Cheating in spogomi

I have written about Sport and Crime in Sports Criminology and about litter as a criminological subject so was fascinated to hear about the new sport of spogomi - competitive litter picking. I had already heard of plogging its more recreational cousin that allows for running but not official competition.

In my book I point out the many connections that might be made between the rules, regulation and judicial regimes of sport and those of the societies - increasingly global - in which they are located and of criminology’s failure to address sport as a topic. I have a long history of addressing ecological issues in criminology (drugs and corporate crime 1991!).

In my book I mention a few ecological and green issues for sport, for instance the polluting effects of cars yet motor sport is lionised but its bad brother ‘joyriding’ (the subject of my PhD) is damned.

I touch on how a green criminology and a rural criminology may not agree on the ethics of blood/field sports but fox-hunting, badger-baiting and hare-coursing all have ecological consequences. And we should not forget the water usage of golf courses and the amount of concrete poured and air miles entailed by international competition.

So what of spogomi? As a criminologist I immediately thought how might people cheat? The few rules of spogomi suggest they thought some might:

The distance between the first and last member should not be more than 10 meters apart.

The goal is reached when the last member crosses the finish line and reports to the judge standing at the finish line.

Do not run (fast walking is allowed)

• Walking: Method of movement with either foot on the ground at all times
• Running: a method of movement in which there is a moment when both feet leave the ground, float, or jump at the same time.

What not to pick up

• Trash already in the trash bin
• Trash left at garbage collection points
• Trash that appears to be owned by others - judging from the surroundings (arranged and placed, signs of having been used recently, etc.)

Bulky waste

Large trash that does not fit into the garbage bags to be distributed (700 mm x 500 mm = 30 liters)

Examples: batteries / fans / futons / cushions / fire extinguishers / concrete / blocks / safes / metal bars / tires / wheels / stoves / computers / strollers / rice cookers

• Hazardous waste (syringes, broken glass, torn metal)
• Trash picked up by lifting road gutters and dovetails
• Do not leave the competition area
• Areas you are not allowed to enter
• Rivers and oceans
• Private property

About the parking lot

Coin-operated parking lots, although privately owned, shall be accessible due to their public nature that anyone can use them (parking lots exclusively for companies, organizations, etc. shall not be allowed).

• Observe separation rules.
• Observe traffic rules.

World Champion litter-picker, Sarah Parry, experienced another team trying to pick litter from their bag during the Championships in Tokyo. The story inThe Guardian is pitched as quirky but clearly matters might get out of hand in a Squid or Hunger Games fashion with violence breaking out. But to draw back from my criminal catastrophising, what about the ecological issues?

Japan is famously tidy and litter free but without the authoritarianism of Singapore. I went to Japan to see the Rugby World Cup in 2019 (yes, my carbon foot print blown for a while) and saw little litter. On early morning jogs I did find groups - of mostly elderly people - litter picking voluntarily without threat of punishment or sporting inducement. I often pick litter myself and don’t like the idea of it being used as punishment. So I worry. Where did they find highly littered places in Japan (OK, Tokyo was slightly worse)? And did they they have to keep them littered until the day of competition? If this takes off will volunteers give up? And travelling half way round the world to pick litter? I look forward though to hearing of the first sporting scandal on spogomi.

So spogomi is quirkily presented as a good thing for the environment but I prefer the more spontaneous and playful voluntarism of just picking it up and slam dunking it in the bin!

In a moment of synchronicity I have discovered that Madeleine Orr was coming to the Hay Festival to discuss her book Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport. I live nearby and now have tickets so we’ll see if we have common ground.

Review of Chapter 5 Sport and Crime

 Chapter 5 Modes of Surveillance, Governance and Surveillance in Sport

This chapter looks at the ‘security legacy’ that follows from hosting mega sorts events that involves a general surveillance of populations and the more individual surveillance, governance and policing of athletes bodies. I am glad to see attention to the mundane as well as the exceptional.

The work of Roche (2000) on the Berlin (1936) and Barcelona (1996) is highlighted and borrowing from Critical Security Studies safety and security at mega events is considered before examining three aspects of sports surveillance: 1) for ‘safety’ and ‘security’; 2) ‘lateral surveillance’ and 3) of athletic bodies and performance.

So we need to be very careful in asking for whom security and safety are promised and on what terms. So we see how ‘hooliganism and ‘terrorism’ are utilised. Intriguingly by Baudrillard to call out Mrs Thatcher’s terrorism against the miners but most often by states to impose security apparatus that lingers on in legacy form. And, it might be said, to blame hooliganism for all problems in sport and specifically Liverpool fans. They note also the confluence of discourses around hooliganism and terrorism.

The promised legacy of mega events rarely occurs but the that of surveillance lingers on. Even one-off events like a Champions League final or Super Bowl often leads to greater surveillance. Though I would suggest some cities are now so densely surveilled that the presence or effect of additional surveillance might be difficult to assess. And, anecdote again, my attendance at the Rugby World Cup suggested to me that Tokyo city was so large that the the event was barely noticed beyond the stadium and fan zone. But note Millward et al quote South Wales Police on the use of a Champions League Cup in Cardiff to ‘test and prove concepts’. However, this did not go well (BBC, 2018) and was critically contested by fans and commentators.

Much is made of the use of CCTV and it would have been nice if some of material on this were quoted. For instance Crime control or crime culture TV? and As Easy as AB and CCTV one of the first pieces of work on such matters (1994!).

The encouragement for players or fans to inform on each other is pictured as ‘peer monitoring’ or 'lateral surveillance'.

As my talk to UEFA shows (see above) I am particularly concerned for the rights of athletes in their own right but also down the line of all of us. It is interesting to see that the ‘whereabouts’ procedures are described as ‘draconian’ by Andy Murray. We keep less tight tabs on convicted dangerous and sexual offenders.

I think Millward et al are right to note the greater impact of many of these things in the global south. But within the global north they note disparities with the National Basketball Association’s dress code squarely aimed at the many young black athletes on their rosters (see Kennedy and Silva, 2020 on similar in the National Hockey League).

Sport and Crime: Towards a critical criminology of sport review of intro and chapter 2

 Sport and Crime: Towards a critical criminology of sport

It might be unusual to start with mentioning the acknowledgements in a book review but here we go.

Laura Kelly and Emma Poulton are mentioned as originators of the idea for this book and I can attest that ten years ago I advised Routledge to publish it. The book in hand is the successor text to that sadly unpublished one.

And to look even earlier in the book we might ask why the book is in sport and leisure series not a criminology one?

But as the Oxford Handbook of Sports History (Edelman and Wilson, 2017) contains only 4 mentions of ‘crime’ and one of the grand texts aimed at criminology students (Newburn, 2013) barely mentions sport we should not be surprised.

I am extremely grateful to Andy Millie for pushing me and Bristol University/Policy Press for bearing with me in getting my book accepted as a criminology one.

And whilst we are still looking at such ephemera I must take issue with the claim ‘that this is the first book to fully explore the connections between sports studies and criminology’ (website and back-of-book blurb!).

Introduction

I am cited on page 1 in the Introduction as noticing the ‘sheer potential for a distinctive criminology of sport’. I am mentioned amongst a number of others who I also acknowledge - such as Meek (2013) and Nichols (2010). I give a chapter to considering whether sport can prevent crime or rehabilitate the convicted as those two argue. I’m more equivocal.  Millward et al engage in this debate in Chapter 4.

They note Avi Brisman’s review of my book in which he suggests my work was an ‘opening bell or starting pistol’ and likening me to a ‘father wanting acknowledgement of paternity without the responsibilities of child-rearing’. They are kinder but I’m going to admit Avi - who I know and respect - has me sussed, nearly. I am staking a claim - hence my eye-brow raising at the claim that this book is the first. But unlike a stern father I don’t seek to lay down the law and terrorise my children but keep a kindly, perhaps avuncular or god-parental, eye on what is going on in the playground. I’ve always had a ludic intent to my work. 

So whether as parent, uncle or god-father I am engaging strongly in this review and have also provided the afterword for Power Played edited by Derek Silva and Liam Kennedy.

Millward et al are hopeful of the future of connections to be made between studies of sport and criminology. They kindly note my emphasis on mundane acts as well as spectacular or scandalous ones involving elites; for instance, they give an example of the banning of skateboards in Norway between 1978 and 1989. I agree their conclusion that ‘the relationship between ‘crime’ and ‘sport’ is so diffuse, contested and broad’ (p5). I would add that our relationship as people and criminologists is similarly diffuse, contested and broad.

My book took a critical criminological stance, even critiquing sports and theories I favoured but also attempted to set out how a variety of criminologies might be applied to sport. Millward et al dive right in so spend some of the introduction setting out some critical points.

Those critical points are:

1) there is a starting point in my work and that of others and

2) citing Francis (2012) they note ‘sport is and always will be harmful’ and

3) those harms include dead workers on Qatar’s World Cup stadia (which they take up in Chapter 7) and increased control and surveillance at sports mega-events (taken up in Chapter 5)

and 4) critical criminology has become diffuse and disputed. Sport makes a ‘novel entry point’ (p6).

Chapter 2 then provides further history of critical criminology and its scant engagement with sport.

Chapter 3 looks at white collar crime and crimes of the powerful in sport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA).

Using a Foucauldian lens, sports based interventions (SBIs) are examined in Chapter 4. They are found to mask social inequalities and control whilst providing isolated cases of ‘success’ (p9).

Critical Security Studies inform Chapter 5’s examination of sport mega-events but also of athlete’s bodies.

Drawing on ‘edgework’ Chapter 6 looks at mixed martial arts, bare-knuckle boxing and other extreme sports.

Chapter 7 focusses on the upcoming football Word Cup in Qatar and the social harms caused by it.

Chapter 8 sums up and offers a research agenda. I’ll check it against mine in (Hall and Scalia, 2019).

Chapter 2 - Sport and the Criminological Imagination

For criminology theory nerds chapter 2 offers a friendly history of some of the rifts (schisms?) in critical criminology from the work of Taylor, Walton and Young onward. I did my Masters and PhD at Middlesex University when Jock Young, John Lea and Roger Matthews were setting out a ‘left realist’ criminology opposed to right and administrative ones. I recall that at European events friendly but competitive relations were maintained with ‘left idealists’. Vincenzo Ruggiero provided a consistent sociological critique. (He was also my internal examiner. Tony Jefferson the external.) 

I feel my criminology to be balanced (?) between ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ but broadened to include green and sexuality perspectives and possibly tempered by spending 20 years as a Home Office administrative and policy civil servant. I was lucky to know, but never work with, Tim Newburn, Ben Bowling, George Mair and Marian Fitzgerald and did work for Mike Hough when he was moonlighting as a pen-pusher.

The roots of my green and queered perspectives on criminology derive from my PhD on joyriding. I focussed on how similar joyriding was to the advertised pleasures of legal driving and how ungreen that was. Also the mainly young male joyriders seemed to have some anxieties around their masculinity. The fieldwork took place in ‘motor projects’ and some of this eventually found its way into my book years later. This will feed into my discussion of Millward et al’s chapter 4.

Whilst I hope that sports criminology is more than the extant studies of football hooligans I have to recognise with, Millward et al, that Taylor’s work on this topic is important. His first thoughts might be seen to be neo-marxist or left idealist in casting football hooligans as resistant ‘class warriors’ whereas his later accounts - moving in a realist direction - misread the Hillsborough disaster.

Taylor applied a critical criminology to a sport he loved. Few others did. We don’t get to find out how Millward et al relate to sport as participants or spectators. I have sometimes wondered if the lack of criminological engagement with topics close to our hearts like driving and car use has been an ambivalence which I think also applies to sport. They mention feminist critiques of left realism and other criminologies and suspect some feminists may not wish to engage with sport unless to note the masculinity of its adherents or the violence towards women of some sportsmen. 

I would have been happy if this chapter had just told us that few attempts had been made to look critically at sport, cited my work and a few others on this before discussing Taylor’s trajectory from an idealist critical criminology to a more realist one. That could have been folded into the first chapter leaving space for another chapter of critical criminological engagement with more sports.

Round 8 - in which the appeal of the gym to Frank, Eric, Leroy and many others is considered (chapter 6)

In this she explores the tensions between surface gratifications (my word) and deeper psychological motivations. This prompts one of the few mentions of boxing popular culture when the words of one man prompt her to mention the film Fat City (p106) and apart from a mention of a Rocky (p110) poster that’s it for cultural references.  I’ve not seen either yet I (2017) said this:

Boxing is a sport that has a long history of being illegal or involving illegality and continues to attract calls for its renewed criminalisation. Boxing’s home may now be in the USA but its original origins are in the UK. Even where it is legal, illegal versions still occur. Popular culture has continued to engage with both. Thus the Rocky (Avildsen, 1977) and multiple ongoing sequels lionises the brutality of the legal version and Fight Club (Fincher, 1999) the illegal - and illegality surrounds even the legitimate. Though a case might be made that sport is only the vehicle but the subject is actually masculinity - damaged and damaging.

Obviously I’d be hard pushed not to mention Simon and Garfunkel’s The Boxer somewhere or sneak in a lyric.

Back to the homosocial, even homoerotic, we find Deborah noting:

Interestingly, some men spoke of the boxing gym as they would a lover and discussed (without being aware) the sensual and erotic pull of pugilism: disclosing how the smell of sweat and the feel of skin contributes to the seduction of sport. (p106/7)

and offering these quotes from Baz and Sal (p107)

forget drugs, a good fight if the best buzz, up against the ropes toe to toe
it’s just you and him, puts you in a trance, like a form of dancing

She relates this to Lyng’s (1998) ‘edgework’. He uses the term ‘risky’ but she says ‘risqué’ and speaks of ‘preening and manly display’ and even the ‘carnivalesque’ (p107) which is all sounding very camp/very queer.

Goffman (1967:185) is cited on boxing being ‘where the action is’ and elsewhere extensively so feel I should mention Prof Liz Pike a sport sociologist with a keen interest in his work.

She touches on her gender as potential obstacle to becoming an insider noting her presence ‘perturbed’ some and others ignored her (p114). I really want a whole chapter on this wrestling with ethnography across gender.

On page 115 she does use the term ‘homosocial’ (no index entry) and she very much picks up on sexist and homophobic epithets, like ‘pussies’ and ‘bitches’, being used as means of dealing with the anxiety this induces in the men. And specifically mentions the men’s fear of becoming someone’s bitch and being ‘fucked’. She helpfully adds - in the sense of being beaten as opposed to penetrated. I disagree I think both a queer and psychoanalytic analysis would suggest this is exactly what they are psychically fearing.

In round 6 I mentioned ‘religion’ and on page 117 she does same in similar vein plus ‘salvation from crime’ (p123).

She quotes Woodward (2004:7) that ‘boxing invokes hegemonic masculinity’ and I must disagree with his monolithic non-nuanced take on hegemony, a crude reduction. The ‘gangster’ contends with ‘the boxer’ for dominance in this milieu and as Deborah’s work shows this may even play out in the lives of the men in the narratives they use to construct their lives show.

Baz (p127) started boxing in jail and Ricky and he agree it kept them out.  Prison gets mentioned periodically but I’d like to know her opinion on boxing in prison.  She’s for boxing but not blind to its problems how about in prison?

Round 7 - Leroy’s dad and grandfather (and Panto villain JRM introduced to make a point) (chapter 5)

Leroy also boxed professionally, as had his father, but was less dismissive of the amateurs at the gym than most. He sees himself only as ‘street smart’ so his physicality is his only source of negotiable ‘capital’. His father and grandfather were both abusive and largely, or often, absent. Many boxers see such abuse as inherited. He still desired a,‘different scenario for my little lad’ (p92). 

Leroy lived in a pub for while on a rough estate where his dad’s hard reputation was needed and she records him saying, ‘we had a dog, a pitbull, and that used to be involved in the fights (p86)’. Walking to school one might be robbed or see ‘cars blown up’ (p89). Is this dogfights or the dog weighing in on human ones? Either way some reference to Maria Kasperson on dangerous dogs or Simon Harding on status dogs or even the mentions I make of cock and dog fighting might have been made.

Leroy had originally not wanted to be a boxer having seen his father come home ‘broken’ (p87) and I’m reminded of the accusation that the boxing impresario Don King, a successfully rehabilitated ex-convict, was someone who ‘for 15 cents will put boys in the ring and girls on the street’ (in Johnson and Long, 2008:122). I conclude in my book that boxing is like sex work in its use of the body.

At his first school his father’s fearsome reputation had some cachet but on a move to a more middle class school it held against him with teachers, perhaps sharing the belief in the heritability of violence, and fellow pupils unimpressed. I take this as an opportunity to point out differing and fluid hierarchies of masculinity contending to be hegemonic. For instance, Jacob Rhys Mogg’s posh languid style is often seen as effete (feminine) but he is rich, successful and has the balls to father many children. His lying on the benches of the Commons is a form of ‘trash’ talk. The violence he and his colleagues can unleash is structural not visceral. An ideologically-rendered invisible but toxic masculinity. Neither Deborah or I are going to be invited to do an ethnography of Eton as cause/cure of rampant villainy.

We are told Leroy’s sister ‘felt less pressure … in defending the family name’ (p95)but guess a concern would have been shown should she dishonour it. We are reminded of Sennett and Cobb, 1973) on the hidden injuries of class men like Leroy suffer. Their comments throughout about the place of women in society suggest they may also subscribe to a belief in the looming injuries of feminism. There is only one indexed mention of feminism (p23) and none of racism!

A brief reflection on homosociality in boxing and MMA

As some of you might have noticed this is not just a review of Deborah Jump’s excellent The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance but often a restatement of some of my own work. Indeed an attempt to clarify in my own mind some of these issues. Please join in on here or twitter. This little inter-round ‘ring girl’(?) does not relate to any particular chapter but to the theme of homosociality which I detect throughout but goes unnamed as far as I can determine currently.

I offer no definition of my own other than to say I disliked the all male grammar school I attended, much of the all male Scouts and rugby. I see I only used the term once in my PhD, in a discussion on the extent of homophobia amongst the boys and young men.

A quick look on Google Scholar for ‘homosociality boxing’ through up a number of items and I was intrigued by the following.

Bird’s (1996) WELCOME TO THE MEN'S CLUB Homosociality and the Maintenance of Hegemonic Masculinity is clearly a starting point.  She notes:

The men who described themselves as less competitive (or noncompetitive), on the other hand, explained that they considered the intensity with which other men engaged in competitions (especially sports) as relatively unimportant for them- selves. At the same time, however, these men recognized the expectations of masculinity to be competitive. One man explained, Guys don't know what it means not to be competitive. Even those men who tell you that competition is silly know they have to [compete]. It's like otherwise you're gonna get walked.

Silly me, I’m doing it now.

I very much like Ungar’s recent PhD on The Boxing Discourse in Late Georgian England, 1780-1820: A Study in Civic Humanism, Gender, Class and Race which makes extensive use of the term. His understanding of the hegemonic seems to accord with my own. For instance, ‘Politeness was “French” and foreign; boxing was “English” (p74). 

Stenius (2015) also addresses homosociality in The Body in Pain and Pleasure An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts.

Doubly interesting is Jennifer Ruth Lewis-Vidler PhD on Traveller, Boxer and Fascist: The Identities of Joe Beckett which deploys the concept liberally and has material on Tyson Fury.

Round 5 - our first contender, Frank (chapter 3)

Frank’s narrative is the soteriological one of salvation through boxing, from identifying as a gang member to identifying as a boxer to the extent that he takes pleasure that people came use ‘Boxer’ as his name rather than Frank.

He is 31 and has boxed since he was 12. As a young black man he had little trust in people from the Feds to Deborah herself, initially. His first experience was of boxing with others, who like him, had been excluded from school. He knew that some of them couldn’t take the physical demands. Which reminds me of Cloward and Ohlin on illegitimate opportunities for crime/deviance not always presenting themselves. No boxing gym was available to me, nor would likely have succeeded, in my troubled teenage years. Becoming a discontented civil servant and then maverick academic has had mixed success in building my sense of self. Very much an ongoing project. Retirement requires a new narrative as we’ll see later in Eric’s story. Yes, I’ve peeked ahead.

Frank’s initial access to a gym was blocked by postcode rivalries. A gym in every ‘hood needed obviously. He is now settled in one gym where he trains others and earns his living as a bouncer. Shaw and Haysom (2016) found organised crime connections between bouncers and boxing in South Africa, a ‘bouncer mafia’. For a bouncer boxing also serves as the necessary bodywork (a recurring issue throughout book). An investment of, ‘physical capital’ (p51).

Prompted by Frank she notes, of all the men, ‘that their definition of respect meant the ability to intimidate and command fear’ (p52). In this search for respect Anderson’s Code of the Street is key. And supporting Cloward and Ohlin’s view Frank has this to say about his opportunities, ‘Prison, death or shit jobs’ (p56). Perhaps part of the code of the streets is to think that there are jobs that are not shit. But in good news for the social control theorists Frank felt he’d found a ‘new crew’ (p56).

On the way back to the gym after one long interview in a nearby cafe Deborah and Frank came across a group of drunken youths who Frank felt were ‘eyeballing’ them. The moment passed so  Frank refrained from, “‘fuckin’ them up”. It is not clear if this is just standard male paranoia or Frank’s own locally situated one but influenced by Mulvey I’d want to explore why, for many men, being looked at is like being screwed. His big body is meant to say don’t look at me as I am terrifying. But it also says I’m terrified that you’ll penetrate me and that’ll make me the punk. Perversely I have written more in this queer vein elsewhere.

In that work I said this:

Reiss likes to keep his animals in separate cages in the name of sociology. As he says: ‘From a sociological point of view, the peer–queer transaction occurs between two major types of deviators – ‘delinquent’ and ‘queers’(1968/61: 375)’. He sets out exceptions to the norms of the ‘peers’ and has this to say about their identity:

Boys are very averse to being thought of in a queer role or engaging in acts of fellation. The act of fellation is defined as a ‘queer’ act. [. . .] Boys who accept the female role in sexual transactions occupy the lowest status position amongst delinquents. They are ‘punks’. (1968/61: 377)

This despite such exceptions to these norms as Danny S., leader of the Black Aces ‘a fighting gang’ who tells Reiss: ‘we all get blowed by this queer . . . we don’t get any money then . . . it’s more a drinking party’ (1968: 376). Or this on their experiences with a boxing instructor from the State Training School:‘He’s got a cabin up there on the creek and he blows us. But mostly we just drink and have a real good time’ (1968: 376).

Which lead me to say over twenty years ago:

Today we might want to go beyond interaction to the ‘interpenetration’ of these worlds, to examine what such sexual activity meant for them and how their views of homosexuality might be challenged by a boxing gay.

And back to the homosocial Frank admits being a bouncer, working on the door, pays the bills but like the gym it’s where, ‘the boys hang out’ (p60).

Round 4 (chapter 2)

Round 4 presents some challenges but not ad hominem ones

This chapter expands on much of what went before rendering some of my comments above redundant. She expands on the history, and notes, ‘boxing clubs have a long history of engaging young men’ (p17). I agree it is not just grant-seeking behaviour but often altruistic or enthusiast led. Some of my motor projects were like that but once established the need for funds sometimes required redrafting aims and objectives or nomenclature to secure funding (sometimes whilst carrying on as before).

Much use of Quest for Excitement: Sport and Leisure in the Civilising Process and mention of ‘muscular christianity’ (p21)!

We then move into the sport and masculinity literature with Sabo’s Jock: sports & male identity and much Connell.  She argues, and I completely agree, sport is, ‘a perfect starting point for investigation how individuals actively construct meaning around gender, power and masculinity’ (p24). Let’s hope this work and that of a few others will kick this off.

I am taken with her brief use of Dutton’s The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Physical Development (who looked at bodybuilders and strippers) to say, ‘the masculine body moved from symbol of beauty to symbol of power’ (p25) as she also uses Fussell’s book on bodybuilding (p30). No citation to hand (if you know of one please let me know) but I’ve always thought (my personal male perspective?) that bodybuilders and male strippers, however muscly, are like male models, ‘to-be-looked-at’ and therefore seen to be passive like women subject to the male gaze and not active male gazers. Whereas the scrawniest of boxers or mixed martial artists may be granted the title, ‘manly’.

I don’t think she uses the term homosocial (not in index) but much of this seems to be about the problem of being largely in the company of men without being seen to be gay. I think we are are on the same page here as she quotes Messner thus, ‘being out there with the guys - being friends … [having] some kind of closeness’ (p27). She goes on to use him to argue that the ‘less skilled, less competitive boys’ could become alienated from the sport that might have shored up their masculinity. My joyriders were not sporty (other than illegal motorsporty) and tended to the ectomorphic rather than the traditional mesomorphic athlete/criminal.

Have to pull out this quote as I take it to be important:

I am still convinced that combat sports sport provides an arena in which men can deny vulnerability, disavow anxiety and thus distance themselves from the intimate feminine other and subsequent marginalised male (p32)

But add that video-games and e-sport now offering ways to fight and joyride digitally and even these may involve virtual and real offending. Gamergate gives no hope that these nerdier/wimpy men (hypomasculine?) are ready for disavowal. We shall see if she can flesh out the ‘how’ of this.

See I’m cited (p35) in the section on sport as pro-social along with the cheerleaders for sport and social control theorists. Thought I’d done a better job than that of covering the field from biological to post-modern takes on sport and crime as cause/cure. Rightly lots of Nichols (2007) and Meek (2018) and others but reviewing the literature Deborah finds, ‘little evidence that participation in sport offered new peer networks’ (p38) and, ‘the argument that an attachment to role models in the form of trainers or coaches immediately reduces delinquency is a common misconception’ (p39).  Agreed.

On sport as potential cause we have Trimbur (2009:263) noting, ‘One can be an accomplished drug salesman and Golden Gloves champion’ (p40) and Kreager (2007:708) ‘attests’ (p41), ‘by applying lessons learned from sports, athletes may perceive violence and intimidation as acceptable means of achieving of-field goals’. And boxers and participants in other ‘power sports’ may have a higher probability of being involved in violence (Edreson and Olweus, 2005).

Round 3 - in which we may trade some blows (chapter 1)

I promised to float butterfly-like and not be bee-like but I do have to start with the title of this chapter, ‘Boxing as Sports Criminology’. I admit to being miffed. I called my book Sports Criminology, this blog Sports Criminology and regularly tweet using that hashtag so not to get a mention here is gutting.

In my book I dance about the term never really settling (that butterfly again) but think I conclude, against the book’s own title, that there is no such thing as sports criminology just a big playing field called criminology in which sport and the ludic should be taken seriously. Mind you I also argue against green and queer criminologies on the same basis but include both as perspectives in my own work. However, my efforts to break down inter- and intra- disciplinary barriers are usually ignored.

A more dispassionate complaint is that I don’t think she actually engages with the term in the chapter or elsewhere. She discusses both the sport of boxing and criminology but never brings them together. Later in the chapter she uses a word I’ve never come across ‘decussate’ (p14) in another context. Perhaps she has brought the lines of sport and criminology together on the page to form > <  but not yet an X?

In her potted history we jump from ancient Greece to the 2012 Olympic Games with the perceived ‘civilising influence’ (p5) of boxing to the fore. She doesn’t use the term ‘muscular christianity’ and neither does Petty Officer Second Class Ian McCoy, of the U.S. Navy (a serendipitous discovery of mine) who only recently argued that 'Boxing Can Boost the Navy’s Fighting Spirit'.

Specifically he says:

Boxing is the essence of the fighting man (my emphasis) the value is not that in the skill that is acquired though that too has real value for hand to hand combat, but because it quickly acclimates the body and mind to the violence and shock so foreign to modern day youth, yet so absolutely essential to fighting men (my emphasis) the history of boxing is essentially the story of the molding of the combative or fighting instinct of man into a moral substitute for war.

Yet the Navy Institute who host this website illustrate the article with a picture of two women fighting!

Much of her fieldwork was done during the period around the 2012 Olympic Games and over six months she, ‘situated myself as a boxer’ (p6). She also reveals her history as a youth justice practitioner in reparation and rehabilitation. My own decision to study joyriding came from my Home Office days visiting probation led motor projects.

She moves on to discuss boxing gyms as sites of research and notes Wacquant (2004), Woodward (2007), Ingen (2011), and Trimbur (2013).  She notes growth in numbers of registered boxers including increased numbers of women. Intriguingly she also mentions Page McBee’s (2018) account of becoming the first trans man to box competitively at Madison Square Gardens. Obviously much sports politics now concentrating on trans women but this case obviously touches on what it is to be a man as the sub-title screams, Amateur: A True Story About What Makes a Man. If I gave him the wool would he make me one? I hope to here more on these gender and sexuality matters.

She picks out Anthony Joshua’s trajectory ‘From Drug Offences to Heavyweight Stardom’ (Daily Telegraph, 6 April 2016) as typical of the boxing saved me from jail narrative that sometimes serves as the only evaluation of the sport as a potential crime prevention/desistance measure. My version of this appears in chapter 7 of my book and references, by way of balance, Aaron King’s '10 best boxers who went to prison’. 4 years on I realise I’d wanted to explore Traveller boxers and wonder if this will arise. Tyson Fury is currently hitting the headlines in both sport and crime categories.

Before moving on to discuss her methods she asserts, ‘boxing and football came to be symbolic representations of working-class masculinity’ which prompts two thoughts. First to agree but then to want to separate boxing out as so much more involving - more total a way of life for some. Six months for her but longer for her subjects. Secondly to note the issue of a specific class-based masculinity because elsewhere in common with many she tends to elide masculinities into the ‘hegemonic’. Perhaps because I don’t own it as my masculinity or because of my exposure to Stuart Hall’s take on Gramsci adumbrated through OU courses I see even the hegemonic as contested. My nerdy wordy masculinity wouldn’t cut in the gym but on this blog maybe.

Methodology nerds only get a few paragraphs about narrative interviewing and citations of the work of her supervisor David Gadd on the importance of the psychosocial. Her question is ‘Tell me the story of how you became a boxer’ (p10) but I still want to know, beyond the few clues she gives, also how she came to want to do a PhD on boxing. On the question of the psychosocial also glad to see the External Examiner of my PhD Tony Jefferson cited.

She then moves on to various theories of desistance and the age-curve question. She then foreshadows her individual chapters on Frank, Eric and Leroy. Frank ‘saw violence as a way to accrue respect and command obedience and Eric sought to build, ‘a carapace of muscle’ (p14). This reminded me of some women’s narratives of weight gain to protect them from the male gaze or expectations of femininity. Leroy was seen to be trying to deal with ‘the hidden injuries of class’ (p14) (Sennett and Cobb, 1973).

Boxing we are rather dramatically we are told offers, ‘a distraction from the atrocities that these men may have faced’! We shall see.

Review of Deborah Jump's 'The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance - round 2 (introduction)

Leaving James’s auto-picaresque tales we come to Deborah’s introduction and an update from ringside. Deb has tweeted me that she played rugby and trained to black belt in wushu kung fu. Given more space this might have featured in the ethnography chapters on Frank, Eric and Leroy.  I think more space should be made for reflexivity in criminology generally and am disappointed it doesn’t get to feature here.

Glad to see she emphasises the violence of boxing and the need to ‘challenge masculine discourses in present within the gym’ that, ‘can compound violent attitudes and male domination’ (p1). Specifically she argues, ‘that the enclave of the gym and the majority of its members are actually compatible with violent criminogenic attitudes’ (p2). She sets out her intention to outline boxing and gyms as a suitable site for sociological research. Her theoretical base is in psychosocial approaches to desistance in which boxing is the ‘hook for change’ (Giordano et al, 2002).

The motor projects I studied tended to assume the benefits (homeopathic?) of giving access to cars to those convicted of, or ‘at risk’ of, car crime offending. Theories of change evaluation was underdeveloped then and I handed out Home Office Probation Service Division grants on accounts, rough throughput figures, claims of reduced offending and occasional visits. Specific worked out theories of change seem to go beyond mere ‘hooking’ and we’ll see if these get mentioned explicitly later. They seem to be implicit in her argument so far. Thus she argues, ‘it is easy to fill boxing gyms with recalcitrant youth and walk away, hoping for for a more disciplined and respectful one to walk out’ (p2). Or again, she suggests, ‘we look more closely at the mechanisms’ (p3). I’d probably want to quote  some Nick Tilley here. How do we test the idea that diluted violence can cure violence?

She talks rightly of the ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ (p3) but I know from my HO days (late ’80 to mid ‘90s) handing out grants of the pressure on organisations to have a good narrative and celebrity backers that may shade any proper evaluation. Moreover that might then have to be turned on its head if the grant regime changes. I had a budget to spend I admit I sometimes gave them hints.

Review of Deborah Jump's 'The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance - round 1 (foreword)

I welcome this book, in part for selfish reasons but very much in its own right. My selfish reasons relate to my hope that this book shows I was right to try to tie sports sociology and law to a critical criminology (and tip of the hat to Andrew Millie and Policy Press for believing it too). In my book I suggest antecedents and like to see this and the work of Kennedy and Silva as potential descendants.

As this review is not for a journal I don't have to stick to a word limit or format. It also means I can be quicker. I propose to shamelessly deploy boxing and other sporting metaphors throughout.

Too great a use of social media and my own mental capacities mean that a short form suits me: let's call them rounds. I'll make a few jabs, possibly essay a combination, cover then withdraw, have my second towel me down before getting back off my stool.

So seconds out round 1.

Stepping into the ring I find Jump has tagged James Treadwell in (see Corteen on wrestling).

'Protect yourself at all times' opens his foreword and immediately he fesses up to his own fandom of and participation in the 'Sweet Science' and lifelong familiarity with boxing gyms.

I did not. My sporting life was schoolyard soccer, rugby and judo before settling on running. Rugby carried on into my late 20s and I failed to 'protect myself' (no shin pads or gum shield then) but got more black eyes from occasional squash! My most martial activity was the judo. A small club with respect for each other and the Japanese origin of the sport. I fought young women and old men. Luckily groundwork didn't cause too much embarrassment from intimacy issues but I can now, in a Proustian moment, recall the alcohol-scented breath of one older man. The 30 seconds holding down required for ippon seemed an age.

I mention my, and James’s, sporting life because I'm not sure we find out Deborah's but we shall see.

James goes on to demonstrate the community of boxing globally and across criminal and non-criminal worlds. Like many men I can talk sport and for my PhD on joyriding and car culture, though no petrolhead, had to talk ‘car’. I kept my green reservations to myself in fieldwork and I'm sure I'd not mention Mayweather's domestic violence history or Pacquiao's tax affairs if talking to Australian gangsters.

Though I can talk sport, I’m not enthusiastic about all sport: motor racing for green reasons and boxing because I’m a pussy! Having established his hardman credentials James praises Deborah, seeing in her, ‘a once-in-a-lifetime prospect every coach seeks’. Clearly a Million Dollar Book.

Most significantly he concludes, ‘Jump never falls into the trap of seeing boxing as a panacea for all social ills’, which is reassuring but I will also be looking to see how she deals with the opposite assertion that all sport is male violence and a cause of further violence - often against women and marginalised and demonised communities.

I hope to float like a dilettante butterfly but not sting like a provoked bee.

Obviously a deficiency of my approach is that I may pick up on a point in one round only to find that the counter-punch comes in the next. But I also hope that people may engage. I may have to change my stance, become a southpaw even.

Consider this sparring.