Sport Culture and
Weinberg and Arond’s (1952)
Subcultures
PETER DONNELLY
University of Toronto, Canada
Raymond Williams (1983) argued that “cul-
ture” is one of the most complex words in the
English language. That is certainly the case when
considering sport as an aspect of culture. Little
research focuses specifically on sport and culture
and, when references are made to “the culture
of sport,” they seem to have two purposes. The
first highlights contradictory versions of the
culture of sport, either by drawing attention to
negative aspects – such as the “rule-bound,”
“elitist,” “masculinist,” “authoritarian,” or “na-
tionalistic” nature of sport – or by focusing on
“sport for good” – often evangelical evocations
of the power of sport to bring about peace and
international development or a growing recog-
nition of the soft power potential of sport. The
second recognizes the overwhelming diversity of
sport cultures, observing national, regional, class,
gender, ethnic, and age variations.
As a consequence, research on and theoretical
approaches to sport culture and subcultures in
the sociology of sport have focused more on sport
subcultures. Subcultural work may be divided
into four overlapping periods: (1) early interest
in sport subcultures from an interactionist per-
spective; (2) a transition period with more critical
theoretical approaches to culture and subcultures
and more rigorous methodological approaches;
(3) a wholehearted embrace of “cultural studies”
and the consequent fragmentation of approaches
to sport subcultures; and (4) the reported death
and subsequent (partial) revival of research on
sport subcultures. These changes were accom-
panied by parallel theoretical and definitional
concerns about the meaning of culture and
subculture.
Some of the earliest work in the emerging
subdiscipline of sociology of sport concerned
The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology. Edited by George Ritzer.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405165518.wbeoss230.pub2
sport subcultures.
study of boxers preceded studies of professional
baseball players, professional wrestlers, pool
hustlers, ice hockey players, and the various jobs
involved in horse-racing. These were followed
by a series of striking comparative studies of, for
example, hockey players and Hollywood musi-
cians, professional wrestlers and physicians, and
female gymnasts and professional wrestlers.
These studies of occupational subcultures
were grounded in the US tradition of subcul-
tural research. Culture was that which humans
passed along socially rather than biologically;
subcultures were subunits of the larger culture;
and even Fine and Kleinman’s (1979) attempt to
“rethink” subculture maintained a basic interac-
tionist definition, in which “the referent group”
encourages potential members to take on the
cultural characteristics of a particular subculture.
The original subcultural research in sociology,
focusing primarily on youth and deviance, had
spread from “deviant careers” to other occupa-
tions and avocations, and Arnold (1972) provided
justification for the study of sport subcultures by
arguing that they “have a sociological importance
in and of themselves.” Arnold proposed that
membership in such “achieved” (as opposed to
ascribed) subcultures provided an alternative
identity status as the institutional significance of
work decreased.
Ingham (1975) signaled the critical turn in
the sociology of sport subcultures by combining
Marx, Weber, and Goffman in his analysis of
“occupational subcultures in the work-world
of sport.” His study was contemporary with a
“cultural turn” in both sociology and the sociol-
ogy of sport. Culture was no longer something
relatively inert, “meanings and ways” that were
passed from generation to generation; rather
it was a social construction, a site of struggles,
something that was produced, reproduced, and
resisted – and subcultures could now be seen as
both the engines of cultural production and the
venues for contesting culture. As Bourdieu (1978:
826) pointed out: “The field of sporting practice
is the site of struggles in which what is at stake,
2 S PORT C ULTURE
inter alia, is the monopolistic capacity to impose
the legitimate definition of sporting practice and
the legitimate function of sporting activity.”
Thus, in sport, these struggles were fought
over the “meanings and ways” of what was now
being recognized as a dominant sport culture – a
culture that was outcome, achievement, and
record-oriented; a culture that was characterized
by homogenizing principles of governance and
commercial interest. In the dominant sport cul-
ture, sport was rationalized and utilitarian: it was
for the purposes of entertainment or to encourage
civic–national pride; it was to demonstrate the
effectiveness of a political ideology (e.g., Olympics
during the Cold War); it was for the purposes of
health in the new era of privatized and personal
conceptions of health; and it was primarily for
socialization – character, work habits and disci-
pline, individual achievement and teamwork, and
so on – or even just to occupy the time of those
considered to be “dangerous” or “youth at risk”
(e.g., “midnight basketball” for the social control
of urban youth).
Studies of sport subcultures began to incorpo-
rate these changes, which were influenced both
by Geertz’s (1973) “thick description,” which pro-
duced richer and more nuanced ethnographies,
and by the more politicized ethnography and sub-
culture theory that was developing at the Centre
for Contemporary Cultural Studies in England.
Although the broader notion of “career” was still
at the root of most research, there was also the
beginning of a change towards socialization and
identity factors in sport subcultures, an interest
in class cultures and sport, and the beginning of
a focus on sport subcultures as sites of cultural
production. Gruneau (1981: 10) pointed out that
the study of sport subcultures now concerned
how “subcultures, with their various ‘estab-
lishment’ and ‘countercultural’ emphases, have
been constitutively inserted into the struggles,
the forms of compliance and opposition, social
reproduction and transformation, associated
with changing patterns of social development.”
Bishop and Hoggett (1987) similarly argued that
sport and leisure subcultures are crucial sites
for the transmission, resistance, and negotiation
of the dominant values of the larger society.
Research during this second period extended
the interest in careers to the life cycle of a career
in sports and to processes of socialization into
AND S UBCULTURES
and desocialization from participation (for a
collection of studies representing this type of
research, see Coakley and Donnelly, 1999). Iden-
tity issues also began to emerge in terms of how
individuals developed appropriate subcultural
identities and how those identities were nego-
tiated and accepted (or not) by other members
(Donnelly and Young, 1988).
Further evidence of transition during this
period concerns what is now referred to as
alternative or extreme sport subcultures – they
were “alternative” to the dominant sport culture,
openly rejecting many of the “meanings and
ways” noted above. Earlier research on sports
such as surfing and rock-climbing had focused
on these activities as deviant subcultures; research
now began to reinterpret the alternative nature
of such subcultures as “resistance” rather than
“deviance.” This work also led to the recognition
of the ephemeral nature of resistance to the
dominant sport culture and of the ways in which
activities such as freestyle skiing, skateboarding,
and snowboarding were subject to commercial
and media pressures and to incorporation by the
dominant sport culture. The life cycle of freestyle
skiing, from its “hot-dog” origins of resisting all
of the trappings of mainstream sport to almost
complete incorporation into the international
skiing federation (FIS) and recognition as an
Olympic sport, represents a classic example of
such resistance and incorporation (Donnelly,
1988). Using Raymond Williams’s cultural typol-
ogy, Donnelly (1993) also showed how alternative
cultural formations were evident in both residual
and emergent contexts.
The third period represents a completion of
the shift toward cultural studies evident in the
transition period and an increasing fragmen-
tation of approaches to subcultures, in parallel
with the broader fragmentation of approaches to
sociology after the postmodern turn. In addition
to an increasing interest in identity work in sport
subcultures, there was increased interest in (and
opposition to) the idea of a global sport culture,
increasing amounts of research on “jock” culture,
fan culture, and celebrity culture in sports, and a
substantial focus (given the embodied nature of
sports) on body culture (Atkinson and Wilson,
2002). Research in the sociology of the body now
covers a wide range of bodily practices, including
sports. As Bourdieu (1978) pointed out, the
 S PORT C ULTURE
definitional struggles associated with sport also
extend to defining the “legitimate body” and “le-
gitimate uses of the body.” Definitional concerns
also reappeared with regard to the concept of sub-
culture itself, some contending that “subworld”
represents a better descriptor than “subculture”
of the cultures that emerge around sports; they
argue that “subculture” implies a condition of
domination and subordination that does not exist
in some sport “subworlds” (Crosset and Beal,
1997).
In the fourth period there have been claims
that the concept of subculture is no longer
useful, or even meaningful, in a postmodern
and postindustrial world where cultural forma-
tions are ephemeral and constantly shifting and
where social formations are seen to continually
fragment and no longer require face-to-face
interaction to exist (Wheaton, 2007). Theoreti-
cal concerns assert that some researchers have
overused the concept of resistance to the point
that it no longer has a political impact, and
that studies of subcultures imply a homogeneity
of culture where heterogeneity is widespread.
Methodological concerns are associated with
the crisis of representation, where researchers
have begun to question their “right” to speak for
others and to represent their “realities.” Arguing
that announcements of the “death of subcultures”
have been premature, Young and Atkinson (2008:
38) note that “these sub-communities, however
conceptualized, can tell us much about the world
and worlds we inhabit, and how group members
forge their own behaviours and meanings from
their own lived experiences.” Recent research
suggests that sociologists of sport will continue to
be interested in fan culture, celebrity culture, and
body culture in sports, and interest in alternative
sport subcultures continues to be popular. To the
extent that sport subcultural research continues
to shed light on the historical processes by which
a way of playing a sport becomes the way of
playing the sport; on the ways in which cultural
meanings and ways are produced in sport subcul-
tures; and on the ways in which sport subcultures
are involved in larger processes of resistance,
social reproduction, and social transformation,
such research will continue to be of interest to
sociologists.
AND S UBCULTURES 3
SEE ALSO: Sport and Culture; Sport as Specta-
cle; Sport as Work; Sports Heroes and Celebrities
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Further Reading

Donnelly, P. (1985) Sport subcultures. Exercise and

Sport Sciences Reviews, 13, 539–578.