Sporting Dystopias (part I)

Sport is intimately connected, in social and geographic terms, to how a community is arranged as a result of modernization. With the development of urban spaces during antiquity, sport was a central component to providing entertainment for the citizens. At this point it was largely an activity controlled by the political and social elite, but increasingly it was consumed by the masses. We see a good example of this in the centrality of the gladiatorial games in Roman society. The sporting arena was generally close to the city center, if not the city center (is this true? Find a source). These games came to be seen as a mechanism of social control as it provided a venue for plebs to vent frustration, and watching the slaughter of men and animals must have acted as kind of catharsis. If the political elite felt there was unrest amongst the people, providing this type of entertainment was a way to deflect and channel this sentiment.

A contemporary example of this is provided by Foer’s analysis of the function of Barcelona Football Club during the Franco years. Franco allowed for the expression of Catalan nationalism inside the Nou Camp Arena (which included strong criticism of his own regime) because it meant these feelings weren’t being expressed on the streets, an environment much harder to control.

Of course we know the valve theory didn’t always work. There are plenty of examples from the Roman Empire and from the modern era of mass spectacle, of violence erupting as a result of these games. Emperors and high-ranking officials were chased out of coliseums, fans have brutalized each other during and after games, and some would argue wars have been started after soccer matches (Honduras and El Salvador and even the Balkans War).

From Antiquity on, sport was associated with the urban space. After the fall of Rome and the decentralization of power in Europe, urban spaces no longer held the same attraction. For a largely agricultural society dominated by local lords there was not much time for entertainment and leisure activity. However, as modernization progressed and technology developed, society became less dependent on agriculture and more focused on industry. Improvements in production methods and technologies allowed fewer farmers to produce more products. In turn, people began to move to the industrial centers in search of work.