Charles Darwin proposed that species evolve through natural selection. Recognizing variations exist within all species, Darwin suggested that beneficial variations enable certain populations to survive and thrive within particular environments. Due to the "survival of the fittest," these populations would reproduce at greater rates and be more likely to pass beneficial traits onto future generations.
Trial By Space
"All battles over space and place are in fact battles over spatialized social power" (Massey, 1996, p. 120)
Football & Labor
"American business has found in American college football the epitomization of present day business methods... [football] has come to be recognized as the best school for instilling into the young man those attributes which business desires and demands" Walter Camp (as qtd. in Gorn & Goldstein, p. 158)
Greek Body
"Arête or excellence, moral virtue, aidos or a feeling of respect, reverence, modesty, and a sense of human value, all inborn or God-given capacities and displayed through the display of their physical beauty and athletic excellence"
Name the Speaker & Group
"Few of their children in the country learn English... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious."
Sporting Competition
"For both the United States & the USSR, sport became an extremely important arena for the assertion of national identity and power, and also for the gaining of prestige and the exercise of ideological influence around the world" (Roche, 2000: 104)
America's Pastime
"I claim that Base Ball owes its prestige as our National Game to the fact that as no other form of sport it is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness; American Dash, Discipline, Determination..." Albert Spalding (1911), Base Ball, p. 2 "...American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm; American Pluck, Persistency, Performance; American Spirit, Sagacity, Success; American Vim, Vigor, Virility..." Albert Spalding (1911), Base Ball, p. 2 "Base Ball is the American Game par excellence, because its playing demands Brain and Brawn, and American manhood supplies these ingredients in quantity sufficient to spread over the entire continent" Albert Spalding (1911), Base Ball, p. 2
Title IX
"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance" From the preamble to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 "No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subject to discrimination under any educational programs or activity receiving federal financial assistance" From the preamble to Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 When Title IX was passed in 1972, the NCAA resisted its implementation and lobbied Congress for an exemption. According to NCAA executive director Walter Byers, Title IX would spell the "possible doom of intercollegiate sports" as resources were shifted away from men's sports to support female athletics.
commercial interests
"Popular media construct our contemporary folklore, our cultural memory, no matter if the stories they tell fail to coincide with the existing record... Much of the public learns its history from the movies and tends to regard factual errors as 'the truth.'" (Schultz, 2014, p. 30).
Marketing Sandow, Marketing Fitness
"Sandow's name became associated with health, exercise and the built body, which he leveraged to sell more products... the more popularity Sandow gained meant that more people associated his name with these notions, thereby increasing his brand equity"
Isolationism
"The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible... It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliance with any portion of the foreign world"
Sex Testing
"The various iterations of sex testing are designed to disadvantage women who, for one reason or another, do not align with the established social, biological, or genetic parameters of femaleness" (Schultz, 2014, p. 104)
Football & the Military
"Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days and on other fields will bear the fruits of victory" General Douglas A. MacArthur 1922 While football utilizes warlike language and has the conquering of space as its primary objective, its hierarchical organization and tactics also serve the interests of military preparation.
Athletics & Americanization
"by means of proper recreation, thousands of young men and women are learning a spirit of comradeship, a truer humanity and a higher standard of civic duty, [that instills them with] a broader patriotism" American Citizen, May 1913, as qtd. in Levine, 1992, p. 15 "there is nothing which will help quicker and better amalgamate the foreign born, and those of foreign parents in this country, than to give them a little good bringing up in the good old fashioned game of baseball... They don't have things like that on the other side of the ocean... And many spend their hours fussing in conspiring and hatching up plots when they should be out in the open improving their lungs" Morgan Bulkeley, President of the National League
Basketball: The Jewish Game
"ever since Dr. James A. Naismith came up with a soccer ball, two peach baskets and a bright idea... basketball players have been chasing Jewish athletes and never quite catching up with them" Stanley Frank, 1936 as qtd. in Levine, 1992, p. 27. "the characteristics inherent in the Jew...mental agility, perception... imagination and subtlety... If the Jew had set out deliberately to invent a game which incorporates those traits indigenous in him... he could not have had a happier inspiration than basketball" Stanley Frank, 1936 as qtd. in Levine, 1992, p. 27.
Muhammad Ali-KNOWLEDGE
-He went against the ideology that black people were mentally inferior to white people -Knew what it took to be masculine.
Muhammad Ali-POWER
-Product of race relations and political attitudes. -Involved in economics of boxing (money he made allowed him to have power)
Quantification of Sport
According to Guttmann (1978), virtually every athletic feat has been transformed into one that can be quantified and measured. With electronic timers, computers, and newer technologies that track athlete movement, statistics and other forms of measurement provide seemingly objective indicators of athletic performance.
From Barbarianism to Civilization
According to Henry Curtis, Secretary of the Playground Association, "the recapitulation theory maintains that, with certain limitations, the individual repeats the history of the race, passing up through stages that correspond closely to savagery, barbarism, semicivilization to civilization. The boy is a natural barbarian. He has the same motor interests and desires..." As qtd in Azzarito et al, p. 381 Curtis continued, "The question of crime in our cities is mainly a question of athletics. If this boy can find in athletics vent for his motor interests and desires, he may be saved to civilization, but if he cannot, he is very likely to become delinquent under the strain." As qtd in Azzarito et al, p. 381
Trial By Space
According to Lefebvre (1991), groups, classes, ideas, representations and values try to "succeed in making their mark on space... [or] lose all pith and become mere signs, resolve themselves into abstract descriptions, or mutate into fantasies" (p. 417)
Sport as a Commodity
According to Marx, a commodity is "an object outside of us, a thing by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another." In addition, a commodity must be part of a market exchange. Stephen Hardy (1986) identified sport as a "triple commodity" consisting of: --Game form: The rules & rule books which define the manner in which games are to be played --Sporting goods: Equipment and facilities --Sport services: Functions of sport, such as education, status, political propaganda, and entertainment, that frequently (but not necessarily) require payment
Diffusion of Football
According to Oriard, in the early 1880s, football began spreading across the United States from Eastern colleges as games on Thanksgiving placed football on the social calendars of elites in New York and gained the attention of the media. By 1900, football had transcended its elite roots to become popular throughout the nation.
Hegemony
According to Sage (1998), "hegemony is silent domination" as subordinate groups accept their status and demonstrate support for the existing social order by engaging in compliant behaviors. Dominant groups are able to secure this consent through defining what is considered to be "commonsense" and "normal" everyday practice.
Consent
According to Sage (1998), "hegemony is silent domination" as subordinate groups accept their status and demonstrate support for the existing social order by engaging in compliantbehaviors. Dominant groups are able to secure this consent through defining what is considered to be "commonsense" and "normal" everyday practice.
Social Darwinism Redux
According to Spencer, as they are smaller and weaker than men, females possess lesser amounts of energy. Rather than expending this limited energy in physical or intellectual activities, it needed to be preserved for the "demands of reproduction" for the good of the species.
Secondary Sources
According to Wiggins & Mason (2003), secondary sources "are usually comprised of books or articles written by others who were not directly associated with an event. In many cases, they are written by researchers who have done their own primary source-based research" (p. 50). Secondary sources interpret and analyze historical events from a positioned removed from those events in time and/or space. They represent the independent conclusions of the researcher and involve a degree of filtering that lessens their value to historians. A secondary source may feature primary source materials in full (such as a photograph) or in part (such as quotes). •Journal articles •Books •Edited books •Textbooks •Magazine articles •Encyclopedias •Web pages
Primary Sources
According to Wiggins & Mason, "primary sources are those that are directly associated with the topic that is being investigated" (p. 49). They are documents or physical objects which was written or created during the time under study. These sources were present during an experience or time period and offer a first-hand and/or insiders viewof a particular event. Unlike the original research that represents primary sources in many disciplines, historical primary sources generally refer to the raw data of historical inquiry. Historians use primary source materials "to get as close as possible to the event" (Wiggins & Mason, 2003, p. 49) that they are researching. •Public records •Newspaper reports •Artifacts•Letters & diaries •Memories •Remains of historic sites •Speeches •Interviews •Photographs
Injury in the NFL
According to Young (1993), "no workplace matches football for either the regularity or severity of injury. In a 4-month NFL season, all players can expect to be injured at least once" (p. 377).
The Doubleday Myth
According to the Mills Commission of 1907, some time in 1839, Cooperstown native Abner Doubleday invented the sport of baseball as he improved a game of "town ball" by diagramming a baseball field and listing basic rules.
Jim Crow America
After the Civil War, Southern states went through Reconstruction as African-American rights were actively guaranteed by the Federal government. When Reconstruction ended in 1877, African-Americans began to be systematically excluded from many areas of American society. In the South, segregation consisted of a series of laws and informal codes of conduct. African-Americans who transgressed were subjected to judicial and extra-judicial violence. In other parts of the country, racial hierarchies were reinforced in much more subtle, but no less effective, ways.
Identity
Although different identity positions have a genetic basis, these are ascribed cultural meanings which are used to create and differentiate between groups of people — a process of classification that is used to create differences between 'groups' based on power, wealth and authority. As a result, identity is not "natural". Instead, identity needs to be thought about as a social construction with social consequences.
Criticisms of Football
Although football was growing in popularity, it earned criticism from those focusing on the violence and brutality in the game, poor sportsmanship, its commercialization, and a growing win-at-any-cost mentality. University professors were concerned at the undermining of academic integrity and the recruitment of "tramp" athletes.
Conclusion
Although strength and speed records in many sports continue to improve, most of this improvement can be attributed to technological advances for equipment, better training practices, specialization, and chemical enhancement. Despite commercial rewards for those pushing the boundaries of human performance, improvements have come at substantial human cost.
The Nation-State
Although the Bible identifies several official censuses conducted by governments, by 1830, the collection of statistics by central administrators provided essential information for policymakers as they governed large and distant territories, collected taxes, managed resources, and sought to address social problems.
Resistance to Change
Although the Harvard Fatigue Lab helped to transform scientific understandings of the impact of physical activity upon the body, athletes and coachers were slow to apply these insights towards enhancing athletic performance. This was mostly due to a highly conservative culture that tended to replicate successful practices and was wary of new practices.
Medieval Urbanization
Although the fall of Rome marked trends towards deurbanization, Medieval towns tended to be centers for craftwork production, trade, the church, and state activities. Most towns had walls and gates that protected inhabitants and controlled access to goods, services, and people.
The Great American Melting Pot
America seeks cultural assimilation, as it is believed that no matter what country or culture a person comes from, his/her identity will "melt" away into and help form a homogenous American nation/culture.
Power
Analyses of political economy are often concerned with issues of power as formal political structures are strongly related to the distribution of economic resources. "[Power] is the ability to get what one wants, either by having one's interests prevail in conflict with others or by preventing others from raising their demands" (Parenti, as qtdin Sage, 1998, p. 2)
Roosevelt's Intervention
As 18 players died and 159 suffered serious injury during the 1905 season, President Roosevelt hosted a White House meeting with representatives from Yale, Harvard and Princeton to discuss football reforms. Contrary to public myth, Roosevelt did not threaten to abolish the game, but recommended that the schools draft a common statement to agree to carry out "in letter and spirit the rules of the game." Despite only receiving promises to make football safer, Roosevelt's intervention was much more than symbolic. The President's concern legitimized those of reformers and highlighted the debate over violence in football.
NFL-AFL Merger
As AFL revenues increased, the NFL and AFL competition led to increasing player salaries and expansion as the number of professional football teams increased from 12 to 24 between 1960 and 1966. Given the antitrust implications, the merger required Congressional approval, which was secured by agreeing to place an NFL expansion franchise in New Orleans.
Harsh Realities of Frontier Life
As America moved westward, 10% of the 500,000 travelers on the Oregon Trail died during the journey. Despite fears, very few casualties came from encounters with Native tribes - most of which were started by paranoid settlers. Much greater dangers came from disease, dehydration, accidents, and wild animals.
The Development of the USSR
As American policy turned inward, the newly-formed Soviet Union was busy consolidating itself following the 1917 Russian Revolution. Following Lenin's death in 1924, Josef Stalin rose to power and carried out a series of radical economic reforms that were enforced by an increasingly totalitarian state.
The American Century
As Europe was embroiled in the early days of World War II, Time Magazine publisher Henry Luce that the United States described should, "accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit." Luce claimed that the 20th century would be "The American Century," during which the U.S. would use its power to spread peace, free markets, and democracy across the globe.
Sport & Women's Liberation
As a bastion of male privilege, sport became an important site of contestation for women. With the passage of Title IX in 1972, women saw a chance to receive resources for physical activity and opportunities to compete.
Women's Liberation Movement
As a bastion of male privilege, sport was an important space of contestation. The Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) was founded in 1971 to increase opportunities for participation in high level competition. Through Title IX, women saw a chance to receive resources for physical activity and opportunities to compete.
Sport in the Industrial City
As cities were essential elements for the development of the sports industry, commercial sport also impacted city. Teams often provided significant image benefits and sports facilities helped to shape urban development.
Commercial Sport
As described by Friedman & Bustad (2016), only cities possess the critical masses of participants, spectators and producers that were the necessary ingredients for the development and success of the commercial sports industry.
The European Century
As described in the last lecture, as the United States focused on conquering the North American continent during the 19th century, European nations established global empires with territories in Africa, Asia, and the South Pacific. As the 19th century ended, Americans debated our role in the world: to continue isolationism or to become internationalists.
Collective Memory
As different groups tell and retell stories about the past, they are helping to construct what Halbwachs (1985) termed "collective memory." The ability to influence and shape collective memory is a source of considerable social power.
Overview of SCIENCE IN THE SERVICE OF POWER
As discussed in the last lecture, scientific research into issues around the body historically has been deeply embedded within dominant discourses and power relations. As a result, white men have used science to "prove" their "naturally superiority" over women and other racial groups. However, understandings of race and gender are social constructions rather than biological "facts."
History Today
As discussed previously, powerful groups can utilize various symbols, images, ideas and representations to reinforce their dominant positions. History offers a wellspring of material in this effort as corporations, politicians, and other elites create spaces and generate narratives that further their political and economic interests. These histories, however, are not objective representations of the past, but are highly subjective and (de)politicized. These presentations often forget "problematic" histories, depict social injustices as belonging to the past, and overlook continuing patterns of institutionalized inequality.
Science as a Social Construction
As evolutionary theory became accepted at the end of the 19th century, many social theorists applied its insights to cultural development. Social Darwinism and the related science of eugenics "found" that racial and social hierarchies were the natural products of the physical, intellectual and moral superiority of the white race and upper classes. Similarly, medical experts at the end of the 19th century found that the cyclical functioning of female physiology caused physical, emotional, and moral vulnerability and that vigorous physical and/or mental activity would be dangerous to women's health. Despite claims of objectivity, such science was based on a priori assumptions of racial, social, and gender superiority reflecting existing the racial, social, and gender hierarchies. In confirming these hierarchies as consistent with nature, science perpetuated an iniquitous status quo.
Homosexuality
As female athletes engaged in "mannish" behaviors, questions were raised regarding their potential attractiveness to men and their sexual preferences.
The Nuclear Family
As growing families moved to the suburbs, there were concerns that families were "drifting apart" with men expected to support families by working in cities and women expected to tend to the home and children.
An Unhealthy City
As gymnasiums and playgrounds provided recreational opportunities, reformers also believed they could address social and health problems by incorporating natural spaces into cities. Large urban parks could be the "lungs of the city."
Bodybuilding Contests
As he sponsored and promoted "The Great Competition," Sandow was also marketing fitness and his various exercise products and programs.
The Urban Poor
As migrants from farms and immigrants crowded into cities, social reformers recognized the necessity of open spaces and recreational opportunities within densely populated slum neighborhoods. Beyond health impacts, open spaces and activities were used to educate residents, provide moral alternatives to immoral activities, and assimilate immigrants into American culture.
Capital-Labor in Early Baseball
As professionalized, the first baseball league, the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, failed within a few years due to its loose & decentralized structure, and the inability to enforce contracts with players which led to escalating salaries and unprofitability. With power centralized in a league office and with team owners, the National League became the first successful league in 1876. Part of their success was based on exclusive territorial rights and the development of the "Reserve Clause."
Transmitting Knowledge
As scientific knowledge is a social product, education translates that knowledge into forms that impact social relations, politics and culture. Physical culture has helped to reproduce and disseminate knowledge by educating people in physical health, moral social behavior, and spiritual wellbeing. Yet, this education is not an end to itself as it has been used towards achieving broader social purposes.
Gender Politics in Physical Culture
As sport taught "masculine" traits, many people considered women's participation to be problematic as it would lead to a dangerous "masculinization" of women that would damage female reproductive capacity, promote sexual illicitness, and blur "natural" gender differences. Within this context, women were frequently excluded from sporting spaces and denied opportunities.
Conservative Resistance
As states passed laws protecting workers, the Supreme Court invalidated many by arguing that they imposed undue costs on businesses, represented "restraint of trade"and interfered with a person's "right to contract."
The Cold War Begins
As the 1940s ended, the USSR successfully tested a nuclear bomb and communists were victorious in China. The US feared the USSR and its allies sought to dominate the world through military conquest.
Conclusion
As the Cold War ended without direct warfare between the US and USSR, sport was an important propaganda battleground as both sides sought to exercise soft power. Thus, sport was a highly important site for international engagement.
The Lure of the Suburbs
As the Federal Government provided VA loans to returning soldiers and constructed the Federal Highway system, suburban areas offered single-family homes, open space, lower costs, perceptions of safety, and new job opportunities.
National Association ofProfessional Base Ball Players
As the first professional league, the NAPBBP had a very loose structure as clubs made their own schedules and there was no central league office with authority over clubs. This lack of central authority led to several problems as clubs often did not play their scheduled games and frequently went bankrupt.
Bicycle & Health
At first, physicians and health reformers encouraged women to participate. Beyond new clothing designs that would not limit movement, cycling could improve women's ability to bear children through strengthening leg, pelvic and abdominal muscles.
Questioning Sex in Sports
At the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, German high jumper Dora Ratjen finished 4th Later, in the 1950s, Ratjen announced that his real name was Hermann and had bound his genitals to compete as a woman - It was also revealed that Hitler had forced Ratjen to do so, in an attempt to increase Germany's medal count
Baseball Labor
Baseball players missed out on the gains of workers as average salaries increased from $13,000 to $19,000 between 1950 and 1967 and minimum salaries remained at $6,000. During this time, league-wide revenues increased substantially due to rights fees from television, league expansion and the relocation of many franchises.
Bat & Ball Games
Bat and ball games have a long history going back to seker-hemat-a game played in Ancient Egypt. Developed from English games, there were several regional variations of bat and ball games played throughout the colonies and Antebellum America.
A Fixed Human Capacity
Beamish and Ritchie (2006) suggest that beliefs around physical capacity were based on the First Law of Thermodynamics: total energy within a closed system is constant and it cannot be created or destroyed. Within this conception, bodies were "closed systems" with people possessing a finite amount of energy over their lifetimes. Any diminishment of the body's "vital fluids" and "vital energies" would weaken the person and leave them vulnerable to injury, disease, and domination.
1968 Olympics: Mexico City
Before the 1968 Games, Harry Edwards organized the Olympic Project for Human Rights among African American athletes that threatened a boycott in protest of racism within the U.S. and sports industry. Although the boycott failed, athletes found other ways to protest.
America at Peace
Besides the U.S. Army's continual warfare against native tribes, following the end of the Civil War in 1865 and America's entry into World War I in 1917, the United States was involved in less than four months of declared war against another nation (Spain 1898).
Labor Actions
Between 1972-1995, there were eight labor stoppages divided between owner lockouts and player strikes. Players remained unified as they fought for increased pension benefits, independent dispute arbitration, salary arbitration, and free agency.
Play Days
Between the 1920s-1960s, rather than sponsoring competitive female athletics, many universities held "play days" in which women from three or more schools would convene at a predetermined site, divided and placed on interinstitutional teams for games and various competitions (Eikelberry, 2013). Play days frequently featured social events in an atmosphere of "jolly sociability" (Cahn, 1994, p. 66).
Mythologized Frontier: Abner Doubleday
Beyond choosing Abner Doubleday as the "inventor" of baseball, the selection of Cooperstown is also significant beyond representing small town America. Cooperstown was founded by the father of James Fenimore Cooper, one of the most successful early American novelists. Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales romanticized frontier life.
Roosevelt & Conservation
Beyond his regular activities, Roosevelt was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, who would engage in these activities whenever he had the chance. As a result of his activities, Roosevelt was a strong advocate for National Parks as important for the nation.
Winston Churchill
Born into an aristocratic family, Churchill was educated to become a national leader. -Prominent politician from 1900-1964 -First Lord of the Admiralty at the start of WWI -Prime Minister during WWII Churchill's main source of income came from writing as he published more than 40 books and thousands of newspaper articles. He received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Literature. "History will be kind to me for I intend to write it"
Taking Up the White Man's Burden
British writer Rudyard Kipling extolled the virtues of imperialism. In 1899, the poem The White Man's Burden was printed in the American magazine, McClure's. It exhorted the U.S. to fully engage its imperial responsibilities beyond North America.
The Evolutionary Theory of Play
Building on the proposition that humans had an innate instinct to play, psychologist G. Stanley Hall and Luther Gulick, Jr. proposed that each person "recapitulates" the social evolution of the human species during childhood. In this recapitulation, children move from savage to barbarous to civilized behavior. Given this relationship between play and human development, properly structured play, physical activity and physical education were essential for not only the child's healthy development, but for the safety of the nation and advancement of the species.
U.S. Imperialism
By the end of the 19th century, the U.S. became an imperial power as it acquired control over Puerto Rico, the Philippines, territory in Panama, and various Pacific islands in the Spanish-American War and other imperial adventures.
Steroid use
By the late 1960s, steroid use was rampant and reflected the system of which it was part. In the U.S., 2/3 of male track & field athletes had taken steroids. Eastern Bloc countries developed state directed programs in which trainers and physicians administered steroids.
Regulating Behavior
Capitalism attempts to extend its control over workers beyond the workplace. Heavily influenced by Victorian values emphasizing moral discipline, material aspirations, propriety and self-restraint, physical activities were offered as healthy alternatives to a working class culture that undermined productivity.
Internationalism vs. Isolationism
Debates over U.S. foreign policy and global engagement continued through the first half of the 20th century as the U.S. entered World War I, helped design (but refused to participate) in the League of Nations, limited immigration in the 1920s, and turned inward as World War II loomed in the late 1930s.
Globalized Physical Culture
Despite being the global being at the most abstract level, physical culture in the U.S. is deeply embedded within global networks. Whether through the flows of products, capital, individuals, culture and/or knowledge, the world has grown "smaller" as technology has increased speed and deepened interdependence.
Imperialism
Despite claims of beneficence, imperial nations exploited native populations, resources, and markets. Local cultures, religions, languages, histories, and institutions were characterized as inferior and frequently prohibited. The children of native elites were often educated within the culture of the imperial power at special boarding schools or within the imperialist's home country.
Amateurism in the U.S.
Despite its British origins, amateurism quickly took hold in the U.S. Colleges banned professional athletes from competition and formed the NCAA for enforcement. Private athletic clubs sponsored the most prestigious track & field competitions. The Amateur Athletic Union organized competition in new and emerging sports.
Resisting Structures
Despite structures that discriminated by rule (de jure) and by custom (de facto), institutions, groups and individuals found ways to challenge dominant power relations. --The Negro Leagues showed that African Americans could play high quality baseball --Coaches, boosters and athletes contravened NCAA bans on amateurism
Negro League Baseball & Integration
Despite support from the African-American community, according to Riess (1995), "neither the players nor the community felt this was a substitute for the major leagues...and integration remained the ultimate goal" (p. 114) In concert with the NAACP, the African-American press, led by sportswriters Sam Lacy and Wendell Smith, aggressively worked to integrate baseball, including arranging tryouts with Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox during the early 1940s.
Economic Exploitation
Despite the NCAA benefiting from their likenesses, athletes receive no money from royalties and are expressly banned from receiving any benefit from their celebrity status.
Chromosomal Testing
Despite the increased 'scientific' measures found in chromosomal testing as a means to identify biological sex, there were inconsistencies in test results Namely, incongruences between chromosomal sex and physical characteristics
Women's Basketball
Despite these adaptations, many organizations, educators, and physicians still attempted to limit opportunities for females to play competitive basketball at the high school and college, often through denying resources.
The Crisis of 1905
During the 1905 football season, 20 athletes died and many others sustained serious injuries. Responding to public concern, President Roosevelt convened representatives from Yale, Harvard and Princeton to discuss reforms to the game. Roosevelt's intervention legitimized reformers who established the Intercollegiate Athletic Association (IAA), which became the NCAA in 1910.
Women's Liberation Movement
During the 1960s-1970s, women demanded legal recognition and social acceptance of their rights over their bodies and lives, and opportunities for political and economic advancement.
Science & Patriarchy
During the 19th century, men claimed medical expertise in women's health issues and displaced female health practitioners, such as midwives. According to Vertinsky (1987), these doctors "utilized pseudoscientific theories about the effects of the reproductive life cycle upon women's physical capabilities to control the life choices of middle class women and set limits upon their activities" (p. 7).
Feminine Performance
Female athletes also needed to conform to expectations of feminine performance and beauty through uniforms, clothing in general, and behavior. Besides requiring athletes to compete in short skirts, the AAGPBL required lessons in charm and beauty, banned "unladylike" practices such as smoking, and provided teams with chaperones to ensure "proper" femininity.
Festival Culture
Festivals tended to be drunken and unruly events, which provided peasants with a break from the drudgery of agricultural work and serfdom. For aristocrats, sponsoring festivals enabled displays of status and allowed them to gain favor from peasants.
Jack Johnson
First African American boxer to win the World Heavyweight title (1908), represented the idea of the "New Negro" in the early-1900s American culture. Did not let authority get the best of him. ($100 for a $50 fine) Johnson infuriated white America and was unevenly supported in the African American community due to his assertive and individualistic attitude and his refusal to conform to racial norms.
Louis Sockalexis
First Native American to play in major leagues with the Cleveland spiders in 1897 --In june, he was hitting 417 and recognized as having substantial potential. some sportswriters start calling team the Indians. --However, injuries and alcoholism (fueled in part by the racist taunting he faced in others cities) led to his decline in 1899
Play as Natural Instinct
Following Darwin's Origin of Species, several scientists noted the similarities between the play of animals and children. Within play, young animals were practicing the skills necessary for their adult survival. Hall and Gulick argued that the human species acquired a fundamental impulse to play during evolution.
Wartime Allies
Following Pearl Harbor, the US and USSR became allies. However, the nations had different war aims: Western nations believed that the liberated states of Eastern Europe should be re-established as capitalist democracies. Following Pearl Harbor, the US and USSR became allies. However, the nations had different war aims: After being invaded by Germany in two wars, the USSR believed bordering Eastern European nations should be allies as buffer states to protect it from attack.
The Brotherhood War
Following the 1889 season, the Brotherhood joined with external investors in a cooperative venture to form the "Players League" as a rival to the NL & AA.0 Most NL players (81) joined the new league with just 38 veterans remaining in the NL.
Mediating the NFL
Following the merger, the NFL championship game quickly became the highest rated television program of each year. Seeking to capitalize on the NFL's ratings, ABC placed professional football into primetime through Monday Night Football in 1970.
Sport as an Artificial Frontier
Historian Frederick Paxson, as he linked the corruption of the Gilded Age and urban America with the closing of the frontier, argued that sport could provide a viable substitute. In Paxson's (1917) view, sport would be a "safety valve" as the "rugged individualist of sport took the place of the rugged individualist of the frontier."
Material Consequences
Historically, such social constructions have resulted in legal discrimination, economic deprivation, and cultural marginalization. In many cases, groups have internalized racial beliefs in relation to their physical and/or intellectual capacities. These beliefs become "naturalized" as people accept the seeming truth of these ideas, and as beliefs are incorporated into cultural expectations and practices.
Capitalism and Professional Baseball
However, professional baseball was a relatively inexpensive business to enter due to low stadium costs and the number of players who could be attracted by larger salaries. Between 1880-1914, five other "major leagues" were established. New leagues challenged existing leagues for control of players and markets as they did not honor territorial exclusivity or the reserve clause. To reduce competition and monopolize "major" league baseball, the NL entered into agreements with new leagues in 1884 (American Association) and 1903 (American League). Rather than engaging in direct competition for baseball talent or for market supremacy, leagues agreed to act as a cartel, which kept ticket prices high and player salaries low towards increasing team profitability.
What theories of power have we identified? How are they enacted?
If power is coercive, then it makes you do something If power is hegemonic, they agree with it/it is taken for granted, so they go along with it. De Jure- power established by law De facto-power established by social norms Economic power-if you have money, you have power Political power-you have the power to enact policy on a macro or micro level. Power is institutional-it is enacted through law, policy, and institutional social norms EXAMPLE: NCAA has power economically and politically
Monroe Doctrine
In 1823, following a series of revolutions in Latin America in which nations achieved independence from the Spanish Empire, President James Monroe issued a statement that new European colonization or interference efforts in the Western Hemisphere would be considered acts of aggression against the United States.
More Than Porkopolis
In 1869, civic boosters in Cincinnati fielded the first team with 9 professionals in the starting lineup. The Red Stockings made a highly publicized undefeated tour through the East and claimed the "championship" for the city.
Stuck in the Second Tier
In 1900, the city of Buffalo was promised a team in the new American League. At the time, Buffalo was the 8th largest city in the U.S. and previously hosted National League teams. However, at the last minute, league commissioner Ban Johnson chose to place a franchise in Boston instead.
Cleveland Indians
In 1901, Cleveland received a team in the new American League --Nicknamed the "naps" after star 2B Napoleon Lajoie --Lajoie traded in 1914, which necessitated a new name for 1915 Team President convened meeting with writers from four newspapers to choose name. --selected the name "Indians." American Indian Movement protested the name and logo as being disrespectful to Indians.
Jim Thorpe
In 1911 and 1912, he earned All-American football honors as the Carlisle Indian School. Although Thorpe gained fame as a football player, he was originally recruited by Carlisle as a track and field athlete and also played baseball. In the 1912 Olympics, he won gold medals in the Pentathlon and Decathlon.In the spring of 1913, a newspaper reported that Thorpe had received as much as $35 per week playing summer baseball in 1909 and 1910. In response, the IOC and AAU cancelled his amateur status and expunged his records.
Capital Abuses & Resistance
In 1919, the Chicago White Sox took money from gamblers to lose the World Series. Team owner Charles Comiskey had players benched to prevent them from earning bonuses and charged players for laundering uniforms.
Harvard Fatigue Lab
In 1927, the Harvard Fatigue Lab engaged in a holistic, collaborative approach to studying how bodies responded to their environments and activity. Its discoveries set the foundation for exercise physiology.
Local Pressures
In 1945, the New York State Legislature banned discrimination by race and religion. New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia established a Committee on Baseball to pressure the Dodgers, Giants, and Yankees to sign an African-American player.
Sex Testing/Gender Verification
In 1946, the International Amateur Athletics Federation (now the International Association of Athletics Federation, or IAAF) introduced a rule requiring female competitors to bring a medical certificate to prove their eligibility. - This was called the 'fem card' By the 1960s, international athletic organizations performed their own sex verification tests at elite sports competitions (e.g., the Olympic Games)
Television Fitness
In 1951, Jack Lalanne starred in a televised exercise show featuring calisthenics, exercise tips, recipes, and product pitches.
Little League Baseball
In 1951, Little League explicitly banned girls from competing. In 1973, the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights ruled in a case brought by Maria Pepe's parents that the prohibition violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws.
League Revenue Sharing
In 1960, following the example of the AFL, Rozelle convinced league owners to pool league-wide television revenues. The 1962 contract was $4.65 million and the 1964 contract increased to $14.1 million. Although prohibited by antitrust laws, Congress allowed the NFL to share its TV revenue by passing the Sports Broadcasting Act in 1961. Towards gaining approval, the NFL agreed not to play games on Friday or Saturday to protect high schools and colleges.
American Football League
In 1960, the NFL was challenged by the 8-team American Football League (AFL), which was founded by owners unsuccessful in seeking NFL franchises in cities denied NFL teams. Although the AFL struggled for its first few years, a league-wide $8.5 million annual contract in 1964 helped ensure its survival.
The Rise of the Major League Baseball Players Association
In 1966, the MLBPA hired Marvin Miller as Executive Director. Miller, who had been the chief economist for United Steel Workers, took an aggressive, adversarial stance in negotiations with team owners to increase player rights and salaries.
Maria Pepe
In 1973, Maria Pepe was forced to quit Little League after complaints from parents with children on other teams. The National Organization for Women filed a grievance with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights which ruled Little League's ban violated state and federal anti-discrimination laws.
Little League Softball
In 1974, Congress amended Little League's charter and officially opened the organization to girls. In response, Little League created a softball program as a parallel institution. While girls are allowed to play baseball, social norms lead most to choose to softball.
The Messersmith-McNally Decision
In 1975, arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that baseball's reserve clause only allowed unsigned contracts to be renewed once, following which players would become free agents. Owners locked players out from training camps in 1976 and eventually negotiated the free agent system.
The Decline of Unionized Labor
In 1981, President Reagan fired the air traffic controllers of PATCO, who were on a "wildcat" strike. This action signaled a clear shift by the Federal Government to support the interests of capital in labor disputes.
After courts upheld the right of girls to play Little League Baseball, the organization quickly established a separate fast-pitch softball program. In 2004, almost 500,000 girls competed in Little League programs with 80% of them playing softball.
In 1981, the NCAA started offering championships for women, despite vehemently opposing the application of Title IX to sport and choosing not to sponsor women's championships for many years. The AIAW filed an anti-trust lawsuit and lost. The AIAW went out of business in 1982.
Testosterone
In 2011, the IAAF issued new standards that focus on testosterone levels to determine the eligibility of female athletes • Yet Schultz (2014) and other scholars note that "there is no definitive connection between hyperandrogenism and athletic ability" (p. 120)
Playing With Pain
In addition to the possibility of losing one's job and livelihood, playing hurt is celebrated as validating masculinity. In many ways, injuries become "badges of courage" as players persevere despite pain.
The Greek City-State
In ancient Greece, political life operated through the different city-states that were ruled by its landowning citizens. In addition to being political hubs, city-states were centers of commerce, culture, and religion and were supported by agriculture in nearby villages and countryside. City-states also had walls for defense.
Capitalism
In capitalism, the means of production are privately owned. The owners seek profit and suitable return on invested capital from the production of goods and services. The owners offer people wages in exchange for their lab or to produce goods and services. These products are then sold on a free market following the laws of supply and demand. Government's role is to protect property and regulate markets.
Forgetting Problematic Histories
In celebrating the past, certain factual elements are written out of the historical narrative. These elements could offer unflattering images of the historical actions taken by powerful individuals or institutions. How can we understand this celebration while considering the history of institutional racism in Major League Baseball?
President's Council on Youth Fitness
In response, President Eisenhower established the President's Council on Youth Fitness, which sought to improve physical education in schools and general levels of physical activity.
The Closing of the Frontier
In the 1890 census, there was no "frontier line" in the United States (not including Alaska) past which population density was less than two people per square mile. Railroads, telegraphs, towns, mines, homesteads and ranches covered the formerly open western plains.
Counting Calories
In the 1920s, calories were seen as central to diet and health as writers recommended people count calories as they sought to manage their weight.
America Under Threat
In the late 1930s, Nazi Germany and its ideology of Aryan supremacy represented a challenge to a heterogeneous America. Sport offered the Nazis chances to win symbolic victories, which they would use in propaganda. During the late 1930s, Louis twice fought Germany's Max Schmeling.
Early Sport Celebrities
In the late 19th century, athletes were already present within popular culture. Many athletes were popular on the vaudeville stage as they toured the nation, told stories of their endeavors, and engaged in athletic exhibitions. Athletes, such as King Kelly and John L. Sullivan, promoted products in advertising and were celebrated in popular songs of the era.
Sexual Independence
In the late 19th century, female baseball players were accused of "immodest," "unladylike" and "disreputable" behaviors. These charges were especially leveled against travel teams that played before large crowds. Yet, to attract the attention of male sports fans, women athletes were also expected to be objects for the male gaze as female athletes often wore flashy and revealing outfits.
Elitism in British Sport
In the mid-19th century, Great Britain began looking back to Ancient Greece as the model for civilization. Interpreting the structures of Ancient Greece through the lens of British society, the upper class created the myth of amateurism as a way to reinforce class privilege within sport and to justify upper class dominance of its structures.
Moderation
Instead of vigorous athletic competition, women were encouraged to be physically active and taught "appropriate" feminine activities. Female sport was also modified to limit exertion, aggression, and physical contact to reinforce gender differences and as a preventative against the masculine effects of sport.
Gender Barriers in 1960's America
Legal protections - Until the mid-1970s, a husband could not be convicted of raping his wife • Reproductive rights - No generalized right to contraception • Financial opportunities - Women could not get a credit card in own name without husband's signature
Conclusion
Like many other ideas, the Evolutionary Theory of Play had only a limited duration before it was superseded by alternative theories about the relationship between play and childhood development. Nonetheless, the Evolutionary Theory of Play helped to shape institutions, programs and practices that continue to this day.
Ancient Greece & Rome
Men in both Greece and Rome were employed full time in "sport." In Greece, many male citizens spent substantial time in the gymnasium where they trained. Victorious athletes would receive generous prizes, fame, and some became trainers for other athletes. In Rome, slaves were employed as gladiators and could win their freedom.
Playground Movement
Progressive reformers founded the Playground Movement to provide open spaces within slum areas. Playground leaders were often educated in the Evolutionary Theory of Play as they directed age and gender appropriate activities, rather than allowing spontaneous play.
Americanizing Sporting Institutions
Progressive social reformers saw sport and physical activity as effective tools to teach American values to immigrants and, especially, their children - Settlement Houses - YMCA/YMHA - Public Schools Jewish newspapers encouraged youth to participate in sport "as a mark of both their freedom and acceptance as Americans" (Levine, 1992, p. 16). The Young Men's Hebrew Association created a Jewish environment for recreation and emphasized the importance of assimilation and practicing good citizenship
Selective & Depoliticized Representations
Representations of the past frequently replace the oppositional, strident or transgressive politics of individuals and events with a gauzy nostalgia that obscures the conflicts of which they were part. How can we understand this celebration and Robinson within the context of the Civil Rights movement?
The Organization Man
Returning from World War II, men took white collar jobs within the increasingly bureaucratic large corporations that dominated the American economy.
Celebrating Jackie Robinson
Robinson has also been celebrated in popular culture in many ways, including the 2013 film, 42 and in statues throughout the United States.
The Destruction of African-American Institutions
Robinson's presence in Major League Baseball meant the end of the Negro Leagues. By 1950, Major League teams signed the most talented players, and, in contravention to business practices common among Major League and Minor League clubs, MLB teams did not compensate Negro League teams by purchasing player contracts.
Steroid Programs
Seeing improved athletic performance, the US and USSR encouraged widespread PED use. Following commercial incentives, 1/3 of US male track & field athletes were taking steroids by the late 1960s In the Eastern Bloc, statedirected trainers and physicians developed an organized system to administer PEDs. Athletes were often given PEDs without their consent as they submitted to the authority of the state.
The "Natural" Black Athlete
Similarly, African-American athletes were credited with having greater physical prowess. Anthropometry identified anatomical advantages such as an "elongated heel bone," "longer legs" or "narrower hips." Anthropological attributions suggested that African Americans were closer to a "primordial" past in which escape from wild animals was a life-or-death matter. By attributing African-American athletic success to natural physical traits, these attributions deny the presence of character, discipline, hard work, and intelligence. Thus, when considered for central positions (eg. Quarterback, Catcher), coaching, or executive positions, those in positions of authority may believe that African-Americans "may not have some of the necessities" for those roles.
Enclosure Movement
Sport entrepreneurs recognized growing popular demand to watch sporting events. They invested in facilities that limited the supply of seats. This forced fans to pay in order to watch sport and excluded those unwilling to do so.
Defining the Local
Sports teams also contribute to a sense of local identity by providing host cities with status and can help to build community.
Revitalizing the City
Stadiums have been built downtown as part of broader visitor-based redevelopment strategies in which central cities have been reconfigured into recreation and entertainment spaces. Stadiums are used to draw large crowds into the urban core and as platforms from which to broadcast favorable images of the city to distant television audiences.
International YMCA Training School
Starting as director at the in 1887, Gulick directly influenced the development of sport and physical activity within the YMCA program. He encouraged his students to experiment with new games suitable for gymnasiums and were age appropriate. James Naismith and William Morgan were both associated with the YMCA Training School and invented basketball and volleyball in direct consultation with Gulick.
Mythologized Frontier: Buffalo Bill's Wild West
Starting in the 1870s, Bill Cody's frontier life was serialized in the New York Weekly magazine. The fictionalized adventures of "Buffalo Bill" became internationally popular and Cody began life as a stage performer and impresario. Buffalo Bill's Wild West and other shows romanticized the frontier and westward expansion with displays of cowboys, Native Americans, and wild animals. These shows toured the U.S. and Europe and featured theatrical reenactments, tales of the West, and trick exhibitions of "frontier skills." Within this mythology, the westward expansion of the U.S. demonstrates the superiority of white Americans over the "primitive" Native American nations. The shows' extensive touring performed and reproduced this message to many audiences.
Muscular Christianity
Starting in the mid-19th century in England, physical education was promoted as important to the development of moral character. Luther Gulick, the founder of the physical education program at the YMCA's Training School, believed that spiritual life relied on the equal development of body and mind.
Amateurism
The English upper-class cited Ancient Greece as the model for the development of sport. They argued that the Greeks participated in sport for its own sake. It is an invented tradition there was no tradition or even a concept of amateurism in Ancient Greece, where athletes accepted large prizes for their victories and participation.
The Enlightenment
The Enlightenment began at the start of the 18th century and is closely linked to the scientific revolution with an emphasis on empiricism, rational thought, and beliefs in advancement and progress. With its emphasis on natural rights and the social contract, Enlightenment thought is credited as inspiring the American Revolution and Constitution.
Expanding Boundaries of Whiteness
The Jewish experience of "becoming" white is not unique as the descendants of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe were eventually accepted as white (but "ethnic") Americans.
From Rust Belt to Sunbelt
The Sunbelt rose as corporations and people moved to the West & South. New technologies (airplanes & air conditioning) eased transportation and production difficulties. Western and Southern states had newer infrastructure, lower wage costs, and fewer regulations. As the Sunbelt rose, traditional manufacturing centers in the Northeast and Midwest (the "Rust Belt") declined. Much of this transition occurred due to shifts in industrial production as factories begin to age and the costs of unionized labor increased.
The Walking City
The Walking City is one of transition as from 1820 to 1870, the modern, industrial city took shape. This transition occurred due to migration and the growth of manufacturing.
Immorality
The idea of women competing against men was seen to undermine traditional gender roles, especially if women displayed "masculine" traits and were victorious. Morality concerns also centered on sexuality, both in terms of independence and homosexuality.
The 1960s
The late 1960s were a tumultuous time in the United States as an assertive Civil Rights Movement fought for equal rights and youth protested against the Vietnam War.
Southern Colonies
The southern colonies (Virginia, Carolinas, Georgia) were generally settled by people seeking economic opportunities and land ownership. Many large farms were bought by the younger sons of English aristocracy, who would not inherit lands in England. Most white settlers came under contracts of indentured servitude, while Georgia was settled by criminals.
The Sporting Culture
The sporting culture was centered around taverns, theaters, brothels, volunteer firehouses, dance halls, and gambling parlors. Promoters recognized sport (boxing, dogfighting, ratting) could attract patrons and encouraged the drinking and wagering within these almost exclusively male spaces.
Suburban Sport & Physical Activity
The suburbanization of America was also felt within physical culture as participation patterns and spectator opportunities changed. Opportunities for physical activity were determined by socioeconomic status and spatial patterns.
The Long Residuals
This means searching for the continuities and discontinuities in socio-political forms, practices, and institutes. -Stephen Hardy We live life forward but we interpret it backward. We will be searching for continuities and discontinuities as the practice of institutions of sport and physical activity has changed (or not) over time and discussing the reasons these have occurred (or not). although the current moment may appear different from the past, we will be examining the multitude of relationships and legacies existing between the past and the present.
Separate Spheres through History
Throughout American history, men and women have lived in "separate spheres" with defined roles and expectations. - Men were in the "public sphere" of employment, military and politics - Women were in the "private sphere" as guardians of the home and morality
Cold War Battlefields
Throughout the 2nd half of the 20th century, the two "superpowers" challenged one another for global supremacy. Allied with governments featuring similar economic and political systems, the USSR and US sought to attract the non-aligned nations of the "Third World" through political, military, economic, scientific, and propaganda means.
Victorian Era Femininity
Throughout the Victorian era, social expectations upon middle and upper class included the wearing of restrictive corsets that minimized activity. These expectations led to frailty with clothing promoting sedentary behaviors.
Japanese Baseball
Throughout the early 20th century, American all-star teams toured Japan with games taking on additional significance in the 1930s as tensions increased between the two countries.
You Gotta Have Wa
To many in Japan, baseball required Japanese values of order, harmony, perseverance, and self-restraint that part of the Bushido Code followed by the Samurai class of warriors.
Reciprocal Boycotts: Moscow, 1980
To protest the USSR invasion of Afghanistan, the United States led a boycott of 62 nations. In doing so, the US deprived the USSR of a global audience to showcase its nation and ideology
Scientific Racism
To prove the superiority of Caucasians and the inferiority of other races, researchers utilized a variety of scientific tests. Anthropometry measured body parts to identify physical prowess and intellectual capacity. IQ Tests were used to measure intelligence. Statistical analyses of social data were used to differentiate between groups.
Growing Revenues
To realize their shares of increasing revenues, colleges began investing in larger and more luxurious facilities, and larger coaching and administrative staffs. Since 1984, coaching compensation for football at public institutions increased by 750% (adjusted for inflation) and many men's basketball coaches earn millions.
Manliness and Water
Too many football coaches before the 1960s, practicing without drinking water helped to build grit and fortitude.
The Roman Circus
Towards entertaining the masses, Roman spectacles provided a mix of danger, violence, stories, oddities, and the exotic. Events did more than entertain as they educated the masses about the physical, cultural and military superiority of the Roman Empire.
Organizations
Towards teaching "proper" values to youth, institutions such as the YMCA, YMHA, and Boy Scouts, emphasized sports and physical activity within their educational missions. They recognized that competition and physical activity could attract boys, who then would be given other spiritual, cultural, and social lessons.
The New Map: Transportation
Until the 1950s, baseball teams generally rode trains between cities. Until the 1950s, baseball teams generally rode trains between cities. However, the development of commercial passenger jets made the placement of teams on the West Coast and Southeast practical.
Medicalization of Sport
Waddington (1996) suggests the impact of medicalization of sport and the development of associated disciplines of exercise physiology, biomechanics, and sports psychology is to surround and make athletes "increasingly dependent upon a whole group of specialist advisors" (p. 180) in their training and development.
PEDs: Baseball & Amphetamines
While steroid use was limited before the 1990s, large numbers of players had been regularly taking amphetamines since the 1950s. Players would claim that the stimulants provided the energy necessary to complete a 162-game schedule over a 6- month regular season.
Physical Education in History
While the Evolutionary Theory of Play may have directed physical education and recreation programs at the start of the 20th century, the theory is one of many ideas that have influenced the development of physical education as a field.
Basketball: An Americanizing Game
With its origins in the YMCA, basketball was linked to social reform from its invention. The game could easily operate in a dense, urban context with few spaces for structured recreation. It did not require much space or expensive equipment.
The Science of Gender Exclusion
With menstruation understood as an "eternal wound," medical experts recommended that women be prevented from engaging in vigorous exercise and intense athletic competition as a health measure protecting their abilities to bear children.
The Science of Gender Exclusion
With menstruation understood as an "eternal wound," medical experts recommended that women be prevented from engaging in vigorous exercise and intense athletic competition as a health measure to protect their abilities to bear children.
Labor in the Gilded Age
With minimal government intervention and hostility towards labor unions, capital dominated labor. Workers, including child laborers, were exploited as they often toiled in hazardous conditions for long hours and low wages.
Settlement Houses
With more than 400 houses by 1910, the Settlement House movement sought to address the problems of the urban poor by locating themselves within slum neighborhoods and offering a wide range of educational and social services. Settlement Houses were often led by middle and upper class women who provided moral, mental, and physical education, often focused on promoting democratic ideals. According to Azzarito, et al (2004), "democratic play aimed to provide safe learning spaces, such as playgrounds, that promoted healthy living conditions, women's competitive sports, national identification, and physical educational experiences for the well-being of immigrants and poor people" (p. 386).
Civilizing Play
With play considered as a "natural" instinct, physical education would enable children to successfully develop at each stage and learn how to exercise control over their instinctive behaviors. However, lacking proper instruction, children would tend towards delinquency and deviant behaviors.
Gendering Physical Education
With the belief that females were physically inferior to and developed differently than males, physical education emphasized gender-appropriate activities that would promote masculine traits for boys and feminine traits for girls.
Alaska: "The Last Frontier"
With the frontier closed in the "Lower 48," Alaska claimed the title as America's "Last Frontier." Despite a gold rush in 1898, settlement remained sparse due to a harsh climate and few economic opportunities.
Cold War Sport
With victories perceived as symbolizing the superiority of the athlete's country and its economic system, both sides sought to use the Olympics to promote its political and economic goals. Within the competition, the US and USSR sought ways to enhance athletic performance. Outside of competition, both sides attempted to coopt the Olympic movement and use it for political ends.
Early Baseball
Within 20 years of the Knickerbocker rules, baseball had become a business with entrepreneurs building baseball fields, promoters selling games to the public, and players earning significant wages as professionals.
Ancient Physical Education
Within Ancient Greece, the cultivation of the body through physical education was a form of worship as the gods were considered physically perfect with incredible athletic prowess and beauty. In the Roman Empire, bodies were trained for the military and the bloody spectacles of the amphitheater.
Disciplinary Power
Within Foucault's conception, power is a relationship between people that guides conduct, practices and actions. People are taught expectations about their bodies and trainedto meet them. Rather than being forced to comply, people internalize discipline, regulate their behavior, and become docile.
Feudal Labor System
Within Medieval Europe, aristocrats and peasants were joined within the Feudal system. The "Lords of the Manor" were the aristocrats who owned the land. Serfs worked the land and paid rent by giving a portion of their harvest to the Lord.
Agricultural Society
Within feudal society, agricultural labor followed seasonal rhythms and allowed for many days of leisure. Due to a combination of religious observances and pagan celebrations, there was approximately 1 holiday per 2 days of work.
Setting the Color Bar in Sport
Within professional sport, no laws excluded African-Americans from participation, but there was systematic exclusion through explicit policies and implicit "Gentleman's Agreements" that denied licenses, tryouts, and other opportunities to compete.
Paradigms of Knowledge
Within the sciences (physical and social), a "paradigm" refers to the set of concepts and practices that define the discipline's approach to identifying topics and questions, conducting research, and interpreting results. A paradigm is underpinned by a set of assumptions regarding reality and the nature of truth.
The Industrial Radial City
Within the walking city, there were many underdeveloped, natural public spaces and lower population densities. However, with economic considerations shaping urbanization, vacant lots were transformed into monetizable real estate. As developers seek to maximize the value of urban space, cities had increasing population densities and became manufacturing centers. These conditions created crowded slums and pollution that led to poor health and contributed to epidemics.
Formalizing Physical Education
Within this context, Physical Education curricula began to be standardized, featuring such classes as anatomy, physiology, hygiene, applied anatomy, and the history and philosophy of gymnastic systems. This background trained physical educators to properly structure physical activity towards improving childhood development.
"Objective" Science?
• The regulation have been criticized for: - Conflict of interest - Non-transparency of data - Inability to replicate results - Flawed data - Incongruence of scientific results and policy - Disproportionately affects black and brown women from the Global South "Far from being objective or universal, this regulation mobilizes a version of 'fairness' that is a privilege reserved for those with favored racial, gender, sexual, class, or national status" (Karkazis & Jordan-Young, 2018)
The Box Score
As Chadwick's scoring system and box score produced standardized quantitative measures of player productivity, statistics also generated a particular knowledge about the game's "proper" objectives and emphasis.
An Iron Curtain Falls
As Eastern Europe was liberated from Nazi control by the USSR, western nations had no practical ability to press its claims. As a result, puppet Communist regimes were established in Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania & Bulgaria.
Ancient Greek Sport
As described by Guttmann (1978), ancient Greek civilization did not attempt to quantify aspects of human performance as they believed that man was "the measure of all things." As victory was all that mattered, there was little need to measure times and distances or to record particular performances for subsequent comparisons.
The Media
As described earlier in the semester, sport and the media have had a symbiotic relationship as the media helped educate people about and build an audience for sport. Events would then provide a popular source of content that would attract audiences and increase advertising sales.
Urban Development
As discussed previously, sport helped to shape the changing industrial city through the development of public parks, playgrounds and gymnasiums that were designed for leisure, physical activity and recreation. This development also included places for commercial sport.
The Contradictory Female Athlete
Given the expectations surrounding both sport and gender, female athletes have had to prove themselves capable of competing at the highest levels while also proving their ability to conform to expectations of femininity. However, expectations of femininity have been subjected to contestation with physical culture, an important site of struggle. Just as women have fought to increase opportunities within sport and society, they have met resistance from people promoting the patriarchal status quo.
Cold War Sport Science
Given the stakes of athletic competition, the USSR and US also turned towards drugs to enhance athletic performance. In the 1950s, Russians were taking straight testosterone while the U.S. physician John Ziegler developed anabolic steroids.
A Consumer Class
By the 1920s, social demands for self -control and Victorian rigidness were replaced by much greater permissiveness. As the average workweek declined from 60 hours in 1890 to 47 in 1920, people had more leisure time -allowing for the expansion of commercial amusements
Better Performance Through Chemistry
By the 1960s, physicians and researchers recognized the link between water restrictions during practice and death. They worked to change the culture in sports and to develop products to assist with hydration. Against the backdrop of Cold War competition, the USSR and US utilized drugs and hormones to enhance athletic performance. In the 1950s, Russians were taking straight testosterone while the U.S. physician John Ziegler developed anabolic steroids.
Jack Johnson
African Americans could fight for most titles, but white heavyweight champions avoided black challengers. Johnson, the black champion since the early 1900s, defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia on December 26, 1908.
The Invention of Race
Although ancient Greeks and the works of Shakespeare represent Africans as an "other" and the slave trade was active between Africa and the Americas, race did not exist as a meaningful social construct until the late 17th century when the first taxonomic models were developed by white Europeans.
Urban Health & Morality
Although cities have been central to economic growth and social development, they have often been perceived as centers of disease due to overcrowding and vice due the migration of thousands of unsupervised young men. Changing and shaping urban space to become more conducive to health and morality has been central to the efforts of social reformers.
Identity as a Social Construction
Although race, sex, and sexuality all have biological bases, understandings of race and gender are socially constructed. However, research on the body often uncritically accepts these categories as being natural. Results regarding the capacities of groups have been used to justify racial and gender segregation within physical culture.
High Performance Bodies
Although scientific approaches to physical measurement did not identify significant differences attributable to race, it did find that certain bodies were better suited for particular athletic activities.
The Politics of Knowledge
Although scientists within positivist paradigms claim objectivity, research on the body historically has been deeply embedded within dominant discourses and power relations. Claims that research is politically neutral and objective help to obscure the constructed nature of knowledge and its underlying assumptions.
The Historical Record
Although the film and statue present this incident occurring in 1947 in Cincinnati, nothing was reported at the time. However, in 1952, Robinson described it as occurring in Boston during 1948.
Resisting the Image
Although the global stage of the Olympics allows nations to promote particular images of themselves and earn symbolic victories through athletic competition, it also provides opportunities to individuals and non-state actors to present alternative visions and engage in protests.
From Kid's Game to Sport
In 1842, Alexander Cartwright helped establish the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in Manhattan. They played Town Ball, a variant of rounders-an English children's game popular in New England. In 1845, Cartwright led a committee to write the rules for a more "adult" game. Throughout baseball's early years, participants and organizers sought to make the sport more challenging and "manly", so as to distinguish it from "boyish" games. The 1845 rules eliminated throwing at a runner and, in the late 1850s/early 1860s, there were controversies over the fly rule, which replaced catching the ball on the bounce for an out.
World War II
In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the USSR signed a non-aggression pact that allowed for the invasion of Poland and began World War II. In June 1940, France surrendered six weeks after Germany's initial westward attack. Great Britain stood alone, but received significant American support, despite the official neutrality of the US.
Winter 1980: Lake Placid
In December, 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan to bolster its puppet government. The United States led several nations in their condemnation of the USSR and demanded that the Soviet Union withdraw. Backdropped by increasing Cold War tensions, the Winter Olympic Games were held in February, 1980 in Lake Placid, New York.
1956 Olympics: Melbourne
In November 1956, the Soviet Union brutally subdued a revolt in its East Bloc client-state Hungary. More than 2,500 Hungarians were killed and another 200,000 fled as refugees. At the end of November 1956, Hungary and the USSR met in the semi-finals of the Water Polo competition. Due to the excessive violence between players, the game has been called "The Blood in the Water" match.
The 4:00 Mile
In the early 1950s, coaches, sportswriters, and many scientists claimed that it was physically impossible for a person to run one mile in under four minutes. In the first 50 years after Roger Bannister achieved the "impossible," more than 950 runners surpassed the mark.
The 4:00 Mile
In the early 1950s, there was popular attention on the possibility of breaking 4:00 for the mile. Roger Bannister, who had degrees in physiology and medicine, applied his scientific knowledge to his training regime, and broke the 4- minute barrier in 1954.
Women's Liberation Movement
In these efforts, women demanded access to traditionally male spaces, such as college and professional schools, executive positions in business, and leadership roles in politics.
Limiting Immigration
While America has generally been welcoming, each immigration wave has been met with strong antiimmigrant opposition and discrimination from "native-born" Americans, who have engaged in demagoguery and passed immigration restrictions.
Class-Based Exclusion
While class status is not enshrined in law in the United States, class status and power often defined and reinforced through the ability to include and exclude other people from certain spaces and activities.
The Great Depression
While many recognize the stock market crash in 1929 as precipitating the Great Depression, its duration and intensity were due to the collapse in consumer demand. Keynesian-inspired New Deal programs and social safety net helped revive the economy, but the Great Depression was ended by World War II as the entire nation mobilized for war and with high spending by the Federal Government.
The "Scientific" Explanation
While men could limit their loss of vital fluids, women could not exercise similar control over menstruation, which late 19th century medical science treated as a dangerous and disabling condition. Experts theorized that cyclical functioning of female physiology caused physical, emotional, and moral vulnerability and cited as evidence of poor health, fatigue, pain and illness, mood swings, and menstrual irregularities
Rickey & Robinson
While popular culture tends to portray Rickey's signing of Robinson to be a courageous, moral act, it also needs to be considered in terms of self-interest. The Dodgers were facing growing external pressure and signing the first African-American player offered potential for economic gain and competitive advantage.
Spaces for Physical Culture
Within the walking city, physical activity could occur within underdeveloped outdoor public spaces, such as streets and vacant lots. However, as cities became more densely populated and governments regulated activities, clubs relocated frequently until the development of commercial sport spaces and public recreational spaces.
The "Scientific" Explanation
Experts theorized that cyclical functioning of female physiology caused physical, emotional, and moral vulnerability and cited as evidence of poor health, fatigue, pain and illness, mood swings, and menstrual irregularities.
Separate But (Un)Equal (1890s -1930s)
Faced with marginalization and organized exclusion, African-Americans developed parallel institutions in baseball, tennis and golf for segregated sport. Boxing was not completely segregated as the sport provided opportunities for whites to achieve symbolic racial victories.
The Olympic Spectacle
Following these challenges, the Olympics have been used to serve various political and economic ends as host cities and countries have sought to develop urban areas, improve image by impressing global audiences, and demonstrate superiority.
The Frontier
"Coarseness and strength, acuteness and inquisitiveness, that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism that comes with freedom -- these are the traits of the frontier" Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893 "This expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnishes the forces dominating American character." Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893
The Production of Space
"Every society - and hence every mode of production with its subvariants - produces a space, its own space" (p. 31). Henri Lefebvre (1974) "(Social) space is a (social) product" (p. 26). Henri Lefebvre (1974)
The Outcome
"I thought it would set us back 50 years if I didn't win that match. It would ruin the women's [tennis] tour and affect all women's self-esteem" Billie Jean King
Football & the Production Line
"In football, on each play eleven men act in unison, and in each action not the individual but the corporate unit acts. When Bart Starr completed a pass for the Green Bay Packers, all the Packers could be said to share the deed; one man alone is quite helpless. When Joe DiMaggio stepped to the plate in Yankee Stadium with his unforgettable stance and fluid swing, DiMaggio stood in spotlighted solitude, and none of his teammates could act in his behalf. Football is corporate, baseball an association of individuals." Michael Novak
1968 Olympics: Mexico City
"John Carlos's raised left black-gloved fist represented unity in black America, and the beads around his neck signified lynching suffered by blacks." "Both men wore black socks but were shoeless during the ceremony to represent the black poverty in Racist America. Together they formed an arch of unity and power."
Sculpting Jackie Robinson
"Robinson is sculpted as a saintly smiling figure, a visage that reflects martyrdom rather than his blend of dignity and intense combativeness. At best Robinson's statues depict the face that he was forced to maintain against his personality"
Sex Verification Testing
"The logic that undergirds the history of sex testing is such that gendered expectations become sexed imperatives... As a result, social concerns are exercised on the material body of the female athlete" (Schultz, 2014, p. 121)
Beyond a Boundary
"What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?" C.L.R. James, 1963
The "Liberty Valance" Effect
"When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."
"Time-Space Compression"
"innovations dedicated to the removal of spatial barriers... have been of immense significance in the history of capitalism, turning that history into a very geographical affair" (David Harvey, 1989, p. 232)
African American Experience in Sport
1865 -1890s: Setting the Color Bar 1890s -1930s: Separate But (Un)equal 1930s -1950s: Beginnings of Integration 1960s: Revolt of the Black Athlete
The "Natural" Black Dancer
According to Miller (1998), AfricanAmerican were recognized as having "innate" and "intrinsic" characteristics that made them naturally talented and allowed them to excel in modern dance. However, African-Americans were also noted as "wise" for not pursuing ballet, "for its wholly European outlook, history and technical theory [which] are alien to [them] culturally, temperamentally and anatomically" (p. 119)
Memorializing Jackie Robinson
According to Stride et al., statues allow communities to bask in Robinson's "reflected character" and operates as a form of 'tolerance branding." These allow host communities to represent their histories in progressive ways.
Jack Johnson & the Color Bar
African Americans could fight for most titles, but white heavyweight champions avoided black challengers. Johnson, the black champion since the early 1900s, fought Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia on December 26, 1908.
Cold War Fears
After World War II as the U.S. was being challenged by the Soviet Union for global supremacy, many people feared that America's youth would be unable to defend the nation against a Soviet attack as almost 1/3 of draftees were declared unfit for service.
Post War Suburbanization
After World War II, Jews were subjected to much lower levels of discrimination. As restrictive housing covenants against Jews became more rare, many relocated to suburban areas along with other "white" Americans.
Suburbanized Metropolis
After the end of World War II, large numbers of (white) urban residents relocated to nearby communities, which were connected to cities through the new Interstate Highway system. Low-cost VA loans enabled many returning soldiers to purchase new homes.
Masculine Attributes of Sport
Aggression Discipline Determination Endurance Bravery Leadership Physical Strength Strength of Character
Government Involvement
Although civic boosters and leading business interests were involved in sports teams, local governments were generally uninvolved, did not subsidize stadiums, and treated teams no differently than other businesses.
Military Confrontation
Although the US and USSR did not engage in direct military conflict, they were both fought indirectly through military interventions, surrogate wars and civil wars.
America & Immigrants
Anti-immigrant sentiment has been closely linked to the fear of being unable to assimilate immigrants into American culture and that immigrants would change American culture into something unrecognizable to the (white) majority.
Baseball & American Exceptionalism
As "inferior" local cultures were replaced by those of the "superior" European imperialists, many involved in professional baseball believed that it was imperative for America's "national pastime" to be a wholly American creation.
Jack Johnson: The Aftermath
As Johnson upended the "natural" racial order with his victory over Jeffries, white America mobilized to reinscribe it through violence against the African-American community and the power of the state against Johnson.
Roosevelt as President
As President between 1901 - 1909, Roosevelt heavily promoted physical activity as the building block for masculinity. The youngest person elevated to the office, Roosevelt continued his regular exercise, boxing, and participation in other sports.
Mega Event as Theatre of Power
As a propaganda event, the Nazi Party sought to use the Olympics to express historical ambitions and significance of Nazism, despite Games (notionally) dedicated to the ideal of peace.
Conclusion
As battles over space are "battles over spatialized social power," victories often are met with resistance and require defense long after they are won. Although Title IX provided females with the right to participate in sport programs in the 1970s, women still fight for legitimacy in spaces of physical culture.
The New Middle Class
As corporate capitalism grew in the late 19th century, opportunities increased for middle managers, secretaries, and salespeople. This growing professional class was augmented by industrial workers receiving higher wages as manufacturers recognized employees as potential consumers
Promoting Multiculturalism
As described in Dinces (2010), organizers promoted the Los Angeles Games as a center of national, racial and class diversity. However, this image contradicted the "city's identity as an urban hotbed of discrimination" (p. 267).
Physical Culture on the Frontier
As discussed earlier in the semester, rough and tumble fighting was a frontier practice in some places through the mid19th century. Also known as "eye gouging," fights were brutal and without rules. During the 19th century, Mexican ranchers, living in territories subsequently conquered by the United States, organized charrerias, in which they competed in equestrian contests such as roping steers and horses, wrestling bulls, and riding wild bulls and broncos.
Sport as an Artificial Frontier
Frederick Paxson argued that sport could provide a viable substitute. In Paxson's (1917) view, sport would be a "safety valve" as the "Rugged Individualist of sport" took the place of the rugged individualist of the frontier
Little League Baseball
From its inception, Little League Baseball excluded girls as founder Carl Stotz discussed the importance of teaching "boys" the values of sportsmanship, fair play, and teamwork. Although girls occasionally earned spots on Little League teams between the 1940s-1960s, rules explicitly banned them from participation.
Academic Historians
Generally working within university contexts, academic historians attempt to answer new questions about the past as they interrogate original (primary) sources. To do so, they follow standards of historical scholarship established within the field. Their main audience tends to be other academic historians as they publish articles in academic journals and books through academic presses.
Staying on the Field
Given these incentives, players often lie to trainers and coaches and/or have turned to painkillers to get back on the field. While cortisone may reduce swelling, the underlying damage may be exacerbated by additional contact.
Boys' Sports Fiction
Heroes exhibited Christian values through their healthy personal habits, moral behavior and in their sports participation. Characters, such as Frank Merriwell, did not smoke, drink or cheat, they protected the weak, worked hard, exhibited gentlemanly behavior, and were inevitably successful.
The First Dieters
Historically, fatness has tended to be associated with the "deadly sin" of gluttony with eating behaviors considered reflective of morality and self-control. Beginning in the mid-19th century, specific diet and physical activities practices were being advocated to shape the body.
Features of Base Ball
However, base ball culture in the 1850s was much more than sport. Clubs were structured as fraternal organizations in which social activities, such as formal balls, dinners, and club functions, were as important (if not more so) than practices and games.
Rising Disappointments
However, desegregation did not result in equal opportunity as quotas limited the number of African Americans on teams, stacking limited available positions, a glass ceiling prevented African Americans from holding positions of authority, and due to the destruction of African American institutions (i.e. the Negro Leagues).
Gender Politics in Physical Culture
As sport taught "masculine" traits, many people considered women's participation to be problematic as it would lead to a dangerous "masculinization" of women that would damage female reproductive capacity, promote sexual illicitness, and blur "natural" gender differences.
National Pressures
As the United States prepared for war, African-American leaders organized a March on Washington to demand protections against employment discrimination. To prevent the march, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 to ban discrimination in the national defense industry.
Power & Knowledge
As the spaces of sport and physical activity were closely linked to masculinity, the presence of women was controversial. The masculinity of these spaces were reinforced through the provision of resources, generation of scientific knowledge, and broader cultural norms. The masculine assumption of athletic spaces were reproduced as American culture celebrated the achievements of leading male athletes within the media and advertising. The masculine assumption of athletic spaces were reproduced as American culture denigrated the achievements of leading female athletes and required overt feminine performances both in and away from competition.
Body as Object of Knowledge
As we will discuss in Module #3, the body is also an object for scientific inquiry and educational intervention. Yet, as we think about science, we must move beyond assumptions of objectivity and tendencies towards abstraction.
A Common Polity
At its foundation, the United States is a political and legal entity that has sovereignty over a defined territory. As a federal system, there are several levels of government within the U.S., with the Constitution granting supremacy to the national government. Most people living in the U.S. are citizens and the nation shares a common currency.
Idols of Consumption
Attempting to change puritanical beliefs that consumption was self-indulgent and wasteful, Madison avenue celebrated athletes and celebrities who had achieved the American Dream and indulged in its rewards.
A Middle Class Recreation
Clubs often formed along ethnic, neighborhood and professional lines as base ball allowed players to demonstrate traits associated with upwardly mobile men, such as self discipline, sportsmanship, a positive work ethic, and proper behavior.
Better Performance Through Coaching
Coaches were important in the application of scientific advances and in producing knowledge and expectations of player performance. Often, coaches adopted dangerous practices as they copied the methods of successful coaches.
A Shrinking World
Communication and transportation innovations have "shrunk" the globe by greatly increasing the speed at which people, goods and information can travel.
European Imperialism
During the 19th and 20th centuries, European nations sought to extend their dominance over territories in Africa and Asia through colonization, military force, and economic means.
Labor Under Keynesianism
During the Great Depression, the Federal Government passed the Wagner Act that fueled the growth of organized labor as it enshrined the right to unionize. During the 1950s, almost 1/3 of American workers belonged to unions, which helped to set wages and conditions throughout all industries.
A Profane Body
During the medieval period, ascetics believed that the body was a tool of the Devil that could infect and pervert the soul. As a result, ascetics did not train the body, but mortified and degraded it through the denial of all pleasure, neglect of physical needs and even self-torture.
Selling Aerobics
Jane Fonda was a fitness entrepreneur with best-selling books and videos. Other celebrities followed as they sold their own secrets of diet and exercise to an eager public.
Collegiate Athletics
In 1869, college enrollment was 63,000 people, which was less than 1% of the 18-24 year old population. During the post Civil War era, college was generally limited to the children of the economic and social elite. Athletic clubs and competitions were generally organized by students.
Women's Basketball
In 1892, Senda Berenson developed an alternative set of rules for basketball towards making the game "appropriate" for female participation - 9 players per team - Court divided into 3 areas & players were limited to 1 area - Players could only dribble the ball 3 times or hold it for 3 seconds - No snatching the ball away
Literature of Fitness
In 1899, Bernarr Macfadden started Physical Culture magazine, which featured articles about bodybuilding, health, exercise, and nutrition. Magazines also promoted exercise books and equipment.
Spalding vs. Chadwick
In 1903, English-born sportswriter Henry Chadwick wrote an article in which he claimed that baseball originated from the English game of Rounders. American-born sporting goods magnate Albert Spalding disagreed. To settle the issue, the Mills Commission was convened in 1905 to "discover" the origins of baseball.
The Federal League
In 1914, the Federal League was established as a rival major league. Average salaries increased from $3,000 to $5,000. After the FL folded in 1915 and due to the impacts of World War I, average salaries fell to $3,600 by 1918.
Gender Verification Testing
In 1950, the International Amateur Athletic Federation required women to present themselves naked to judges, who would visually inspect their genitalia. Starting at the 1968 Olympics, women were subjected to chromosomal testing, which has identified several cases of intersex competitors.
Television & the NFL
In 1958, the NFL Championship Game between Baltimore Colts and New York Giants was watched by a nationwide audience of 45 million. Despite this interest, the NFL did not have a national league-wide TV contract as teams independently contracted with networks and local TV stations.
Olympic Project for Human Rights
In 1968, San Jose State professor Harry Edwards organized protests among African American athletes centered on the Olympic Games. OPHR threatened a boycott in protest of racism unless the team added African American coaches and the Olympic movement excluded apartheid nations of South Africa and Rhodesia. OPHR also demanded the reinstatement of Ali's heavyweight title and boxing license. Although the boycott movement failed, Tommy Smith and John Carlos protested American racism and took a stand for black power and pride on the medal stand during the 1968 Olympics.
CAS Decision: Chand vs. IAAF
In 2015, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (sport's highest ethical court) suspended the 2011 IAAF regulations, pending supportive scientific evidence
Body Measurement
In addition, scales precisely measured weight as they provided knowledge that would inform people and doctors about the effectiveness of diets and other weight management behaviors.
Spectators
In general, large number of potential consumers are needed to make a viable market for any commercial product. The large number of former participants, the improving quality of play, and media promotion increased consumer interest in paying for the opportunity to consume sport as a leisure product.
Class as Ascribed Status
In pre-19th century Europe, social class was a legal concept which conferred differential levels of benefits, obligations and protections based upon ascribed status as determined at birth.
The Reserve System
In response, owners implemented reserve schemes starting in 1879 in which they could identify 5 players for whom they would have exclusive negotiating rights. By 1887, all contracts contained a formal reserve clause that stated teams retained the right to a player's services for the following season and could assign that contract to others without recourse.
The Closing of the Frontier
In the 1890 census, there was no "frontier line" in the United States (not including Alaska) past which population density was less than two people per square mile. Railroads, telegraphs, towns, mines, homesteads and ranches covered the formerly "open" western plains.
The Walking City
Initially antebellum cities were small and commercial as they did not represent a fundamental lifestyle change from colonial times. In general, walking cities were fairly small with unspecialized land uses and plentiful vacant lots and quiet streets.
The Modern Olympics
The modern Olympics movement was led by the Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French aristocrat enamored of the British Empire. He believed physical education and sport enabled Great Britain's success.
The Dialectic Thesis
Physical Culture is influenced by, and often reflects, the society of which it is a part Society----->Physical Culture
Public Historians
Public historians, such as Ken Burns, produce historical stories for dissemination to wide audiences through the media, museums, and historical sites. Utilizing traditional standards of historiography, public historians often use the products of academic historians to help craft their stories.
Selling the Game Form
Published in New York and distributed widely by railroads, baseball rule books and guides helped to create a common game throughout the United States. The Spalding Guides of the 1890s helped to quickly diffuse the game of basketball.
Power, Space & Knowledge
Questions of power and space are inextricably implicated in the construction, application and transmission of scientific knowledge. In Module 3, "The Science of Physical Culture," we will: - Question who produces knowledge and for what purposes - Explore how education reproduces ideas - Examine real world consequences of ideas - Identify lingering manifestations of ideas
Surviving the Trial By Space
Questions of who has access to particular spaces (especially those of power) and what issues are considered important are fraught with importance.
Moderation
Recognizing these limitations and expectations, health literature of the late 19th century emphasized the need for women to maintain their physical and mental health. However, to protect females from injury, athletic activities were structured and adapted towards limiting competition, aggression, exertion, and contact.
Physical Culture & Morality
Reformers believed that sport and physical activity could be properly structured to build character and attract young men away from immoral activities. Participation in sports and physical activity would teach boys proper behavior, sportsmanship, and respect for authority, which would increase the likelihood of achieving material success
A Social Construction
Scientists have tended to classify races based on phenotypical factors, including skin color, head shape, hair texture, stature, and nose shape. From these surface characteristics, certain groups are believed to possess differential physical and mental abilities. Although centuries of research have failed to identify physical or intellectual advantages resulting from these "racial" differences, superficial racial classifications have represented sources of advantage and disadvantage for particular groups.
International Pressures
Segregation became increasingly difficult to morally justify as the U.S. fought World War II against nations with explicit racist ideologies. After the defeat of the Axis and the start of the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union competed for global ideological supremacy by actively courting post-colonial nations in Africa and Asia.
Questioning Sex in Sports
Similar to the contrasts painted between American and Eastern European women, differences in upholding 'acceptable femininity' were also reflected between white and black women in the Olympics. "Such rhetoric established athleticism and femininity as oxymoronic and criminalized powerful female Olympians. Accordingly, sport authorities found it inconceivable that strong, muscular women could be authentic or natural. With this line of reasoning, 'real' women were those who preserved Western notions of white femininity" (Pieper, 2016, p. 8)
A Symbiotic Relationship
Sport has been an important source of content for the American media since its commodification in the mid-19th century. As a popular cultural topic, magazines, daily newspapers, radio, movies, television, and the Internet all have used sport to attract media consumers. Simultaneously, media interest and hype have generated consumer interest in sport.
Medicalization of Life
Sport is one area of a broader societal process that began in the 19th century in which a growing number and range of normal human conditions were identified as "medical problems." As such, these conditions required routine medical intervention under the supervision of a doctor.
Gender Politics in Physical Culture
Sport was a central space for men to prove their masculinity through competitions that demanded strength, bravery, discipline, determination and aggression. These "masculine" traits were considered essential for success in an industrial economy and within international politics.
Munich -1972
The 1972 Olympic Games were held in Munich. West Germany used the Games to try to rehabilitate its image with a very different presentation than 1936 in Berlin.
Entrepreneurs
Lured by audiences potentially willing to spend money to watch high quality games, entrepreneurs were willing to risk capital to produce and promote events and to construct commercial sport facilities.
Slum Life
Many Jewish immigrants to New York in the early 20th century settled in cramped tenement houses in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Often, family members would earn extra money by doing piecework in their apartments.
Stacking
Many teams practiced stacking as they limited African -American players to certain positions and denied opportunities to play at the central "thinking" positions.
College Athletics
The NCAA controls the 10 billion industry of collegiate athletics. Athletes are compensated with scholarships whose renewal is largely determined by team coaches. Athletes are contractually obligated to fulfill a broad range of duties and required to comply with rules of determined and enforced by the NCAA, their athletic department, and coaches.
Gender Apartheid
McDonaghand Pappano(2008) explain that gender apartheid within sport is justified by beliefs surrounding the "three I's": --Inferiority --Injury --Immorality
Agricultural Society
Up until the 18th century, life followed seasonal rhythms of the calendar. With life generally focused towards agricultural production, measurement tended focus on practical things related to commerce, astronomy, and navigation. Beyond these practical demands, few things to be accurately calculated or precisely measured.
Differing Approaches to Civil Rights
W .E.B. DuBois-Fight for civil rights through legal challenges to segregation Booker T. Washington -African-Americans would achieve rights by earning respect from whites through education and hard work
Proper Physical Activity
Towards ensuring moderate and gender appropriate physical activities, physical education for women promoted calisthenics, gymnastics, domestic exercises (sweeping), and traditional activities such as walking and riding (Struna, 2001).
From Sport to Business
Towards the end of the 1850s, baseball began moving away from a purely fraternal club activity into a business. Its growing popularity resulted in/from increased coverage in the media, and people were willing to pay money to watch high-quality games.
Selling Weight Reduction
Thinness among women became a "national preoccupation" and part of the American dream during the 1960s. According to McKenzie (2013), "the thin body was becoming more important in American culture as a signifier of status, personal style, and beauty" (p. 55)
The National Pastime
While baseball was first referred to as "the national pastime" in 1857, by the turn of the 20th century, it had become one of the most popular sports in the U.S. The Doubleday Myth serves the national imaginary by declaring a pure American paternity to the sport.
World War II & Gender
With male factory workers inducted into the military, 6 million women were recruited to take their place. They became essential workers in making supplies and armaments for the troops and the home front.
Rosie the Riveter
With male factory workers inducted into the military, 6 million women were recruited to take their place. Many of these workers were middle class women, who had been previously expected to remain at home.
The Myth of Rugged Individualism
Within Turner's conception is the notion that frontier life was wholly determined by individual efforts. However, frontier towns developed quickly and people relied on each other and products from large cities.
Industrial Revolution
Within an industrialized capitalist society, measuring productivity became increasingly important as higher production and the efficient use of resources increased profitability. As such, the lives of an industrialized workforce were often dictated by the rhythms and regimes of the factory.
Jim Crow Baseball
Within baseball, Black players had been barred from many white clubs starting in the 1850s, but the systematic exclusion of African-American players through a "Gentleman's Agreement" between owners, managers and players was not fully established until late-1880s.
Material Consequences of Science
Yet, such ideologically-driven science has done much more than just provide seemingly objective support for the status quo. These ideas have had substantial material consequences ranging from denial of opportunities to legal discrimination and genocide.
Johnson vs. Jeffries:The Aftermath
•Race riots •Prosecution of Johnson under the Mann Act •Exile of Johnson to Cuba and his 1915 return to be defeated by Jess Willard •African Americans denied another title shot until the 1930s
Differing Approaches to Civil Rights
•W.E.B. DuBois& the NAACP-Fight for civil rights through legal challenges to segregation •Booker T. Washington-African-Americans would achieve rights by earning respect from whites through education and hard work •Marcus Garvey-Advocated economic empowerment; Pan-Africanism/Back to Africa movement
The Production of Space
"(Social) space is a (social) product" (p. 26). Henri Lefebvre (1974)
From City to Suburb
After the end of World War II, large numbers of urban residents relocated to new homes in nearby communities and commuted into cities for work on newly constructed highways. Employment and shopping opportunities quickly developed in the suburbs.
"Refeminizing" America
After the war ended, the fashion and media industries engaged in the process of refeminizing Americain in the wake of Rosie the Riveter. In this effort, the middle-class suburban mother/housewife became the ideal feminine image, while female participation in sport was often reduced to cheerleading. However, most women did not fit this image or want this role.
Los Angeles -1932
Against the backdrop of a global economic depression, civic boosters, politicians, and commercial interests used the 1932 Olympics to promote Los Angeles as a tourist destination and celebrate the city's rapid growth.
Physical Culture & Morality
Although sport and physical activity were often linked to immoral activities, reformers believed that sport and physical activity could be properly structured to build character and promote morality.
Amateurism & Class Discrimination
Amateurism was "invented" in the late 19th century in England by the upper class. Through their control of sporting institutions and naturalizing the belief that athletes should not make money from sport, the elite practically limited competition to the wealthy and ensured competition would occur on their terms.
In what ways does the invented tradition of amateurism justify economic exploitation and political domination.
Amateurism-competing without getting paid (opposite of professional)
Hawai'i & Pacific Islands
American missionaries began arriving in Hawai'i during the 1820s. Preaching against native culture and traditions, missionaries established schools to indoctrinate Hawaiians in Protestantism. Within this process, traditional practices (e.g. surfing, canoe races, hula) were banned with the substitution of American physical cultural practices.
keeping up with the Joneses
Amongst status-conscious consumers, possessing the newest products (I.e. TV, new cars, suburban homes, etc.) provided important symbols of growing audience. This pursuit of status through consumption transcended goods, as it was important to participate in "the right" activities and achieve "the right" bodily appearance.
Material Impacts of Gender
Based on health concerns, women were denied equal opportunities to compete in sports and resources for physical activity. Additionally, sports for females were modified to limit exertion, aggression, and physical contact.
Other Sports
Beyond baseball, athletes typically received compensation in commercialized sports events. As promoters sponsored events and sought to attract the best talent, media attention, and spectatorship, cash prizes were given to winners in golf, horse racing, boxing, billiards, and pedestrianism.
Racial segregation in baseball
Despite its meritorious rhetoric, from 1887 through 1946, African Americans did not compete in "organized" (white) baseball due to a "gentleman's agreement." Segregation was not a written rule, but a social norm enforced throughout the sport.
Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias
Didrikson began to receive greater social acceptance only after marrying professional wrestler George Zaharias in 1938. Through her marriage and other feminine performances, Didrikson demonstrated her conformity to societal norms.
Towards Quantification
During the Enlightenment of the 18th century, the Scientific Revolution, Industrial Revolution, and the emergence of the nation-state emphasized the importance of measurement for understanding the physical world, managing productive businesses and governing populations across geographic distances.
The Metric System
During the French Revolution, scientists and government officials created a universalized, decimalized system to standardize measurements of weights, lengths, volumes, temperature, and money. Efforts towards the decimalization of time with new clocks and calendars were unpopular and quickly abandoned.
Masculinist & Frontier Culture
For people living on the margins and frontier of American society, violence, danger and poverty were ever present. Engaging in rough and tumble fighting allowed men to earn status and protect their reputations by demonstrating their toughness and willingness to risk their bodies.
Foucauldian Power
French philosopher Michel Foucault presented a very different version of power. Rather than something operating from above, power is diffused throughout society.
Mythologized Frontier: Naming Sports Teams
From the late 19th century, thousands of sports teams were named for Native Americans and appropriated Native American imagery. These representations often highlight Native Americans as "savage warriors. " Rather than celebrating America's first nations, team names and mascots serve to obfuscate the physical and culture genocide of Native American peoples by the United States. Frontier expansion was often achieved through wars of conquest or through treaties whose terms were abused by white settlers. Native Americans were dislocated from their lands, relegated to reservations, and subjected to an education system that rejected native languages and culture.
At the Frontier
Frontier imagery remains potent within American popular culture with outer space positioned as "the final frontier" and as politicians use it to cultivate a masculine image.
Separate Spheres
Gendered expectations positioned men as producers, warriors and politicians, while women were the guardians of the private sphere of the home and morality. This division emphasized the reproduction and the raising of children as women's primary role in society and general female inferiority.
Luther Gulick, Jr.
Gulick also was the founder of New York City's Public School Athletic League, the first president of the Playground Association of America, an early leader of the American Boy Scout movement, and a co-founder of the American Campfire Girls.
The Sports History Marketplace
Hardy (1999) identifies three different groups producing historical stories for the public. Each group has its own standards, methodologies and imperatives. 1. Academic historians 2. Public historians 3. Commercial interests
Promotion of Notre Dame Football
Having a "keen instinct for the use of press exposure" (Robinson, 1999), Rockne helped shape Notre Dame's mystique and prominence among America's Irish Catholics through his friendship with sportswriters.
Benevolent Imperialism
Imperialism was often justified through racial discourses in which white Europeans were generously extending civilization and culture to "backward" native populations.
Taxonomies of Race
In 1779, Johann Blumenbach identified five races: Caucasian, Mongolian, Malayan, Ethiopian, and American. Although many Enlightenment thinkers did not consider any race to be naturally inferior, by the 19th century, scientists were ascribing causality to race for differences in social development.
Generating Revenue
In 1858, promoters charged 50 cents for admission to an all-star game between Brooklyn and New York at the Fashion Race Course on Long Island.
Amelie Mauresmo
In 1999, French tennis star Amelie Mauresmo was criticized by competitors who were alleged to describe her as "half a man" and that playing against her was like "playing a guy"
Jackie Robinson Day
In 2004, Major League Baseball declared each April 15 as "Jackie Robinson Day" to commemorate the integration of MLB on the anniversary of Robinson's first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Each MLB stadium features tributes to Robinson and all players wear 42, which had been retired by all teams in 1997.
Mildred "Babe" Didrikson
In its ranking of top athletes of the 20th century, ESPN ranked Mildred Didrikson, who competed in track and field and golf between 1930-1955, at #10. Despite (or because of) her remarkable and multifaceted achievements she was considered: The "antithesis of femininity" "It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring"
Industrial Capitalism Production
In the first stage of the Industrial Revolution, manufacturing centered around producer goods (such as steel for railroads) dominated. These goods allowed the American economy to expand rapidly, but they reached a saturation point as basic infrastructural needs were satisfied.
New Government Policies
In the hope of deriving the image benefits from hosting professional sports, emerging cities built subsidized stadiums to attract existing and expansion teams and their growing television markets promised new sources of revenue. Cities with existing teams responded with subsidized stadiums of their own.
Physical Culture provide a DYNAMIC WINDOW into broader society
Includes politics, economics, structures, gender, race, etc
Institutional Support
Institutions, such as the YMCA, YMHA, and settlement houses, promoted participation through gymnasiums, playgrounds, and recreation programs as they used sport to attract young men. This promotional support increased general interest in sport.
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Johnson incurred white America's wrath with ill manners and a defiant attitude as his actions challenged the dominant racial order. Many members of the black middle class were also angry with him as they saw Johnson setting back their efforts to work for racial equality and justice.
Race and Power Relations
Johnson's behavior outside of the ring defied social taboos as he refused to defer to white men and engaged in sexual relations with white women. Johnson also defied the expectations of many African-American leaders who feared he would poorly represent the race.
Defending the Reserve Clause
Leagues enforced reserve rights as teams signing reserved players faced expulsion. Players jumping their contracts could be "blacklisted" and permanently banned from playing.
Joe Louis
Louis became a hero for African Americans and represented all of America during the 1930s and 1940s as the country faced external and internal challenges. He did so by adopting an ingratiating and compliant manner (but not submissive) towards members of the dominant culture.
A Hero's Reward?
Louis ended World War II deeply in debt to his financial backers and the IRS, which claimed he owed $500,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties. Rather than being able to retire, Louis continued fighting past his prime and then became a professional wrestler.
Mildred "Babe" Didrikson
Mildred Didrikson has been generally recognized as the top female athlete of the 20th century as she excelled at numerous sports. However, Didrikson did not receive social acceptance until she conformed with gendered expectations.
Empire & Sport Diffusion
Moving beyond baseball, Americans used sport to proselytize Protestantism to Catholic populations, who were believed to be backward. Missionaries also used physical culture to communicate with Spanish-speaking natives, while the U.S. and local leaders attempted to impose the English language within schools, politics and commerce.
Suburban America
Much of this growth occurred as small towns on the edges of urban areas became suburbs. Lured by inexpensive home loans, new construction and infrastructure, and open spaces, millions of urban residents moved out of cities.
Why Teddy Should Have Won from the Start
No other president in U.S. history was as physically active or promoted physical activity than Roosevelt. That he had to wait seven seasons to win his first race and engaged in any number of unsportsmanlike behaviors in his attempts to do so were gross misrepresentations.
Conclusion
Nothing about physical culture is inherently moral or immoral. Instead, it is necessary to understand the intentions and goals of the people structuring sport and physical activity and the contexts in which they operate.
Negro League Baseball
Numerous professional African American baseball teams were organized after 1885. These teams often lacked home stadiums or set schedules and frequently "barnstormed" through the country. In 1920, Rube Foster and six other team owners met in Kansas City and founded the Negro National League to create a more stable organization. Teams and games in the NNL (and other Negro major leagues) were usually owned, promoted, managed, coached and umpired by African-Americans.
The Mills Commission
On December 30, 1907, based on the testimony of 71-year old Abner Graves, the Mills Commission declares that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in Cooperstown in 1839
Jordan Mcnair's death
On May 29, 2018, Jordan McNair collapsed during a team workout as his body temp reached 106 degrees. McNair died two weeks later. Coach DJ Durkin was fired in November following an investigation and campus turmoil.
Youth Organizations
Organizations such as the Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts and Campfire Girls used play to reinforce gender ideals. Offering age-appropriate activities, the first American Boy Scout manual included outdoor games emphasizing hunting skills and primitive activities such as spear throwing
Performance Enhancing Drugs
PEDs promise incremental improvements in strength and/or speed. \ For athletes and coaches pursuing any advantage, PEDs can elevate performance, leading to more playing time, larger contracts, and championships.
Imperialism & Physical Culture
Physical culture played a significant role within imperialism as a pedagogical tool. Through sport, imperial powers taught the ethos of fair play and the notion that people could advance through merit. Sport was also used to teach discipline, obedience to authority, rules and laws, and punishment for infractions without complaint.
Gymnastics
Play-based physical education challenged dominant gymnastics programs that were first established in Germany, where gymnastics were created as part of a wider effort to instill nationalistic pride.
Women's Sport
Similarly, male-developed theories of female physical capacity and appropriate feminine behavior shaped the development of sport for women. Although females enjoyed playing the same sports as men at the end of the 19th century, rules adaptations made activities more "appropriate" for female participation.
Flood vs. Kuhn
Sitting out the 1970 baseball season to protest the trade, Flood, with the support of the MLBPA, filed a lawsuit against MLB. He lost the case in 1972 as the Supreme Court upheld its ruling from Federal Baseball.
Related Business Interests
Stadium sites were often selected to positively impact the business interests of team owners. Brooklyn's Ebbets Field was built in 1913 near an underused trolley line that was owned by team investors.
Stimulating Demand
Stimulating Demand In 1888, Spalding sponsored a baseball world tour involving leading players. The tour visited New Zealand, Australia, Egypt, Italy, France, and England. Although the game did not become popular, Spalding found local distributors for his products in many new markets.
White Flight
Suburbanization was a highly racialized and exclusionary process as middle class whites left the city and were replaced by African-Americans relocating from the rural South. Housing covenants in suburban areas often did not allow African-Americans to purchase homes in new neighborhoods.
Suburban Physical Culture
Suburbs offered a wide range of choices for sport and physical activity. Communities had inexpensive land, new infrastructure, and growing affluence. Organizations, such as Little League, Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts, offered structured and supervised youth activities that kept children out of trouble, taught moral lessons, and reinforced traditional gender roles.
Suburbanizing Spectator Sport
Taking advantage of inexpensive land, stable neighborhoods, highway access and locations near their traditional fan bases, teams followed the middle class white population to the suburbs.
Constructing the National Imaginary
The "imagined" American identity has been constructed through numerous signifiers. These establish a common culture through shared experiences, histories, myths, customs, institutions, and values. • Fourth of July • "The American Dream" • "Four Score and Seven Years Ago" The "imagined" American identity has been constructed through numerous signifiers. These establish a common culture through shared experiences, histories, myths, customs, institutions, and values.
The Politics of Competition
The USSR joined the Olympic Movement in 1952 to compete in the Helsinki Games. Although Russia was an IOC founding member, following the 1917 Revolution, the USSR refused to participate in what it considered a "bourgeois" institution that reinforced exploitative social relations.
A Socially Constructed World
The categories through which social science describes society are social constructions. However, they have material consequences in people's lives through producing and reproducing power differentials, enabling economic exploitation, and excluding people from space.
Ancient Rome
The city of Rome had more than one million people in 210AD at the height of the Roman Empire. To support this population, Rome had an extensive infrastructure with aqueducts bring water from distant mountains to the city center, plumbing that removed waste, and roads that enabled commerce and to meet the needs of urban residents.
Jewish Immigration to U.S.
The first Jews arrived in the American colonies in 1654 and more than there were around 2,000 Jews in the U.S. in 1800. The first large wave of European Jews arrived from Germany, starting in 1848. Between 1880 and 1924, more than two million Jews arrived from Eastern Europe. The existing Jewish community established several organizations to support and assimilate new immigrants.
Internationalist Ethos
The goal of Olympism was to "place everywhere sport at the service of the harmonious development of man (sic), with a view to encouraging the establishment of a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. To this effect, the Olympic Movement engages, alone or in cooperation with other organizations and within the limits of its means, in actions to promote peace"
Civil War Baseball
The popularity of baseball and the New York game spread during the Civil War. To pass time between battles and training and to raise morale, officers encouraged soldiers from all parts of the country to compete.
Questioning Sex in Sports
The sex of Ukrainian sisters Tamara and Irina Press were questioned after they won five medals during the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics. While American newspapers wrote of their 'questionable femininity,' Schultz suggests that Eastern European nations had different expectations of femininity
Mythologized Frontier: Modern Rodeo
The show also demonstrated the range of cowboy activities, including shooting, horse breaking, and bull riding that have become some of the central skills in contemporary rodeo competitions.
Frontier Imaginary
Theodore Roosevelt was one of many "dudes," Eastern elites who went to the West for an "authentic" frontier experience. Unlike many of other elites, Roosevelt fully immersed himself in frontier life as lived on and actively operated his North Dakota ranch during the 1880s.
Scientific Revolution
Theoretical advances in mathematics and a broader range of questions led to increasing demand for precise measurement. With an emphasis on empiricism and rational thought, Enlightenment thinkers used statistics to identify and understand natural and social phenomena.
Abstraction
This emphasis on statistics led to a high degree of abstraction as quantitative performances led to numerically-based labels such as "A .300 Hitter." Quantitative efforts have intensified since the 1970s through efforts to further identify what performances contribute to victory and improve defensive metrics.
Growth of the American Nation
This growth was achieved through a series of treaties (with European powers that ceded lands to and settled territorial claims with the United States. Warfare against Native American nations and Mexico (1845) further extended American territory to the Pacific Ocean.
Saints and Their Bodies
Thomas Higginson wrote, "physical health is a necessary condition or all permanent success" (p. 82) as he argued for the physical, moral, spiritual, and nationalist benefits of a comprehensive program of physical education and vigorous adult activity.
City Beautiful Movement
Those advocating for public recreation were part of a broader movement that sought to improve the quality of urban life. As the movement included architects and urban planners, they believed that open spaces, monumental buildings, and urban plans were part of the solution to the problems of city living.
Youth Sport
Through organized youth sport, boys were taught to be obey authority, to accept their place within a social hierarchy, to subjugate oneself for the good of the group, to possess orderly work habits, and to understand competition as natural.
Industrial Capitalism Consumption
Towards the end of the 19th century, manufacturing shifted from producer goods to consumer goods. However, in order to be successful, this industrial strategy required masses of people with the capability and desire to consume. One of the great successes of this shift was also in producing consumers.
Axes of domination
Traditional analyses of power relations tend to privilege one dimension over all of the others. In doing so, that dimensions is considered to be "determinative" of outcomes. --Marxist political economy: class --Women's studies: Gender --Queer studies: Sexuality
Robinson in 1947
Under orders from Rickey not to react to racial provocations and despite the pressure of breaking the color barrier, Robinson won The Sporting News Rookie of the Year award. The Dodgers won the National League pennant and attracted large number of African-Americans to EbbetsField and on the road.
Bread & Circuses
Under the Emperors, the political elite followed a strategy of "Bread and Circuses" as they provided basic sustenance and spectacles celebrating the Roman Empire to the masses to curry favor and minimize popular discontent. Contemporary analysts suggest that major sports events and facilities serve similar ideological purposes as substantial public resources are expended primarily for private benefit while using entertainment to distract audiences.
Selling Sporting Goods
Until the 1880s, the sporting goods industry was relatively small with many producers. A.G. Spalding & Brothers became the dominant sporting goods producer by purchasing its competitors, becoming the official equipment supplier of the National League, and through sports promotion.
America Ascendant
With Axis powers shattered and European Allies severely weakened, the U.S. was the only major country to emerge stronger from World War II. Yet, as millions of soldiers were demobilized and war spending tapered off, fears rose that economic depression would return. In response, the government invested in human capital (GI Bill), national infrastructure (highway system), and the reconstruction of Western Europe (Marshall Plan). Additionally, people had very high levels of savings and high demand as few consumer items were available during the war. The combination of government spending, the "Baby Boom" and the post-war consumer economy created a 25 -year period of economic growth and the unmatched expansion of the middle class.
Remembering Jack Robinson
Yet, according to filmmaker Sarah Burns, Robinson tends to be celebrated as a martyr rather than as an activist for civil rights before, during, and after his baseball career.
The Dangers of Bicycling
Yet, doctors soon warned that riders were susceptible to overstrain of the heart, spinal shock and other spinal deformities, uterine displacement and injuries to pelvic organs, and "bicycle face." Vertinsky (1990) suggested that these shifting health concerns were related to the mobility and freedom that bicycles provided to women.
Invented Traditions
a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past"
Contested Terrain
different groups tell stories about the past as they struggle to define and redefine the meanings of the past, social constructs, and cultural practices. "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past" (George Orwell, 1984)
Sonny Lohr
in 1959, four football deaths were attributed to heat, Including UMD player Sonny Lohr. Lohr fell to the ground repeatedly during drills and asked to stop. He was required by the coaches to continue.
Gender Barriers in 1960's America
• Employment opportunities - "Glass Ceiling" prevents women from executive jobs & high-status, high-paying professions • Educational opportunities - In 1972, women received 7% of law degrees, 9% of medical degrees, & 1% of dental degrees
Gender & Sex
• Gender (masculinity/femininity): a social construction that defines the cultural expectations associated with biological sex • Sex (male/female): A system of classifications determined by biological structure and function
Chromosomal Testing
• Klinefelter's Syndrome: 47, XXY genotypes were considered female but typically had 'male' physical characteristics and were allowed to compete in women's competitive categories • Turner Syndrome: athletes who were only born with one X chromosome had female genitalia and would pass the external genitalia examination, but 'failed' chromosomal testing Yet, athletes with these conditions possessed and possess no athletic advantage (Schultz, 2011)
Urban Development in the Industrial Era
• Walking City (1820-1870) • Industrial Radial City (1870-1970) • Suburbanized Metropolis (1945-present)
Promoting Sporting Goods
"A Spalding Swimming Suit won't teach you to swim, but it will make you feel like an Olympic champion"
Amateurism: An Invented Tradition
"A gentleman does not make his living from his athletic prowess. He does not earn anything from his victories, except glory and satisfaction." "A gentleman never competes for money, directly or indirectly" -Walter Camp
Jackie Robinson Quote
"A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives"
Celebration of the State
"Advanced countries can and must act out their preferred myths through self-and other-stereotypes, and celebrate those qualities which, in their own eyes, make them more modern, more advanced, in short superior" (Boyle & Haynes, 2000: 147).
The Great White Hope
"Can the huge white man [Jeffries]...beat down the wonderful black and restore the Caucasians the crown of elemental greatness as measured by the strength of blow, power of heart and being, and, with all, that cunning of keenness that denotes mental as well as physical superiority?"
Immigration
"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Emma Lazarus (1883) The New Colossus • Major waves - 1850s - Germany & Ireland - 1880s-1920 - Southern & Eastern Europe - Limited immigration from Japan & China in late 19th c.
Delegitimization
"It would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring" Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram
Managing Vital Energy
"Nature is a strict accountant... and if you demand of her in one direction more than she is prepared to lay out, she balances the account by making a deduction elsewhere" (Herbert Spencer, as qtd in Vertinsky, p. 14)
Training for technique
"Simply by existing, we are burning energy." What's more, although exercise puts a temporary stress on the body, the Training for Technique Hoole's (1888) The Science and Art of Training: A Handbook for Athletes, suggested that the rules for athletic preparation "differ but slightly from those of judicious living.
Avery Brundage quote
"Sport, like music and the other fine arts, transcends politics... We are concerned with sports, not business and politics"
The Olympic Ideal
"Sport, like music and the other fine arts, transcends politics... We are concerned with sports, not business and politics"-Avery Brundage, President IOC, 1952-1974
Baseball & Imperialism
"The countries where baseball is most popular today [are] those... the U.S. has maintained a strong military, business, or political presence since the late nineteenth century" Zoss & Bowman (qtd. in Elias, 2010, p. 28)
Newspapers & Football
"The daily press in New York had an impact on college football in the 1880s and 1890s greater than television's effect on professional football in the 1950s and 1960s" (Oriard, 1993, p. 57)
Sports Medicine
"The entire enterprise of elite sport is best understood as a recent chapter in the history of applied medical research into human biological development" (Hoberman, 1992, p. 4).
The Closing of the Frontier
"The frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history." Frederick Jackson Turner, 1893
Positivism
"Through formal measurement and conceptualising the social world as a system of variables, positivism traces facts or causes of certain phenomena, a truth that can be objectively obtained through the rigorous testing of hypotheses." Markula & Silk, 2011, p. 27
1968 Olympics: Mexico City
"Tommie Smith's raised black gloved fist presented black power, the knotted black scarf around his neck represented pride, and the box in his left hand contained an olive tree sapling which stood as an emblem of peace."
Depicting Social Injustice
"[Historical films] construct the past as something temporally dislocated from the here and now. Audiences can watch Glory Road and its depiction of the virulent racism of the 1960s and praise the racial progress of the last fifty years, supporting the belief that all racial problems were solved decades ago" To what degree does Jackie Robinson Day distract from the current. status of African-Americans in Major League Baseball?
Football & the Strenuous Life
"sports especially dear to a vigorous and manly nation are always those in which there is a certain element of risk. Every effort should be made to minimize this risk, but it is mere unmanly folly to try to do away with the sport because the risks exist." Theodore Roosevelt, 1893
Social Reform
According to Cohen (1982), "the statistical champions of the mid-nineteenth century were fairly clear about what they regarded as the effects of quantification on social thought. Enumeration focused concern on an issue, accurately described its dimensions and suggested the proper course of action to be taken" (p. 225).
Suburbanization
After World War II, a series of government housing and transportation policies, broader demographic trends, and racial politics redefined urban America and the relationship between cities and their surrounding regions.
NCAA revenues
Also in the 1950s, the NCAA began to sell the right to broadcast college football games. By the 1980s, the NCAA was also receiving substantial television revenues from men's basketball games, especially the Division I tournament. Beyond television and gate revenues, the NCAA earns money from souvenirs, advertising, shoe and equipment contracts, and video games.
1972 Olympics: Munich
Although West Germany planned for the Olympic Games to represent its rehabilitation, Palestinian terrorists took advantage of relaxed security as they kidnapped and murdered 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team.
Recapitulation & Social Development
Applying recapitulation theory to human development, Hall and Gulick suggested that each individual develops socially through each stage of the species during adolescence. Proper development within each stage would enable children to acquire the motor and social skills necessary to move onto the next stage of development.
American Imperialism
As European nations claimed territories in Africa and Asia, the U.S. moved steadily westward on the North American continent through the 19th century. Under the banner of Manifest Destiny, many Americans believed that the U.S. had a divine right to continental dominance in the cause of liberty and civilization.
Joe Louis -Heavyweight Champion
As a contender, Louis lost to Schmeling in 1936. Schmeling was in line to challenge heavyweight champion James Braddock, but a bout between the two was cancelled at the last minute, which some people attributed to political reasons. Instead, Braddock gave Louis the first heavyweight title opportunity for an African American since Jack Johnson. Louis won by TKO in the eighth round.
The Industrial Radial City
As cities in the Northeast and Midwest matured, they became increasingly defined by capitalism and of industrial production. Cities featured accelerated population growth, rapidly rising property values, and the highly specialized use of urban space.
Industrial Football & the Birth of the NFL
As football embodied industrial values, many early professional teams were connected to factories in the Midwest and attached to industrial labor departments. These industrial teams formed the core of the National Football League when it formed in 1920.
Industrialization
As the Industrial Revolution and capitalism elevated manufacturing over agriculture as the primary form of economic activity (and capital accumulation), the lives of an industrialized workforce were dictated by the rhythms and regimes of the factory rather than the agricultural calendar.
A Hero's Actions
As the U.S. was challenged by the rise of the Nazis, Louis won a major symbolic victory against his German rival. During World War II, Louis enlisted in the Army, fought exhibitions for troop morale, and raised money for the military through fights for charity and war bonds.
Earning Respect & Gaining Rights
As the first President of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Booker T. Washington advocated self-reliance that, over time, African-Americans would earn the respect of the white majority. In this way, African-Americans would earn full civil and political rights.
White Flight & Decline of the City
As whites moved out of urban centers and African Americans were denied opportunities to live in the suburbs, city demographics shifted. As part of this population shift, urban cores went into spiral of population and corporate exodus, declining tax bases, and eroding public services.
Early Free Agency
At the end of each season, players were free to offer their services to other teams. As a result, many players were paid their fair value in an open market. However, NL teams in the 1870s were mostly unprofitable.
Eugen Sandow & the Fitness Industry
At the end of the 19th century, Prussian vaudeville strongman Eugen Sandow helped to establish the fitness industry through marketing himself and selling a wide range of branded products that bore his name or received his approval.
The Bicycle Craze
At the end of the 19th century, cycling became very popular due to pneumatic tires, safer designs, and mass production and marketing. Men and women both participated in the activity that provided unprecedented mobility.
Crisis of Masculinity
At the start of the 20th century, many American leaders believed masculinity was in crisis as the traditional spaces for forging and proving masculinity were disappearing. In their place, people were worried about a feminizing culture that would weaken the country and leave it vulnerable.
Cuban Baseball
Baseball quickly caught on in Cuba during the 1860s among Cubans seeking to end Spanish control of the island. In 1869, Spain issued the first of many bans on baseball due to its "revolutionary" potential. After Cuba became independent, American racial prejudices were incorporated into both the new Cuban Constitution and baseball. Despite its American origins, baseball remained part of Cuba's struggle against foreign domination.
A Fixed Human Capacity
Beamish and Ritchie (2006) suggest that beliefs around athletic capacity were based on the First Law of Thermodynamics - that total energy within a closed system is constant and it cannot be created or destroyed. Following this belief, performance could only be enhanced through refining technique.
Institutional Responses
Besides violence in football, the NCAA had a broader set of concerns as it sought to regulate college athletics through ensuring amateurism and enforcing academic standards.
Goodwill Tours
Between the 1940s and 1960s, the State Department recruited African-American athletes, musicians and other artists to go abroad as cultural ambassadors to newly established nations in Africa. These tours were designed for people in these newly freed countries to see social mobility of AfricanAmericans and choose to affiliate with the U.S. in the Cold War. While African-American athletes were well-received, people recognized the Goodwill Tours as propaganda efforts and were generally unimpressed. Thomas (2005) suggested that the urgency of the Cold War required the U.S. government to substantively act against racial discrimination towards swaying opinion in Third World nations.
Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King was both a leading women's player and activist as she helped to establish the Women's Tennis Association and was the first female athlete to earn $100,000 in a single year.
Better Performance Through Technique
Biomechanical analysis can be used to identify flaws within an athlete's execution of a skill and/or to develop more effective and efficient techniques to maximize performance.
Hank Greenberg
Born in New York City to Jewish Romanian immigrants, Greenberg was the first star Jewish player in Major League Baseball. Playing first base for the Detroit Tigers, he earned two MVP awards during the 1930s, led the AL in HR and RBI 3 times. During 1934, the Tigers were in a close pennant race with the Yankees. On Rosh Hashanah (September 10), Greenberg played and hit two home runs to lead Detroit to a 2-1 victory. However, 10 days later on Yom Kippur, Greenberg chose not to play.
The Third World
By 1960, most of Great Britain's and France's colonial possessions had achieved independence through treaties (India, Middle East) or wars of national liberation (Vietnam, Algeria, Congo). These new nations were generally unaffiliated with the U.S. or Soviet Union and were actively courted (and undermined) by the competing Cold War superpowers.
Rising Expectations
By the end of the 1950s, Civil Rights efforts were gaining momentum with the Supreme Court victory in Brown vs. Board of Education, in which the Court reversed legal segregation and the "separate but equal" doctrine. In sports, integrated competitions increased as "gentleman's agreements" collapsed.
Matty at the Bat
Christy Mathewson is considered one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history. College educated, Mathewson never pitched on Sunday during his 17-year career as he promised his mother to respect the Sabbath.
Reciprocal Boycotts: LA, 1984
Citing "security concerns" and the antiSoviet rhetoric of the Reagan administration, the USSR led a boycott of 15 nations in retaliation for the U.S.-led boycott of 1980.
Glass Ceiling
Despite African-Americans managing, operating, and owning Negro Leagues teams, as well as umpiring games, a glass ceiling excluded African-American from positions of game and team management and ownership opportunities.
Coercion
Dominant groups can often use institutions to forceother groups to comply. "De jure" power involves the establishment and enforcement of rules and laws. "De facto" power involves social norms. These forms of power are supported by the ability of the state, institutions, and other actors to punishtransgressions.
Mind-Body Split
Drawing from Greek philosopher Plato, early Christianity believed in dualism - the separation between mind and body
Sandow's Legacy
Due in part to Sandow's marketing acumen, exercise and fitness have been commodified since the late 19th century. While common discourses recommend fitness as necessary for health, it is important to remember the various economic relations embedded within consumer culture.
Development of Leagues
Due to growing national interest and the quality of professional baseball, professional leagues emerged during the 1870s to organize and manage the sport. -1871: National Association of Professional Base Ball Players(NAPBBP) -1876: National League of Professional Baseball Clubs
Imagining the American Nation
During its first 85 years, there was little conception of a unified country. Instead, many people owed their first loyalty to their home state rather than the "united states." The Civil War enabled the creation of a unified national identity through asserting the political and legal supremacy of the Federal government and culturally through the shared experience of war.
Progressive Legislation
Faced with increased demands from workers and "muckraker" stories about dangerous working conditions, many states passed laws that banned child labor, imposed safety regulations, and established minimum wages and maximum hours.
The Strenuous Life
Faced with this perceived crisis of masculinity, Theodore Roosevelt argued that, through vigorous physical activity, men could cultivate their superiority, restore their confidence, and regain their hard edge required for effective leadership. "I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife..." "... to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil..." "... and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph." Theodore Roosevelt (1899)
Conclusion-Olympics
Few events attract as much global attention as the Olympics and other sports events. As such, major sporting events provide cities and countries unique opportunities to pursue their ideological and economic goals. However, the political control over this unique stage is not absolute as individuals, nations and non-state actors can disrupt the narrative and perform their spectacular forms of protest.
Getting Physical in the 1980s
Fitness culture was ubiquitous in the general culture as it was featured in movies, television, music, toys, and clothing. Exercise was increasingly strenuous with sayings such as "feel the burn" and "no pain, no gain."
The Greek Olympiad
Five major Greek city-states hosted religious festivals that featured athletic competitions to honor the gods. The festival at Olympia was considered the most significant as it honored Zeus.
Space: "The Final Frontier"
Following World War II, rocketry enabled people to leave the Earth's atmosphere. During the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet Union used the space race to show their scientific supremacy as the USSR was the first nation to launch a satellite and a person into space, while the U.S. was first (and only) to land on the moon.
"Refeminizing" America
Following World War II, the middle class suburban mother/housewife became the ideal feminine image of 1950s suburbanization. The AAGPBL folded after the 1954 season. During this era, female sport participation was often in supportive roles, such as motherhood and cheerleading.
The Golden Age of Sports
Following the end of World War I, the modern sports industry emerged with heroes such as Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Red Grange and KnuteRockne. Their popularity was intensified by the new forms of sports media combined with the exuberant prose of sports journalists and the efforts sports promoters.
Scientific Management
Fordism was closely tied to the rise of "Taylorism," which used time-and-motion studies to maximize production through improved efficiency.1
Little League
Founded in 1939, the growth of Little League Baseball was centered in suburbia as between 1949-1958, participation increased from 11,800 to 334,000 as 4,662 leagues and 21,911 teams were established. According to Carriere (2005), Little League's growth was fueled by post-World War II anxiety over family structure, juvenile delinquency, and economic changes. Little League provided a space allowing for the reinforcement of traditional gender roles. It enabled fathers to be involved in the lives of their sons, placed women in background and supportive roles, and helped train boys to become men.
Little League
Founded in 1939, the growth of Little League Baseball was centered in suburbia as between 1949-1958, participation increased from 11,800 to 334,000 as 4,662 leagues and 21,911 teams were established. According to Carriere (2005), Little League's growth was fueled by post-World War II anxiety over family structure, juvenile delinquency, and economic changes. Little League provided a space allowing for the reinforcement of traditional gender roles. It enabled fathers to be involved in the lives of their sons, placed women in background and supportive roles, and helped train boys to become men.
American Exceptionalism
George Bancroft's History of the United States, (1834-1875) first presented the argument of American Exceptionalism "the United States had been designed by God to demonstrate to the world the moral and political superiority of democratic institutions"
Integrating the national pastime
Given its symbolic importance within broader american culture, integrating baseball was a goal within the civil rights movement
The Emergence of (State) Sports Science
Given the symbolic importance of sport (especially those reliant on strength and power such as boxing, wrestling, and track & field) and the stakes of competition as demonstrated through the medal count, both the Soviet Union and United States developed more rigorous, scientificallybased regimes of athlete development.
Luther Gulick, Jr
Gulick believed that spiritual life relied on training both the mind and body. He developed the physical education curriculum at the International YMCA Training School and was instrumental in the founding of several sporting institutions.
Becoming White
However, as race is a social construction, its boundaries have not been stable. Although "white" has remained the privileged category, the ethnic groups considered to be "white" has changed substantially while hierarchies of "whiteness" have also varied over time.
Token Integration
However, much of this was "token integration" as teams denied equal opportunity to African-American players. For many years, quotas limited the number of African-American players on the roster or lineup. This typically meant that an African-American player had to be a starter as bench players tended to be white.
The Rise of Fascism
Humiliated by the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I, Germany's democratic Weimar Republic struggled for legitimacy and support through the 1920s. As Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party gained power through promising to restore national greatness, it used state sponsored terror, militarism and propaganda to build its totalitarian state.
Muhammad Ali: Black Muslim
In 1966, the U.S. Army changed his status from "1-Y" to "1-A". Ali refused induction into military as a conscientious objector.
Measuring Public Health
In Great Britain, Edwin Chadwick became one of the fathers of public health as he promoted legislation based on extensive statistical data identifying links between poverty, sanitation, and health.
Glass Ceiling
In Major League Baseball history, African-Americans have held the following management positions: -14 Managers -5 General Managers -0 Team Owners (Managing Partners)
New England: Puritanism
In New England, life was structured around a form of strict Protestantism that sought to create a pious society. In doing so, they rejected many elements of English culture, were intolerant of religious difference, and believed that all time belonged to God.
Spectators
In general, large number of potential consumers are needed to make a viable market for any commercial product. The large number of former participants, the improving quality of play, and media promotion increased consumer interest in paying for the opportunity to consume sport as a leisure product. As previously discussed, sport spectatorship allowed immigrants to celebrate their ethnic identities in an "American" way. Sports teams also were used to develop civic pride and build identification with the city among transient populations.
Political Economy
In general, political economy is interested in examining the relationships between political institutions, broader social structures, and economic systems.
Politics
In general, politics refer to the various practices surrounding the structures, processes and systems of government and governance. However, as we think about politics, we also need to consider the politics existing within interpersonal and intergroup relationships.
Citius, Altius, Fortius
In its slogan, the Olympic Movement asserts a goal of surpassing previous physical achievements. Such accomplishments in human performance were identified through precise measurements of time and distance, which could then be compared to results recorded from other competitions.
The Ideal Industrial Worker
In many respects, industrial workers became parts of the machines on which they worked (indeed, much assembly line labor is now completed by robots). Corporations sought reliable employees who were sober, disciplined, focused, could work in a team, respected authority, and competitive.
National Association ofProfessional Base Ball Players
In the NAPBBP, players had significant power as contracts were difficult to enforce, which allowed them to jump between teams(often during the season). The lack of binding contracts allowed players to negotiate new salaries after each season, which caused player costs to escalate and made most clubs unprofitable.
Power & Resistance in Physical Culture
In their efforts to reproduce their social dominance, elites have frequently utilized physical culture to represent and distract from their power, exclude other groups, and define acceptable behaviors. Yet, as physical culture is a contested terrain (as all culture is), it is also as a space used of resistance by subordinate groups.
The Puritan Ethos
In their rejection of physical pleasure, Puritans were generally cool toward playful activities as they sought to establish a society dedicated to the preservation of the visible church. Actions had to be purposeful towards serving either God or particular useful social ends.
Sport as an Artificial Frontier
Jackson disciple Frederick Paxson linked the corruption of the Gilded Age and urban America with the closing of the frontier. He argued that sport could provide a viable substitute. In Paxson's (1917) view, sport would be a "safety valve" as the "rugged individualist of sport took the place of the rugged individualist of the frontier."
Defining the Nation
Major international sporting competitions provide countries to deepen emotive connections between citizens and the nation and also act as a platform through which to transmit images and narratives about their nation to global audiences.
Manifest Destiny
Many Americans believed that the U.S. had a divine right to expand westward in the cause of liberty and civilization. "And that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us." John L. O'Sullivan, 1845
The Meaning of the Frontier
Many people believed that the frontier was the space in which American virtues were forged. In 1893, Frederick Jackson Turner argued in his influential frontier thesis that democracy, egalitarianism, and rugged individualism evolved as settlers built communities out of the wilderness. "Coarseness and strength, acuteness and inquisitiveness, that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism that comes with freedom -- these are the traits of the frontier. This expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnishes the forces dominating American character" (Turner).
Black Nationalism
Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association to seek social, political and economic freedom for blacks. Rather than integration, Garvey promoted black separatism and Pan-Africanism, which was anti-colonialist, urged black solidarity, and encouraged blacks to return to Africa.
Separate, but Not Completely Separate
Negro League teams often rented MLB ballparks. Many white teams considered these rents as an important source of revenue. Despite segregation, throughout the 1930s and 1940s, white and black all -star teams would barnstorm together and compete during the off-season.
Disciplinary Power
People are taught expectations about their bodies and trained to meet them. Rather than being forced to comply, people internalize discipline, regulate their behavior, and become docile.
Impacts of Scientific Racism
Perceived racial differences helped justify inequitable treatment within a variety of legal, economic, and cultural realms: - "Stolen Generations" of first nations children in North America and Australia - Legal structures of slavery, apartheid, and Jim Crow - Genocide of Native Americans - Genocide of Jews, Roma, homosexuals by Nazi Germany and European allies
Baseball
Perhaps baseball has been subjected to more detailed statistical analysis than any other sport. While changes in gameplay make it difficult to compare football, hockey, and basketball players from different eras, standards of excellence have remained fairly constant in baseball.
Conclusion
Physical Culture has been a tool of American imperialism and foreign policy as the U.S. has taken a more assertive role in global affairs. As will be discussed further on Wednesday, whether through political propaganda, social control, or within a civilizing mission, physical culture has been utilized to serve American interests.
Sandow & The Media
Sandow wrote six books on physical fitness and published a magazine. His magazine had features about fitness and advertisements for health & wellness products, mail-order exercise courses, and fitness equipment.
Selling Exercise
Sandow's Institutes of Physical Culture catered to middle and upper-class consumers by featuring posh wood paneling, potted palms, gilt -framed mirrors, and oriental carpets. They were also called "studios" rather than "gymnasiums."
Power Over Space
Segregated spaces of physical culture often served to reproduce broader patriarchal relations. As men developed social networks with other powerful men, women were denied similar opportunities
The Sporting Culture
Sporting culture was centered around taverns, theaters, brothels, volunteer firehouses, dance halls, and gambling parlors. Promoters recognized sport (boxing, dogfighting, ratting) could attract patrons and encouraged the drinking and wagering within these almost exclusively male spaces.
A Mediated Commodity
Sports also featured prominently as a source of popular content in the establishment of new media forms. As advertisers would spend money in order to reach sports consumers, media companies paid rights fees to broadcast events.
Ethical Dilemmas
Sports medical professionals attempt to manage multiple obligations going beyond the traditional doctor-patient relationship as they work to find a balance between health and performance, short and long term health in the management of injuries, and demands from teams and athletes to return to competition.
Better Performance Through Technology
Sports scientists also sought ways to improve techniques, materials and surfaces. Synthetic tracks reduced energy expenditure and allowed faster times. Softer materials allowed high jumpers to leap backwards over the bar and land safely. Shoes were improved to be lighter and more energy efficient.
Heat Stroke Deaths in Football
The American Football Coaches Association identified 1,862 deaths directly or indirectly related to football (at all levels of organized play) as occurring between 1931-2017. Of these fatalities, 150 were identified as being related to heatstroke. Hypermasculine culture, training and coaching techniques, and the NCAA structure are all contributing factors to these deaths
Beating the "Red Machine"
The USSR team was considered the overwhelming favorite for gold as their players had several years of international experience and were state-employees. The US team was comprised of amateur college players and had lost to the USSR 10-3 in an exhibition two weeks before the Olympics.
An Expanding Nation
The United States steadily acquired and conquered Western territories from the time it achieved its independence. Encouraged by expansionist ideologies, the discovery of gold in California, and open land for farming and ranching, the nation expanded westward to the Pacific Ocean.
YMCA
The YMCA developed to provide a moral alternative for young men living in the city. Although physical activity was not emphasized at first, leaders recognized "it was neither sport itself, nor the focus on the body that was sinful, but rather the activities and spaces typically associated with sport that were degrading" (Lupkin, 2009, p. 23).
YMCA & Settlement Houses
The YMCA, YMHA, and settlement houses used recreation amenities to attract slum dwellers into their buildings. Once inside, visitors would receive various forms of instruction.
The New Map: Television
The emergence of television reduced the viability of multi-team markets as fans did not have to go to stadiums to watch games. However, large cities without teams could offer lucrative media rights contracts.
Unstable Identities
The meanings associated with identity are unstable and contextually-dependent. These meanings change over time and vary from place to place. The meanings are subject to contestation as dominant groups attempt to maintain and strengthen their positions, while less privileged groups challenge and/or adapt to their domination.
The Non Dialectical View
The non dialectical view of sports and politics is that the two are not connected and should not go together.
Rationale for Exclusion
These victories were achieved by excluding professional athletes, whom elites feared would take over "their" games. Elites rationalized this exclusion arguing amateurism was "the only way to keep... sport pure from the elements of corruption" (Pope, 1996) and that professionals had unfair advantages because they pursued sport as a job and they trained more heavily.
Institutions of Moral Uplift
Those advocating Muscular Christianity and using physical activity for social and moral reform developed a range of institutions, practices and ideologies of physical culture through which to transmit positive values to the next generation.
Recapitulation Theory
To further explain evolution, recapitulation theory suggested that embryos physically develop through successive stages of their ancestors' evolution. In early periods of development, more advanced species embody characteristics of their primitive adult ancestors.
"Go West, Young Man"
Towards meeting this destiny and following the advice of New York newspaper editor Horace Greeley, men who were not suited to urban life could prove their masculinity, find opportunities and seek their fortunes at the edges of the growing American nation
Measuring Calories
Towards scientifically improving weight management programs, Wilbur Atwater led an effort during the 1890s to measure the energy content of foods. He also conducted metabolic experiments to measure calorie expenditure during physical activity.
Anti-Vietnam Activist
Upon refusing induction in 1967 as a conscientious objector, many states revoked his boxing license and his title was stripped. Ali was sentenced to 5 years in prison, which was immediately appealed. His case eventually went to the Supreme Court which overruled his conviction in 1971. "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong... No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill, and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end"
Commercial Sport & Urban Form
Urbanization was a prerequisite for the development of the sports industry, spectator sport has had a significant influence on the development of the city.
Reactionary Responses
Where females challenged the conventions of male sport, they faced substantial social and political resistance from men and traditionally-minded women. Female athletics were often delegitimized as questions were raised regarding the quality of competition and challenges made to the femininity and/or sexuality of female athletes.
Institutions for Play
While physical education programs are generally located within schools, numerous institutions developed to promote play and physical activity towards improving fitness, health and morality
Japanese Baseball
Whiting (1989) credits American teacher Horace Wilson as bringing baseball to Japan in the late 1860s. The first team was formed in 1878 by Hiroshi Hiraoka, who became a Red Sox fan as a student in Boston.
Sugarball
Within the countries of Latin America and the islands of the Caribbean, baseball was closely tied to the U.S. military, political and commercial interests (often sugar companies), and native dictators who were supported by the U.S. government. American corporations and local dictators promoted baseball to build popular support and to distract from exploitative working conditions and political oppression. At the same time, baseball was an oppositional space that allowed native populations to express themselves and achieve symbolic victories over American domination.
Enlightenment & Race
Although Enlightenment philosophers suggested that all people were equal, they also recognized considerable variation between social groups. Following the ideas of the scientific revolution, towards categorizing the natural world, taxonomies of race began to be developed.
Ali's Influence on Other Athletes
Ali's renunciation of Christianity, opposition to the war, pronouncements against liquor, drugs, and sex with white women bothered many black athletes. At the same time, his bravery and his brazen attitude inspired many, and promoted a black consciousness necessary for the promotion of economic and political power.
Things "Known" But Ain't So...
All men are physically superior to all women • Humans are different races possessing superior and inferior attributes • Too much vigorous activity can cause permanent injury to women's reproductive organs • The human body has a fixed capacity • Children have an evolutionary-produced instinct for play
Performance Enhancement
Around the turn of the 20th century, athletes took a variety of stimulants in endurance events. Although some athletes died, these substances were not banned as they were believed to allow athletes to use their existing capacities to the fullest rather than providing them with an "artificial" advantage.
Beginnings of Integration (1930s-1950s)
As global political issues made discrimination problematic, African Americans found opportunities for advancement on White America's terms. As a result, African American progress in sport was uneven.
Anti-Positivist Paradigms
Covering several different paradigms, those coming from an anti-positivist position consider knowledge to be fundamentally subjective and reality to be socially constructed. Rather than seeking "TRUTH," interpretive paradigms seek to develop an understanding of the social world.
Ancient Greece
Following Solon's ideal of a society in which rewards follow merit, athletes in Ancient Greece often received substantial economic rewards for their triumphs. Although the belief that Ancient Greek athletes pursued sport for their own sake towards honoring the gods, there was no tradition or even the concept of amateurism.
Curt Flood
Following the 1969 season, the St. Louis Cardinals traded 3-time All-Star centerfielder Curt Flood to Philadelphia Phillies. Flood, who had been with the Cardinals for 12 seasons, did not want to be traded "Dear Mr. Kuhn, After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes."
Global Geopolitical Competition
Following the end of World War II, the capitalist U.S. and communist Soviet Union were left as super powers in a bipolar world. During the Cold War, the US and USSR engaged in political, economic, scientific, cultural and sporting battles to demonstrate the superiority of their economic and political system as the two nations competed for allies and geopolitical advantage.
"The Way of the Amateur"
For the British upper class, the manner of competition was more important than victory. Sport and physical activity were ways to demonstrate class status with victory considered the natural by-product of "proper" behavior.
The Suburban Housewife
For women, the 1950s ideal meant a return to the domestic sphere, where they were supposed to defer to the authority of their husbands.
Fordism
Ford developed the modern assembly line on which semiskilled workers repeated the same job rather than building an individual automobile. Production techniques were standardized towards mass production. Products were standardized towards mass consumption.
Lamarckism
Initially proposed during the early 19th century, Lamarckism suggested that organisms could pass along characteristics acquired during its lifetime to its offspring.
Being a Major League City
Many cities consider Major League sports teams as status symbols marking their relative importance. Civic boosters, businessmen, and politicians claim that inclusion in the sports media through broadcasting and reporting has positive impacts on tourism, business travel, and the locational decisions of corporate executives.
Early Base Ball Clubs
Many early baseball teams were originally organized as social clubs by and for middle class men and tradesmen to participate in a healthy and moral activity. In this, base ball provided an alternative to tavern-based culture.
Healthy Mind, Healthy Body
Many educators looked back to the Renaissance, during which humanists argued that the body and mind were closely linked, such that physical training was incorporated into broader forms of education.
Selling Exercise Equipment
Many exercise products were developed and sold with Sandow's name on them. He marketed these products within his stage shows, his (and other) magazines, and within his Institutes of Physical Culture.
Racism in the U.S.
Many of these new nations in Africa and Asia were victimized by the ideologies underpinning segregation in the U.S. Their diplomats and embassy staffs were often subjected to racially-based discrimination in Washington, DC and other American cities. Many people in the State Department believed that discrimination was the single biggest hindrance to U.S. foreign policy objectives.
Gender & Physical Activity and Sport
Physical activity and sport have historically been a space in which men prove their masculinity. As a result, these have been male-dominated spaces. Contention around the inclusion of women in sport/physical activity is further rooted in biological essentialism, or belief in female inferiority Consequently, women entering this male space often have had to conform to gender expectations, while having their biological sex questioned.
Masculine Attributes of Sport
Physical culture fitted the needs of an America that was concerned about masculinity as it provided a space for men to learn and demonstrate aggression, discipline, determination, endurance, bravery, leadership, physical strength, and strength of character that otherwise would have been honed on the battlefield or frontier.
Not Playing with Pain
Players who are not physically incapacitated but choose not to play risk being shamed by coaches as a sissy or woman. Additionally players may be ostracized by teammates who distance themselves from the injured.
Mother's Day Massacre
Playing the role of a highly-sexist male, Riggs repeatedly challenged King. After she declined, Riggs played the top-ranked women's player Margaret Court on Mother's Day, 1973. Riggs defeated Court in straight sets, 6-2, 6-1. King then accepted a match to play Riggs.
Expectations of Masculinity
Playing with pain displays the "masculine traits" of strength, perseverance, control, and courage. Giving into pain and injury can be perceived as weakness, which historically has been related to ideas of femininity.
The Ancient Greek Polity
Political life in ancient Greece operated through city-states that were ruled by their landowning citizens. City-states competed with one another for influence and were centers of commerce, culture, and religion. City-states also had a military focus with walls for defense and as they fought with one another and against common external threats.
Geographic Scales
Power and knowledge operate within and over space at different geographical scales from local to national to global. Within the process of globalization, the differences between the local, national and global levels have reduced as interconnectivity and interdependence has increased.
Economics
Power can also be exerted in and through the economy as scarce resources are distributed amongst the population. The field of economic investigates several key issues: --Who owns the means of production? --How is value determined? --How is the wealth produced allocated? --What is the role of government?
The Professionalization of Sport Science
Practices began to change slowly following World War II as Cold War raised the geopolitical consequences of athletic competition and increasing revenues available within the sports industry incentivized players and coaches to apply the most advanced scientific knowledge into their training regimes and lifestyles.
Red Grange
Red Grange turned professional five days after his final collegiate game at Illinois in order to fully profit from his popularity. Working with promoter C.C. Pyle, Grange earned money from exhibition games, advertising, films, and products bearing his name.
Eugenics
Social Darwinism was also closely related to eugenics. Eugenicists believed that the quality of the human species could be improved through selective breeding as those with "positive" traits would be allowed to reproduce. Often, people with "negative" traits (such as mental illness) would be sterilized to prevent the reproduction of those traits in the next generation.
Knute Rockne
Rockne's "keen instinct for the use of press exposure" (Robinson, 1999), helped shape Notre Dame's mystique. He was equally gifted in promoting himself as Rockne promoted many products, earned $5,000 annually as a motivational speaker, and the Studebaker Corporation produced 38,000 cars between 1930-1933 with his name.
Roosevelt's Strenuous Life
Roosevelt lived the strenuous life he preached as he boxed and wrestled in college during the 1870s, purchased and worked a ranch on the Dakota frontier in the 1880s, organized and led the Rough Riders during the 1898 Spanish -American War, and explored an uncharted Amazonian river in the 1910s.
Race
Scientists have tended to classify races based on phenotypical factors, including skin color, head shape, hair texture, stature, and nose shape. From these surface characteristics, certain groups are believed to possess differential physical and mental abilities. Despite centuries of scientific research that claimed to identify physical or intellectual advantages resulting from racial differences, genetic research has failed to identify significant biological advantages or disadvantages associated with superficial phenotypical factors. .1% of our genetic makeup is different from person to person.
The Politics of Victory
Sports victories symbolized the superiority of the athlete's country and economic system - Communist countries featured a state centered athletic training system. The state identified potential athletes (without respect to gender) at an early age, trained them at special sports academies (regardless of interest) and supported them as they are productive athletes Sports victories symbolized the superiority of the athlete's country and economic system - In the United States, athletic training programs were decentralized, with very little state-support or direction as private organization
Spectators & Producers
Sports were targeted to working class residents as inexpensive entertainment options. Sports facilities were often located on the urban periphery near working class neighborhoods or were accessible to mass transit.
Summer Baseball
Starting in the 1880s, many collegiate baseball players earned money playing baseball professionally at summer resorts. Many played under false names or earned money doing "other" employment in order to maintain their amateurism and ability to play in college. Eventually the NCAA accepted the practice because it was unable to eliminate it.
Talent Migration
Starting in the 1910s, MLB teams started recruiting white players from Latin America, while black players joined the Negro Leagues. Since the end of World War II, Latin America has been an important source of players through cultures celebrating the game and organized baseball academies.
Sport as a Commodity
Stephen Hardy (1986) identified sport as a "triple commodity" consisting of: -Game form: The rules & rule books which define the manner in which games are to be played -Sporting goods: Equipment and facilities -Sport services: Functions of sport, such as education, status, political propaganda, and entertainment, that frequently (but not necessarily) require payment According to Marx, a commodity is "an object outside of us, a thing by its properties satisfies human wants of some sort or another." In addition, a commodity must be part of a market exchange
Argument: An Economic Institution
The NCAA exists to exploit the labor of athletes, who are banned from earning money, and, in the revenue generating sports, are mostly poor. Their labor produces significant wealth for coaches and administrators, and produces scholarship money for middle and upper class athletes in non-revenue generating sports.
Mail Order Fitness
The pages of fitness magazines also featured advertisements for exercise programs, equipment, diets, and nutritional supplements that promised to transform people's bodies and attitudes.
Wo m e n 's B a s e b a l l & Wo r l d Wa r I I
The All American Girls Baseball League formed in 1943 as many male players were serving in World War II. The league played in cities throughout the Midwest.League chief executive Arthur Meyerhoff consciously sold the game as a blend of masculine skill and female beauty.
Women's Baseball & World War II
The All American Girls Baseball League formed in 1943 as many male players were serving in World War II. The league played in cities throughout the Midwest.
PEDs: Football & Steroids
To help get into shape and get stronger (and therefore more likely to earn a contract), by the 1960s, football players were regularly given steroids by coaches, trainers, and doctors. However, in baseball, players resisted muscle training (and steroid use) due to fears that muscles would become too large and reduce speed and flexibility
Earning Respect & Gaining Rights
Washington's approach prioritized cooperation and accommodation over confrontation.
Diplomatic Competition
With Great Britain and France unable to maintain global empires after World War II, the US and USSR used diplomacy, propaganda, and other means to gain influence in the former colonial and newly liberated nations in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Facilitating consumption
With all the new products coming to market, companies greatly expanded consumer credit by offering purchasers Installment contracts and allowing them to make small weekly or monthly payments.