he Figurational Analysis of the Development
f Rugby Football:
Reply to Ruud Stokvis
ric Dunning
am grateful to Dr. Stokvis for his critical
eview of B a r b a r i a n s , G e n t l e m e n a n d P l a y e r s (1),
specially for his conclusion that it is "the
est sociological study of the development of a
port that (he) know(s) of" (2). Such praise is
elcome. Nevertheless, it is necessary to point
ut that his criticisms are not always based on
n accurate interpretation of the text. He also
lisrepresents some of the figurational analyses
hat are offered and misconstrues aspects of Elias's
heory of the civilizing process. Accordingly,
.hese few notes are necessary to set the record
traight and to clarify an analysis that is, per.aps, more complex than it may at first appear.
stokvis offers a number of criticisms of B a r b a r a n s , G e n t l e m e n a n d P l a y e r s . I shall reply here
:o just four of them. They all relate either to
>ur employment of the figurational method and/or
:o our interpretation of Elias. Accordingly, they
\ay be of wider interest. These critical points
ind my reply to them are as follows:
according to Stokvis, Kenneth Sheard and I argued
:hat civilizing changes were introduced into
:ootball at Rugby School "as part of the reforms
\ade (...) under the influence of the higher middle
ilasses". He goes on to claim that the introduction
>f stricter violence-controls into "soccer" at
;ton, a school socially dominated by aristocrats,
ihows that "the presence of relatively many boys
:rom the higher middle classes obviously was not
i necessary condition for limiting violence in a
>ublic school sport". We failed to draw this
'obvious conclusion", he suggests, because it
533
would have led "the way in which (we) use the
theory of civilization (...) (to) become too un­
settled". However, we did not draw such a conclu
sion for the simple reason that it is beside the
point. More specifically, this criticism involve
two factual misunderstandings of our text, and
these are compounded by Stokvis's reduction of a
figurational-developmental analysis of a complex
social integration into a simple class analysis.
Let me demonstrate how that is so.
The Eton game we refer to was not "soccer" but
the Eton "Field Game". So far as we were able to
ascertain, this was the first form of football’i
which an absolute taboo on the use of hands was
introduced. It was probably one of the prototype
from which modern soccer was developed but it wa
an earlier form that differed from it in signifi
cant respects. Stokvis's account also implies th.
we attempted to analyse the regulation of violem
in Eton football d i r e c t l y . In fact, we treated .
i n d i r e c t l y as part of a discussion of the format
of the Football Association and the Rughy Footba.
Union. We pointed out in that connection that a
limited civilizing process took place with local
variations in football at all the public schools
in the 1840's and 50's. The presently available
evidence suggests that Rugby in 1845 was the
school at which this process began. However, in
1849 at Eton - we did not mention this in our
account - the boys laid down a rule which enjoin«
that: "No player may hit with the hands or arms
or use them in any way to push or hold one of thi
opposite side". Around the same time, similar ru
were introduced at Harrow and Winchester (3). In
each of these schools, the limitations imposed
on the use of physical force were stricter than
those at Rugby. Since, at least in the cases of
Eton and Harrow and probably of Winchester, too,
the proportion of aristocratic pupils was greate:
than at Rugby, that might seem to substantiate
Stokvis's case. However, that would be a false
conclusion to draw because of the second main
factual error which vitiates his account.
Rugby was a school attended primarily by boys
from the M i d l a n d s g e n t r y . One could designate th<
534
stratificationally als "higher" or "upper middle
class" but they have to be distinguished from
other groups at the same level, more particularly
from the ascendant b o u r g e o i s groups whose wealth
and power grew correlatively with industrial­
ization. It was the growing power of the l a t t e r
that we took to be crucial in explaining the
reforms that, starting in the 18 30's, were made in
the public schools. And it was the presence at
Rugby of comparatively large numbers of the f o r m e r
that we took to be crucial in explaining the fact
that it was at that school that such reforms were
first successfully introduced. However, Stokvis's
account does not only err in matters of factual
and conceptual detail of this kind. Our study
reports a figurational analysis of the civilizing
transformation of relationships that focusses on
the part played in this process by shifting power
balances at different levels of social integration,
and he reduces it to a static account in terms
of the relative class compositions of particular
public schools. A brief summary of what we wrote
will make this clear.
Football in the 18th and 19th century public
schools was organized in terms of the "prefectfagging" system, a system of pupil self-rule which
grew up largely consequent upon the power imbalance
between masters and boys that resulted from the
fact that the sons of aristocrats and gentlemen
became socially dominant in the majority of such
schools in the course of the 18th century. How­
ever, as, with increasing industrialization, the
balance of power in British society began to veer
more in favour of bourgeois groups, so there
arose pressure for reform of the public schools,
particularly of the prefect-fagging system. Such
reform came first at Rugby because it formed a
"weak link in the chain" mainly because the
proportion of aristocrats among its pupils was
lower than at schools such as at Eton and Harrow,
thus reducing the status difference and hence the
power imbalance between masters and boys that
existed at most of the other public schools (4).
Rugby was not only the first public school at
which the prefect-fagging system was successfully
535
reformed. It was also the first at which civilizing
reforms of football were undertaken. The conjunc­
ture between these two social processes, we argued,
suggests that the former was a precondition for
the occurrence of the latter. In short, the whole
burden of what we wrote stresses that reform of
the prefect-fagging system, the regularization of
an authority system that had previously been
conducive to disorder, was the principal pre­
condition for the incipient modernization and
civilization of football. Nowhere do we suggest
that simple class differences between schools made
some more and others less amenable to reform. Our
analysis of their class composition was undertaken
mainly as part of an attempt to show why reform
of the prefect-fagging system and a limited
civilization of football, processes that were
common to all the public schools towards the end
of the first half of the nineteenth century,
occurred first of all at Rugby.
II
Stokvis's next bone of contention also concerns
the way in which Elias's theory of the civilizing
process is used in our study. More specifically,
he is critical of the analysis of violence in
sport and the wider society offered in the con­
clusion. There is a widespread belief that we are
currently witnessing a growth of violence in both
these spheres. Stokvis concedes our argument that
this belief is probably to be accounted for more
in terms of a "moral panic" than a factual in­
crease. However, he ignores our suggestion that
the illusion of an excessively high and increasing
rate of violence may be, in part, a consequence
of perceptual magnification through the applicatior
of relatively advanced civilizing standards, in
short, that the contemporary moral panic over
violence may provide s u p p o r t for Elias's theory
rather than representing a d i s a o n f i r m a t i o n of it.
Stokvis is also unwilling to concede our hypothesis
that a limited factual increase in violence may
have recently occurred in Rugby and other sports
to the extent that their increased "cultural,
centrality" and the seriousness with which they
5 36
are pursued has led to a greater emphasis being
placed in them on victory and achievement-striving.
We introduce Elias's theory of functional demo­
cratization to explain this trend and suggest
that, despite superficial appearances to the
contrary, the putative increase in violence does
not represent a de-civilizing development because
it involves a shift in the balance among different
forms of violence from more "expressive" towards
more "instrumental" forms (5). This aspect of our
analysis is then conflated by Stokvis with the
conjectures we offer on the subject of football
hooliganism. It is in that context that we specu­
lated - very briefly - about the possibility that
functional democratization, or structurally
generated pressure "from below", may, under
specific circumstances, be conducive to a decivilizing development of greater -or lesser
duration, in short, that one of the central
structural constituents of a civilizing process
m a y lead it to be "curvilinear" under specific
circumstances and once a certain stage has been
reached. Let me elaborate on this.
Football hooliganism is a deep-rooted problem in
British society. We suggested that a core aspect
of it, namely the recurrent fights that break out
between fan groups, may be related to norms of
"aggressive masculinity" that are generated in
specific working-class communities, namely in those
where forms of bonding predominate that approximate
closely in certain respects to what Durkheim
called "mechanical solidarity" (6). Such commu­
nities, we suggested, have been subjected to
"exogenously" generated civilizing pressures but,
on account of their "segmental" structures and
bonding in terms of "similitudes", not, to any­
thing like the same extent, to civilizing pressures
that are generated "endogenously". That is, the
c o m p a r a t i v e l y undifferentiated structures of such
communities mean that their members are less
subject than, e.g. most members of the middle
classes, to multi-polar controls of the type
generated by a complex division of labour. How­
ever, the structure of modern British society e.g. the fact that it has an economy capable of
providing youth from such communities with money
537
to travel a 1-1 over the country to watch the foot­
ball teams they support and that there is a
transport system capable of getting them there means that football hooliganism, which was once
a predominantly local problem, has become national
in scope. In short, the modern structure of social
interdependencies has enhanced the power of such
youth to express norms which conflict with those
of established groups. So far, all the signs are
that these established groups are reacting repressively rather than accommodatively to this
problem, e.g. by imprisonment, the imposition of
severe fines and compulsory attendance at detention
centres, rather than by attempting to discover
means of integrating "hooligan" groups into the
larger society in a manner that would be regarded
as mutually satisfactory. As a result, the violence
of football hooliganism - and it is, on balance,
violence of an "expressive" rather than an
"instrumental" kind - is liable to escalate.
There are also signs in present-day Britain that
established groups are beginning to adopt a more
repressive approach in relation to a wider range
of problems than simply football hooliganism. This
led us to speculate that, in societies where
established groups are unwilling or unable to
make concessions to outsiders whose power has
grown, a civilizing process may be "curvilinear"
in certain respects, more specifically, that
functional democratization has consequences that
are, on balance, civilizing as long as established
groups are willing and able to make concessions
but that "regressive", de-civilizing consequenses
are likely to ensue to the extent that an establisment becomes rigid, repressive and unwilling or
unable to respond accommodatively to mounting
pressure "from below" (7). Such a situation, we
suggested, m a y have been reached in present-day
Britain and we hypothesized that the class
divisions expressed in Rugby football - especially
those exemplified in the split between Rugby Union
and Rugby League - are symptomatic of divisions in
the wider society that appear to be more rigid,
divisive and hence potentially regressive than
those in most other societies at a comparable
level of social development.
538
Stokvis apparently has not grasped the complexity
or hypothetical character of these arguments. As
one can see, he conflates our speculative analyses
of: 1) the trend towards growing instrumental
violence in Rugby and sport more generally;
2) football hooliganism; and 3) specific aspects
of the social process in contemporary Britain.
And, on the basis of such confusions, he puts
forward a criticism that reveals his failure to
understand crucial aspects of Elias's theory. Thus
he writes:
"(Dunning and Sheard) assume that the civilizing process
occurs in a curvilinear way and that at the present time
a certain decivilization occurs. Also on this subject
Dunning and Sheard must force their theory to bring it
in accordance with their facts. The assumption that the
civilizing process has a curvilinear course constitutes
an importance change in the theory of E l i a s . To make
such an assumption without the support of clear empirical
arguments only to explain the supposed growth of violence
of rugby, seems forced".
Stokvis evidently takes Elias to have propounded a
nineteenth century type "progress" theory which
assumes that a demonstrable trend in social
development is law-like in character and will
necessarily continue in the future. It is diffi­
cult to see where he can have obtained the warrant
for such an interpretation of Elias, for the
latter takes pains to point out that he does not
regard the civilizing process as irreversible. He
refers repeatedly to shortterm reverses and
introduces both a "pendulum" and a "wave-motion"
analogy as metaphors for illustrating a charac­
teristic aspect of the European civilizing process
in the period he has studied. During that period,
the overall direction of the long-term 'trans­
formation was, on balance, "progressive" but no­
where does Elias hint that he believes the process
will n e c e s s a r i l y continue in that direction, i.e.
that "regressive" developments of greater or
lesser duration are i n c o n c e i v a b l e . In short, even
though our conjecture on this issue may have been
crudely expressed or empirically wrong, it is by
no means inconsistent with, or a radical departure
from, Elias's theory. Stokvis has evidently
approached the latter, not as a new developmental
539
theory must entail, namely preconceptions that
identify it too closely with its nineteenth century
antecedents.
Ill
Misunderstandings also appear in Stokvis's
critique of our analysis of amateurism and profes­
sionalism in Rugby. We are held to work in that
context with the concept of a sporting h o m o
o l a u s u s and to judge changes in Rugby and other
sports "in terms of an unchanging amateur ideal",
in that way limiting our view of what is "really
happening in sport". According to Stokvis, our
analysis of this issue is
"based on the supposition that in a pure amateur situa­
tion the individual amateur can decide completely for
himself when he does and does not want to play, the
sportive 'homo c l a u s u s '. Yet also in a pure amateur
situation the player will feel the pressures of team­
mates, trainers, club members, teachers, members of his
family, friends and his own ambition. The pure amateur is
also dependent on others and influenced by t h e m " .
This is another misrepresentation. It is not we
who cling to an "unchanging amateur ideal", the
concept of a sporting h o m o o l a u s u s , but the r u l i n g
g r o u p s in Rugby Union, and, to a lesser extent,
in other sports in Britain. What we attempted was
a sociogenetic analysis of the amateur ethos and
of the unsuccessful attempt of specific British
elite groups to maintain it under changing social
conditions. In short, Stokvis has projected one
of the principal o b j e c t s of our analysis - the
static belief system of a particular ruling group
- onto our analysis itself. A brief summary of
what we wrote will make this clear.
We first showed that the amateur ethos is the
dominant ideology of contemporary Rugby Union.
Central to this ethos is the ideal of playing
sport "for fun". It involves a downgrading of
success-striving, opposition to training and
coaching, hostility to the formalization, mone­
tization and commercialization of sport, and a
"player-centred" antagonism to spectators. This
ethos, we argue, was first formulated as an
540
i d e o l o g y by the "public school elite",
the ruling group in Britain from the second half
of the nineteenth century onwards. We designate
them by this term in order to indicate the part
played by the public schools in unifying segments
of the established, landed and ascendant, bourgeois
ruling classes. However, that is less germane for
present purposes than our suggestion that the
amateur ethos was contradicted in several ways by
the sporting practice of the public school élite.
In fact, even though they were not constrained to
develop it as an explicit ideology, the power of
the 18th century aristocracy and gentry enabled
t h e m to approximate more closely in their sporting
practice to the sporting ideals of the public
school élite than was possible for the public
school élite themselves. That was because the
latter stood at the apex of a more complex social
figuration, one that subjected them to more in­
sistent social pressure "from below". Accordingly,
we conclude that it was the pressures generated
from within this social figuration that led the
public school élite to articulate the amateur
ethos as an explicit ideology and that they did
so principally as a means of distinguishing them­
selves from and excluding increasingly powerful
groups which they perceived as alien and hostile.
explicit
The tensions generated within this figuration led
to the split between Rugby Union and Rugby League.
The former game, however, whilst remaining
nominally amateur, has since developed in ways
that contradict the pristine amateur ethos. Its
teams have become stratified into "major" and
"minor" clubs; the former play regularly in front
of crowds and levy admission charges; competition
has been formalized through the introduction of
cups and leagues; coaching and training are now
central; the Rugby Football Union employs a paid
administrative staff; and, although it is vigor­
ously denied officially, many top-class players
are paid more for playing than the expenses to
which they are legitimately entitled. Each of these
developments was staunchly resisted by the
dominant groups in Rugby Union and the struggle
still continues. It is this ongoing struggle that
forms the subject of our last empirical chapter.
541
Our analysis may be deficient in some or even all
respects but it is difficult to see how it betrays
o u r commitment to the notion of a sporting h o m o
o l a u s u s or to an "unchanging amateur ideal". That
is true of the ruling groups in Rugby Union but in
order to show that we have unintentionally
absorbed aspects of their static ideology and that
our analysis is vitiated as a result, arguments
more detailed, refined and accurate than those
adduced by Stokvis would have to be introduced.
IV
We are accused by Stokvis of making another "theo­
retical f a u x p a s " in what.he calls our "treatment
of professional rugby", i.e. expressed more
dynamically and therefore more adequately, in the
manner in which we analyse the p r o f e s s i o n a l i z a t i o n
of Rugby League. The gist of his critique in this
regard is conveyed in the following extract. He
writes:
"After making clear ingeniously why members of the
business and industrial class were against professional­
ism in soccer, while they were not opposed to it in
rugby, (Dunning and Sheard) go into the matter of how
professional rugby developed. They state that the
interest of the middle classes in rugby as a means of
social control led to remodelling the game into a form
of mass entertainment (...) Empirical arguments for this
(...) statement are difficult to give because there is
a theoretical misunderstanding involved. Dunning and
Sheard confuse a latent function, the not recognized and
not intended consequences of a phenomenon, with the motive
of those involved. It may be rugby had a social control
function, but there remains the question of whether mem­
bers of the middle classes involved in professional rugby
furthered the sport because of this function".
This criticism is based on yet another simplifi­
cation of a complex figurational analysis. We
centainly h y p o t h e s i z e that an interest in social
control was one of the influences which led ruling
groups in Lancashire and Yorkshire to promote
Rugby League as a form of mass entertainment but
this hypothesis is extracted by Stokvis from its
broader context. It almost appears as if he has
responded to the stimulus words, "social control",
542
with an automatic critical response and been
blinded in the process to the totality of our
analysis. Our problem was to explain how and why
the ruling groups in Rugby League, who were
committed to a "weak" version of the amateur ethos
at the time of the split with Rugby Union, were
constrained, over a period of around ten years, to
abandon that commitment and to participate in the
development of Rugby League as a spectator-oriented,
professional sport the rules of which differ in
significant ways from those of the parent game.
Apart from hypothesizing that their class position
gave them an interest in promoting the game for
purposes of social control, we explained this
transformation by reference to the wider social
figuration in which they were involved. We laid
special stress in this connection on the way in
which this figuration generated strong communal
interest in local rugby teams, leading to the heroworshipping of players with a consequent increase
in their power relative to those involved in the
game in an administrative capacity. This power
increment, we suggested, enabled players to demand
more than "legitimate expenses", a tendency that
was reinforced by the strength of local pressure
for succesful teams because this led to the
"importation" of star players from distant parts
of the country and because financial inducements
had to be offered in order to accomplish this.
Thus, Stokvis weakens our hypothesis about social
control by extracting it from its wider context,
making it into an "Aunt Sally" that is easy to
knock down. It m ay be that this hypothesis is
wrong. Sociologically adequate data about the past
are difficult to obtain and, taken in isolation,
the evidence on which this hypothesis is based is
certianly relatively slight. But unless he has
svidence to the contrary, Stokvis has no warrant
for stating unequivocally that we have committed
the theoretical f a u x p a s of confusing a "manifest"
with a "latent" function. Accepting, for the mo­
ment, that Merton's conceptual dichotomy is an
adequate one and relevant in the context of a
figurational analysis, such an argument should
have been presented t e n t a t i v e l y , i.e. as a possi­
bility, unless Stokvis is able to s h o w beyond
543
reasonable doubt that an interest in social contn
was n o t one of the determinants that led members 1
the business and industrial middle classes in
Lancashire and Yorkshire to abandon their amateur
commitment and promote Rugby League as a form of
entertainment. Stokvis, however, does not present
evidence on behalf of his case but rests content
with simply asserting that our analysis is "as
primitive (in this regard) as most other critical
meant treatises about 'sport as opiate for the
people'". We are thus damned by association but
the reader is not provided with a rationale which
explains the inadequacy of the "critical treatise;
with which our analysis is indiscriminately lumpei
together.
Notes and References
1. Eric Dunning and Kenneth Sheard, Barbarians, Gentlemen
and Players: A Sociological Study of the Development of
Rugby Football, Martin Robertson, Oxford, 1979.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
(Published simultaneously by the New York University
Press, New York, U.S.A.; The Australian National Univers:
Press, Canberra, Australia; and Price Milbur
Welling­
ton, New Zealand).
This and all other quotations from Stokvis's text are
taken from the paper, "Rugby and Figurational Sociology:
a Critique of Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players" , that
he presented at the Conference on "The Civilizing Proces
and Figurational Sociology", at Balliol College, Oxford,
in January 1980.
These data were obtained from J.R. Witty, "Early Codes",
in A.H. Fabian & Green, (eds), Association Football ,
Caxton, London, 1960, pp. 133 ff.
The analysis of this issue in Barbarians, Gentlemen and
Players is an elaboration of the analysis presented in m
"Power and Authority in the Public Schools (1700-1850)",
in P. Gleichmann, J. Goudsblom & H. Korte (eds.), Human
Figurations, Amsterdam, 1977, pp. 225-258.
We did not use this terminology in Barbarians, Gentlemen
and Players. It is clear from the overall context, h o w ­
ever, that that is what we meant.
In the research on football hooliganism that I am curren
carrying out with my colleagues, Patrick Murphy and John
Wil l i a m s , we have abandoned this Durkheimian terminology
and now refer to this aspect of such figurations as "seg
544
mental bonding". It was Johan Goudsblom who first pointed
out the dangers of reliance on an overly Durkheimian
conceptualization and led us to embark on what has turned
out to be a radical reconceptualization in more strictly
"Eliasian" terms.
7. This is, in some respects, a refinement of the analysis
which appears at the end of the conclusion to Barbarians,
Gentlemen and Players. However, even though .the formulation
there was slightly di f f e r e n t , this is clearly the gist of
what we w rote.
545