Global Games (Sport and Society)

"Yes, it takes the Guttmann analysis one step further and picks up on the legendary works of Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning. Norbert Elias argues, convincingly in my view, that the reason these modern sports arose in Britain remains intimately linked to her developing a liberal parliamentary democracy that was to govern its capitalist economy. Or put differently, Britain’s early establishment of a functioning bourgeois society – in notable contrast to so many of its continental neighbours – initiated a civilising process of which sports, perhaps particularly team sports, formed such an integral part. Maarten Van Bottenburg picks up on this analysis and Elias’s notion of ‘sportisation’ which he uses masterfully to explain how myriad sports developed in key countries such as Britain and the United States and how they essentially mutated into globally understood and practised constructs that have come to play such an important role in our global culture. I then extend Van Bottenburg’s notion of sportisation by analysing – and analogising – sports as languages. In my view, one speaks different footballs, ie, American football, association football, rugby football, Australian football. They are all related, to be sure, they are all Romance languages – if I am permitted to apply my language analogy here – they all had a common Latin background, but they have become mutually unintelligible in their current usage to anybody not schooled in them. Ditto with bat games: cricket and baseball are related but they are sufficiently different to constitute their very own metrics and grammar and rules. Of course, just like languages, these sports create their own lyric, poetry, beauty, their own masters of creation and interpretation. Those in the know appreciate their nuances, their colloquialisms, their idiomatic quirks that give each and every one of these sports their essential identities. And just like with languages, these sports, too, create their meta levels that only the true aficionados, insiders and experts appreciate. Just like I am in some way a different person when I speak German from when I speak English, I am convinced that I am equally a different person when I speak association football as opposed to its American or Australian or rugby variants, let alone basketball or any of the other two languages comprising the North American big four team sports. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Van Bottenburg also does a masterful job in analysing the proliferation of these sports in terms of their structure, agency and contingency. To be sure, skiing, skating and most of the winter sports performed on ice or snow emerged in countries where such climactic conditions prevail. And sure enough, it is also obvious that different social actors created and fostered the development of different sports. And yet, contingencies also play a role. Thus, for example, by any historical and structural measure, Van Bottenburg’s Holland should have emerged as a global powerhouse in the game of ice hockey. After all, the place features many flat surfaces, created a culture in which skating has become a national religion, millions of its citizens embark on daylong treks across many miles of frozen dykes, and its speed skaters are nothing short of national heroes. And yet, the game of ice hockey is virtually unknown, even though some kind of predecessor to it, maybe akin to the game of ‘bandy’ that is still played prolifically in Russia and Sweden and very marginally in the United States and Canada, was obviously played in the Low Countries in the 16th century, as paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Elder in Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum amply demonstrate."