‘Culture’, ‘civilization’ and the sociology of sport

This paper discusses some of the work that I and a number of colleagues at the University of Leicester have done on sport in relation to what the late Norbert Elias (1939) called the theory of the ‘civilizing process’. It is first necessary to outline some of the basic assumptions of the ‘figurational/process‐socilogical’ approach (Mennell, 1989) on which this work is based and to respond to some of the criticisms that have been made of it. I shall start, however, by offering a brief comment on the history of the sociology of sport and the current ‘state of play ‘ in the field.