Deviance in Sports PDF

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Notes on deviance in Marcus Bell's class....

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Deviance in Sports Deviance occurs when a person’s ideas, traits or actions are perceived by others to fall outside the normal range of acceptance in a society ● Formal Deviance - violations of official rules and laws that are punished by official rules and laws that are punished by official sanctions administered by people in positions of authority ● Informal Deviance - violations of unwritten customs and shared understandings that are punished by unofficial sanctions administered by observers or peers Norm - a shared expectation that people use to identify what is acceptable and unacceptable in a social world ● Formal norms - official expectations that take the form of written laws or rules ● Informal norms - customs or unwritten, shared understandings of how a person is expected to think, appear & act in a social world Problems faced when studying deviance in sports: 1. Types and causes are diverse; one theory cannot explain them all 2. Actions accepted in sports may be deviant in other situations, and vice versa 3. Deviance in sports often involves uncritical acceptance of norms, rather than a rejection of norms 4. Training and performance are now based on such new forms of science and technology that people haven’t had time to develop new norms to guide and regulate the actions of people in sports Absolutist approach - assumes that social norms are based on essential principles that constitute an unchanging foundation for identifying good and evil and distinguishing right and wrong ● The act itself is good or bad This approach is based on several assumptions: ● Norms represent social or moral ideals ● Any departure from the ideal constitutes deviance ● The greater the departure from the ideal, the more serious the deviance Constructionist approach - deviance occurs when ideas, traits, and actions fall outside socially determined boundaries that people use to determine what is acceptable and unacceptable in a social world ● Norms are socially constructed as people interact with each other and determine what is/isn’t acceptable

Types of Norms

1. Folkway: a loosely enforced norm that involves common customs, practices, or procedures that ensure smooth social interaction and acceptance 2. More: a norm that carries moral significance, is closely related to the core values of a groups and often involves severe repercussions for violators 3. Taboo: a norm ingrained so deeply that even thinking about violating it evokes strong feelings of disgust, horror or revulsion for most people

Using a Constructionist Approach to Explain Deviance in Sports Most deviance in sports is not due to the moral bankruptcy of athletes, as inferred by an absolutist approach ● Much deviance in sports involves overconformity to established norms in sports ● Sport deviance must be understood in terms of the context of sport cultures and the norms of “the sport ethic.” ○ An interrelated set of norms, or standards, that are used to guide and evaluate ideas, traits and actions in the social worlds created around power and performance sports ** FIGURE 6.4 in Textbook: The four primary norms of the Sport Ethic...