Sweat and sour. An approach to the sociology of violence in male amateur team sports in France

Abstract

This article focuses on the problem of violence occurring in male amateur team sports. On the basis of a series of surveys performed between 2002 and 2010, we propose to contrast indigenous explanatory categories with tools for objective measurement and appreciation. This study is structured by this central question: What status can be attributed to the explanations provided by those who find themselves closest to the phenomenon studied by the sociologist? To answer, our field researchers reviewed the apparent influences of the types of sport practiced, the resources of the clubs, the characteristics of their environment and their athletes. Finally, the article shows that the indigenous categories can contribute to better understanding of the social dimension when they are contrasted with the facts.

Keywords:

• Violence
• amateur sports
• comparative analysis
• team sports

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Williams Nuytens is Professor of Sociology at the French University of Artois (Faculté des sports et de l’éducation physique). He is interested in sport sociology. He manages the major field of interest "Social link recomposition" of University of Artois. He is co-founder and director of SHERPAS Laboratory (part of URePSSS, EA 7369).

Université d’Artois, Faculté des sports et de l’Education Physique, Atelier SHERPAS, (Equipe URePSSS, EA 7369) - http://sherpas.univ-artois.fr/, Chemin du marquage, 62800, Liévin, France, E-mail address: [email protected], Telephone number: 03-21-45-85-00, http://sherpas.univ-artois.fr/Equipe/CV-de-l-equipe/Williams-Nuytens

Nicolas Penin (corresponding author) is Associate Professor of Sociology at the French University of Artois (Faculté des sports et de l’éducation physique). Currently, his research work focused on the effects of sport on social integration, especially in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. He leads the program ELIPSIS (ANR-15-CE28-0001), funded by the National Research Agency (ANR).

Université d’Artois, Faculté des sports et de l’Education Physique, Atelier SHERPAS, (Equipe URePSSS, EA 7369) - http://sherpas.univ-artois.fr/, Chemin du marquage, 62800, Liévin, France, E-mail address: [email protected], Telephone number: 03-21-45-85-00, http://sherpas.univ-artois.fr/Equipe/CV-de-l-equipe/Nicolas-Penin

Table 1. Volume of violence in the three sports (Nuytens and Penin, 2009).

Figure 1. Situation of the Pas-de-Calais Department in France.

Figure 2. Situation of the towns in the Department of Pas-de-Calais.

Figure 3. The ages of Players.

Figure 4. Population and SPC.

Figure 5. Professions and sport disciplines.

Notes

1 Only men are involved in this study. The share of women in these practices is too different to perform a comparison under the same conditions for men and women. Other surveys conducted by us continued with work regarding violence by women (Penin, Terfous & Hidri, 2011).

2 Considering federal practices.

3 Whereas basketball prohibits contact with the player in possession of the ball, tolerance is much greater for handball. In this regard, football has an intermediate position.

4 We also wanted to examine rugby. But the local rugby league rejected our demand, arguing that there was no violence in rugby. We know it is not the case so we can hypothesise that this institution doesn’t want to focus on this kind of problem or to bring it to light with studies (Nuytens & Penin, 2009).

5 The ‘adult’ category concerns players who are 18 years' old or more. Most violence is concentrated in this category.

6 This was in part dictated by the framework of research funded by the departmental branch of Pas-de-Calais of the Ministry of Youth and Sport.

7 For one of the sixteen clubs, we were never able to recover the completed questionnaires. Regarding another, a serious doubt over the correct procedure of transmitting the questionnaires led us to exclude the returns.

8 We were inspired by Becker’s (1954) short text presenting “tactics” to interview Chicago public school teachers.

9 These towns and districts are: Ambleteuse, Avion, Leforest and the districts of Hochettes and Saint-Pol in Arras for basketball; Auchel, Beaurainville, Harnes and Libercourt for handball; Boulogne-sur-Mer, Coquelles, Fréthun, Haisnes, Lens, Mazingarbe, Wimille, and the district of Mont-Liébaut in Béthune.

10 An interesting intimation can be found in De Coster, Heimer and Wittrock (2006).

11 The meaning we give to this term refers to the local mode of regulating behaviour, rather than to functionalist types of macrosocial theories. Refering to a distinction made by Meier (1982), it must also be interpreted in a meaning focused on the regulation of “deviance” (Becker, 1963).

12 Taking a leaf from Sassier (2005), who underlined the vacuity of using this category, we partially reduce it by taking care to characterise the contexts and situations.

13 More specifically, if a point is given to the association best endowed for each of the 3 indicators selected, 2 for the following, and up to 8 for the ‘least wealthy’ association, the sum of the points accumulated by the 8 problem-free clubs (103 points) is higher than the sum of the points accumulated for the 8 clubs ‘with problems’ (97 points).