Dislipemias

Introduction

As Plummer (2010, p. 3) has noted, during the course of research, one of the primary tasks for sociologists is to ‘ask how people come to assemble their social lives and social worlds in radically different ways in different times and places’. This requires sociologists to examine not only the people whose social lives and worlds they wish to understand, but also the complex relationships they comprise with the many other groups of people with whom they are interdependent. In short, Plummer (2010, p. 24; emphases in the original) argues that:

We are always linked to others, so the wider whole is always greater than the part. Typically, we search for underlying patterns in these relations, examine the meanings

that people give to their lives in cultures, and see all of this as flowing in a constant and perpetual stream of social actions. There is no such thing as an isolated individual.

The objective of this chapter is to outline the various ‘sensitizing concepts’ that were employed in this study to help develop a more adequate understanding of how players within Academies and CoE at professional football clubs come to assemble their lives in the way they do, and, in particular, the views and experiences they have of education and welfare. For the most part, these concepts, which are drawn primarily from the work of the figurational approach of Norbert Elias, include: the concept of ‘figuration’; ‘unintended consequences’; ‘blind social processes’; ‘power’; ‘habitus’; and ‘I-’, ‘we-’, and ‘they-’ identities. The chapter

54 also draws upon other concepts such as ‘identity’ and the ‘self’, which are perhaps more closely associated with the work of symbolic interactionist sociologists such as Mead, Blumer and Goffman. Before outlining the central organizing concept of figurational sociology, namely, the ‘figuration’ (Murphy, Sheard & Waddington, 2000), it is worth outlining the following principles – derived from the work of Elias – that are taken as points of departure from other commonplace theoretical perspectives that inform much of the work in the sociology of youth and sport:

1. Sociology is about people in the plural – human beings who are interdependent with each other in a variety of ways, whose lives evolve in and are significantly shaped by the social figurations they form together.

2. These figurations are constantly in flux, undergoing changes of many kinds – some rapid and ephermeral, others slow but perhaps more lasting.

3. The long-term developments taking place in human figurations have been and continue to be largely unplanned and unforeseen.

4. The development of human knowledge takes place within human figurations, and is one important aspect of their overall development. (Mennell & Goudsblom, 1998, p. 39)

Human figurations and networks of interdependence

Elias dedicated much of his work to critiquing ‘what he called the Homo clausus, or “closed personality” image of humans’ (van Krieken, 1998, p. 56), which he argued was driven by the tendency for many sociologists to conceptualize the ‘individual’ and ‘society’ as if they

55 were separate and opposing things (Elias, 1978; Murphy et al., 2000). Rather than viewing humans as Homo clausus, that is, as freely acting, self-contained and separate human beings who exist independently of the society in which they live (Elias, 1978, 2001; Murphy et al., 2000), Elias proposed ‘seeing humans in the plural ... as part of collectives, of groups and networks, and stressed that their very identity as unique individuals only existed within and through those networks’ (van Krieken, 1998, p. 55). In rejecting the dominant Homo clausus approach to understanding the relationship between the ‘individual’ and ‘society’ in much orthodox sociological writing, Elias introduced the concept of figuration to help capture and emphasize the processual character of human societies. He argued that sociologists should be concerned with viewing human beings as Homines aperti, as open pluralities of interdependent people ‘bonded together in dynamic constellations’ (Murphy et al., 2000, p. 92). Accordingly, Elias (2000, p. 316) described a figuration as ‘a structure of mutually oriented and dependent people’ who constitute historically produced and reproduced networks of interdependence. Therefore, to adequately understand the relationships between individuals and groups of people it is essential to study them as comprising figurations of interdependent human beings (Elias, 1978). In other words, it is only possible to conceptualize the thoughts and actions of individual young footballers by exploring the pattern of their interdependence, the structure of their societies, and the figurations they form with each other. Indeed, it was Elias’s contention that ‘living together in mutual dependencies is a basic condition for all human beings’ (Goudsblom, 1977, p. 7), which is why:

Rather than seeing individuals as ever having any autonomous, pre-social existence, Elias emphasized human beings’ interdependence with each other, the fact that one can only become an individual human being within a web of social relationships and within

56 a network of interdependencies with one’s family, school, church, community, ethnic group, class, gender, work organization and so on. (van Krieken, 1998, p. 55)

Conceptualizing humans (such as young football players) as mutually-oriented and dependent people who comprise figurations and complex networks of interdependence sensitizes us to the ways in which human beings are enabled, and constrained, in their thoughts and actions by the people with whom they are interdependent. We are not enabled and constrained, it is argued, by what Elias considered ‘reified social forces’ (Murphy et al., 2000, p. 92) such as the schools we attend, the countries we live in, where we are employed, the families into which we are born, or, in the case of the present study, the Academies and CoE players attend. Rather, we are enabled and constrained by the people who comprise our school, our country, our place of employment, our family, and the people with whom we interact on a day-to-day basis. As we interact with these people who comprise figurations and whose networks of interdependence of which we are a part, then, ‘we are always connecting, even balancing, our inner resources given to us in our bodies and emotions (partly genetic) with those we find all around us in other people – near and far – whose significance helps give meanings to our lives’ (Plummer, 2010, p. 22).

Finally, in this study of young footballers and their relationships with adult members of professional clubs, it is worth briefly reflecting upon the long-term changes in the character of adult-child relations, as well as processes of youth development more generally, which has ‘concerned a double-edged development’ (van Krieken, 1998, p. 156) associated with the unplanned civilizing of social relations. As Wouters (2011, p. 142) has noted, there has since the nineteenth century been a gradual trend away from ‘social constraints towards self- constraints’ in which all groups, but especially adults and children, have in largely unplanned

57 ways placed increasing restraint both over themselves and over each other (Goodwin & O’Connor, 2006; van Krieken, 1998; Wouters, 2011). This process has involved two principal developments. On the one hand, there has been a long-term ‘democratization of relations between adults and children and a decline in inequality between them’ and, on the other, ‘a decline in the ritualized expressions of respect for parental authority and a more general informalization of relations between adults and children’ (van Krieken, 1998, p. 156; emphases in the original). As networks of interdependency have expanded and societies have become less hierarchical, the power differentials and social distance between groups have narrowed and resulted in a gradual social equalization between, for example, adults and young people (e.g. young footballers) (Elias, 1978; Wouters, 2007, 2011). Whilst there remain rather unequal power relations in modern societies such as Britain, Elias (1978, p. 69) described this unplanned process as involving:

the narrowing of power differentials and development towards a less uneven distribution of power chances; it permeates the whole gamut of social bonds, although there are impulses simultaneously running counter to this trend.

In the context of a gradual social equalization in the power relations between adults and young people, several waves of informalization have occurred simultaneously, the most recent of which occurred during the 1960s and 1970s (Kilminster, 1998; Wouters, 2007, 2011). As Wouters (2011, p. 141) has noted, among the overall trends in informalization have been:

58 a declining social and psychic distance between social classes, sexes and generations; a mixing of codes and ideals; increasing interdependencies; an informalization of manners; expanding mutual identifications; and ‘emancipation of emotions’.

One consequence of the gradual informalization of social relations that is of particular relevance to this study has been the tendency for the modes of behaviour between adults and younger people to grow closer together as the balance of power between them has titled away from adults, and towards being more in favour of younger people (Wouters, 1977, 2007). The changing power differentials between adults and young people have resulted, among other things, in more relaxed modes of behaviour, greater levels of leniency, differentiation and variety that currently find expression in the ‘emancipation of emotions’ (Wouters, 2011, p. 142) that have characterized this process. In relation to young people such as the players in this study, the increased social mixing with adults has been accompanied by ‘the less formal regulation of the spoken and written language, clothing, music, dancing and hair styles’ (Kilminster, 1998, p. 151) as they negotiate and ‘experiment with the boundaries of what is acceptable’ (Kilminster, 1998, p. 152) in social life. This expansion in the ‘range of behavioural and emotional alternatives’ (Wouters, 2011, p. 157) as part of processes of informalization have also been interwoven in many complex ways with other broader social processes, most notably the individualization of life that has characterized the growth of ‘youth’s new condition’ (Roberts, 1996), and the gradual change in the power ratios between adults and younger people.

59

Power

For figurational sociologists, like many other sociologists, power is a ‘prominent – if contested – feature of the social’ (Plummer, 2010, p. 117) world because complex networks of differentially interdependent people are characterized by power differentials that are dynamic and continually in flux (Elias, 1978; Murphy et al., 2000). More specifically, Elias (1978, p. 74) argued that ‘balances of power are always present wherever there is functional interdependence between people’. As human figurations are the aggregate of multiple one- on-one relationships between groups of people, they ‘are always organized around the dynamic operation of power’ (van Krieken, 1998, p. 57; original emphasis). The power differentials that characterize the networks of interdependence of which people are a part, however, are always a question of relative balances, never of absolute possession or absolute deprivation, for no one is ever absolutely powerful or absolutely powerless (Murphy et al., 2000). For example, whilst young footballers may perceive themselves as occupying an entirely powerless position compared to those occupied by the coach or manager of an Academy or CoE, that club management at least have to take into account their needs indicates the degree of power that individual and groups of players have to constrain the actions of their superiors.

It is also important to note that while power differentials can be expressed in a number of different forms (e.g. coercive, economic, political, or physical), there are numerous limitations of any theory that:

explains power differentials only in terms of a monopolistic possession of non-human objects, such as weapons or means of production, and disregards figurational aspects of

60 power differentials due purely to the differences in the degree of organisation of the human beings concerned. (Elias, 1994, p. xviii)

From a figurational perspective, therefore, power can only be adequately conceptualized as a structural characteristic of human figurations, and not solely as an object of possession (Elias, 1978). The balances of power that characterize human figurations vary as the balance of dependency between the people who constitute them change. Consider, for example, the relationship between a child and their parents. In the first months of their life, ‘children are … as good as completely in the power of their parents; more precisely, the parents’ power chances – compared with those of their children – are very great’ (Goudsblom & Mennell, 1998, p. 195). Whilst it would be easy to assume that the balance of power was tilted totally in favour of the parents, this is clearly not the case, for the young child is usually valued by its parents and this constrains them to act in relation to their needs; indeed, ‘in many cases, the birth of a child forces the parents to re-arrange their lifestyles’ (Goudsblom & Mennell, 1998, p. 195). As Goudsblom (1977, p. 7) has noted:

From the moment it is born a child is dependent upon others who will feed, protect, fondle, and instruct it. The child may not always like the constraints exerted by its strong dependencies, but it has no choice. By its own wants it is tied to other human beings – to its parents in the first place, and through its parents to many others, most of whom may remain unknown to the child for a long time, perhaps forever. All of the child’s learning, its learning to speak, to think, to act, takes place in a setting of social interdependencies. As a result, to the very core of their personalities men [sic] are

61 bonded to each other. They can be understood only in terms of the various figurations to which they have belonged in the past and which they continue to form in the present.

For figurational sociologists, therefore, the balances of power between, and behaviour of, children and their parents change characteristically over time and from one society to another throughout the life course as the networks of interdependencies of which they are a part from birth become longer, more complex, and more differentiated (Elias, 1978; Goudsblom & Mennell, 1998; Mennell & Goudsblom, 1998). As the child develops and grows, for example, their actions and behaviours will change as they learn from people around them, especially their parents. These changes in behaviour find expression in the changing nature of the relationships between the child and their parents, and the power differentials that characterize those relationships. Mennell and Goudsblom (1998, p. 36) explain the changes in the degree to which young people are dependent on their parents, for example, and the associated changes that typically characterize this process, as follows:

Because people are usually not equally dependent on each other, the power ratios between them are usually unequal … the power ratio between children and the adults on whom they are at first overwhelmingly dependent changes in a characteristic way over their lifetimes, and by the time the parents have reached old age the power ratio has usually tilted over in the opposite direction, in favor of their offspring.

Conceptualizing social relations in this way helps us to understand how, as people such as young footballers grow older, they become increasingly dependent upon, and interdependent with, many other people, which is often associated with a reduction in the power imbalances

62 between younger people and adults (Goodwin & O’Connor, 2006, 2009; Goudsblom & Mennell, 1998). From the perspective of young people this is often because as they progress through each life-stage they are less likely to need the same care from their parents as they once did and, in the parents’ later years, it is their children who are often constrained to care for them as they reach older age. Mennell and Goudsblom (1998, p. 18) describe the process thus:

As webs of interdependence spread, more people become more involved in more complex and more impenetrable relations. Less abstractly: more people are forced more often to pay more attention to more people, in more varying circumstances. This produces pressures towards greater consideration of the consequences of one’s own action for other people on whom one is in one way or another dependent.

Thus, the relationships between young people and others can be most adequately conceptualized as ‘emerging and contingent processes’ (Murphy et al., 2000, p. 93) where, in conjunction with the lengthening and increasing complexity of interdependency networks, the balance of power between groups who constitute those figurations also varies. Given the multi-dimensional character of these power relationships, it is important to recognize the ways in which people are ‘interconnected by a multiplicity of dynamic bonds’ (Murphy et al., 2000, p. 93) within their interdependent networks. This is because in order to understand the ways in which people think and act, ‘we have always to consider the many social needs by which these people are bonded to each other and to other people’ (Mennell & Goudsblom, 1998, p. 22). These bonds connect figurations of people, such as young footballers, together within networks of social interdependencies and these must be investigated sociologically to examine the ways in which people continually cope with the problems of their

63 interdependence with, and mutual dependence upon, others who comprise their relational networks (Elias, 1978; Goudsblom, 1977).

It is equally important to recognize that whilst changes in young people’s figurations are often brought about by the intentional actions of the groups involved, they are typically unplanned and unintended (Elias, 1978; Goudsblom, 1977). More specifically, figurational sociologists emphasize that the outcomes of complex processes involving the interweaving of the actions of large numbers of people cannot be explained simply in terms of the intentions of individuals. These outcomes, it is argued, are not outcomes that happen by chance or occur in an ad-hoc manner. Rather, they are the normal result of complex processes involving the interweaving of the more-or-less goal directed actions of large numbers of people that generates outcomes which no-one has planned (Elias, 1978). The significance of these unintended outcomes and ‘blind’ social processes for the present study is considered in the next section.

Unintended consequences and ‘blind’ social processes

For figurational sociologists the concept of the figuration helps to explain more adequately social life (van Krieken, 1998) and, in particular, the relationship between individuals and the societies they form. The concept of the figuration and networks of interdependencies also draws attention to the ways in which the differential power relations between those who constitute figurations can influence their own, and others’, actions, the outcomes of which are typically unplanned and contribute to the largely ad-hoc and ‘blind’ development of social

64 life (Elias, 1978). This aspect of social life is often overlooked, not least because for many human beings:

It is frightening to realize that people from functional interconnections within which much of what they do is blind, purposeless and involuntary. It is much more reassuring to believe that history – which is of course always the history of particular human societies – has a meaning, a destination, perhaps even a purpose. (Elias, 1978, p. 58)

Thus, notwithstanding the attractive simplicity of conceptualizing social life solely in terms of the purposeful and intended actions of human interactions, such a view fails to begin to address the question: ‘How does it happen at all that formations arise in the human world that no single human being has intended, and which yet are anything but cloud formations without stability or structure?’ (Elias, 2000, p. 365-6). Put simply, how can we begin to explain how social developments such as famine, global warming, or world wars, come to develop, even