A Model of Discipline

The Rule(s) of Midnight Football and the Production of Order in Subjects and Society

Bibliographic Data

ID2349331
AuthorsDavid Ekholm (0000-0002-6252-9220, Linköping University, corresponding author), Magnus Dahlstedt (0000-0003-0694-5753, Linköping University)
Year2020
Volume44
Issue5
Pages450-475
Publication date2020-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Sport and Social Issues (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0193-7235 • E-ISSN: 1552-7638
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0193723520919818
OpenAlexW3030497834
LanguageEN
Citations received8
References cited50

This article explores the rationalities of social change of a sports-based intervention, midnight football, carried out on two sites in the suburban landscape of Sweden. Based on interviews with coaches and managers and on-site observations, we examine how rationalities and technologies of social change are promoted, how technologies of social change are assumed to operate within the intervention, and how the intervention objectives are formed in relation to the technologies promoted. The analysis is guided by a Foucauldian perspective on disciplinary and pastoral power. It displays how various conceptualizations of risk underpin the intervention, and, in particular, technologies of spatial and temporal diversion. Youth are (dis)located to perceived sites of order and rule, as midnight football is portrayed as a regulated arena in opposition to outside sites of disorder. To form and visualize the rules of law, coaches, ascribed the position of role-models and law-makers, have a particularly important role to play, embodying law, rule, and conduct. In addition, disciplinary power operates through normalizing sanctions, stressing the corrective influence of coaches and readjustment of youth conduct. The technologies promoted are underpinned by goals to form a certain order of subjects, where ideals of conduct can be transferred and proliferated to the world outside, forming order and security in society. Those deemed at-risk and in need of social change, are addressed by means of discipline and control. Conclusively, the technologies promoted appear more as a symptom of existing patterns of inequalities and segregation than as a solution to the challenges confronted

Business · Discipline · Football · Intervention (counseling · Midnight · Opposition (politics · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Public relations · Sanctions · Social science · Sociology · Law · Psychology · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports, Gender, and Society · Youth Development and Social Support