Hierophany and Sport

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Overall, this is a beneficial piece and enhances the literature. More clarity is needed on the subjective vs. objective elements on page 7 and a more thorough conclusion is needed. In terms of the subjective vs. objective, you appear to argue that sport cannot be seen as a manifestation of the sacred for all, but could be a representation for the individual. I would encourage you to be more explicit in your language on page 7 and in the conclusion. Your conclusion feels very rushed. You have used fairly academic language and concepts throughout the article and this feels overly simplistic.

The copy I received had endnotes, but no numbers within the text to delineate what those references referred to. It had in text citations, but no works cited. If this was how the article was submitted, this has to be modified before publication.

 

I have added specific comments on the file below.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for your overall assessment of the text, as well as for your specific comments and detailed suggestions for modifications in the attached file. I have taken all of them into consideration, thought deeply and tried to suggest new wording.
However, I could not comment more precisely on the clarification of the subjective and objective elements, because the whole text is concerned with this topic and the subject cannot be concisely defined in one sentence. It is that paradox of Eliade, where the sacred and the profane are two ways of being in the world, distinguishing the position of religious and non-religious person. But this is not the same as objective and subjective positions. I have attempted to make the point more clear and reiterate it in the conclusion, and hope that the distinction thus made is clearer. The note on p 7 bottom (a secular search for meaning) is explained by the following sentence. I suggest that Bailey's position of the secular (between the profane and the sacred) can be understood as a spiritual one. References are not used in the text; the citation uses the APA form, as required by the journal (i.e., references to sources directly in the text and a reference list at the end).

Reviewer 2 Report

Excellent paper. Structurally sound. Makes a sound contribution to the sport and religion body of literature.

Author Response

Thank you very much for such a positive review of my manuscript. Your opinion is a great encouragement for me.

Reviewer 3 Report

The author(s) use philosophy to offer arguments about sport’s relationship with the sacred and profane. They ask if sport can be a religious way of being in the world. Relying on the concept of hierophany, the authors argue that modern sport is best understood as a representation of the sacred, but not a presentation of it.  Modern sport may be interpreted by some as sacred and an implicit form of religion, but the institution of sport itself does not act as an explicit form of religion nor offer a direct presentation of the sacred.

 

I find the arguments made by the author(s) to be compelling, particularly how modern sport should be understood as a representation of the sacred for some participants. My criticisms are focused on the following areas: 1) Motivation for this intervention/argument, 2) Better context about the “sporting sacred” in the modern sports world 3) Too narrow framing of how social scientists approach symbolism, ambiguity, rationality, and use data when studying sport.

 

I’d like authors to be more assertive about why it’s important for us to interrogate sport’s relationship to the sacred & profane, especially in relation to the notion of the “sporting sacred”, which seems to be something the author(s) find fault with. Is this a glaring hole or misinformed way of thinking about the relationship between (or definitions of) sport and religion? Are many scholars or public discourse reproducing the idea that sport is a metaphysical manifestation of a supernatural reality; or that sport is a manifestation of religion? Does the term “sporting sacred” mislead or flatten varied contexts/histories of sport in relation to religion?  Why do we need to be aware of how ball games and/or collective sporting rituals during the pre-modern period?[1]  Addressing some of these questions could make the motivations and contributions of this piece more precise.

 

And what is the significance/implications of sport not being a direct presentation of the sacred in the profane world? Why does this matter in relation to how religion operates in the modern world and how different people interpret their experiences in sport as sacred and/or spiritual? The authors claim that “modern sport can be a substitute for religion, a promotion for religion, but not a manifestation or essential part of it” (p.7). Why is it important for this to be known by scholars studying people’s lived experience with sport who may articulate notions of belief in its sacred, spiritual, or religious qualities? This is somewhat addressed in the latter part of the paper, but I think referencing a specific study/example (not a macro-mega event like the Olympics) where participants interpret their experiences through religious language/feeling would enhance this claim (for instance, MMA gyms, Crossfit, Football/Soccer Fan Groups, Roller Derby, College Football Tailgating).

 

The authors emphasize that philosophy is needed to answer these questions about sport and religion because other fields are too reliant on quantitative data, and less engaged with symbolism and ambiguity. I disagree with this framing of various disciplines who study sport. Many scholars of sport focus a great deal on symbolic meaning, discourse, and how ambiguity and uncertainty define this social arena. I list a handful of pieces from the social sciences, cultural studies, ethnic studies, and media studies that center lived human experience, symbolic meaning, and ambiguity in their analysis of sport and the social world. Some of these works are about religion specifically and some aren’t. The author doesn’t need to cite all these works in the paper, but I think it is clear how much scholarship there is about sport, symbolic meaning, and lived experience that is not dependent on statistical models. Ultimately, I recommend that the author pushes against creating an artificial oppositional binary between philosophy, psychological discourse, and sociological analyses.

 

I do not expect the author(s) to answer each question that I’ve posed in the review, but I hope the questions are useful prompts during the revision process.

 

References to Consider

           

Bain-Selbo, Eric. 2008. “Ecstasy, Joy, and Sorrow: The Religious Experience of Southern College Football.” The Journal of Religion and Popular Culture 20(1):4–4. doi: 10.3138/jrpc.20.1.004.

 

Gong, Neil. 2015. “How to Fight Without Rules: On Civilized Violence in ‘De-Civilized’ Spaces.” Social Problems spv014. doi: 10.1093/socpro/spv014.

 

Green, Kyle. 2016. “Tales from the Mat: Narrating Men and Meaning Making in the Mixed Martial Arts Gym.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 45(4):419–50. doi: 10.1177/0891241615573786.

 

Changing on the Fly: Hockey through the Voices of South Asian Canadians

by Courtney Szto

 

Hartmann, Douglas. 2000. “Rethinking the Relationships Between Sport and Race in American Culture: Golden Ghettos and Contested Terrain.” Sociology of Sport Journal 17(3):229–53.

 

Hartmann, Douglas. 2003. “What Can We Learn from Sport If We Take Sport Seriously as a Racial Force? Lessons from C. L. R. James’s Beyond a Boundary.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 26(3):451–83. doi: 10.1080/0141987032000067282.

 

Musselman, Cody. 2019. "Training for the “Unknown and Unknowable”: CrossFit and Evangelical Temporality" Religions 10, no. 11: 624. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10110624

 

O’Connor, Paul. 2018. “Handrails, Steps and Curbs: Sacred Places and Secular Pilgrimage in Skateboarding.” Sport in Society 21(11):1651–68. doi: 10.1080/17430437.2017.1390567.

 

Putney C (2001) Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880-1920. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press

 

Segrave, Jeffrey O. 2000. “Sport as Escape.” Journal of Sport and Social Issues 24(1):61–77. doi: 10.1177/0193723500241005.

 

CLR James. Beyond a Boundary.

 

Ben Carrington: Race, Sport, Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora

 

Yağmur Nuhrat’s work on football fandom in Turkey.

 

[1] The author(s) may want to consider citing Guttman’s work about sport’s transformation from ritual to record.  From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports (1978),

Author Response

Thank you for your insightful observations and comments on improving the quality of the text presented. I will only briefly respond to three comments here:

1) Motivation for this intervention/argument: I have attempted to use the referenced recommended literature (thank you very much for the specific direction), as well as the summary definition at the end of the text.

2) Better context about "sports sacred" in the modern world of sports: I see your comment as strongly relevant, and the references to specific recommended literature have allowed me to refine my argument as well, so I have added passages about contemporary sports understood as religion in the section dealing with historical examples and argued against them.

3) Framing too narrowly how social scientists approach symbolism, ambiguity, rationality, and use data in the study of sport: thank you for your comment, which of course I agree with, I didn't even realize my text could come across as so exaggerated. However, this is too broad a topic, which would extend the scope of the paper disproportionately. Therefore, I have at least added a paragraph that points out this transgression of the positivist paradigm in empirical investigations, using visual methods as an example (to make the argument clearly conclusive). However, I fear that a comprehensive discussion of other methodological approaches would already be redundant and in a way overwhelming for the main topic of the paper.

Thank you again for your comments and recommended reading. I have tried to respond to them, and I hope that I have thus succeeded, at least to some extent, in better explaining the argument of the text and its wider context.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The author has made sound revisions to the paper and effectively addressed my comments. The central intervention was made very apparent in this version. And engagement with the sporting sacred was very informative as well.

I have one minor writing/style note on a sentence from page 9 (line 426)

"It can become a representation, but not a presentation, a making present of the sacred." I'm not sure this sentence needs 3 clauses. This could be revised for clarity (maybe split into two sentences).

Congratulations to the author for their scholarship and efforts. 

Author Response

Thank you very much for accepting the changes modifying the previous version of the article. I have amended the proposed minor edit (page 9, line 426) as follows:

It can become a representation, but not a presentation, a making present of the sacred. Sport can become a representation, but not a presentation of the sacred. It can indicate the sacred indirectly, but not make it present. 

With repeated thanks for your thoughtful and careful evaluation of the text and suggestions to improve its quality  
Author