Abstract
The division of a social context into team and audience is a fundamental form of interactional organization. Team-audience-formation occurs in two structurally different ways: First, a symbolic type may impose a reified representational pat-tern on the context delimiting its relevance. Secondly, closure of a game’s typificatory scheme may impose total relevance.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
This is not to degrade in the least Mead’s ingenious intuition in proposing this conception. For if the constitution of the “generalized other” were satisfactorily solved, the problem of intersubjectivity would have found its solution.
E. Dürkheim, Elementary Forms, p. 210.
“Equality and the Meaning Structure of the Social World,” Coll. Pap., vol. 2, p. 247.
See sect. 6.21.
See sect. 6.22.
Common sense reacts quite distinctly to these differences: poor games (where no socially significant symbolic types are enacted) have few spectators. But nevertheless, groups of players are fighting for being “in” as team and sending the others “out” as audience. That this lack of spectators is not solely dependent on poor play is obvious: the World Series held in Frankfurt, Germany, or a soccer game in Chicago’s Wrigley Field would prove this point.
E. Goffman, Presentation, p. 66.
See sect. 8.2. and also the earlier sect. 7.1.
See sect. 7.4.
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, p. 127.
A similar reduction of social life to a mere “ostensible, overt” level of human conduct was criticized earlier in respect to Berne’s foundation of his Games People Play. See sect. 1.3.
See sect. 5.4.
Sein und Zeit, p. 127.
For a most interesting study of the historical development of “decisionism,” which is closely related to aesthetic and rationalistic conceptions especially of German political thought, see Christian Graf von Krockow, Die Entscheidung. Eine Untersuchung über Ernst Jünger, Carl Schmitt, Martin Heidegger (Stuttgart, Enke, 1958).
There are some exceptions. For instance: David Riesman and R. Denney, Foot¬ball in America: A Study of Culture Diffusion, American Quarterly, 3, 1951, pp. 309–325.
Roger Caillois, Unity of Play: Diversity of Games, Diogenes, 19, 1957, p. 99.
J. R. Seeley, R. A. Sim, E. W. Loosley, Crestwood Heights ( New York, Basic Books, 1956 ), p. 121.
Crestwood, p. 124.
In Crestwood Heights one plays “Canadian Rugby football.” The analogies seen by Seeley et al. between the competitive settings of the suburb and of the game refer to that game. However, the authors pointed out the close relationship between American and Canadian football (p. 450 n. 7). The differences in the rules of both games are not significant enough to influence their stock of similarities. Though I refer in the follow¬ing always to American football, a more detailed study should, of course, take account of these differences.
Severe limitations arise for any mere description of a symbolic type. It could be attempted by a study of the semantic field out of which this profile is carved, for instance, in the annual “Pro Football Almanac.” To give only one example here: “Y. A. Tittle, New York Giants. The Bald Eagle never was more gallant. With a hostile sell-out crowd at Chicago’s Wrigley Field howling for blood, aging quarterback Y. A. Tittle continued to play despite his injured, painwracked leg; desperately trying to toss just one more touchdown pass that would give the New York Giants a victory and the 1963 NFL championship.” Bill Wise, 1964 Official Pro Football Almanac ( Greenwich, Fawcett, 1964 ), p. 46.
William James, Pragmatism ( New York, Meridian, 1955 ) p. 22f.
The consequences of the arising dualism between the “tenderfoot” and the “tough guy” cannot be studied in any detail here. But they are immediately apparent in other competitive settings, for instance, in American politics. The types of “dove” or “hawk,” the “egghead” and “liberal” as opposed to a conservative Birchite: these types become politically potent on the background of typificatory schemes which relate to constitutive contexts of games which have been played by “everyone.” William James’ statement may be requoted again since it becomes especially transparent in the political context, say of “doves” and “hawks”: “Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other it has a dash of fear.”
Crestwood, p. 123. — Again, the already quoted Pro Football Almanac may be studied for further support of this thesis. On about 150 pages the “unsung heroes” and the great stars of the game are portrayed. But consistently, quotations praising their achievements refer to teammates’ statements, while they speak out themselves in direct speech only to remark on some mishap, like some injury or suspension, or on their intent to “help the Giants win.”
See sect. 8.1.
The typification of Y. A. Tittle from the New York Giants as the star of the game is so consistent that he is never referred to in the Pro Football Almanac by his first name: “Y. A. injured his leg” (p. 13) or “Y. A. Tittle was on the shelf” (p. 15) etc., etc. No other player seems to have reached the symbolic stage of being typified by his initials only. They are the “Jimmy Brown” from Cleveland or the “Mean John” of the Redskins.
I cannot present a comprehensive study of the game of football at this time. Further symbolic types concerning, for example, typical team-audience formations, typical deviations like “foul play” etc. ought to be studied further in more detail. My present task is merely to demonstrate the applicability of the conceptual scheme of type formations to the problems studied by Seeley et. al. in Crestwood Heights. Hence, I point out only the constitution of one personal type and one action type.
It would be easy to collect empirical data to support this hypothetical opinion of a typical administrator concerning “his” school or “his” staff.
Methodologically, this conception derives from their implicit presuppositions con-cerning the dualism between “fun” in “mere play” and “discipline” in the realm of “serious” endeavours.
Crestwood, p. 121.
David Riesman in his very critical introduction to “Crestwood Heights” takes issue with the authors’ attempts to grasp the social setting within the scheme of competitive efficiency: “I wonder whether it is I who bring to the material a sardonic reaction or whether I find it there, in the use of the term ‘efficiency,’ in the comparison with the club or office, and in the awkwardness - neither quite jargon nor quite literature —of such phrases as ‘highly regarded token of love and esteem.’” (p. ix) — I intend to show that the authors’ had good reason to choose that approach.
“The father...would be more inclined to elbow the child out of the driver’s seat” while the mother tends “to drive, so to speak, from the back seat.” Crestwood, p. 127.
These rules of scoring are subject to frequent changes by agreement between the major leagues. Hence, it may be that other rules are valid today. This does not significantly influence the argument, but only supports it: these rules are imposed.
Of course, the ongoing interaction is also determined by these weights in that they influence the “strategy” of the game. This, however, is a consequence of a particular closure of the game. Different weights lead to a change of strategies.
See sect. 7.4.
The high bodily involvement in football, nearly unlimited as compared to games like soccer or baseball, reduces the main task of the umpires to judge if the ball has been touched to the ground, that is, it is their main task to decide if an action phase has to be terminated. — In which ways the symbolic type of “judge” arising in these games penetrates into the judicial system in the larger social setting is open for further analysis. In any case, the football leagues have developed their own “judicial system.” In the NFL, James Kane was the “field judge” in 1963 and it seems worthwhile reporting in the annals, for instance, that “his honor was knocked down” by a “pair of frisky Colts.” See: Pro Football Almanac, p. 71.
Crestwood, p. 128.
This notion of strategy, by the way, is equivalent to the one prevalent in the mathematical theory of games.
Crestwood, p. 64.
Neumann-Morgenstern, Theory of Games, pp. 68–72.
Crestwood, p. 63.
See sect. 5.4. and 7.4.
See sects. 5.21.
See: Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, Social Mobility and Personal Identity, European Journal of Sociology, 5, 1964, pp. 331ff.
Crestwood, p. 127.
op. cit., p. ixf. —The study of Crestwood Heights does not penetrate what Vidich and Bensman have called the “separate and hidden layer of community life,” i.e., the realm of community gossip. This realm seems to be largely structured by symbolic types, which are related to the more intimate games the people play in Crestwood Heights. See for instance, Arthur J. Vidich and Joseph Bensman, Small Town in Mass Society ( Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960 ), pp. 30–46.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1970 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Grathoff, R.H. (1970). Team and Audience. In: The Structure of Social Inconsistencies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3215-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3215-5_8
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-247-5006-1
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-3215-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive