Sociology of Sport Jouml, 1991, 8, 185-190
Sports Diffusion: A Response to Maguire
and the Americanization Commentaries
Allen Guttmann
Amherst College
In response to the recent collection of articles on sports diffusion, some
generalizationsare in order. While a number of factors determine the processes
of ludic diffusion, the most important of them is the relative political, economic, and culture power of the nations involved. The power vectors are
usually, but not always, aligned. Cultural imperialism is a useful term to apply
to these processes if one remembers that politically and economically dominated nations sometimes influence the sports of dominant nations. Modernization is on the whole a more precise term than Americanization to describe
these processes. Traditional sports are certain to survive into the next century,
but their formal-structural characteristics are likely to undergo changes that
make them increasingly modem.
Since the appearance of the first German studies in the 1930s, it has been
a commonplace among historians that England was the birthplace of modem sports
(Kloeren, 1935; Mandell, 1984; Schoffler, 1935). It has also been widely
recognized-by scholars too numerous to cite-that the United States supplanted
Great Britain in the early 20th century as the prime mover in the diffusion of
modem sports throughout the world. That the Norteamericanos have exerted a
dominant influence on the sports of the Caribbean is another well established fact
(Klein, 1989, 1991; Kriimer-Mandeau, 1988; Wagner, 1982a). On the global
stage, the preponderant role of the United States in the late 20th century is now
such that Americans have begun to impose their games and their organizational
forms on the British as well as upon those, like the Australians and Canadians,
who once took their cues almost exclusively from the British (Kidd, 1991;
Maguire, 1990; McKay & Miller, 1991). The Australian case is especially interesting because of the powerful resistance to American influences on the part of 19thcentury "Aussies" (Mitchell, 1990).
What to make of these historical facts is uncertain and disputed. In responding, somewhat tartly, to a set of scholars whose work I greatly respect, I shall
focus on three related questions: Is "cultural imperialism" the most useful explanatory concept for the observed social processes? Is "Americanization" the most
appropriate term to describe these processes? Do these processes doom traditional sports to gradual extinction?
Allen Guttrnann is with the Department of American Studies at Amherst College,
Amherst, MA 01002.
Guttmann
186
Cultural Imperialism?
Some sports are intrinsically more attractive than others, but the intrinsic
properties of a sport do not seem to account for the rapidity or the slowness of
its diffusion. "The adoption by one group of a game popular among another is
only partly the result of recognizing the intrinsic properties of the game"
(Guttmann, 1988, p. 49). While a number of factors determine the process of
ludic diffusion, the most important of them is the relative political, economic, and
cultural power of the nations involved. It is absolutely essential to distinguishas not & participants in the discussion have-among these, and perhaps other,
forms of power.
The distinctions among the forms of power are certainly not arcane. There
is no need to define them here. What is important is to recognize that the power
vectors are usually but by no means invariably aligned. A nation that exercises
political andlor economic power usually exercises cultural power as well. This
is a well documented generalization, but the Canadian case is especially striking
because political independence obtains simultaneously with a high degree of both
economic and (for anglophones) cultural dependence (Kidd, 1991).
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that cultural dependence is
an invariable consequence of political and/or economic dependence. In fact the
cultural vector sometimes points in a different direction from the political and
economic vectors. More than 2,000 years ago, Horace noted in his Epistles that
Roman military might had subdued the city-states of Greece but that Graecia capta
was culturally dominant over its conqueror. Modern examples of the diffusion
of sports from the politically and/or economically weaker to the politically and/or
economically stronger abound. Polo for instance was introduced into Britain from
India, by repatriated military men, at approximately the same time that British
missionary educators imposed cricket upon the sons of the native Indian elite
(Mangan, 1985). Judo is an even more striking example of reverse diffusion
because it took hold in Europe and the United States at a time when Japan, defeated
and occupied, had barely begun to recover from the material ravages of war
(Goodger & Goodger, 1980).
The example of judo also illustrates the fact that diffusion occurs within
as well as between nations. Social class matters enormously. In the early stages
of its diffusion,judo was especially popular among upper middle-class Europeans
and North Americans disenchanted with their own mainstream culture (Goodger,
1986). As Kidd notes in reference to Canada, ethnic factors and even gender can
also influence receptivity to "imported" sports. Quebec sometimes~welcomes
American sports as a counter to Ontario's dominance of Canadian culture;
Toronto's embrace of major league baseball was abetted by "a cross-class masculinist alliance" (K~dd,1991).
In short, the internationaldiffusion of sports parallels the complex processes
of acculturation within a single nation. Politically and economically dominant
groups normally transfer more of their culture to others than they accept from
them, but the cultural exchanges are rarely unidirectional. Like other aspects of
culture, sports are "contested terrain" (Donnelly, 1988). For that reason, scholars
have reached for the Gramscian concept of hegemony, a concept that modifies
the starkly reductionist contrast between the rulers and the ruled in order to account
for resistance as well as submission.
A Response to Maguire
187
At its margins, hegemony begins to resemble pluralism, but the concept's
genealogy reassures its users, understandably anxious not to be accused of
liberalism, that their radical credentials are in order. The concept of cultural
hegemony provides more than a merely cosmetic improvement over the concept
of cultural imperialism because the former stresses the fact that the cultural interaction is something more complex than an imposition by the totally powerful upon
the entirely powerless. Both terms, cultural hegemony and cultural imperialism,
imply intentionality, which is unfortunate because those who adopt a sport are
often the eager initiators of a transaction of which the "donors" are scarcely aware.
It should also be realized that a culturally dominated group can seize upon
the oppressor's sport in order to enhance its own self-esteem. What is more
delightful than beating them at their own game? Simultaneously, one signals allegiance ("It's your game!") and superiority ("We won!"). For an Australian
cricket team to defeat the English at Lord's, the grounds of the august Marylebone
Cricket Club, which is what happened in 1878, "was to have confidence reestablished. It was also to be restored to the bosom of the mother country"
(Mandle, 1976, p. 62). Similarly, Japanese tormented by feelings of inferiority
vis-kvis the West received an enonnous psychological boost in 1896when a team
of Tokyo schoolboys, whose initial challenges had been rudely spurned, severely
trounced a baseball team composed of Americans living in Yokohama (Roden,
1980).
The defeat of the colonial British by a Bengali team in Calcutta's 1911 soccer
tournament was another occasion for fremied ethnic jubilation (Mason, 1990).
The cultural significance of Brazilian victories in the World Cup and of West
Indian triumphs in cricket have been studied by a number of scholars (James,
1963; Lever, 1983; Levine, 1980; Patterson, 1969; Sandiford & Stoddart, 1987;
Stoddart, 1987).
Americanization?
Should one refer to the social Drocesses of ludic diffusion as Americanization? When the actors are s me rich entrepreneurs who export an identifiably
American sport, like NFLstyle football, by means of Madison Avenue marketing
techniques, there can be no doubt about the appropriateness of the label. That
Canadian sports have been Americanized in this sense is undeniable. But there
is an unfortunate tendency to think of all contemporary examples of instrumental
rationality as if they were uniquely American. This is a mistake. Kidd's first
example of the "Americanization" of Canadian sports is the acquisition of athletes
from one city to play for another, but this employment of outsiders to represent
insiders in sports is a global phenomenon that can be traced back to antiquity.
Similarly, when Kidd laments that Canadian athletic performances have been
reduced to "the universal numeracy" characteristic of contemporary sports, he
is objecting not to Americanization but to a mania for quantification in sports
that began in 17th-century England and reached its apogee not in the United States
but rather in the German Democratic Republic (Kidd, 1991). (That the GDR
rewarded its athletes by other means than "endorsement checks'' hardly matters.)
Wagner's conceptualization is an improvement. He is correct to insist that
we are witnessing "a homogenization of world sports" rather than an Americanization (Wagner, 1990). "Mundalization," however, is not a suitable replace-
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A Response to Maguire
189
now complain, with somejustice, that young judokas care only for technique and
the thrill of conquest. It is worth noting, moreover, that the colored belts that
seem such a traditional element of judo were devised in 1927-by a Japanese
expatriate living in England.
Sumo provides another excellent example. This highly traditional-or
traditionalized-sport now shows accelerated signs of modernization. Ranks for
instance are now determined by a highly quantified point system. In order to adapt
to the exigencies of television, each wrestler, depending on his rank, has been
allotted a specified number of seconds to crouch and glare at his opponent. Not
even the top-ranked yokozuna can take his time when it is prime time he takes.
In regard to Wagner's references to Angolan-Brazilian capoeira (and to
other traditional sports that seem to have taken root in modem societies), therefore, one has to wonder how much if any of the traditional formal-structural
characteristics of the sport have survived the transplantation. As this journal's
extended discussion of the topic demonstrates, diffusion and modernization interact
in ways that defy simple analysis.
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Editor's Note
The Comments that have followed the article by J. Maguire (More Than a Sporting
Touchdown: The Making of American Football in England 1982-1990, pp. 213-237 of
SSJ Vol. 7 No. 3) on Americanization - Wagner (Vol. 7 No. 4), Klein (Vol. 8 No. I),
McKay and Miller (Vol. 8 No. I), and Kidd @p. 178-184 of this issue) - and Gumnann's
response to these Comments, have clearly not ended the debate on Americanization. The
issues raised here - Americanization, globalization, or modernization - are of significant
concern to sociologists in general and sport sociologists in particular. Interested readers
are encouraged to enter the debate as we embark on the era of the "new world order."