Seriously appreciating Avi Brisman's extended review of my book

Seriously appreciating Avi Brisman's extended review of my book Sports Criminology

Avi’s review for Critical Criminology can be found here.  I largely agree with it and have thanked Avi profusely for taking my work so seriously. His is more than a review but a critical engagement with my work which finds fault but also finds something to commend.  I’ll go through much of that but two main themes of criticism emerge:

my failure to mention certain issues and not others

and lack of critical criminology.

To both I must plead lack of space but also take issue occasionally as we shall see. I had to cut about 10,000 words from the book so felt now might be the time to mention some of those issues too.

Avi very quickly spots that I don’t really define my terms in various places including specifically what I mean by sport or, particularly ‘sports criminology’. He notes my slipperiness around this but perhaps not my negative definitions ie what it is not. He does note, in my concluding chapter, my fear it will just become about football hooliganism. Luckily the Sage Dictionary of Criminology (forthcoming) required me to provide a definition:

A criminology of sport, games (including videogames, e-sports and fantasy sport), recreation and leisure. It draws upon but also critiques the sociology of sport and sports law. It studies harm to persons, environment and society whether criminalised by law outside of sport or within the rules of that sport. It also studies the national and international ‘justice’ systems of sport and their interplay with criminal justice.

But this is probably still too lose. My reluctance to be pinned to the mat or sacked is due to several issues:

a) my lazy/‘liberal’ reluctance to legislate, to lay down the law, etc (though I am available for refereeing)

b) my experience of what happens to my pat interventions within criminology (largely ignored or subverted).

c) for utterly instrumental purposes I sometimes combine the formally codified (by sports authorities and media) alongside informal ones (from jogging with friends to street brawling) and antique - but sadly ever present blood - sports to make further connections from sport to crime within society. You could call this cheating.

Turning now to lack of critical edge I’m going to largely accept and suggest I am very critical of sport despite being a fan (Spurs, Saracens, Seahawks) and one-time participant. I’m more critical of my own sports criminology:

this book has doubts about its own title. There has been much discussion of sport and of criminology. Whether the book has successfully argued for a sports criminology is moot. (p157)

I immediately went on to say, ‘The intention has always been to avoid crimes merely associated with sport’ which is my reason for not picking up on the story of Reeva Steenkamp’s murder by Oscar Pistorius though I do explore other instances of athlete’s violence.

In addition to these issues Avi picks up some specifics such as concussion etc in a whole section on ‘Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), Violence and Biological Explanations of Criminality’ with lots of useful references. I do mention concussion briefly and cite Corteen and Corteen on the victimology of professional wrestlers. I return to the issue in my contribution to A Companion to Crime, Harm and Victimisation but while I am sympathetic to the turn to a (social) harm perspective it seems to me this is an issue that is now being taken seriously and medicine and civil law might take the lead for the moment. But again criminology needs to be an active spectator. My mention of biological theories is scant in the book.

He also mentions protests by sportspeople and I fully agree they are potential subject for critical pushback against racist accusations and presumptions.  Sports people are usually more docile, their submission to extreme surveillance and very rough justice systems is examined in the book and I expand on it in a blog here.

Given our joint interests I very happy to see Avi’s extensive pitch for syntheses of green and sports criminology.

One of my starting points for Sports Criminology was the consideration of videogames and I was sorry to cut so many mentions of that in the book. I can only refer you to Playing Around with Crime and Criminology in Videogames   Exploring common themes in games studies and criminology.

I have also written on the overlaps between sport, crime and popular culture here. Some very interesting prison movies that are sports movies examined.

Avi might have given me more praise for the sheer diversity of my sporting and academic sources that I hope others will pick up on.

My concluding chapter also contains much on the issue of consent and how thinking about sport (and gay sex) can help us think through some of these issues.

To answer Avi’s question yes I can be serious and he has taken me seriously. I do suggest in my book that the area has not been taken seriously because it is ‘just sport’ or even games. I sometimes think that criminology is sometimes ambivalent about things that are too close: car driving was my original thought (Ambivalent Criminology – ‘Have you stopped driving your car?’) but peoples’ love of sport may prevent some seeing it as a potential subject for criminology.

[I may return to his chapter summaries in a further blog]