The Social Function of Sports

Sporting competition may have various hidden social functions. Those functions are common to many societies but likely change with economic development as young people prepare for a more complex way of life.

Team sports are symbolically connected to warfare. Many involve some notion of territory that is contested and either won or lost. Most also provide a venue for pageantry, group colors, and emblems that resemble tribal warfare.

War Games

Anthropologists believe that sport may have descended from tribal war games. This point is illustrated by the ethnographic film, “Trobriand Cricket.'

English missionaries introduced cricket to the Trobriand Islanders - who live in an archipelago east of New Guinea. The missionaries hoped that by focusing on sport competition, tribal warfare would be reduced.

The Trobriand Islanders made many changes to the starchy sport of cricket, turning it into a ritualized version of warfare. The film was based on reenactments after the event based on memories of the competitors (given that cricket was no longer played).

Cricket got jazzed up with frequent chants, colorful clothing and masks, tribal dancing, and many changes in rules and paraphernalia. The bat was turned into a large club and balls were improvised.

Teams alternated scores and the home team always won.

This was not quite cricket as the British are fond of saying but shows that warfare and competitive sports overlapped effortlessly in the minds of this isolated society.

Tribal societies often hold feasts where men from rival communities engage in non lethal fights, such as wrestling, stick fighting, or chest-pounding duels. Such events may have complex functions but one element is a parade of strong fit warriors to intimidate rivals,

Physical Fitness

Tribal celebrations can involve bouts of extended dancing that continue for many hours without rest. Such displays are possible only for those with an exceptional level of physical fitness, and they may well function as preparation for the rigors of battle.

This is most obviously true of events such as stick fighting that are a nonlethal version of combat with spears. They advertise strength, skill, conditioning, and courage.

Modern life is very distant from the concerns of tribal Trobriand Islanders. Yet, competitive sports persist. The pageantry and ritual are played down and the focus is more on physical fitness, competitive spirit, and exceptional specialized skills. Modern sports also have a time discipline and are governed by voluminous rules and a proliferation of umpires and line judges. These differences are understandable as an industrialization of sports. .

The skills that young people develop in team sports are clearly more relevant to economic competition in a modern society than to tribal warfare.

Occupational Striving

Sports are competitive within teams as well as between teams. The individual wishes to excel but they also want their team to win necessitating cooperation and some self-sacrifice. These kinds of compromise are mirrored in company employees. Workers may be there primarily for themselves but they cannot prosper in the work environment if incapable of cooperating.

Corporate leaders like to emphasize teamwork in their communications with underlings because they want them to give priority to company objectives. Sometimes this message is overt but more often it is implied through the heavy use of sports metaphors. The new product is a home run. The promotional drive is in the final innings. There is no “I” in teamwork. We don't need more quarterbacks.

Corporate recruiters like new hires who are team players and one of the simplest demonstrations of this is if they play team sports. Players are often highly motivated as individuals but they have learned how to pursue their personal agenda by serving the interests of the group.

In the past, few women played team sports but that has changed a lot. Educators and others realized that experience playing team sports helped women to succeed in careers – an advantage that men have always had. This perspective is highlighted by evidence in a Gallup survey showing that women with experience as student athletes are more occupationally successful and have better prospects in terms of life satisfaction.

Sport and Competition Essential Reads

Why We Get Excited During Sporting Events

What Does It Mean to Be a Good Sports Fan?

Sport as Entertainment (and as Religion)

Whatever about career benefits of amateur sports, we live in an age when more attention is paid to professional, and semi-professional competitions.

Team sports have become an increasingly significant part of the entertainment industry. The fact that time spent in sport spectatorship increases has multiple causes. Ordinary people battle with overweight and have fitness problems that were not evident in an earlier era of manual labor. This may be why we idealize athletes who are perfectly conditioned.

The rise in spectatorship, much of it via screens, occurs in an era when religion is in decline. Sports psychologists see this use of leisure time as satisfying many of the psychological needs thought to be satisfied by religion in the past. This idea was explored in an earlier post.

Sources

Wann, D. L., Melznick, M. J., Russell, G. W., & Pease, D. G. (2001). Sport fans: The psychology and social impact of spectators .New York: Routledge.

https://www.gallup.com/services/189059/understanding-life-outcomes-form…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/200911/is-sport…