Mike Tyler Sport

During my A Level studies, my Geography class went to Chester (a northern city of the UK) for a week of fieldwork. One of the key aspects we studied was the historical determinants of the present day town plan. We considered how the raw materials present in the locality, as well as the depth and navigability of the River Dee, helped to make the site a good one for initial settlement. We discovered how the walls built by the Romans had enabled and constrained the development of the settlement. We thought about how the Mediaeval additions were in part informed by what their Roman predecessors had left behind, and how they added to the existing spaces with their own built structures. This process of remoulding and remaking the built environment continues to to the present day, presenting us with the modern, taken-for-granted forms of the cities and towns in which we dwell. Braun's map of Chester (1571) from http://chesterwalls.info/gallery/oldmaps/index.html Our A Level class ...

Hi, how are things? I'm Mike, and I'm a full time college lecturer (I teach sport, since you asked). But I also study sociology in what little spare time I have. Well, sociology of sport, at least. This letter is to ask for your help. I'm a newcomer to sociology, a johnny-come-lately, the new kid on the block. And the fact of the matter is that I'm entirely out of my depth. I'm assured by my peers that that's a good thing though. The internet is also pretty sure, for example, that Bertrand Russell once said something like this: "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." I'm not claiming intelligence necessarily, but if the 'full of doubt' bit is anything to go by... well you get the idea. I'd like to stick around long enough to see if some of that doubt can be lifted and maybe if there's anything I can contribute. I've come to sociology in a kind of round about w...

It's very hard, when writing of Bourdieu, not to be drawn into mimicking his prolix style of writing. Trawling through long sentences is no fun for anyone, but the concepts addressed here are sufficiently nuanced to demand some form of qualification with almost every statement. Bear with me. What is the Habitus? Pierre Bourdieu developed the concept of habitus for use in the social sciences. He was concerned to overcome the dichotomy between agency and structure. In order to do this he suggested that the formation of each individual person's tastes and dispositions is, in the first instance, a result of early socialisation in particular. The home life, the school life and the other varied experiences of early childhood all combine to suggest, implant and/or produce preferences for 'ways of being' or habitus . That is, the social conditions of childhood serve to cultivate a particular set of personal characteristics: we pick up the values of the culture in whic...

Gianni Infantino Gianni Infantino is the new boss at FIFA. The task of restoring faith in football's wayward governing body is, for Infantino, far from child's play. Now that the braggart Blatter is serving a 6 year ban from all football activities ( recently reduced on appeal from 8 years) it would be nice to think that the opportunity for FIFA to make some long overdue and much needed changes will be grasped. But the question simply is this: is the power to change FIFA genuinely in the hands of the president?  Long term historical process can be seen pulling at the structure and direction of FIFA throughout its entire existence. Globalisation theory posits several stages in world history which have seen the planet become ever more connected. We are growing closer to one another through the global interweaving of economy, politics, society and culture. All of this has been made possible by the unprecedented technological advancement of the modern era. Rob...

Imagine a father comes home from work to find that his 13 year old son has taken apart the toaster in order to study what is going on inside. The son, after hours of prodding and poking has now got a proper grasp of the inner workings of the machine. He could easily explain to his dad how the thing works. Perhaps he even has a future in the grilled bread industry. But his dad scolds him for breaking the toaster and sends him to his room. Welcome to the life of a sociologist. Firstly, the father is like the uncritical individual, possessed by his own certainty. The toaster is a toaster and as long as it serves the function ascribed to it then it is to be regarded as complete, unalterable or even good. He sees no worthwhile extension of its productivity or of its function. It does what he bought it to do: why fiddle? The father does not appreciate deconstruction, he only sees destruction. And the boy is the sociologist. He knows that to discover how something works it is often nece...

Max Weber, my current go-to-guy in the sociological world, constructed a methodology for investigating society. One of the tools that he developed - an heuristic device, if you want to get technical - was the notion of the ideal-type. An ideal-type is a kind of utopian version of a thing, which despite not actually existing in reality, can be used as a substitute, or approximation, of a particular social reality. Let me exemplify. Sport is a social reality which takes many forms around the world, but the mention of the word conjures up a similar image in our minds no matter where we are from, and so evidently there are some clear commonalities which link sport in each context or locality. These commonalities, when pulled together, can be seen to make up a sort of short hand of the thing itself. We might say that an ideal type of sport is that it involves physical exertion, skill or prowess, it is competitive, organised, rationalised, and exists in hierarchical structures. Th...

Tainted samples; missed tests; sabotaged games. Stories of illegal drug use in sport are seemingly more and more common.  The recent and frankly unsurprising news that the Russian Athletics Federation has been up to its neck in doping infractions, making a mockery of the sport (and the athletes) it is ostensibly serving, looks to have long lasting repercussions. But beyond the banning of a federation from an Olympic games, or the potential pro-Russian boycott that may result, there is one thing that is growing more apparent as the stories unfold... Drugs are destroying sport. But why do players, athletes, coaches and even entire federations make clandestine use of illegal and banned substances? The power structures that drive and sustain elite sport create enormous pressures on athletes to use illegal means to success. Let's briefly sketch three of these pressures. Status  Just about everybody knows Usain Bolt, or Serena Williams, or Lionel Messi. These are house...