The "Politics" of Coaching (part 2)
Sociology of Sports Coaching #2.2
I’m always trying to read books that stretch my thinking about coaching and learning. I recently read two books that stretched me a lot so I am writing about concepts from those books for two reasons. First, I don’t think these books are widely read so if I don’t share them with you, I don’t know that anyone else will. Second, selfishly, writing about these concepts helps me think through what they mean to me and how I could incorporate them into my own coaching. I see these as opportunities to wrestle with some big ideas in front of others. I hope you find these explorations both interesting and edifying.
The concept below comes from The Sociology of Sports Coaching edited by Robyn Jones, Paul Potrac, Chris Cushion, and Lars Tore Ronglan1. Specifically, this concept is taken from chapter four, “Pierre Bourdieu: A theory of (coaching) practice”, written by Chris Cushion.
In part 1, I described Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and capital but I left out his third major concept, field. While habitus and capital are fairly easily understood in terms of an individual and in terms of one-on-one or small group (e.g.: team) interactions, the concept of field helps coaches understand the larger context within which coaching happens.
Field
At first blush, the concept of field in coaching seems straightforward enough. It’s the where, when, and who of coaching. But it’s not that simple. Field is also the why and how of coaching.
Each field has its own logic and taken-for-granted structure of necessity and relevance. Such logic is both the product and the producer of habitus specific and appropriate to the field (Jenkins, 1992). (p. 46)
As I’ve written several times previously, the coaching you do comes from somewhere. Habitus explains some of where your coaching comes from. Bourdieu gives a framework that explains the origins of some aspects of your coaching you may not have considered previously. Field sets people’s expectations of what coaching and being coached should look like. Field determines what kinds of capital are important and what kinds aren’t. Field is how everyone knows who the leaders and followers are. Understanding the field you’re in allows you to know which coaching moves can work and which ones can’t. But the positions everyone holds and which moves work keep changing because people keep changing.
That’s kind of the goal of coaching, isn’t it? Coaches are trying to help players grow and change. You’re always helping them stretch and reach to move closer to their potential. You are always changing too. You’re gaining experience and trying new ideas. All that is gradually incorporated into who you are and the coaching you do. Bourdieu is reminding you that, as you and the athletes in your care change, the field you’re all in both enables and limits the changes that happen.
Fields and capital in coaching
Coaches and players are striving to change themselves but their reasons for doing so are rarely interrogated. It’s assumed that they’re trying to achieve things like earning scholarships and you’re trying to achieve things like winning championships. Bourdieu reminds you the things you’re each pursuing are kinds of capital. As each of you gain and lose different kinds of capital, standing in your field can fluctuate. Think of how perceptions of players change when they move into or out of the starting lineup. Think of how perceptions of coaches that have “lost the locker room” or won a conference tournament change.
Bourdieu invites you to see those changes in standing through the lens of field and capital. Coaches and players are striving for social goods. There are many ways to pursue those goods, many reasons to pursue them, and many things to do when those goods are attained or lost. There are many directions to go from here but I want to focus on how novice coaches move through their field. Cushion writes about the kinds of capital novice coaches typically seek.
For example, both coaches and athletes when initially entering a sport or sporting environment have limited social gravitas. They thus immediately strive to accumulate symbolic and cultural capital to guarantee status. (p. 45)
A reminder from part 1 of Bourdieu’s types of capital:
Economic (that which can be immediately and directly converted to money)
Social (such as social position and connections)
Cultural (such as specialized knowledge)
Symbolic (from honor and prestige)
Cushion says that novices have “limited social gravitas”. While I agree with his assertion, I think it’s also a narrow view of social capital. Cushion seems to be saying that new coaches don’t have social capital because they don’t have many established relationships in their field. No one will take them seriously because no one knows them. It would appear the solution is to get people to take you seriously so they want to get to know you. That’s using cultural capital to earn social capital.
But, to me, that view is narrow because it assumes social status is all there is to social capital. I don’t think it is. There’s trust, reciprocity, and cooperation. Can trust be earned by knowing stuff? Yes, but it can also be earned by taking care of others. It can be earned with consistency of behavior. To me, this is the root of the cliché, “they don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”. The cliché tells you to pursue social capital directly, even as a novice coach, instead of pursuing cultural capital first. It’s a cliché because expert coaches tell novice coaches this constantly. Why doesn’t anyone seem to learn the lesson?
Because they think they learned it. They take time outside of practice to build relationships, asking players about their lives outside of sport. For many coaches, that effort seems to suffice for showing how much they care. To me, it demonstrates, that capital is only useful as part of field. While I agree that coaches really are showing care and gaining social capital, they’re still missing a vital perspective about field.
The statement above gets to the heart of the difference. The issue, in Bourdieu’s terms, is that the capital the coaches are earning can’t be easily used in the field they want. While there is some consistency in habitus and social rules between the “outside sport” field and the “inside sport” field, that doesn’t mean capital earned in one field is easily transferred to the other. Coaches have power inside sport that they don’t have outside sport. They have much more control over the hierarchies inside the teams they’re part of. They can show care for a player outside of sport but then disregard them inside their sport because the player’s “inside sport” cultural capital is very different than their “outside sport” social capital.
Just like coaches, players are pursuing both cultural capital and social capital both outside sport and inside sport. When coaches don’t fully honor players’ pursuit inside sport, they fail to learn the lesson of showing how much they care inside sport. Experienced coaches work at connecting with players’ pursuit of capital inside sport and finding ways to support each player’s individual pursuit. I don’t think that kind of work is inaccessible to novice coaches. I think it’s just something that falls into a blindspot because they’re so fixated on showing how much they know.
That brings us to the last section, where we try to understand how coaches are influenced by fields and habitus. If you’ve been paying attention, you’ve probably already guessed this will not be wrapped up neatly. That’s where we’ll start in part 3.
Jones, R. L., Potrac, P., Cushion, C., & Ronglan, L. T. (2010). The Sociology of Sports Coaching. Routledge.