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.

Positive response to Kennedy and Silva's sports criminology

In “Knuckle-Dragging Thugs”: Civilizing processes and the biosocial revolution in the National Hockey League

Kennedy and Silva argue passionately to develop a critical criminology of hockey, and of sport more generally:

They offer three ways forward in their conclusion:

The first avenue is empirical; we must develop rigorous empirically driven analyses of how both discourses of crime and criminal justice and, perhaps more importantly, practices related to crime control operate within the field of sport. (…) Critical criminologists must therefore work tirelessly to develop a grassroots understanding of how these discourses and practices are developed, take shape, and circulate among increasingly large audiences.

More specifically to our case study, a second agenda could focus on tracing out emergent and important overlaps, similarities, and juxtapositions in the ways we talk about crime and “justice” in hockey (and sport more generally, perhaps in other historically violent sports such as amateur and professional football and the increasingly popular sport of mixed martial arts) and the criminal justice system. For example, scholars may be interested in sketching out the ways in which governing authorities, like the NHL or other supplemental discipline apparatuses, and media adopt discourses traditionally the province of the criminal justice system to legitimize (or delegitimize) strategies, rationales, and practices of crime control (see Atkinson and Young, 2008, for an example).

Finally, we argue that we must work closely with the theories and concepts we generate in relation to—but also generated by—the world of sport. Reimagining sport as an important criminological field requires us to attempt to build on existing theories, or develop new ones, capable of understanding the unique role that sporting culture (particularly mass commercialized professional athletics) plays in (re)producing and reinforcing social inequality. Few cultural contexts reach as many focused consumers as sport does, and as such, we must welcome the challenge

of understanding discourses and practices of crime and criminal justice that operate in the arena, on the field or court, or in the stadium.

As the author of Sports Criminology I have to agree and they kindly cite me. My book attempts to set out the potential field and sets many hares running. Kennedy and Silva have clearly come to their own formulation through their study of ice hockey rather than follow one of my fugitive trains of thought. They study how ice hockey ‘offenders’ are covered in the media. Common-sensical, neo-Lombrosan, bio-social tropes are to be found in much of the coverage. As critical criminologists they are keen to contest those.

In an expansion of their work I would want to examine issues of gender, race, class and sexuality. The world of the NHL is overwhelming white but differences of coverage of native Canadians and Eastern European players might be useful but English Soccer and NFL offer more scope. I struggled to find much coverage of women’s sports offending but the case of Hope Solo suggests she may have enjoyed some gender benefits not available to Caster Semenya’s very different circumstances. I hope others will take up sports criminology and am glad to see the work of Atkinson and Young used so extensively as I hail them as sports criminologists avant la lettre.

You should check out Ice Guardians for examples of the hits they are talking about but also a slightly different take and videos like these on fights in ice hockey.

book chapter

Sport is widely admired but also derided. It is given enormous new and old media coverage. That coverage is skewed towards ‘male’, corporate and global sports. Some sports that were once only local are now seeking global audiences. There is also much critical academic attention paid to sport and money to be made in sports law. However, both localized and global criminologies have ignored sport, leaving it to other disciplines to support and critique it. This chapter seeks to remedy that and point out the extent of criminalized and criminal behaviour within and associated with sport. This offers scope for criminologists to examine the ‘foreign’ jurisdiction of sport while close to home. They must risk examining something of which they may well be fans.

For fun chapter look at 

A Research Agenda for Global Crime