‘Football is my life’:Theorising Social Practice in the Scottish Professional Football Field

Dr David McGillivray & Mr Aaron McIntosh

Division of Cultural Business

Glasgow Caledonian University

Presentation coverage Background context State of play Conceptual Coupling: Bourdieu and Sport Methodological pre-occupations Valuing the physical over the cultural: A clash of

capitals (1), (2), (3) Shifting Sands: Exercising Strategies Conclusions Questions References

It’s all you’ve known since you were 16, it’s a way of life. It’s like a drug, going in every day around the boys and the banter and training hard – all geared towards Saturday and you don’t want to give that up. (established professional)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWWJ3ErPG3g

Background context Study contributing to research

carried out since 2001 on professional football labour market in Scotland

Over the last decade a number of significant changes have affected the political, social and economic environment within which Scottish professional football operates

Change in environmental factors: The Bosman (I &II) rulings – free

movement of players Downturn in broadcasting revenues Rationalisation of human resources Growth in influence of the players

union (SPFA – now PFA Scotland)

Leaves a paradox between: Continuing significance and

growing glamorisation of the game (e.g. player power) AND

Unstable labour markets as an increasing trend

Because of much of the above: Growing concerns for the future

career prospects of many players – annual round of redundancies 186 (2003); 307 (2005); 400+ (2009)?

Related upsurge in SPFA activity (visibility, advice and practical support in gaining educational experiences: e.g., learner reps)

Education FOR players, not education OF players, becoming a bigger issue

The state of play Picture of occupational insecurity

further emphasized in most recent survey carried out by SPFA (2005)

50 per cent of existing players had less than a year remaining on their contracts/ another 40 per cent had less than two years

Number of full-time players in Scotland has decreased by a third in recent years as many clubs have shifted to part-time status

Figures suggest that only one out of 160 players will never need a job outside of football (SPFA, 2005)

YET few players are prepared for a forced career change - many left bereft of transferable skills and qualifications necessary to secure employment in alternative labour markets

Key stakeholder response to introduce new learning strategies built more concretely into the fabric of players’ contracts, but this has yet to be accompanied by an analogous culture change within the labour force itself

We were interested in understanding why attitudes remained stable in unstable conditions

Conceptual Coupling: Bourdieu and Sport Bourdieu: studies in social

inequality, education and sport considered dynamic relationship between objective social structures and everyday practices

(habitus) (capital) + field = social practice

Habitus: embodied objective relations “set of durable dispositions that

people carry within them that shapes their attitudes, behaviours and responses to given situations” (Webb et al, 2002: 114)

Embed particular cultural trajectories in young people

Something one ‘is’: it is naturalised- assimilated unconsciously

But oscillation between structuring regularities and individual modes of cultural consumption

Capital: various class groupings possess different levels of ‘capital’: Currency traded within a specific

field - cultural (privileged few) or physical capital

Possession of embodied competence (e.g. speed, skill, strength) or practical labour is accorded greater value in the football world than the cultural capital associated with formal educational discourses

Field: constrains and manages practices which can take place Active relationship with habitus and

capital Bodily or ‘physical’ capital more

important in professional football field(e.g. boxing, football)

Player internalise rules of the game Yet, field is changing – players

vulnerable to inevitable occupational obsolescence

Methodological pre-occupations Bourdieu espoused a middle-

ground approach between the polar positions of objectivity and subjectivity

This study an extension of previous research (McGillivray et al, 2005; McGillivray & McIntosh, 2006; McGillivray, 2006) concerned with generating an ‘objective’ account of professional football players: Questionnaire survey of players

A qualitative research strategy helps to understand how individuals use, inhabit, negotiate or elude their foundational ‘objective conditions’: Space for the voice of actors

Generating their small narratives to develop understanding

Concerned with formal schooling, early football careers and the time since they secured a professional contract

Two case studies: Scottish first division clubs Both subscribe to Modern

Apprenticeship scheme for 16-18 year olds: Young apprentices (16–18 years old) Established professionals (19–25 years old) Senior professionals (26 + ) Club staff

Other stakeholders: Scottish Professional Footballers

Association; Scottish Football Association; Scottish Football League; Scottish Premier League; Scottish Executive, Enterprise and Lifelong Learning

Valuing the physical over the cultural: A clash of capitals

Professional footballers emerge from predominantly working class backgrounds (habitus) (McGillivray et al, 2005):

Relatively low value accorded to schooling vis-a-vis football:

I was mair [more] interested in football than school (young apprentice)

Any time I had to think, I was just thinking about football really. I should have done better at school. I could have done, I just never. (young apprentice)

When you’re sitting in a class or a lecture, you know there are people there who know they’re going to do it [be a professional] and so they think ‘What’s the point?’ (established professional)

Concurs with most other studies of professional football (e.g. Gearing, 1999; Parker, 2000)

The football club continues to occupy a powerful and influential position in the lives of young men from an early age

Young men dissociate themselves from formal education long before they are able to leave school – reinforced by denigration of cultural capital:

my best friend was too interested in his school work and he never got a [pro] contract’ (young apprentice)

I said I want to stick in at school…**** freed me about three weeks later (established professional)

Valuing the physical over the cultural: A clash of capitals (2)

Body is players main tradable or exchangeable asset: ‘the template and epicentre of their

life’ (Wacqaunt, 1995: 66) BUT: physical capital is always

degenerative To find yourself out of work and really struggling to get a club for a while was difficult. That’s the first time I’ve sat down and thought what have I got to fall back on? At that time I was asking myself what else I could actually do – and there’s not a great deal (senior professional)

Restricted investment in formal educational capital to protect for bodily erosion because of belief in the value of the game and its stakes

It’s going to take a major change in attitude in some players . . . to admit that there’s going to be an end to their career’ (education and welfare officer)

Unable to ‘detach’ themselves from idea that football is an occupational inevitability:

They have no time to focus on anything else – or at least that’s how they’ve been brought up – it’s just train, play or recuperate (educational and welfare officer)

This apparently unconscious and unthinking routinization alludes to the determining strictures of habitus

It’s [a contract] there if you want it. If I started now thinking about my education then that’s me saying to myself that I’m not going to get a contract. I’m no going to focus pure hard on it [education] because I’m here to be a footballer at the end of the day (young apprentice).

Valuing the physical over the cultural: A clash of capitals (3)

Football clubs site of anti-intellectualism (Gearing, 1999) – players protected:we dinna [don’t] really speak about it [education] much in the dressing room . . . they only speak about football, or girls or something like that (young apprentice).

football is all about living in a bubble (Scottish Professional Footballers Association educational co-ordinator)

The coaches didn’t really want us to go (to classes). They said they’d rather focus on football (young apprentice)

I don’t think anyone’s particularly interested in going to college . . . they just had a laugh and that (young apprentice).

it was too easy. The person who was there doing it, it was hard for him. There was a lot of carry on. He wanted to get through it so he would tell us what to do, just to keep it going (young apprentice).

Instead of using educational opportunities to engage sceptical young men in the benefits of educational cultural capital as a source of self improvement, encounters of this sort simply act to reinforce the value of physical prowess over academic attainment.

In these circumstances educational discourses remain worthless – are irrelevant – to the everyday lives of those pursuing the dream of being a professional footballer

Shifting Sands: Exercising Strategies Bourdieu argued for a shift from

‘rules’ to strategies’ which can be employed to alter cultural trajectories – interacting with the field

Young professionals cannot transcend their formative circumstances – but meaningful social action can exist – especially as autonomous fields overlap:

The boys now are becoming aware of the fact that the most you’re getting is a year contract . . . so players now realize that they’ve got to be going and getting other qualifications (senior professional)The message is definitely getting across. It’s in the back of your mind that the career doesn’t last forever (established professional).These days, money is so short in football. The young ones know that if you don’t get on the football ladder then you’ve got to have something else (established professional)

The unassailability of professional footballers’ status has been eroded

Evidence of a ‘forced’, instrumental engagement with cultural capital:

Players are all scared, they are looking for the next contract and they might have had a wee scare this summer. All of a sudden when they were out of a club for three, four, five weeks they start to think about their education (SPFA educational coordinator)

Footballers remain sceptical of recognition and investment in educational discourses

Reinforced by clubs focus on instrumental, means-end, outcome-based strategies – vocational awards not individual transformation

Conclusions Professional football represents a disempowering environment in

which a footballers’ lifeworld is colonized by his sport However, incremental change is occurring in the Scottish

professional game through an expanding portfolio of educational opportunities on the supply side and a growing awareness among players – especially those in the established and senior professional stages – that continuing professional development does not simply refer to extra training

Players’ engagement with educational discourses is, at best, an instrumental, means-end and outcome based one - few able to articulate ‘why’ education might be of ‘value’ to them

They have not been able to fully transcend the objective conditions from which they arrived in the professional football field

Attempts to introduce educational opportunities for professional football players needs to start at the recruitment stage; at a time when young men can still accrue educational cultural capital

Conclusions Players remain largely devoid of realistic alternatives and

continue to exhibit quite extraordinary (and unwarranted) faith in the extended corporate responsibility of their employers to take care of them in the event of serious injury

The culture of dependency created in and reinforced by the institutional structures of the professional game represents a further barrier to those trying to embed meaningful education programmes into the social practice of vulnerable young men

Clubs continue to recruit, groom, exploit and then discard their principal assets bereft of the sort of capital which will see them flourish in alternative occupational fields

As public investment flows into youth football, a debate over the accountability of professional clubs for their impressionable employees is required

Questions?

References Gearing, B. (1999) Narratives of Identity among Former Professional

Footballers in the United Kingdom. Journal of Aging Studies, 13, no. 1: 43–58.

McGillivray, D & McIntosh, A (2006) ’Football is my life’: Theorising social practice in the Scottish Professional Football field”, Sport in Society, 9 (3): 371-387

McGillivray, D. (2006) ‘Facilitating change in the educational experiences of professional footballers: The case of Scottish football’, Managing Leisure, 11: 22-38

McGillivray, D, Fearn, R. & McIntosh, A. (2005) ‘Caught up in and by the beautiful game: a case study of Scottish professional footballers’, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 29 (1): 102-123

Parker, A. (2000) ‘Training for Glory, Schooling for Failure’: English Professional Football, Traineeship and Educational Provision. Journal of Education and Work 13, no. 1: 61–76.

Wacquant, L. (1995) Pugs at Work: Bodily Capital and Bodily Labour Among Professional Boxers. Body & Society 1, no. 1: 65–93.

Webb, J., T. Schirato, and G. Danaher. (2002) Understanding Bourdieu. London: Sage