A Study on Football's Relationship with Society Dominic Lo Claremont Mckenna College
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Claremont Colleges Scholarship @ Claremont CMC Senior Theses CMC Student Scholarship 2011 Football, The orW ld's Game: A Study on Football's Relationship with Society Dominic Lo Claremont McKenna College Recommended Citation Lo, Dominic, "Football, The orldW 's Game: A Study on Football's Relationship with Society" (2011). CMC Senior Theses. Paper 94. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/94 This Open Access Senior Thesis is brought to you by Scholarship@Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in this collection by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CLAREMONT McKENNA COLLEGE FOOTBALL, THE WORLD’S GAME: A STUDY ON FOOTBALL’S RELATIONSHIP WITH SOCIETY SUBMITTED TO PROFESSOR LISA FORMAN CODY AND DEAN GREGORY HESS BY DOMINIC LO FOR SENIOR THESIS SPRING/2011 APRIL 25, 2011 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank Professor Cody for being a fantastic reader who challenged me to think about sports in an intellectual and historical manner, which had not occurred to me before. It was also her who inspired my love for primary sources, which really transports me into the historical eras that I was researching. Secondly, I would like to thank my parents who passed on their love of football to me. Abstract This paper looks at the way football affects society. Analysis includes a look into football in Victorian England, the notorious Glaswegian Rangers-Celtic rivalry as well as the role of football in the United States during the late 20th century. Contents Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: Football and Victorian English Society: The People’s Game? ...................................... 10 The Development of Football .................................................................................................... 11 Elites’ and Workers’ Relationship in Larger society ................................................................... 23 Football as an Opiate of the Masses .......................................................................................... 26 Rugby: The Middle Class Game .................................................................................................. 34 Chapter 2: Football and Sectarianism: The Celtic-Rangers Rivalry ................................................ 46 History of Sectarianism in Scotland ........................................................................................... 48 Sectarian Bigotry in Scottish Football ........................................................................................ 55 Football and Scottish Society ..................................................................................................... 60 The Interwar Period ................................................................................................................... 61 Rangers and Inter-War Sectarianism ......................................................................................... 68 Positive Aspects of the Old Firm ................................................................................................ 71 Chapter 3: Soccer, a True Reflection of America? ......................................................................... 77 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 77 Part 1: Soccer and the Yuppies .................................................................................................. 77 Part 2: Women’s Soccer and Feminism ..................................................................................... 85 Part 3: Soccer and Minorities ................................................................................................... 100 Conclusion: Football, the World’s Game? ................................................................................... 116 Works Consulted .......................................................................................................................... 124 1 Introduction “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed in that attitude. I can assure you, it's much, much more important than that.” 1- Bill Shankly This observation by Bill Shankly, Liverpool Football Club’s legendary manager, holds a lot of truth. All around the world, fans pack into stadiums weekly to cheer on their favorite team. Judging by how emotionally charged the fans get, the game does seem more important than life and death. In fact, the motivation for this paper is a result of my own love affair with football. This love affair began when, at age four, my father presented me with my first football and started teaching me the nuances of the game. From that point forward, my love for ‘the beautiful game’ has only strengthened. Every weekend, I find myself waking up at ‘ungodly hours’ just to watch my favorite team, Manchester United, try to put a ball into the back of a net. On one such morning, when I woke up at 5 am to catch a normal league game, I started wondering why football has been able to have such a hold over me. This question lead me to further contemplate what sort of effect this game has on society at large when so many people are just as (if not more) crazy than me about football. Sports as a Cultural Artifact Sports, especially mass spectator sports, are hugely important cultural artifacts. That is, it reflects a society’s culture in “unique and important ways” 2. Sports arguably hold a higher cultural significance than other artifacts such as movies, paintings or music 1 David Goldblatt, The Ball is Round: a global history of soccer (New York: Riverhead Books, 2008), 1. 2 Richard K. Olsen Jr., “Sports as Cultural Artifact,” in Sports in American Culture: From Ali to X-Games , ed. Joyce Duncan, XIII (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2004). 2 because they actively engage participants and foster constant interaction between people witnessing the spectacle. How often does one hear the entire audience in a cinema screaming at the screen? How often does one see complete strangers at an art gallery embracing each other with tears streaming down their face because of the beauty of a painting? In sports stadiums, however, you would see fans screaming down at a team in unison, creating a strong imagined community for all those involved. Moreover, we frequently see complete strangers (even people from diverse socioeconomic groups) embracing each other if their team scores a goal. These are precisely the qualities that make studying sports so fascinating. To understand how sports are able to serve as a cultural artifact, we must first define culture, which is the “total system of meanings within which groups of people live their lives” 3. Sports confer to this ‘total system of meanings’ as it often has multiple levels of significance. At its most basic level, people engage in sports to stay healthy. The type of sport that a group of people chooses to engage in, however, tells us a lot more about their culture than just their desire to stay fit. The development of baseball, often labeled ‘America’s Favorite Pastime’, provides us with a striking example. Throughout the early 1800s, cricket was actually much more popular in the United States than baseball 4. By the mid 1800s, however, baseball had emerged as America’s game. The reason for this ‘crowding out’ of cricket was due to the political climate at the time. Rise of “sectionalism in the South” and the prospect of civil war caused Americans to fear for 3 Richard K. Olsen Jr., “ Sports as Cultural Artifact, ” XIII. 4 George B. Kirsch, Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2004), 16. 3 the solidarity of the country 5. Moreover, there was a flaring of xenophobia due to a huge influx of immigrants from Europe. Culturally, this was also a period where Americans “strove for a literary and artistic independence from European (and especially British) influence that would match their political separation from the Old World” 6. Due to these currents, baseball, which was thought of as a sport that originated from America, eclipsed cricket 7. When some sections of society suggested that baseball was evolved from the British game of rounders, Americans responded by creating the Doubleday myth. This legend states that Abner Doubleday, who was a decorated civil war hero, personally invented the game. As sociologists Andrei S. Markovits and Steven L. Hellerman explains, “pride and patriotism required the game to be native, unsullied by English ancestry” and “baseball devotees found it increasingly difficult to swallow the idea that their favorite pastime was of foreign origin” 8. By placing baseball solely in the American domain, its popularity soared and eventually became ‘America’s Favorite Pastime’. The cultural significance of sports also transcends time, as we see that baseball still plays a central role in American society and reflects American values. This role of baseball is apparent when we juxtapose it with why football [soccer] does not hold a similar role in American society. American essayist Chuck Klosterman, who has written extensively on U.S popular culture, argues that mainstream Americans love baseball and hate soccer because American society is individualistic and meritocratic (values that 5 Kirsch, “ Baseball in Blue and Gray,” 16. 6 Kirsch, “ Baseball