In Notebook 10 I focused on ‘what next’. Among the options were further books on the fractured society and sport. In this follow-up note I reproduce two unsuccessful book proposals, one on each topic. They were ultimately ‘unsuccessful’ because I withdrew them both (from different publishers) in fits of pique. I withdrew them because I was repeatedly asked for revisions in response to comments from reviewers who (a) seemed unfamiliar with my previous work, and (b) kept changing (as reviewers changed, so did the nature of the publishers’ requests for me to revise). In short, I got pissed off. I reproduce the kernels of both proposals in this note.
THE FRACTURED SOCIETY: A SOCIAL THEORY
Introduction
It is readily apparent not only that the offerings of philosophers and social theorists often overlap and also that wheels are repeatedly reinvented. Arguably these processes are exacerbated given the growing pressures on scholars and writers to be topical, to draw on the latest sources, and above all to hit metric measures of productivity and impact. It is an era of acceleration, extending to speed-thinking and speed-publishing. In such circumstances lessons learned as little as a generation ago are quickly forgotten. Time to think things through and make full use of extant studies is a scarce resoure. The volume proposed here is the result of half a century of reading, reflection, teaching and publishing.
I have in the course of my career drawn on a particular quartet of philosophers and social theorists: Ludwig Wittgenstein, Karl Marx, Jurgen Habermas and Roy Bhaskar. While taking care not to misunderstand or misrepresent their contributions, my intent has always been to ‘adapt’ and ‘use’ their work for my own ends. Principal among these ends has been forging a philosophical frame and a series of formal and substantive theories to capture and account for the ‘fractured’ nature of post-1970s financialised capitalism, particularly in the Occident. I have privileged this goal over faithful discripleship. This has involved not only using and adapting the quartet’s published output, but pursuing an expedient of fit-for-purpose synthesis; that is, a credible and comprehensive theory, or assembly of theories, of contemporary society and social change.
But my orientation to this point has typically been towards the sociology of health and health care. The volume proposed here does not have such a specific or narrow focus. It is concerned with society ‘as a whole’ and in relation to a financialised form of capitalism that many distinguished and influential sociologists are defining as terminal, for all that they profess themselves unable to anticipate the nature of any succeeding social formation. The aim of my enquiry and text is to deliver an effective formal and substantive examination and summation of contemporary societal relations. It will in the process confront extant sociologies of the present, including the contributions of theorists like Giddens, Beck, Castells, Bauman, Fraser, Wallerstein and Streeck.
Outline
The introduction will provide a route-map for the arguments that follow. I will sketch the nature of the debts due to Wittgenstein, Marx, Habermas and Bhaskar prior to outlining my theory of the fractured society and ideas for securing measured collective transformative change.
The first part of the book will constitute a – largely philosophical – prolegomenon. Its purpose will be to supply, explain and justify ontological, epistemological and social/sociological butresses for the analyses that follow. The perspectives and theses of each of Wittgentstein, Marx Habermas and Bhaskar will be introduced and those aspects of their works most germaine to my endeavour highlighted and contextualised. The order of their treatment is explained not by chronology but by the order in which I encountered them and their incremental input into the development of my own thought. Their personal social placements and evolving projects will be outlined prior to the provision of the rationale for their relevance to my own theory of society and of change. A detailed but interrogatory exposition and critique of those parts of their works most pertinent for me will follow (eg aspects of the ‘later’ Wittgenstein of Philosophical Investigations and On Certainty rather than the ‘early’ Wittgenstein of the Tractatus). This opening section will provide a grounding and a frame for the substantive analyses that succeed it.
The second part of the book will be committed to introducing a novel theory of society and social change. This will acknowledge its indebteness to Wittgenstein, Marx, Habermas and Bhaskar whilst arguing for an essentially new framework, mode of enquiry, analysis and network of micro- to macro-theories. In this second part of the book many other philosophers and social and sociological theorists will play important parts. The discussion here will emerge and be articulated through distinctive approaches to the conceptualisation and study of each of agency, culture and structure.
The final part will outline a new theory of contemporary society and social change. While it can be misleadingly simplistic and a hostage to fortune to caricature this kind of theory in terms of single adjective or phrase, I shall as a convenient shorthand refer here to an integrated theory of the fractured society. The underlying or ‘labouring’ principles and tenets of this integrated theory will be summarised, and in the concluding sections the earlier arguments will coalesce to yield a comprehensive and evidence-based view of the fractured society and of the potential of the causal efficacy of collective agency in relation to the assorted societal formations that might displace it. Throughout the book the theory propounded here will be compared and contrasted with the contributions of other major social theorists.
Chapters
INTRODUCTION
This will briefly introduce the aims and objectives of the book, namely, the proper grounding and construction of an integrated theory of the fractured society. It will also provide a route-map to take the reader through the subsequent chapters to this end. It will close with a brief summary statement of (a) the lessons learned from each of Wittgenstein, Marx, Habermas and Bhaskar, and (b) my theory of the fractured society and of the potential for accomplishing transformative change towards a better society.
PART ONE
CHAPTER ONE: THE INGREDIENTS OF THEORY CONSTRUCTION
The focus of this opening chapter will be the nature of theory construction in the social sciences in general, and in sociology in particular. This will necessarily examine their limitations as well as their scope; and this in turn will involve a coming to terms with indisciplinarity as well as free will and contingency or happenstance. An agenda will be set, and seeds sown, for the remaing chapters in thie opening part of the book.
CHAPTER TWO: WITTGENSTEIN AND ‘FORMS OF L IFE’
While there is certainly continuity between the ‘early’ and the ‘later’ Wittgenstein, there are also radical departures. It is the ideas of the later Wittgenstein that social scientists have mined and deployed for their own purposes. In this chapter some core ideas – eg forms of life, language-games, family resemblances, certainty – are outlined and contextualised and an assessment offered both of their validity and of their salience and potential for helping ground a social theory of society.
CHAPTER THREE: MARX AND CAPITALISM
Marx has been studied, summarised, revised and critiqued interminably. The object of this chapter is more circumscribed. It is to show what it is in Marx’s writings (and political engagement) that (a) challenges, (b) tempers, and (c) builds upon the philosophical spadework that Wittgenstein’s later reflections. How much and which of these reflections survive to inform a social theory oriented to understanding and explaining people’s lives under capitalism in general and financial capitalism in particular? An analysis of his concept of legitimation crisis is proffered.
CHAPTER FOUR: HABERMAS AND LIFEWORLD-SYSTEM DE-COUPLING
Habermas began more committed to Marxist theory than his subsequent work suggests. This chapter takes off from the conclusions of Chapters One and Two and pays special and critical attention to his notion of social evolution; the distinction between labour and communication; the de-coupling of lifeworld and system; and the subsequent colonisation of the lifeworld by the system. The key question is whether – and if so, to what extent – does Habermas’ theory of communicative action nudge us towards a superior theory of society.
CHAPTER FIVE: BHASKAR AND ‘THE REAL’
Bhasker’s critical relealism is most noted for identifying and calling out the ‘epistemic fallacy’, namely, the reduction of what ‘exists’ to what we can ‘know’of what exists (ie ontology to epistemplogy), and for providing an account of ontological realism with ramifications for any viable ‘scientific’ theory of society. Here I concentrate on his explication of generative (or causal) mechanisms at the level of ‘the real’ and the various ways in which his critical realist perspective on science is (a) at odds with Wittgenstein, Marx and Habermas, (b) complements their work, and (c) can contribute to an optimal social theory of the contemporary social formation.
PART TWO
CHAPTER SIX: ‘BEING AS A RIPPLE ON THE OCEAN OF ABSENCE’
The take-off point of the second part of the book is the summation of the conclusions of the first. Chapter Six picks up in particular on Bhaskar’s ontology, embracing his dialectical notion of ‘absence’ (entailing an acknowledgement that what is (a) might not have been, and (b) might yet be displaced), and his later texts addressing rationales for and modes of accomplishing social transformation. The resurgence of the concepts of utopianism and communism, especially in recent French thinking, are introduced and confronted. Consistently through the second and third parts of the book, empirical studies and illustrations are prioritised.
CHAPTER SEVEN: WHAT’S LEFT OF AND FOR AGENCY?
The fundamentally philosophical idea of free will is explicated. The longstanding debate between sociologists oriented to agency and those oriented to structure (Dawes’ ‘two sociologies’) is then introduced and assessed. Rival approaches – eg between Giddens and Archer – are discussed. It is argued that free will is socially structured but not structurally determined. As much is part and parcel of the necessarily bounded – but irreducible – science of society and social change. A series of empirical investigations, some of them comparative, are drawn upon to underpin the chapter’s thesis that both agency and structure hace the potential to be causally efficacious.
CHAPTER EIGHT: SHIFTING CULTURAL SCRIPTS
Culture, like agency, reflects as well as impacts on structure and agency. This chapter starts from Archer’s characterisation of culture as aligned with her idea of contemporary morphogenettic society. It analyses and ‘puts into perspective’ the genesis of the new social movements, identity politics and the privileging of human rights over (postwar, welfare state capitalist) material redistribution. This chapter offers a typology of rival – and politically opposed – orientations to cultural forces. The pivotal idea of (commodifiied, consumerised) ‘choice’ is re-analysed.
CHAPTER NINE: STRUCTURE, BUT NOT STRUCTURAL DETERMINATION
The ‘structured but not structurally determined’ theme runs throughout this book and is clarified and defended against rival views in this chapter. I proffer what might be called a neo-Marxian and non-determinist concept of structure as a causal or generative mechanism. I argue for the continuing salience of class in financialised capitalism notwithstanding substantial shifts in class relations and in the sources of identity formation. I also discuss the interplay between the key relations of class and those of gender, race or ethnicity and age.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TEN: AN INTEGRATED THEORY
By integration here I refer to reconcilations between (a) different philosophical, social and sociological schools and theorists, (b) different micro-, meso- and macro-orientations to theory and empirical inquiry, and (c) different disciplinary approaches. While reconcilations in relation to (a) and (b) are resolved, (c) is beyond the brief of this volume (though every effort is made to ensure compatibility with inputs ranging from genetics to anthropology). Humans are biolological and psychological as well as social beings. The theory of a fractured society is also set in historical context, as an emergent and presently ‘imploding’ social formation.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: FRACTURED SOCIETY IN THE 21ST CENTURY
In this lengthy chapter the parameters of the fractured society are outlined, as is its growing propensity to succomb to crisis. There is a particular focus on the following concepts: environmental threat; accelerating migration; the nomadic proletariat; new inequalities; class and precarity; post-national ‘othering’; gender dissolution; cultural disorientation; and disconnected fatalism. The account offered in previous publications (notably Scambler, 2018; Scambler, 2019) is refined and extended beyond the ‘class/command dymanic’ posited previously. Three further dynamics are introduced: stigma/deviance, insider/outsider, and party/populist. A cluster of ‘Mertonian’ middle-range theories linking macro-social change into the 21st century with people’s everyday experiences in the lifeworld is also expounded. These theories rely on a meta-reflective heuristic; that is, they cull theories from across diverse literatures (eg Archer on reflexivity, Goldthorpe on risk aversion, Seigrist on effort-reward imbalance). This chapter spells out my new theory in detail and, in the closing paragraphs, defends it against other ‘rival’ theoretical narratives (eg Giddens, Beck, Castells, Fraser and the like).
CHAPTER TWELVE:SOCIAL CHANGE AND SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION
The concluding chapter utilises the contributions of Marx, Habermas and Bhaskar (a) to provide a grounded (neo-Enlightenment) case for directing scientific scholarship towards fuelling transformational change targetting ‘the good society’, (b) to lay out and discriminate between differential potentials for effective oppositional ‘collective’ agency and willed transformative change, and (c) to propose and commend optimal strategies. The overall aims and objectives of the book culminate here: it offers both a comprehensive picture of a fractured society about to implode and a rational – ‘logical’ – case for a scholarly commitment to change.
SPORT IN THE FRACTURED SOCIETY: A CRITICAL REALIST THEORY
There are innumerable sociologies of sport, many of them American and taking the form of general textbooks. The current proposal is for what might be called a theoretical monograph. It builds in particular on the contributions of theorists like Brohm, Gruneau, Giulianotti and Andrews and Silk. It (a) presents a new way of thinking about the sociology of sport, (b) sets this in the context of the fracturing of society that has occurred in the twenty-first century, and (c) lends itself to a concise and accessible format. The underlying thesis is that sport is itself undergoing a process of fracturing that can only be accounted for via an understanding of global, macro-social change.
Introduction
The core thesis of this volume is that sport in the era of post-1970s global or financialised capitalism has undergone a process of fracturing, and that this calls for an amendment to longstanding and consensual accounts of traditional-to-modern sporting activity. Rival concepts of sport are assessed and the professional/amateur binary superceded. The central thesis is rooted in the philosophies and theories of critical realism and critical theory. In the introduction both are introduced. This is followed by introductions to four types of sporting or athletic activity – track and field, cricket, soccer and rugby – that are drawn on throughout the book to proffer detailed case studies and illustrations of the developing argument. Finally, abstracts are offered of the contents of each of the chapters of the book.
Chapter 1: The Case for a Revised Sociology of Sport
The opening chapter offers a ‘scene-setting’, critical review of the principal paradigms employed in the contemporary sociology of sport. These are functionalism, conflict theory, figurationalism, interpretivism, feminism, post-colonialism, disability theory and postmodernism. The first five of these were discussed in my previous book, and the critiques there will be updated and extended; the remaining two will be given more extensive treatment. Special attention is paid subsequently to Marxist and neo-Marxist conflict theory and to the pioneering work of Brohm and Gruneau and the contemporary contributions of Hargreaves, Giulianotti and Andrews and Silk. A full account is then given of the critical realist philosophy and theory that forms the basis of the arguments in this volume. A distinction is drawn between Bhaskar’s basic critical realism (BCR) and his later dialectical critical realism (DCR). BCR is explicated, with a focus on: (a) the epistemic fallacy; (b) the ‘holy trinity’ of ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgemental rationality; (c) the open society; (d) the transformational model of social action; and (e) the concepts of emergence and interdisciplinarity. A selection of analyses and concepts from DCR of special salience for a ‘revised’ sociology of sport is then elucidated, most notably: (a) absence; and (b) totality. The critical theory of Habermas is briefly summarised and deployed to add substantive flesh to the critical realist skeleton. The ways in which critical realism and critical theory: (a) allow for a compelling synthesis of key elements of these paradigms, and (b) amount to a compelling case for ‘going beyond’/revising orthodox sociologies of sport, is outlined. It is further argued that there has been no convincing coming to terms with the concepts of structure, culture and agency in an open society, and that reconciling this triad is of critical importance for a sociology of sport. The first chapter concludes by situating a new sociology of sport in the context of our 21st century fractured society. This involves explications of: environmental threat, the nomadic proletariat, the new inequality, class and precarity, post-national ‘othering’, gender dissolution, cultural disorientation, and disconnected fatalism.
Chapter 2: From Hyper-Rationalisation to the Fracturing of Sport
This chapter examines the extent to which both professional sport and sport in the lifeworld have been subject to enhanced or hyper-rationalisation in financialised capitalism. Special attention is paid here to the ‘stretch’ between schools-and-parks-to-global-stadia in athletics, cricket, soccer and rugby. The mushrooming business of ‘fandom’ is analysed with reference to this stretch (see Sandvoss). Conventional criteria for delineating clearcut historical phases of sporting development (classically by Guttman) are called into question, principally for privileging the system and ‘absenting’ the lifeworld. It is argued that these have been unduly restrictive and that the present phase of fractured sport cannot be subsumed under extant criteria. This key point is illustrated with reference to the emergence, evolution and recent transformations of cricket and soccer in particular, though passing attention is paid also to athletics and rugby. This chapter ends with a (positive) discussion of the prognoses of ‘big sociology’ and authors like Wallerstein, Collins and Calhoun, namely, that financialised capitalism is not only fracturing society but imploding and unlikely to survive beyond the middle of the 21st century. What this might mean for the future of sport is broached and considered.
Chapter 3: System versus Lifeworld: Globalised System versus Localised Lifeworld
A discussion of the ongoing tension between system-driven (global, see Maguire) ‘professional’ sporting activity and everyday, mundane, lifeworld ‘amateur’ engagement starts by interrogating the status of Greece’s earliest ‘professional’ Olympians and goes on to consider the Victorian inclinations for gentlemanly amateurism to examine today’s more ‘mercenary’, moneyed circuits, focusing on recalibrations around T20 cricket and world rugby. It is argued that most historical and sociological texts: (a) see this tension in overly simplistic terms, and (b) ‘absent’ non-elite sporting activities. Point (b) applies also to my own previous book (ref below). This chapter seeks to re-frame and re-position widespread – and global – ‘popular’ sports in financialised capitalism’s fractured society. It uses the concept of the ‘sporting festival’ to compare and contrast the nature and character of different sporting gatherings. It also addresses the growing, ‘colonising’ intrusion of system, professional and ‘mercenary’ sporting orientations into popular sports participation in the lifeworld, reaching back into school sports and childhood. Drawing in particular on critical realism, four social mechanisms or dynamics critical for both society’s fracturing and the (knock-on) fracturing of sport are defined and analysed, namely: (a) the class/command dynamic; (b) the stigma/deviance dynamic; (c) the insider/outsider dynamic; and (d) the party/populist dynamic. These, it is contended, are likely telling mechanisms/tendencies for ‘the future of sport’.
Chapter 4: Healthy Communities? Healthy Bodies and Minds?
Team sports in particular, it is often claimed, offer a sense of community, of belonging and of identity. Sporting activities in general, it is also asserted, make for healthy bodies and minds. These two propositions are re-examined in light of: (a) the sociology of community; (b) the sociology of the sporting body; (c) the critical realist concepts and the four dynamics explicated in Chapter 3; and (d) Habermas’ theory of the progressive system colonisation of the lifeworld introduced in Chapter 1 and featuring in Chapter 2. Illustrations are drawn from all four sports under specific consideration in this volume: athletics, cricket, soccer and rugby. Attention is also paid to combat sports like boxing and cage fighting, and the changing ‘mundane’ role of social media, with reference to Elias’ theory that sport underwent a ‘civilising spurt’ in the Occident and his acknowledgement that ‘de-civilising spurts’ are always possible. What might be called the hinterlands of sport, from its ‘mediation’ via mainstream and social media to gambling and drug use, are also discussed here, as are their ramifications for addictions and other forms of sickness. As throughout the volume, it is argued that sociology must go beyond the ‘superficial’ study of individuals and aggregates of individuals to expose the – often hidden – structural, cultural and agential mechanisms at work, as it were beneath the surface. This penultimate chapter ends with a discussion of the works of scientists Hawking and Lovelock and their confident claims that humans are currently ‘evolving’ – via genetic engineering and artificial intelligence respectively – into a new species. This, it is contended, signals the significance of critical realism’s grasp of the simultaneous operation of physical, biological and psychological as well as social mechanisms and the pertinence of this insight for a sociology of sport into the 21st century.
Chapter 5: A Critical Realist Theory of Sport
This chapter draws threads together and argues for a paradigm shift in the sociology of sport; it also establishes the parameters for, and a set of substantive theses towards, a novel research programme. It is a programme that is ‘required’ by the transition to a financialised capitalism in crisis and a fractured society reaching deep into sporting endeavour. The case is made by reference back to the specific characteristics of the fractured society listed in Chapter 1. The premises of this research programme are both ontological (drawing on the precepts of BCR and DCR) and epistemological (drawing on critical theory). The resultant arguments from these premises embrace structural, cultural and agential dimensions and range from micro- through meso- to macro-sociological propositions. Use is made too of the later Wittgenstein’s notion of language games and family resemblances. In this chapter too, several middle-range theories from outside extant sociologies of sport – including Archer’s modes of reflexivity, Goldthorpe’s model of risk aversion and Seigrist’s theory of effort-reward imbalance – are mooted as means of enhancing the reach, depth and appeal of a critical realist theory of sport. Twenty-first century rugby union – from school rugby to its professional pinnacle, the World Cup – afford case studies to illustrate its principal components, accenting individualisation and identity for self and others; liquid group dynamics; and system rationalisation or colonisation.
Conclusion
In this brief, summative chapter the emphasis is on showing the enhanced explanatory potential of the sociology of sport described and prescribed through the course of the preceding chapters. Importantly, this entails acknowledging sociology’s limits in: (a) what Bhaskar terms a multi-tiered or ‘stratified’ world and (b) in what he refers to as an ‘open system’ resistant to experimental closure. Bhaskar’s concept of ‘absence’ is deployed to highlight what goes missing in many theoretical and substantive contributions to existing sociologies of sport. Finally, some case studies around individual sports persons are offered to provide an indication of how the social can causally inform, enable or constrain, and ‘permate’ what appear to be distinctive and individual sporting trajectories.