Fragments on Sportisation

This chapter is made up of three previously unpublished texts on processes of 'sportisation', mainly in eighteenth-century and ninenteenth-century England. The first draws upon various editions of Stonehenge's Manual of British Rural Sports to demonstrate the gradual transition from the dominance of 'field sports' like foxhunting to that of modern sports like football. The second fragment deals with the development of cricket and the impact of the specific figuration of social class on that process. The thrid piece sketches out ideas for a book on sports that Elias planned to write but never completed.