Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Sport and ideology refers to the way in which the former, as a distinct form of leisure activity, impacts upon the body of ideas which reflect the beliefs of a social group or political system. Indeed, the ideological capacity of sport can be considered so great that it may now be apt to rework Marx's dictum, in that sport, rather than religion, might sensibly be considered to be the new opiate of the people. Unquestionably, explicit links between sport and ideology have their roots in the work of the Frankfurt School thinker Theodor Adorno. In sum, Adorno argued that sport, like many other forms of popular culture, was a frivolous activity which reinforced the inequalities of the capitalist system and prohibited critical thought. At the heart of Adorno's critique lay two defining principles: participant competition and the consumption of the sporting spectacle. Addressing the first of these issues, Adorno argued that sport emitted dangerous social messages, which resonate with the sports-playing proletariat. A given example is that sport is ultimately tied to “instrumental reason,” meaning that it serves a purpose of habituating those in subordinate social positions to the demands of material life. Therefore, Adorno's indictment was specifically aimed at the means-end rationality of bourgeois society, in that sport created the message that if the sports player worked/trained hard, ... log in or subscribe to read full text