Sociology of Sport Essay Interview (Advise you to read the INSTRUCTIONS)

Sports in Society:

Issues and Controversies

Chapter 10

Age and Ability:

Barriers to Participation and

Inclusion?

How able must you be to think of yourself as “able-bodied”? Which abilities matter the most in determining this?

What counts as ability?

Definitions of ability are influenced by ideology Ableist ideology = interrelated ideas and beliefs

that are widely used to identify people as physically or intellectually disabled, to justify treating them as inferior, and to organize social worlds and physical spaces without taking them into account  Rejects physical & intellectual variation as natural

and normal among humans and ignores that meanings given to particular abilities change over time and from one situation to another

Non-disabled vs disabled

Who decides which impairments count when classifying people as dis-abled—a term that implies a condition worse than “unable.”

Who makes that decision and for what reason?

What does it mean to `dis’ able a person?

These are political questions. They are answered politically in connection with official policies and

socially in relationships.

Photo by Elizabeth Pike

If each of these women can run 400-meters faster than 90% of the men in the world, on what basis

do we say they are “disabled”?

Socially constructing ability

Here is an ability continuum from low to high. Where do we draw the line to separate “disabled” from “able-bodied”?

Low ability High ability

Who should draw such a line? What criteria should be used to draw it? What are the implications of the line after it’s drawn? THE POINT:

Disability is related to real and often inconvenient impairments, but it has a central social

dimension to it—in a sense, we all create it.

Ableist ideology is related to:

AGEISM—an evaluative perspective that favors one age group—usually younger people—over others and justifies discrimination against particular age groups that are assumed to be incapable of full participation in mainstream activities.

ABLEISM—an evaluative perspective in which the label of disability is a mark of inferiority, meaning that a person is assumed to be incapable of full participation in mainstream activities.

Ideas and beliefs about ageing are changing, but ageism continues to be used to age-segregate nearly all forms of sport participation.

Being practical about ability

In terms of everyday life, an IMPAIRMENT is a physical, sensory or intellectual condition that potentially limits a person’s full participation in social and/or physical environments.

An impairment becomes a DISABILITY when an official definition makes it so, or when the social and physical environment contain barriers that convert impairments into functional limitations.

Protocol was adopted in December

2006. It used the following

definitions:

“Disability is an evolving concept and results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

Persons with disabilities are “Those who have long- term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others.”

Age as a social construction

Ideas and beliefs about AGE vary by culture, situation, and over time.

 Sixty is today’s 40 in the U.S. upper middle class where bodies have not been forced to do long term physical labor.

Ideas and beliefs about age in a meritocracy are linked with health and ability: when a person is physically active and cognitively capable, he or she is considered to be “young’ in relative terms.

Older people today are expected to be more active than they were in the past

As media coverage is given to active older people, such as this 101-year old who has completed a marathon, the cultural barriers to physical activity among older people begin to fade.

The politics of age and ability

As people live longer, ideas and cultural expectations about age and ageing change

In meritocracies older people may be marginalized due to the assumption that they no longer contrite to society

People who have internalized ageist attitudes may create a self-fulfilling prophecy by withdrawing from active participation in society

Beliefs about age, physical activity, and health influence official policies related to services and medical care

Ageing and sport participation

As ideas & beliefs about ageing become more open, participation in physical activities and sports increases among older people.

Elite athletes no play to an older age than in the past.

The “baby boom generation” in the U.S. & Western Europe have higher expectations for their physical lives that have past generation

 Some older people today are challenging the notion that sports are for younger people only

Photo by Nancy Coakley

As ideas and beliefs about age and sport participation change, it is more common to see grandparents participating in physical

activities with their children and grandchildren.

Research on older people

in sports indicates that

Participation in Masters events is increasing rapidly in many countries

World Masters Games are organized to be inclusive with a focus on the health advantages of lifelong sport participation.

Sport participation helps people negotiate the process of ageing.

Older people are attracted to events offering competition without pressure to constantly improve performance.

Sports and sport events could be organized with handicaps that would make age-integrated participation a regular

feature of competitive and recreational sports

Photo © Mark Bryan Makela/In Pictures/Corbis

AGE intersects with gender,

race & ethnicity, & social class

The meanings given to age vary with other socially significant attributes

These meanings are applied to ability and physical activity in ways that influence sport participation.

Media images of active, older people focus on upper middle class lifestyles (because this is where the discretionary money is located).

 For older people of limited means, cost and accessibility barriers may interfere with engaging in regular physical activities and sports.

The meaning of ABILITY

Ability and “disability” are tricky concepts because their meanings shift depending on the situation, task, and a person’s position and experiences.

For people with a physical or intellectual impairment, handicapped is a negative term that infers being held back, weighed down, and marked as inferior due to perceived impairments.

“Don’t “dis” me!”

 People with an impairment are “dis’d” when there are no accommodations made in the social and physical environments.

The medical model locates “disability” in the person with an impairment. This implies that an impairment

is a personal defect that requires a medical or technological “fix” to make the person “normal.”

The social model locates disability in a system of social oppression where accommodations are seen as extras rather than taken-for-granted parts of the designed environment.

The Meaning of Ability Differences

Because people with certain impairments are segregated in many societies, they often are defined as “others” and seen as strange or fearsome by people in mainstream social worlds.  This fosters even more marginalization and segregation

as people use a vocabulary of exclusion when talking about them: “handicapped,” “deformed,” “retard,” “quad,” “paraplegic,” “spaz,” etc.

 Most languages do not have an adequate vocabulary of inclusion and ability that defuses a fear of “otherness.” This creates the illusion that human variation is insignificant.

Living in the Empire of the Normal

Visible impairments in the Empire of the Normal require polite responses as residents of the Empire repeatedly ask:  What happened to you? Why are you this way? Why

are you not like me and everyone else in the Empire?

Power & performance sports are given high priority in the Empire of the Normal.  This often isolates athletes with impairments in

“special” programs where they receive “special” support—and where they will not inconvenience residents of the Empire or force them to question their definitions of “normal.”

The bodies of athletes with disabilities challenge expectations in the Empire of the Normal. Athletes with a disability are expected to have stories that explain “why my body is different from your body.”

This influences their socialization experiences and their identities as athletes.

Photo by Jay Coakley

“Will they let me play with my brace?” After watching her older sister play organized sports and seeing no one who was like her on the field, Ally wanted to know if they would allow her to play.

They would, but are she reached 10 years old, the parents of her teammates became impatient with her lack of peripheral vision & a weak left foot kick. So she decided to quit. Seven years later, she skis; her ski boot serves as a brace and there’s no competition with other people. Photo by Jay Coakley

It can be disabling when others define you in terms of an impairment. It highlights limitations and often creates loneliness. Having older role models helps deal with this issue.

Photo courtesy of the Challenged Athletes Foundation, http://www.challengedathletes.org

Images & narratives

in media coverage of disability sports

Media coverage is constructed around specific themes and messages. For athletes with disabilities, the coverage usually fits in one of these categories:

Patronizing/curiosity/tragedy/inspiration/

mystification/pity/surprise

The irony: As the athletes disrupt and challenge stereotypes about disabilities, the media coverage converts then into OTHERS, such as the “heroic supercrip” and the “courageous victim.”

Disability and gender

Women with disabilities are disadvantaged in a culture where femininity and heterosexual attractiveness are equated.

Men with disabilities are disadvantaged in a culture where manhood is constructed through narratives of conquest and domination.

Some people with disabilities fear being identified as “subnormal” and, therefore, avoid playing sports.

Photo by Jay Coakley

This form of mobility technology can be used in adapted sports. Could there be school district “paravarsity” teams that bring

students with disabilities together in a sport context?

Sport and ability

Sports are often at the center of inclusion battles involving people with impairments because

 Sports are highly visible and culturally valued activities

 Sports are believed to be unique socializing activities, important for self-affirmation, social acceptance, health and well-being

 Sport resources go primarily to those will elite skills or potential

Barriers to sport participation

 Lack of encouragement and guidance  Lack of fully accessible gyms and other facilities  Too many one-time opportunities and events and too

few regularly scheduled programs  A shortage of expertise in creating participation

opportunities that people with disabilities perceive as welcoming

 Overprotective family members and lack of family resources to support regular participation

 Few advocates with power and influence to mandate the elimination of barriers

 Scarcity of institutionalized sources of year round information/resources to support participation

Miracle Field in Myrtle Beach, FL is totally accessible and

allows people with impaired walking to play baseball.

Exclusion & Inclusion

The great sport myth perpetuates discourse that overlooks problems of access for people with impairments.

Processes of exclusion and inclusion involve power relations that occur formally and informally.

In the absence of adapted or “ability mixed” sport programs, informal games are the only option for participation.  Children with the willingness and abilities to create

on the spot adaptations are rare

Responses to exclusion

 When people lack power, they usually respond to systemic and pervasive exclusion with resignation or by seeking contexts in which they feel welcome

Over time, those who are excluded become invisible and their expectations for inclusion fade. This leads to

 Resignation and political impotence

 Further loss of opportunities to experience the “normalizing” effects of sports

Meaning of Inclusion

Social inclusion involves  Investments and strategies that close physical and social

distances and resource gaps that create us vs them attitudes

 Contexts designed so that previously excluded people see they are valued, respected, and contributing members of a group or community

 A proactive, developmental approach in which people are supported in connection with their needs

 Recognition of the reality of diversity and the commonality of people’s lived experiences and shared aspirations

Disability and the law

The Americans with Disability Act (ADA) requires that all youth sport programs open to the public cannot exclude children unless  There are threats to the health and safety of able-bodied

participants  Necessary accommodations fundamentally alter or cause

“undue burden” to a program.

This is fine, but most organized youth sports today are not organized to make children with (dis)abilities feel welcome or valued

New guidelines for inclusion

The ADA did not lead to meaningful inclusion

New U.S. Department of Education guidelines now mandate that “students with disabilities have an equal opportunity to benefit from the life lessons they can learn on the playing field or on the court”

This “mandate” had created panic among those who have never given a thought to this for of inclusion. This panic will lead to two responses

 Resistance based on all the standard excuses

 Efforts to be creative in meeting educational needs of students

“We are out there”

Toni Davis receives stares from people who don’t expect to see a black swimmer or one with only one arm.

She knows that all sport participation has a point of entry, and for people with a disability, it usually is through therapy, medical programs, or a network of family and friends.

Unless the “look and feel” of a program is welcoming, an ethnic minority person is not likely to participate.

Photo from Toni Davis

Sports as a cause of impairments

Sports in which risk, pain, and injury have been normalized, disabling injuries are too common.

As sports become commercialized there are pressures to engage in more dangerous moves, tricks, stunts, action.

Athletes with disabling injuries struggle to negotiate the transition from their former active “able” selves to being a person with a serious physical impairment

 Former NFL and college football players with CTE (and associated cognitive decline) face challenges

Disability Sports

Serve as contexts for normalizing bodies with impairments

Do not automatically leads to increased self acceptance—in fact the opposite can also occur

Exist to the extent that people are unwilling or unable to make accommodations so that mainstream sports are inclusive

Are sites where it is possible to initiate discussions about inclusion—although they can also be sites that reaffirm existing patterns of exclusion.

Paralympics: Sports for people

with physical impairments

There has been and continues to be a tense relationship between the IOC and the IPC

 The IOC does not want to share resources, publicity, media coverage, or sponsors with the IPC, nor does it ant the IPC to raise funds in ways that conflict with their fund raising.

 Current media contracts for covering the Olympic Games now also cover the rights to cover the Paralympic Games

The IPC has had legal battles with the IOC over flag and logo images. The IOC threatened to sue the IPC over Image A, because the 5-teardrops logo was too similar to the 5-rings logo. They also objected to Image B. So the IPC finally decided on Image C.

A

CB

Photo by Elizabeth Pike

When the 2013 Olympic and Paralympic Games were held in London in 2012, the local organizing committee, the media in the UK, and the British people embraced the Paralympics to extent never before seen.

This provided a welcome boost to the finances and reputation of the IPC

The Paralympics:

An internal challenge

Creating fair competition has always been a primary challenge for those who organize disability sports

Commercial success has become more important Athletes are assigned to one of many competition

categories based on the type and seriousness of the physical impairment(s). This process is  Managed by panels of experts on the limitations

associated with physical impairments  Guided by an 82-page code that is cumbersome and

complex; a revision is due in 2015.  The new code book also promotes spectator interest by

reducing the number of competitive categories.

Paralympics: Gender equity issues

Eliminating inequities in participation opportunities

 Often grounded in dominant definitions of masculinity and femininity in a culture

 May be related to religious beliefs

Establishing legal definitions of equity

Providing equal support for athletes

Achieving equity in coaching and administration jobs

When athletes in quad rugby use masculinized vocabulary to describe the intimidation and violence in their games, it challenges stereotypes about people with a disability, but it reaffirms a definition of masculinity that can lead to risky actions and disabling accidents.

Special Olympics: Sports for people

with intellectual impairments

 Special Olympics is the most successful NGO in the world in fund raising

 It sponsors 50,000 competitions a year—136 each day; more than 7500 athletes from 185 nations participated in the 2011 World Summer Games in Athens, Greece.

 In response to criticism, the organization has created a new approach to  Systematically engage participants in the larger

community  Prepare the community to include people with

intellectual disabilities into everyday activities so they may live more independently.

High schools in Fort Collins, Colorado hold “unified sport events” in which young people with a disability are matched with high school athletes for games that emphasize full inclusion and the development of relationships.

Disability Sport

Events and Organizations

Inclusion issues plus the wide range of physical abilities and attributes among human beings has led to the creation of multiple sport organizations that reflect the interests of specific populations:

 Dwarf Athletic Association of America

 International Committee of Sports for the Deaf

 Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association

 United States Association of Blind Athletes . . . and others

Whose sports count in society?

Why has NBC not provided live or prime time coverage of the Paralympics in the U.S.?

Why hasn’t the IOC mandated it?

Disability Sport Legacies

What are the social and cultural consequences of disability sports?  Only recently has this question been taken seriously by

researchers and people inside disability sports

Claims about empowering people and changing attitudes have never been systematically evaluated.

Data from recent studies indicate problems:  Paralympic athletes are not seen as role models by

people with a disability, because the athletes claim they are not disabled.

 Spectators see Paralympic athletes’ abilities and wonder why any there is a need for assistance and programs for people with disabilities.

Technology and Ability

When athletes use technologies to adapt their bodies to the physical challenges presented by sports, they blur the line between body and machine.

The use of prosthetic technologies is a controversial topic in sports.  Many people with impairments see technology as a

means of improving their lives  Many people in mainstream sports see prosthetic

technology as a threat to the meaning of sport performance and the current organization of sports.

Transhumanism:

Making people better than normal

 Believe that all bodies can be improved so that people can achieve goals currently out of reach.

 Claim that we overlooked available enhancement procedures and technologies because of outdated religious and cultural traditions that are no longer in sync with twenty-first-century knowledge.

 Athletes in the future will take-for-granted performance enhancing technologies, some of which will be introduced through disability sports

If you tore your ACL, would you want a stronger synthetic ligament put in your knee?

Social class, sport participation,

and access to technology

Social class has a major impact on people with disabilities because they

 Have an unemployment rate three times higher than people without disabilities

 Are three times more likely to live in households making less than $15,000

 Are less likely to have access to transportation

The cost of prosthetics is so high that most people with disabilities cannot afford them.

TO “ DIS ” OR NOT TO “ DIS ”

An official disability classification system  Is a literal life saver for people living with sever functional

limitations due to physical or intellectual impairments  Leads many people to assume that unimpaired bodies are

natural and normal, and that people classified as dis-abled are subnormal, below average, and less than whole as a human being.

 Obscures recognition of the abilities of people with impairments and creates a label that is a barrier to participation in mainstream society.

Is there a sensible alternative?

Current trends: Sports for people with disabilities (I)

 More people disabled by war, lack of medical care, and poverty

 Increased recognition that people with disabilities desire to play sports and have a right to expect opportunities

 Continuing use of sport participation as therapy

 More sports for elite athletes with disabilities (continued)

Current trends: Sports for people with disabilities (II)

 New, but expensive, technologies that facilitate sport participation

 More visible examples of sports for elite athletes with disabilities

 Emerging ideas, vocabularies, and orientations that support people with a disability and their participation in sports There remains a pressing need for advocates

to work along side people with disabilities to create fully inclusive sport programs

and fully accessible facilities