From Ritual to Production in Sport

Excerpted from Dunning & Sheard (1979), Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players: A Sociological Study of the Development of Rugby Football:

FOLK GAMES	MODERN SPORT
diffuse, informal organization	highly specific, formal organization; institutionally differentiated at local, nat'l, int'l levels
traditional rules, simple	formal, elaborate written rules
imperceptible "drift" of rules	rational-bureaucratic rules and rule changes
variable space, time and number of participants	fixed space, time, and number of participants
little role specificity	division of labour/role differentiation
no firm division between players and spectators	rigid division between player and spectator
local contests central locus of competition	national and international contests superimposed on local; monetization of sport

Date: April 12, 02004
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sportsBabel

sportsBabel examines the aesthetics, politics and poetics of sport and physical culture, weaving between materiality, information, intuition and intellect. The notes posted here should be understood as emerging from an ongoing program of research-creation.

Threads of inquiry include: the security-entertainment complex and the militarization of sport; mediated sport as a spectrum of interactive possibility; the experiential qualities of postmodern sporting spaces; the cyborg body athletic manifest as mobile social subject; and the potential politics of a sporting multitude.

sportsBabel is produced by Sean Smith, a writer and artist from Toronto and a doctoral student at the European Graduate School of Media and Communications in Switzerland. Also a lecturer at various universities in Canada (curriculum vitae), his dissertation is titled "On Performing the University of Disaster."

department of biological flow

The Department of Biological Flow is a project of research-creation by Sean Smith and Barbara Fornssler exploring the concept of the moving human body as it is integrated with broader information networks of signal and noise.

The reference is from George Lucas' epic 1971 movie, THX 1138, in which a state-controlled intensification of communication processes manages every facet of daily life in a futuristic society, regulating the flux of all human subjects in work, leisure and love.

Though the Department exists in homage to Lucas’ vision, our consideration of biological flow seeks to reinvigorate the agency of the human subject in its negotiations with economic and political structures both material and immaterial.

www.departmentofbiologicalflow.net

From Ritual to Production in Sport

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