STHM 1211 Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Making Money, Social Capital, Cultural Capital
6 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
• Class and Sport
o Resources in the form of money and power influence what sports you play and
when, where, and how you play them.
o Class and Sport: Upper
▪ Theory of leisure class (Veblen, 1899): Sport is used by the upper class as
a way to show off capitals, or to improve social capital.
▪ How does that work?
• Free time
• Facilities, training
• Social capital
▪ Characteristics:
• The highest rates of sport participation
• Can afford exceptional sport experiences
• Exclusive memberships, used to build social capital
• Play exclusive sports.
o Class and Sport: Middle
▪ Private clubs, individual sports, team sports, community sport.
▪ May also participate in Olympic/high-performance amateur sport.
▪ Top coaching and training can run as high as $75,000 each year in some
individual sports
▪ Requires economic, social, and cultural capital
▪ Should the government provide funding for Olympic sport training?
o Class and Sport: Lower
▪ Sport may be used as a tool for survival/escape.
▪ Prefer sports characterized by violence and uncertainty.
▪ (Violent) sport used to establish self-respect and a sense of masculinity.
▪ Example: boxing
▪ "To be honest, I don't know what's going on here. I'm just up here
hearing $60,000. I'm just thinking of what I'm going to spend it on.
Maybe a nice car and some suits or something, some custom-made suits.
I don't know ... I'm making money here, I didn't have money before this,
you know. Like I said, I was collecting 180 Euros a week off the social
welfare and here I am and I've got 60 G's bonus and my own pay."
o Why so many pro athletes go broke?
o What are the root causes?
o Propose a solution to the problem?
• Class mobility through sport
o Ladder 1:
▪ Make to professional ranks and commands a huge contract.
▪ The perso will autoatically joi the upper class alost…
o Ladder 2:
▪ Through education that comes along with sport participation.
▪ Need to stay academically eligible to play
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