Social Construction Of Sport

Sport is entrenched in the sociocultural foundations of New Zealand. It has a dominant place in society; belonging in the same category as family, economy, media, politics, education, and religion (Donnelly, 1996). Like many of the aforementioned spheres of our lives, sport is a social construction, providing a window into the sociocultural context of which we live (Allport, 1985). Being a “social construction” we must attempt to understand sport by approaching it as a social fact, therefore sociologically, as opposed to how we would with objects or events in the biophysical world – through science and numbers. Understanding sociology as “the study of social relations undertaken from the point of view of people who operate within those social
Dominant cultural ideologies are contested and struggled over in everyday life (Falcous, 2005), sport included. Falcous’ Media-Sports Complex allows us to view sport in a light that we are not subject to as consumers. It is a key text in understanding what we buy in to, and why or how we have come to the decisions that we have regarding sport in society and culture. It is with things such as the Olympics and highly advertised games that we question: “why did I actually watch that?” It is rarely because you are an avid fan, or active in the sport, but because the media filters the raw reality of the situation, to a point where the act of watching the sport is seen as desirable and rudimentary to your life. With examples of the NBA and NWBA, we are forced to view women in a secondary light to men when it comes to sport, and this is a global phenomenon. In conclusion, the media, be it mass media, niche media, or micro media, have a certain amount of control over sport; how it is viewed, and how it is perceived in society. The critical theorist would place the media at the top of the hegemonic power ladder, controlling the sports, and their organisations. The relationship between media and sport is no longer symbiotic as it was once thought, but viewed as part of the emergent vertical integration
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