This piece is the first official contribution I made to the digital hockey magazine AllHabs.net as a Featured Contributor.
While many fans lament the ways that economics and power struggles have kept hockey off the ice during the current lockout, in this piece I explore the historical connections between sports, politics, economics, and culture. After understanding the ways that sports is used by societies to promote, and argue over, its most cherished social values, I suggest that fans use these connections to get involved in trying to bring the game of hockey back and to contribute to the social needs of the societies and communities in which they live.
You can read the digital version here.
The Politics of Sports and the Hockey Lockout
By Avi Goldberg
It’s been a rough couple of years for
hockey fans in general and for fans of the Montreal Canadiens in particular. Between the lockout, intractable
negotiations over arena deals, and intense scrutiny over whether the Habs coach
and GM must be bilingual, much attention has been focused away from the game of
hockey itself. While resentment of
the presence of politics, economics, or culture within what we like to think of
a realm of play is understandable, ties between sports and core features of society
cannot be unravelled. We may
choose to shy away, but awareness of those ties can give us control when the
perceived contamination of sports by societal issues leads us to feel as though
we have none.
Because humans have always imagined their
sports as representing their most valued social characteristics and
aspirations, direct resemblances between politics, economics, culture and
sports can be traced far back into history.
Ancient Greece,
birthplace of modern democracy, was known for a liberal approach to life and
for enlightened politics in which citizens joined together in discussion and
decision making over community affairs.
Contours of this participatory
philosophy and other societal features were grafted onto sports practices of
the Classical Greek era.
Echoing Greek politics, values of fair
play and equality in competition were taught to students in physical education
classes in the national education system and were also intricately applied to
events in the ancient Olympic Games.
Exemplifying additional sports-society links, ancient Greek athletics displayed
core social values through their public enactment of rituals that characterized
Greek religion. Greek athletics
were not merely about physical fitness.
The organization of sports highlighted revered social priorities. Participation signalled honouring of the
gods as well as efforts to bring divinely granted good fortune to the
community.
Whereas participation, fairness, and
religious practice were fundamental virtues of society and sport in ancient
Greece, the organization of ancient Roman sports was directly reflective of the
core economic and militaristic dimensions of that great civilization.
The Emperors of Ancient Rome routinely used
the wealth they accrued from imperial and economic success to please their citizens
with the public provision of material opulence and national holidays of leisure. The culture of conquest and economic
extravagance was replicated in Roman sports festivals that featured
gladiatorial fighting by paid performers before audiences that were permitted to
gamble on outcomes. Thus, in an
advanced commercial and militarily robust society, sports took the form of
orchestrated entertainment publicly celebrating the spectacle of violence in
amphitheatres throughout the Roman Empire.
In one final example of the constructed
connections between core elements of society and sports, hockey in Canada
provides a familiar illustration.
As a game originally played outdoors on
ice, and that historically showcased tough physical play, hockey not only
models the reality of a cold physical environment but also the strength required
by Canadian communities to thrive within their geographic contexts. Parallel to the requisite physicality,
hockey players off the ice are also valued for their humility, politeness, and
generosity. When they find these
character traits in the everyday comportment of their favourite players, Canadians
locate in hockey a particular approach to social conduct and political affairs
that many argue distinguishes their culture from that of their neighbours to
the south.
This brief history shows that modern
sports activities are not merely by-products
of society, against which a human group’s politics, economics, and culture
collide from time to time. Rather,
society and sports are deeply intertwined, with the latter often deliberately
built as a stage on which core features of the former are publicly expressed.
But, if it is really a society’s prized social philosophies and values
that are showcased in sports, why should conflicts arise over these features at
all?
As current tensions in the US remind
us, societal values reflect the aspirations of many of its members at the same
time as they can exclude the preferences of some. Serious disagreement over political, economic, or cultural
policy can result in social unrest, but this is part of an unavoidable continuous
process in which citizens of free societies move between stability and change
as they work through defining and institutionalizing their social priorities. Due precisely to its role in expressing
society’s values, there is no escaping the fact that sports is involved in
social dynamics that are almost as likely to stir up debate and contestation as
they are to promote collective agreement.
So, just as a political doctrine or an
economic policy will not represent the aspirations of all members of a diverse
society, the deliberate presentation of some of these features in sports will
necessarily promote the interests of some citizens more than others. This was clearly the case in Greek
athletics as women, non-aristocratic males, and slaves were excluded from
participation in Olympic competition just as they were from the deliberations
of the vaunted first democracy.
And, while fighting and hitting are widely appreciated as reflective of
a Canadian style of play, there is
also an increasingly restive segment of fans and media pundits willing to speak
out against their presence in the game.
The promotion of a society’s core
values contributes to making sports an emotionally compelling experience for its fans. As fans in Montreal know well, when
those values lack full citizen endorsement, the
potential for acrimony is always there.
In the context of the ongoing hockey
lockout, what does a consideration of the nation-building
functions of sports offer to counter the intense frustration that hockey fans currently
feel towards the NHL and the NHLPA?
With knowledge of the relationship
between sports and society, the first suggestion is to accept that there is no mystery to the hockey lockout, or to the tactics taken by both sides, and to view it as
tied to historic battles over the terms and possibilities of our society’s economic system. Shaped by and expressive of fault lines
that characterize capitalism, the NHL is advocating owner or manager control over
the conditions of work while the NHLPA is defending a more cooperative model of
economic affairs. Fans and pundits
appear surprised by owner and player greed, but limited restriction on material
acquisition is endorsed by the private enterprise economy and by the culture in
which it operates. Despite claims
to the contrary, the lockout is a stage on which
owners and players are performing societal deliberations, and intense disagreements,
over core societal economic principles.
Recognizing the economic values being
showcased in the lockout leads to a second suggestion that fans work toward
developing specific positions on what is required to resolve it. It is common to hear that both sides are to blame, but this is a
non-position that sidesteps the possibility of forming an informed judgment. Beyond displeasure resulting from missing
the games, or from a lost salary if one’s income depends on the NHL,
frustration is also created by confusion over which side’s policy ambitions are
most unjust. Once they see the
lockout as similar to management-labour battles waged in their own professional
fields, fans can more easily identify the policies advocated by the two sides
that require immediate reform in order for the business of hockey to resume and
return to being healthy once again.
With a defined perspective, a final suggestion
is for fans to join the deliberations by taking action. This can mean writing letters to the
NHL, the NHLPA, or to specific teams to challenge the details of their stances. It can take the form of organizing
online communities to pressure corporations that do business with the league or
the players. It can also mean
developing innovative projects, such as mobilizing to punish the NHL and the players when they return or appropriating popular symbols of
hockey to get people involved in social priorities more important than arbitration
rights, HRR, and ‘make whole.’ The
fans’ power lies in their pocketbook and in their passion, interest, and time. By communicating clear preferences on
the issues, by withdrawing support unless priorities are changed, or by
channelling their frustration into either pressure tactics or needed public involvement,
fans can use their power during the lockout to get things
done.
Because fans are both valuable members
of their communities and citizens, seeing hockey as a battleground for a
society’s political, economic, or cultural direction need not instil fear. Just as sports will always be used to
express official societal agendas, fans have the power and the right to get
involved in the process.
Involvement will not only help to ensure that the games are organized
and played as the fans would like, but it would also mean that their
communities and their societies are being built according to the visions that
are closest to their hearts.
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