MORE THAN FUN AND GAMES: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF THE ROLE OF SPORT IN ENGLISH AND AMERICAN SOCIETY AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.

摘要

Under the impact of industrialization and urbanization, Anglo-American society underwent great changes at the end of the nineteenth century. With masses of people gathered in cities, new ways of life emerged. Traditional methods of doing things no longer sufficed in work or in play.; In this new era, the rich and the poor met on the playing field. Such meetings had occurred only when the elite sponsored sporting events and had invited the rest of society to join them. The masses were now invading the stadia on their own. The leaders of sport in England responded by bringing back the ideal of amateurism of the ancient Greeks. An amateur athlete was one who could affort to play games for free. His counterpart, who became known as a professional, was a person who played for pay. In England, this sporting class distinction became firm in the eighteen eighties and fitted well in a society in which deference and the recognition of social classes had long been a fact of life. The elite leaders of American sport sought to import the same definition into the United States. A society, however, in which equality was one of the watchwords and in which social mobility was the ideal, if not the rule, was not one in which the distinction between amateur and professional seemed proper. This concept was attacked from its birth.; The amateur-professional distinction was an attempt to keep the different social classes separate on the field of play. By the turn of the century, however, the popularity of sport hampered the success of the policy of segregating athletes by social class.; Entrepreneurs soon realized that they could make a great profit from sport. Professionalization spread into many sports, and masses of people flocked to see the games. At the same time at which these professional games were being played, advertisers began to capitalize upon sport's hold on the population and featured athletes in their promotions. Other institutions in society, in pursuit of other goals, noticed the same things.; Churches in England and the United States sponsored sports teams to try to win boys and young men back to their pews. Schools in both countries used physical education (games for the rich to create leaders, calisthenics for the poor to prepare followers) to teach discipline and create men out of boys. Psychologists encouraged sport as a way to produce well-adjusted men. The military-minded felt that sports would be the best way to ensure that, in the event of a war, their country would have men ready to defend their shores. Experts on the immigration question argued that games would Americanize them and turn them into healthy, happy, and contributing citizens.; Englishmen and Americans advocated sports for all of these reasons, and they soon established international competitions. The country which produced the greatest athletes, it was argued, was the one which had the best social system. After Baron de Coubertin, an Anglophilic Frenchman, founded the modern Olympic Games in 1896, other nations joined these competitions. The clear-cut American successes in these contests were seen as a vindication of the American way of life. When America triumphed, her system of government had been proven victorious.; Sport was a way to build up a nation, to educate the younger generation, and to amuse the population. It turned a profit, too. Sport could do anything. Sport's success created its own legend. It became an activity and an ideal in which people believed.