Abstract
Violence—both as an object of study and as an analytic concept or lens—is everywhere in the social sciences these days. At least that’s how it seems in the world of sport studies, where violence has become as common a topic and multipurpose organizing theme as inequality, injustice, or cultural politics. Playing through Pain: The Violent Consequences of Capitalist Sport offers a tour and bird’s eye view of this trend. Along the way, it also provides a provocative introduction to the thoroughgoing critical orientation that, for better or worse, characterizes much current sociological research and writing on sport.
The book’s substantive chapters work their way across different types of violence against athletes, by athletes, and from institutions and practices of modern sport on the social world. The first three are the most literal and familiar. Chapter Two (“In-Game Violence”) is about the serious, often debilitating physical injuries athletes sustain just playing their sports as well as the after-effects and often lifelong consequences of injury. Suffice to say, concussions in American football figure prominently. Chapter Three (“Outside the Lines”) involves the violence and abuses committed against athletes by coaches, trainers, and even doctors. Chapter Four (“(In)Action Speaks Louder than Words”) deals with the violence perpetrated by athletes against others, often in domestic contexts involving sexual abuse against women.
These chapters, like the book itself, are not based on new or original research so much as they are driven by high-profile, mostly North American cases, individuals, and events that are then analyzed and interpreted via existing research and theory on the relevant topic. The egregious sexual abuses committed by Larry Nassar against female gymnasts when he was team doctor for Michigan State and USA Gymnastics play a prominent role in Chapter Three, for example. The chapter on athlete violence against women is dominated by the numerous domestic assault cases and accusations against various NFL players, current and retired. Taken together, these chapters provide a sobering counterpoint to sport’s cherished and long-standing claims about being a prosocial, healthy, character-building force in the world.
The core of Sailofsky’s synthesis and larger argument is that the range of injuries and abuses associated with athletes and athletics derive from the pressures to win at all costs and maximize opportunity and profit brought by the unchecked capitalist nature of modern sports. Sailofsky’s unapologetic “Marxist theoretical framework” is elaborated in some detail in the book’s Introduction. For what it is worth, Sailofsky, who was trained in sociology and currently serves as an assistant professor of kinesiology and physical education, has also worked in a variety of sports contexts over the years and draws on these experiences on occasion to illustrate or reinforce various points. He also references interviews he conducted to determine how much the public knows about athlete misbehavior and what they think about it.
The next three chapters employ, and thus contribute to the development of, more abstract or metaphorical conceptions of violence in, around, and through sport. Chapter Five focuses on the harm done to athletes via economic exploitation. (Think New York Times’ sportswriter William Rhoden’s well-known Forty Million Dollar Slaves, or The New Plantation by sport sociologist Billy Hawkins.) Chapter Six delves into crowd or spectator violence such as that associated with English football “hooligans” but also including parents in youth sporting contexts such as ice hockey. Chapter Seven takes on social problems such as environmental degradation or housing displacement brought by “mega” sporting events like the Olympics or the World Cup, as well as the role of national and global sport spectacles in the legitimation of capitalism and authoritarian regimes via sportswashing.
Sailofsky’s unrelenting and unapologetic Marxist framework is most apparent in these chapters, and few stones are left unturned in demonstrating the economic causes and social consequences of profit-driven sport. In many respects, Sailofsky’s old-fashioned materialism is revealing and quaintly refreshing. But its limitations and fissures also begin to emerge over the course of the book.
Other critical theoretical frameworks such as feminism, critical race theory, or power and domination are only occasionally alluded to. One wonders how our understanding might be enriched by attending to other, non-economic factors that drive risk-taking or excessive training, domestic abuse, poor parenting, or political authoritarianism. The agency of athletes themselves often seems somewhat short-changed as well. For someone (like me) with an interest in sport-based activism, it can also be difficult to find opportunities for or explanations of resistance and change such as those witnessed in the Black Lives Matter campaigns of the previous decade. Finally, it also seems worth considering the “violence” done to the concept of violence itself when extended into purely economic terrain. No surprise, perhaps, that the conclusion (“The Way Forward”) feels a bit vague and/or flat.
I raise these issues not to dismiss Playing through Pain but, rather, because it is a book that deserves to be taken seriously, and to be read and engaged carefully. This is the case especially for sociologists (and others) who have been dismissive of sport as a social force, as well as for those who are passionate about sports but only beginning to think critically and systematically about sport, its place in society, and its cultural power in the contemporary world.