Colonial echoes in sport and the environment – time to decolonise and degrow?

The convergence of sport, decoloniality, and the environment presents a labyrinth of intricate ideas, and as we delve into their interconnectedness, the complexity deepens.

Joining us on this informative journey is Samuel Clevenger, an Assistant Professor at Towson University in the USA, who has been trying to unpack some of this intersection. We start with the radical concept of decoloniality—an evolution beyond mere decolonisation. Through philosophical references and anecdotes, we raise instances where sport has been wielded to perpetuate a Western-centric worldview, shaping notions of identity, imagery, and competition. Then, in contrast, we examine examples where Western sports were recast more in the image of the indigenous people who were pressured to play them.

As we pivot to the environmental repercussions, a canvas of broader societal critiques unfurls. The discourse expands to encompass profound themes like climate justice, athlete and fan burnout, and the nuances of degrowth or post-growth.

Whether you're a sports enthusiast, an environmental advocate, or simply curious about the multifaceted connections between these realms, there are undoubtedly ideas in this episode of interest to you.

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Episode Transcript

Ben (00:10):
Welcome back to the sustaining sport podcast.
Today we are talking to SamuelClevenger, assistant professor
at Townsend University in theUSA, and I don't think it's
possible to have a more complextopic how does sport relate to
colonialism and how does thatrelationship impact on the
environment?
We start by exploring thefairly radical idea of

(00:30):
decoloniality and examples ofhow sport was and is used to
maintain a western-centricworldview on themes like
identity, imagery andcompetition.
We also reference situationswhere western sports had been
reconceptualized more in theimage of the indigenous people
who were pressured to play them.
Then, as we pivot to theenvironmental repercussions, we

(00:52):
inevitably have to discussbroader societal criticisms and
notions such as climate justice,burnout and degrowth or post
growth.
I know it's a lot to unpack,but I think if you're interested
in sport or the environment oreven history, there's something
in this episode for you, soplease do enjoy our conversation
with Sam Clevenger.
Welcome, sam, to the sustainingsport podcast.

Sam (01:22):
Thank you, thanks so much for having me.

Ben (01:24):
No, you're so welcome.
So, as I like to begin witheveryone, now tell us a little
bit about how you got into thisspace.
What led you down to thisparticular subject matter of
sport, colonialism, theenvironment, all the many other
topics you touch on.

Sam (01:38):
Specifically with colonialism.
It was a particular articlethat I wrote I think forget what
year it was in grad school whenI was at the University of
Maryland and it was a paperabout.
I was getting really interestedand influenced by the school
thought called decoloniality.

(01:59):
It's kind of a group ofscholars with Latin American
origins that look into kind ofepistemological colonialism that
came along with the literal,the physical, material
colonialism in the history ofkind of Western invasion of
indigenous peoples and I wasreally interested in the way

(02:22):
that decoloniality could helpexplain how the idea of sport
could be tied to issues of powerand repression, like the ways
in which ideas of sport could belike Eurocentric or could
inform kind of a Western view ofthe world at the expense of

(02:47):
other perspectives and otherworldviews, particularly
non-Western or indigenousworldviews.
I grew up as a white settler inthe state of Ohio in the US and
I grew up as a fan of Clevelandsports and one of the Cleveland
sports teams was always theCleveland Indians, the major
league baseball team, and theyfamously had the chief Wahoo
mascot and I just remembergrowing up like there was just

(03:10):
always something kind of strangeand difficult with the mascot,
like even as a kid because yougo to games and you'd see these
grown men I mean like fathersand grown adults be sort of
painting their faces red and bewearing sort of feathers and
making kind of stereotypicalsounds that they think Native

(03:33):
Americans made when they went tobattle or something, and it
just seemed like it just alwaysseemed wrong.
So when I was in grad schoollater on and started to study in
sport history, it just seemedlike kind of a natural movement
for me.
It's like getting into the waysin which sports seem to be tied
to these issues with thehistory of colonialism.

(03:55):
So when I got into that, thatfirst piece which is just about
kind of basically like kind ofEurocentric knowledge and the
history of sport, that was kindof my first entry into seeing
the ties between the two.
It's only been kind of morerecently in my work that I've
started to more closely look atthe links between environmental

(04:16):
change, colonialism and sport,the interconnections between all
three of them.

Ben (04:21):
Yes, and I don't think that's an uncommon route, I
think to some of theseacknowledgments, or at least
becoming aware of these things,I think, even as a non-American,
the first thing that oftencomes to my mind would be the
Washington Redskins and all thatthat's gone on in terms of the
name, but it goes around theworld.
I think more apparent would belike the Exeter Chiefs, which
have changed their logo frommore of like a Native American,

(04:43):
but that's a British rugby teamwith a sort of Native American
representation which seems verypeculiar.
But again there is that changehappening and I think in my own
country of South Africa it'sbeen very tied where,
post-apartheid, they basicallyhad to change all of the sports
teams' names because most ofthem were named regionally and
the regions themselves werebicolonial design.

(05:04):
I think let's start with thisconcept of like decoloniality.
From what I understand and Ithink you probably need to
clarify this for me it is adeeper set of thoughts than
purely decolonization.
Decolonialization refers tomore, maybe what dependency
theory, and decoloniality ismore both a cultural and

(05:24):
economic sort of equitization.
Is that fair to say?

Sam (05:28):
I think so I think it's getting to it.
I'm definitely not an expert.
I definitely wouldn'tespecially as being sort of a
white settler from the UnitedStates, like to declare myself
an expert in decoloniality.
I mean, a lot of the writers,like Walter McNullo, for example
, really emphasize sort of thedecolonial thinkers that have

(05:48):
existed for centuries, goingback to the 1400s of the Common
Era, and people that wereresponding to the forced
colonization of peoples with thearrival of Europeans.
The thing I always emphasize,because there's so many
connections between when you'retalking about you know if you're
talking about Edward Said andpostcolonialism, or if you're

(06:09):
talking about settlercolonialism and then this idea
of decoloniality, like for me,decoloniality has a lot to do
with the knowledge, like thecolonization of knowledge, and
how epistemic repression is tiedto economic and physical

(06:29):
repression, how, when you'retalking about the history of
colonialism, it's not just thatthe people you're talking about
genocide or you're talking aboutdispossession or enslavement,
but at the same time the ideasof those peoples were also being
repressed or trying to beextinguished by European peoples
.
You know the emphasis wheneveryou read decoloniality is always

(06:50):
about you know strategies forchanging the terms of the
conversation, like it's abouthow you frame and understand
knowledge and the ways thatwhich those framings can often
reinforce kind of the Westernmodern worldview and slide this
whole kind of dark history ofcolonialism and then how that

(07:12):
epistemological repression hasdirect ties to the capitalist
world system and to sort ofeconomic repression, like
they're not separate things.
They have sort of distinctelements to it but they're not
separate.
They're sort of overlapping andinterlocked in important ways.
You know, when I think ofdecoloniality with sport, for me
decoloniality and sport is likethis how the ideas that we take

(07:34):
for granted when we think aboutsport, like dominant perception
, perceptions of sport, ofteninvolve ideas that are linked to
Western history and the Westernworldview and we forget that.
We often look like thinkingabout sport as being something
that's supposed to becompetitive or something where
it's supposed to be a businessand supposed to be profitable,
or it involves individualscompeting against individuals.

(07:56):
You know, all of those ideasare not universal.
There's nothing universal aboutthem.
They come from a particularkind of geopolitical origin.

Ben (08:04):
No, it does make a lot of sense and it's, I think,
fascinating from a South Africanperspective, because it's
exceptionally true that, bothboth from a knowledge and
identification perspective andalso from an economic
perspective, south African sportis entirely in the colonial
design.
I mean, I acknowledge your pointabout it's maybe some ironic to
hear this from likes ofyourself or me where, yeah, we

(08:26):
are both white people but fromcountries that basically only
exist because of colonialism.
But all of the sports in SouthAfrica, like the big three, are
football, slash soccer,predominantly rugby and cricket,
which are kind of England's bigthree sports.
But then if you actually lookinto the sports themselves, the
very systems on the ground arepointing still towards England.
Like, if you are a young SouthAfrican soccer player, slash

(08:49):
football player, you absolutelywant to make it at your local
club level, maybe make it at thebig club level so that you will
be picked up by a European club.
And that is for both reasons offinancial gain, of course,
which are drastically imbalanced, and also from a perspective of
identification.
You know these children areraised.
I'm not saying they'reindoctrinated, I would not go

(09:10):
that far.
It is purely just a case of,yeah, marketing and good TV
coverage to think that, you know, playing for Arsenal or playing
for Liverpool are the bestthings that can happen, such
that, yeah, their own ambitionswithin their own country seem to
be quite diminished.

Sam (09:27):
Oh yeah, absolutely, and it comes.
You know, there's even kind ofthis sort of backward looking
route too where they assume thatkind of the value of the sport,
like you know, for example,like history is a football, like
association football, like mosthistories still assume that the
origins are in England, so ithas like a Western European
origin.
I mean, if you look at it fromkind of a longer perspective of

(09:51):
ball games like this, the verylong history of various
different societies using a balland either kicking it around or
throwing it around, then thathistory is a lot more
complicated.
I mean, people have been doingthose type of ball games for
centuries.
I mean, you can go back atleast to the Egyptian societies
thousands of years ago.
But we have these narrativesthat say that, okay, well, this
modern version of the sportoriginated in Europe, in Britain

(10:15):
, and from there it's spreadaround the world.
So it retains that kind ofkernel of kind of Western
exceptionalism.
That's kind of serves toreinforce the existing power
structure where kind of theEuropean institutions and sort
of European governments orWestern governance seem to still
reign supreme within theorganization.
And that's the same thing, notthe same thing.
But there's similar dynamics, Ithink, in the United States as

(10:37):
well.
I mean a lot of my work.
So I've done some work recentlyand I'm still doing some
research on the history ofbasketball, and with basketball
there's this sort of longestablished narrative that James
Naysmith, who was a Canadianborn kind of physical educator,
comes to Springfield,massachusetts, and then in 1891

(10:58):
writes down the rules forbasketball.
There's been ball games thatinvolved an elevated hoop in a
rectangular court for a really,really long time.
There's a lot of Aztec andMayan and other kind of early
modern civilizations, going allthe way back to the Olmecs,
having very similar games.
But in the narrative thatexists and then the narrative
that's reproduced by the NBA andby the basketball hall of fame,

(11:19):
by universities like theUniversity of Kansas, they
reinforce this idea that no,it's this modern, individual
Western man had this sort ofimmaculate conception of a game
that had no sort of predecessorwhatsoever, had no connection to
any other people that existedin history.
And then suddenly thatnarrative kind of reinforces

(11:39):
this sort of exceptionalist viewof the sport and it's part of
how they sort of frame the sport, how they promote it, how it
exists as kind of an economicentity.
You see that in a lot ofdifferent sports to this day.

Ben (11:56):
I think it's funny that that does sort of still manifest
itself when, at least I wouldsay, former British colonial
countries such as New Zealand,australia, south Africa and I'd
even go so far as to say thelikes of Scotland, obviously
pushing it back, you know, evenperhaps pre-colonialism, in
terms of that rivalry.
But there is this sort of mantraand I think the Scottish fans

(12:17):
were singing it a few years agoduring the Euros, the football
tournament.
It's like anyone but England,because they accept the
narrative of like.
Maybe these people invented thesport.
Whether or not that's true, asyou say, is highly debated, but
if they are going to invent asport and spread it around the
world, then we better take thaton board and beat them at it.
And there's this, you know,some kind of tribalism and joy
that people get out of it, and Iwould even say I get a lot out

(12:39):
of that.
You mentioned this kind ofrelationship with the how the
sport spread, and obviously thatwas a part of colonialism and,
specifically, globalization.
Where do you see sport in thecause and effect?
Do you see sport as justanother thing that's being
globalized like many other typesof culture, or do you think
sport has a bit more agency interms of it is a tool to be used

(13:01):
to influence people.

Sam (13:03):
I mean most of my work involves kind of historical
analysis, like if you asked meto describe myself, let's say,
as a port historian.
So when you look back in termsof the diffusion of modern
organized forms of sport, theywere often deployed by settler
nations like in my work, theUnited States, for example as

(13:26):
tools for cultural assimilation,ways of stripping indigenous or
non-western peoples of theircustoms and assimilate them into
Western society, western views,western attire, western ways of
acting and working.
You know you could look at thecolonization of Hawaii and the

(13:46):
sort of the appropriation andcommodification of surfing, of
surfing practices, into it'skind of like a business by the
early 1900s.
You can look at Puerto Rico,the boarding schools.
You know American Indianboarding schools, the government
, government run boardingschools, church run boarding
schools.
That happened in Canada as wellwhere they sort of forcibly

(14:09):
placed native children on theseschools and then it was
basically a curriculum ofcolonization and assimilation.
You know, in those curriculum Imean sport it wasn't just there
.
They didn't include sport justbecause they thought the kids
would like it and it'd be funand playful.
I mean it was part and parcelof their sort of
assimilationists and kind oferasure objectives.

(14:33):
You know, like the sport itselfthey thought at least, was a
way to fully ingratiate thenative children into the Western
way of living.
It didn't work.
I mean, like some of the besthistories out there are these
histories from the perspectiveof indigenous peoples and sort
of detailing the ways thatindigenous peoples did not

(14:55):
engage with the sport in the waythat you know the school
leaders or the other organizersof sport wanted them to engage
with it.
They use sport for their ownpurposes.
They use sport as a way to sortof a kind of counter hegemonic
strategy, a way of maintainingtheir native identities in the
face or in that context ofcolonization.
I'm thinking in particular ofthe historian Wade Davies has

(15:18):
his book Native Hoops, which isabout kind of the history of
American Indian basketball, andAmerican Indian peoples
encounter basketball through theboarding school experience by
the turn of the 20th century.
So it's distinctly a context ofcolonialism.
But the way that they engagedwith basketball, the meaning
that they ascribed to basketball, how they used it, was entirely

(15:39):
connected to the way theypreserved and maintained a sense
of native community and nativeidentity.
It wasn't, it was not as ifthey just simply accepted the
sort of intentions of the schoolleaders.

Ben (15:52):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think to that point it raises
some very interesting parallelswith even just the colonial
history of South Africa.
Obviously the first Europeansto get there were Dutch and then
followed, once they found acertain degree of resources
where the British came as well.
And in the evolution of thecountry and I'm speaking in
quite broad strokes here, buteven the broad evolution of the

(16:13):
country it sort of becameassociated that cricket was a
little bit the English game andrugby was a little bit the Dutch
game, even though rugby is alsoan English invention.
That's kind of how it playedout.
So in this very sort of Britishboarding school style education
which a lot of the white peoplein the country had, those two
sports were pushed, obviouslyparticularly across men.

(16:34):
And then during the apartheidera it was kind of considered
almost not frowned upon, but notpart of the ethos of the
country to play games likesoccer, slash football.
But that was very interestingbecause then it became an act of
protest to some degree withinthe oppressed indigenous people
under apartheid to play soccer,because that was not what the

(16:56):
dominant powers were doing.
And actually on that act ofrebellion there was even some
causation there because the theANC, the African National
Congress, which was anunderground movement during most
of apartheid, realized that thelocal soccer communities
attracted a crowd.
So it was often used as like anon excuse, but like, built on
top, was this way ofcommunicating and gathering

(17:16):
momentum and coordinating actsof rebellion, which I think is
super interesting.
And then, yeah, since the endof apartheid, rugby and cricket
are slightly diminishing in thenational consciousness and
soccer and we do call it soccerin South Africa, by the way is
growing.

Sam (17:31):
You know, it's interesting too, like, I do think, like when
you look at these various sortof contexts where sport was sort
of well, european forms ofsport, sort of enter a context
of colonialism, I think oftenthe intention was to make the
people who are living in thecolony more productive.
So, like you're saying, was sortof kind of the economics of

(17:52):
South Africa to kind of be acompliment to what they're
trying to extract economicallywithin, within the, the place
that they're trying to colonize.
That was certainly the case, Ithink, with the, with the United
States.
You know, there is often, whenyou're talking about either
extracting for gold or thevarious other natural resources,
like sport.

(18:12):
The function of sport was tosort of instill this, this idea
that you need to constantly beimproving your productivity or
maintain your productivity, andplaying sport was a way of
maintaining that.
So it has, in that sense, likein these various different
contexts of colonialism, sporthas this weird connection where

(18:32):
it's being, it's often beingcast as if it's not connected.
It's kind of like the it'soutside the economic context of
colonialism, but I think it'sactually a lot more integral.

Ben (18:45):
And I think obviously during apartheid South Africa
were famously sanctioned by,eventually by most of at least
American supported allies aroundthe world.
The Soviets were taking adifferent approach, but you know
that played into the Cold War.
But one of the main sanctionswas it did become sport.
And there was this verycontroversial rugby tour in the
70s where New Zealand, which wasgoing through its own sort of

(19:07):
reckoning or or shall we say,awakening to their own racial
history, sent a touring sitejust to Africa, despite some
other countries saying no.
But they brought certain Maoriplayers with them, but then they
pretended like they weren't,like the South African
government, because theyrealized that they needed
someone to play to keep thissport functional.
The South African governmentbasically like, pretended that

(19:27):
the even in the officialdocumentation you'd read it
pretended these four Maoridescended players were not Maori
so that they were legallyallowed to play.
Because if we, if they hadacknowledged they were Maori, it
would have been illegal forthem to play rugby at the
International 11 South Africa,which is very frustrating, I
find.
I also think that even morerecently there's been a little
bit of this and to the Americanlisteners, they might struggle

(19:49):
to follow this, but in the ashes, which is the cricket series
between Australia and Englandthat's going on at the moment.
There was a game a couple ofweeks ago where both teams
bowled a lot of short balls,where the ball is like right at
the batsman's head and it's alittle bit dangerous, but the
idea is that it kind of throwsthem off their game.
And these bowlers were bowlinga lot of these balls.
And then one of the West Indianplayers whose long since

(20:11):
retired so he's from Jamaica andcricket obviously became a very
big thing in the Caribbean saidthat there was some hypocrisy
there because when the WestIndian players had done the same
thing against England about 40years ago, they were banned from
doing so because they were sogood at it.
So there was this weirdcontradiction where these very
physically strong players cameup with a new tactic on the

(20:31):
field and the English said no,no, no, you can't do that.
But then 30 years later they doexactly the same thing and no
one complains about it.
But I apologize for that littleto anyone who don't know about
rugby or cricket.
So let's bring in theenvironmental angle here.
Let's start with the obviouslythe colonial side.
There's no doubt that theconcept of even development, or

(20:51):
even economic growth, has likesevere environmental
consequences, and the biggestemitting countries are the likes
of the United States and Europe.
How does colonialism play intothat?
So this problem of economicgrowth, like this emphasis on
economic growth, you made, oreven just like spreading this
certain idea of how we live ourlife and spreading that to all

(21:12):
four corners of the world andthereby increasing emissions in
all four corners of the world.

Sam (21:16):
Yeah, you know, you know I've been, I've been reading a
lot of work by this philosopheris a Swiss, german philosopher
named Young Jo Han who talks alot about the psycho politics of
neoliberal capitalism, which isa very kind of Eurocentric
worldview to.
What he means by psychopolitics is, you know, we often
talk about capitalism, sort ofpursuit of capital, this endless

(21:39):
pursuit of capital, for throughthe commodification of the
material resources of Earth, bethat people or be at sort of the
actual resources that areextracted from the earth.
But then he also talks aboutkind of the way capitalism also
colonizes the human psyche.
So we start to look atourselves and exploit ourselves
as if we are commodities.

(21:59):
So we people start torelentlessly pursue, pursue
achievement and kind of theoptimization of the self, as if
we need to sort of constantlyimprove ourselves, as if we are
kind of mechanical robots wherewe can just constantly kind of
tinker with ourselves and findways to make ourselves more
efficient or more productive.
And not only is that sort oftied into this all discussion of

(22:24):
kind of epistemic repressionwith with colonialism.
It's a very sort of Eurocentricworldview, this idea of like
endlessly pursuing yourproductivity.
It has a very sort of Westerngeopolitical origin, but then
also I mean that that's kind ofcorollary to this problem of
growth.
You know, when you talk aboutgrowth and climate change, it's

(22:45):
not, it's not just the growth interms of economic activity and
sort of sort of adverse impactsof that economic activity on the
earth, but then also us burningourselves out.
There's a kind of.
I guess what I'm trying to sayis, you know, following Han,
there's a dual crisis withclimate change.

(23:06):
There's the crisis of how we'rekind of destroying the earth
and the burning of fossil fuelsand sort of the degradation of
the biosphere, and then howwe're burning ourselves out in
the process.
It's kind of a dual death drive, the way Han describes it,
bringing it back to Freud there.
And that, I think, is wheresport really has a central role,

(23:27):
like sport, is the popularityof sport as a cultural spectacle
.
The importance is not just thatit's popular, but the way that
it reproduces cultural ideas,and one of the such foundational
cultural ideas that dominateforms of sport professional and
elite levels of sport in theUnited States, going all down to

(23:49):
collegiate levels of sport andhow they're promoted in mass
media and how much big businessthey are, but they constantly
are promoting this idea ofachievement, individual
achievement, as one of the mostimportant values that you can
believe in.
They are constantly reinforcingthis very Western-centered
psychopolitical worldview.

(24:10):
That is not sustainable.
It's not sustainable in any way.
I'm coming at all of this from,in many ways, a perspective of
degrowth, like what I'm sayinghere is, what is necessary in
terms of dealing with theenvironmental emergency is very
much.
It'll involve kind of reductionof growth, strategic reduction

(24:31):
of growth, and that's going toinvolve not just sort of
reduction of economic orbusiness growth, but then also a
rethinking of how people liveand how we look at ourselves and
how we understand ourselves anddifferent conceptions of
happiness and well-being andmental health and how we treat
each other.
And that's going to involve, Ithink, looking at sport

(24:55):
differently, because sportconstantly is reinforcing a very
unsustainable worldview.
Not only is the sport industryconstantly growing, with immense
environmental consequences youcan just look at scholars like
Jules Boykoff and the studies ofthe Olympic Games.
I mean that mega event isdramatically not sustainable.

(25:15):
It can't keep going the way itis in terms of operations but
then also if we keep thinking ofsport as something where the
most important thing isindividual achievement,
individuals constantly achievingit and every year trying to
achieve more and more and moreand trying to improve our
productivity.
That's not sustainable either.
I mean, that's not asustainable way of thinking
about ourselves in an era ofclimate change.

(25:37):
So yeah, sport is central to it.

Ben (25:40):
Yeah, I think there's so many good themes raised there I
think the Olympics one and I hadI had Jules Boykoff on this
podcast a couple of months agoand, yeah, so amazing that one
can spend your entire careerbasically highlighting the
problem of this and stillnothing sort of ringing true.
But I do think the cows arecoming home a little bit with
that.
I just saw this morning thatfinally, lvmh signed on to

(26:00):
sponsor the next Olympics inParis and it was a bit of a
relief for the Olympics becausethey were struggling to find
sponsors.
The reason being and eventhough this is supposed to be
the most sustainable Olympicsever, the reason being is that
their expectations were out ofline for how much money that
wanted to come in.
You know what I mean.
Like every time you host anevent, you're expecting a bigger
sponsor than last time andsubsequently, five, 10 years

(26:23):
beforehand, you start putting inthe excess that will that you
can spend that money on, andthen that money doesn't come.
You put yourself in a verytricky position and I think,
even at the grassroots level,the area that I struggle with
the most, both from an emotionalperspective but from an ethical
perspective or projects likeSport for Development, which is

(26:43):
that there is no environmentalunderstanding.
Or even if it is, it's justusually a charity where
Europeans fly over and teachsome African kids some soccer
and say look how good teamworkis, and then they leave and of
course you know you can get intolike the monitoring and
evaluation of it.
But there's an ethical questionhere.

(27:03):
I guess they're trying to focuson the development, but I just
often see there one travelemissions and two the, as you
say, hegemony of it all.
Yeah right Right.

Sam (27:14):
Exactly, I struggle.
I struggle with that questionbecause, like you know, when you
look at sport, it does have thekernel of ideas that I think
are beneficial, like the idea ofcooperation, for example, with
all sport.
Like you, like, different teamshave to cooperate, they have to
agree to the rules in order tohave the sport actually happen.
And things like teamwork, likethe idea of teamwork in and of

(27:35):
itself isn't a bad thing, it canbe a good thing.
It's how those, it's either howthose ideas sometimes get kind
of subsumed with a kind of anover emphasis on the
competitiveness of it and theachievement oriented element of
it, and how those, you know, howwe kind of forget that those
are all kernels to it.
I think it's just the way thatI agree with you.

(27:55):
Like, I get a little dismayedsometimes at how particularly
dominant forms of sport getoveremphasized.
You know, like in, like in theUnited States, they're just,
it's just those like three orfour major popular sports and
you don't hear very much of theother forms of sport that are
going on.
And some of those forms ofsport have more interesting ties
to a sense of community withinlocal areas or complicated

(28:20):
histories that involve variousdifferent subaltern or sort of
marginalized groups Like that'sthe really interesting stories
with sport that need to beemphasized, and sometimes we
just focus so much on thesedominant sports.
There needs to be kind of morework to really emphasize the
other kind of sports at theperiphery or at the boundaries
that offer differentopportunities.

Ben (28:43):
I think there is a challenge with that.
Where there's a naturalcentralization to any anything
of interest, you know it becomesa little bit of a winner.
Take all the sport that has themost resources, that has the
most influence, the mostinterest across the world will
naturally attract the mostattention and more resources to
be reinvested in the same thing.
So FIFA aren't going to goaround using their excessive

(29:06):
wealth and the small projectsthey do run in Africa and I mean
small, not in the scale of theprojects, but in the scale of
the actual projects they coulddo, given how wealthy they are.
They're not going to not goingto sponsor some like other
sports.
They're like no, because theyknow that by getting more and
more people around the worldinto soccer, slash football,
that'll suit FIFA in the longrun.
You know it's that's only goingto help their, their situation.

(29:27):
And of course you can't evercriticize project by project.
You can't go to the course theproject manager in, like Uganda,
and say you're doing the wrongthing because they're not.
They are helping people.
They are taking resources fromoverseas and bringing them into
the country.
They are doing some good things.
But it's also quite difficultwhen, as we've just discussed,

(29:47):
they're not doing things, maybeexactly the best for the long
term, for the community, whetheryou know, be a short term
project and the outcomes arepotentially negative as in it
centralizes powers and worlds.
I guess this leads to anotherbig topic around you know,
reparations.
What do you make of that topic?
Because there's a growingnumber of people in the global
south and I hate using the termglobal south because it seems a

(30:09):
bit nonsensical to me, but Iacknowledge the difference
between the wealthy north andthe less wealthy south what do
you think of the concept betweenreparations from the north to
the south?
Because I can see why it'sdemanded and it makes a lot of
sense to me, but the executionseems almost impossible.
Like who do you give it to?
And also that anyone in thenorth, particularly the working
class people of the global north, would ever accept that because

(30:30):
it would also diminish theirown material wealth.

Sam (30:33):
I don't, I don't I am not well versed in that discussion
but, to be honest with you, butwhen I'm thinking about
listening to what you're saying,like not only does kind of the
complexity just kind of comeright at you, but also like what
you were talking about, thisissue within a context of kind
of an environmental emergencywhich requires, in effect, kind

(30:57):
of a very drastic reduction ofeconomic growth.
If I'm thinking of it in termsof the context of sport, with
reparations, in some sense itinvolves a strategic growth for
certain groups, right?
So like not only you're talkingabout reparations in a context

(31:17):
of centralized authority, whichwhich makes it sort of super
duper complicated, like you weresaying earlier, like central
organizations trying to controlan actual sort of sport or sort
of what happens within anindustry, but then you're also
talking about this issue of whobenefit from certain types of
economic growth and whoshouldn't, which, to be honest,

(31:39):
I think is, I think that's goingto be a necessary thing.
I'm thinking about, if there'sany sort of implementation of
kind of a degrowth or postgrowth strategy in global
society, it's going tonecessarily involve certain
aspects of the world,specifically in the global north
, because those are the moreaffluent and those are the
countries in the global north.

(31:59):
They're the ones that arepolluting the most, right like
they're the ones that they, orthe corporations and sort of
consumer societies in the globalnorth, they're the ones that
are causing the most sort ofcarbon emissions and pollution
that's driving climate change.
So the degrowth is going tohappen the most, the reduction
is going to happen the mostthere, and there's probably
going to be areas of the globalsouth and economies of the

(32:19):
global south where they're goingto need to continue to continue
to grow some economies orcontinue to engage in economic
growth in order to achieve sortof a greater equity with
northern societies.
So I think I think in thatcontext, reparations is going to
would be kind of a necessary, anecessary part of that right in
order to achieve equity.
But how it's implemented, Imean, that's a really that's a

(32:42):
really difficult question.
I don't think I have a goodanswer to that.

Ben (32:46):
I'll tell you if the two of us did have a good answer for
it.
I promise you this.
This wouldn't just be on apodcast.

Sam (32:52):
But yeah.

Ben (32:53):
I think.
I think even the field ofdegrowth is struggling a little
bit with itself and obviouslythis is why the names come up a
lot, because the degrowth bit isonly a phase, you know.
It is only to try and bring usdown to a sort of sustainable
level.
And then you have the term postgrowth, where it's more
flatlining.
And of course technology willhave a role and I know the

(33:14):
people who, I guess, definethemselves eco and modernist
would say technology will saveus, even though evidence, I
think, strikes the contrary.
But there will be sometechnological improvements.
You know we are improving ourrenewable energy outlook, all
this kind of stuff.
And in that realm there seems tobe some kind of contradiction
where obviously a lot of thematerials required for solar and
other types of renewables comefrom Central Africa and those

(33:38):
materials currently are notbeing used on the whole to build
solar panels in the DemocraticRepublic of Congo and that's
where they're being built on thewhole.
They're being built in Europeand I understand those.
They're still being paid, butare they being paid a fair value
?
Because obviously the Congo isquite a difficult area right now
and there's not a lot ofinstitutional structure, so it's
probably very easy to extractmaterials at below market rates.

(34:01):
How's that resource being used?
So I even think that in ourefforts to like decarbonize,
we're still kind of leavingcertain areas behind.
So I agree with your pointAfrican doesn't necessarily need
to decry.
Certain parts of almost theentire global South don't need
to decry.
In fact, they need prettyrigorous development to save a
lot of people from a lot ofhorrendous things.

(34:22):
But at the same time, theinstitutions that have or sorry,
the countries that have thebiggest emissions definitely do,
but they're the ones in charge.
So how, why would they everchoose to decry?

Sam (34:34):
Right, exactly, and the thing that comes to mind for me
is this question of desire Likeyou know, when you're looking at
either these major sportingorganizations that are located
in the global north or, you know, these affluent societies, the
people and the corporations haveto want to limit their sort of
engagement with growth or limittheir consumerism or limit their

(34:58):
impact on the earth, even asthey're looking at other
societies, particularly in theglobal south, still engaging in
growth Because they are, becausethey are less affluent or they
haven't benefited the most fromthe capitalist world system, how
it's operated to this, to thispoint, you know, and that that
idea of getting people I live inthe United States, the United

(35:19):
States as a late capitalistsociety People don't have a very
good conception of limits.
They don't like limits.
They don't like the idea oflimiting themselves and the idea
of trying to get them to notonly accept the notion of limits
but actually want it, to seethe benefits of it, to see the
pleasures that can come fromlimiting oneself.

(35:40):
I mean, that is, I don't evenknow how that's possible.
How do you even approachsomething like that?
And you know, these questionsof sport in an era of climate
change is a question ofreparations and necessarily
involves people in the globalnorth coming to accept and
desire limitations to how theyconsume and how they engage in
certain things like sport, thatthat question of desiring that

(36:03):
is really important.
And we're not, you know, Idon't.
I don't think we're anywhereclose to even having a very good
discussion of how we can sortof achieve something like that
get people to desire stuff likelimits.

Ben (36:15):
Yes, and I think, if anything, the current is going
in the opposite direction.
And I'll use a line that one ofmy former guests, a guy called
Matzab cousin, who's a sort ofanti gambling campaigner he uses
this very nice term, which isunstimulated demand, which I
love where people do want things.
That's undisputed like ifyou're just sitting there in a

(36:37):
field, you will go around andleverage the resources around
you to improve your situation.
That is how human beings havesurvived, it's how we've how
we've propagated, it's how we'veprospered.
That's not for dispute, butwanting things.
There's no want of somethingyou've never seen, and I'm not
talking about some kind of likerepressive police state where
everything is blocked and youcan't.

(36:58):
You know there's no freedom ofexpression.
But at the same time, justliving your life in a global
North country, you cannot go 10seconds without seeing an advert
or a this or that, and it'soften fairly high carbon actions
, because those are the mostprofitable industries that can
pour money into advertising andI am very worried that that kind

(37:20):
of stuff is pouring into therest of the country just because
of the ability of the internetnow and smartphones as much, as,
like everyone, having internetis a good thing for purposes of
education and communication.
It does create desires thatweren't there before, and it's
trying to get the genie back inthe bottle right.
You can't go to these peopleand say, oh, for you to desire a
European or American lifestyleis wrong, because it's not

(37:41):
necessarily wrong.
But at the same time, thoselifestyles are so carbon
intensive and, as you say,there's there's growing evidence
that they lead to loweroutcomes in things like well
being, which I think to the pure.
I don't know the freedmensupporters of this world.
The term well being iscompletely alien to them because
they can't put a number on itnecessarily.

(38:02):
I know a lot of scholars aretrying and I think of the work
of Tim Jackson at the Universityof Surrey, who's trying to
create this narrative aroundsustainable prosperity but well
being essential to that that,although in the short term it
seems completely contradictory,buying less stuff can lead to a
happier outcome.
But how the hell do you telleveryone around the world that

(38:23):
that's the case when, for thelast 50 years and still to this
day, everything they've seen ona television or an advert is
said buy more stuff will makeyou happy?

Sam (38:32):
And I think, bring this back to sport.
I don't think sport oftendominant forms of sport, I don't
think promote a very healthyunderstanding of life and how to
live, like in many ways it'ssort of over most sports over
emphasize unhealthy compulsivepursuits right, I'm trying to, I

(38:52):
think, like the sort of overemphasis on competition and
achievement is one example ofthat.
It's really interesting, likein recent years.
I'm trying to think, like theOlympian Simone Biles is one
example that's coming to mind orNaomi Asaka, where you have
these sort of prominent athleteswho very openly decide to stop
playing sports or they'retalking about their mental

(39:13):
health in a very sort of publicsetting, which is a really,
really interesting phenomenon.
I mean, you know, you go back afew decades.
It'd be, it'd be something thatwould not be accepted the way
that is accepted now, and Ithink that's in many ways a
byproduct of how much there'sthis sort of kind of hyper
competitive emphasis that youfind in a lot of sports.

(39:34):
We have these like the NBA, forexample.
They want to expand the numberof games that the players played
in the football league thatalready added one more game.
If they could, they'd add moregames to it in order to make
more money off of thebroadcasting and then the
putting on of the variousregular season games, like they
always want to do more and moreand more to the detriment of the
players themselves.

(39:54):
You know, the players havelimits.
It's like all human beings havelimits.
So I think the way that moreathletes are talking about sort
of burnout and the mental healthstruggles as athletes
themselves is in many ways amanifestation of just how kind
of sustainable a lot of a lot ofsports are in the sporting
values are that exist.

Ben (40:16):
Yes, and I also think your point around more and more games
is to the detriment of thesport itself, and I would use my
own lived experience is thatyou know I am a massive
Liverpool FC fan and I neverused to miss a game.
But if, particularly if theteam does well in any given way,
you're playing up to 80, 85games a year, plus maybe some
internationals, like in thesummer break, you know where,

(40:38):
like your country's playing, Ijust can't watch that much of
one game.
I just I cannot do it.
Like diminishing returns, thewhole thing, you get everything.
And it's interesting youmentioned the actual players
perspective on this because ofcourse I think they you get a
little bit of an arms race, youget a little bit of game theory
where some, some players wouldsay, hey, why don't we have a
more balanced lifestyle?
Why don't we have a sport forhalf the year and the other half
the year we're going to be?

(40:58):
I don't know, maybe academicswould not be amazing, but of
course, if one of the athletesspent the whole year training,
they would absolutely trance thelike you know, they'd wipe the
floor with everyone else andthen I mean, this is how they
basically describing theprofessionalization era of sport
.
So then, because performancebut gets attention and wealth,
everyone's going to try andperform at the highest level and

(41:19):
you know it's in the clubsinterest to play more games and
the players interest to playmore games in the short term, of
course, long term they getexactly burnout, things like
that, and I also think there's alot of intersectional problems
here.
When it comes to things likewomen's sport, you know they
were talking this year about howdifficult it was to raise the
same level of commercialsponsorships for the women's
soccer World Cup, and part ofthat was the time zone, because

(41:40):
it's an Australian, new Zealandbut I also think part of that
was the expectation, like it wasnever going to be as big as the
men's World Cup, particularlyovernight, and also it probably
shouldn't because that's such anunsustainable event.
You know, if the FIFA aretrying to get the women's World
Cup to be big, not because theycare about women, because they
want to make the same amount ofmoney twice as opposed to do it
once, and that's what suffers inthat, you know, not women,

(42:03):
definitely not women.
Power to them like they shouldbe able to earn a much more
fairer salary, but theenvironment does completely
struggle because for everyflight that needs to be taken,
there's your problem.
But even the commercial side ifyou have to sell more products
to make a World Cup commerciallyviable, those products have to
be made and sold.
So, yeah, we're really tyingourselves into knots here,

(42:25):
that's.
Yeah, we really are.
Now, as I try and do a lot ofthese episodes, I'm going to try
and put a happy one.
When I ask you to try and put ahappy twist on this and I'm
kind of annoyed, I would gotinto the advertising topic
because that's actually thetopic of the next episode.
So look forward to that.
But how do you, maybe even at acommunity level, go about
changing this?
And I think your perspectivefrom being American, I think is

(42:46):
very interesting becauseobviously, as you've described
in this episode, the consumptionthere is quite excessive and
that's probably one of the firstplaces to be brought down.
Even at the sporting level, youknow, like the, the fireworks
and the grandeur or somethinglike the NFL is unparalleled.
Where, where does thisconversation start in the
American sporting ecosystem?

Sam (43:06):
to maybe dial things down a bit, the thing that's been
common to mind for me lately is,I think, the problem of burnout
of people, either feelingburned out either through their
consumption of sport being aspectator and just the sheer
amount that they're often askedto watch, the amount of

(43:26):
advertising and promotion of thesporting events, or being
participants or athletesthemselves, and feeling sort of
exhausted or overwhelmed by thesport is a kind of interesting
catalyst for kind ofreconceptualizing how we engage
with sport.
I mean, there's two things Ialways think about Like number
one, the vast majority of peopleare not professionals, do not

(43:49):
engage in sport as professionals.
It's either as spectators orbasically as amateurs like they
play the sports with friends orin leagues linked to their
community.
That's how the vast majority ofus do it, and they may be
competitive, they may want towin, but it's not this sort of
professional sport where they'remaking a salary in order to
engage in the sport, and thatengagement in sport in and of

(44:10):
itself is not the problem.
It's not the problem that'sdriving climate change, us
playing people playing sport ata YWCA, for example.
That's not the problem.
And then, number two, thisconception of sport that seems
dominant, this idea of sportbeing sort of hyper competitive
and needing to be a business andthese huge spectacles that are

(44:34):
deeply, deeply unsustainable.
That's a very recentunderstanding of sport.
The vast majority of humanhistory people have engaged in
forms of play and more or lesswhat we can think of in sport in
ways that were more sustainable, that were very local, that
weren't overly sort ofrationally organized, that had

(44:55):
sort of ties to communities, asense of communal identity.
And those ideas don't, theydidn't get extinguished with
modern sports.
They just sort of kind of insome ways kind of lose their
power.
They become kind of residualideas within the sporting
culture, but they still exist.
The way people have a sense ofcommunity identity and through

(45:19):
sport is a residual of thoseearlier forms of sport that
existed before industrialcapitalism.
So we have the tools, the kindof cultural and ideological
tools, to engage in sport indifferent ways.
We don't have to engage in sportin the ways that we do now.
We don't have to want to desireelite professional sport.
It's just this difficult andarduous task of kind of

(45:44):
recalibrating our desire, oursporting desires.
How do you do that?
I mean, that's where I get tothis.
I see a lot of potential inthis discussion of burnout
Because I think the usefulnessof this discussion of burnout is
it really brings to theforefront what are we getting

(46:06):
out of these sporting products,like, do these dominant forms of
sport actually are actuallybenefiting us as people?
And if they're not, then whatdo we do about it and what
should we do about it?
I mean, that's kind of thequestion I keep going to back
and forth.
And I think that's a questionthat a lot of people can connect
to.
When you talk about it in termsof mental health, well being, a

(46:27):
burnout, I think that's adiscussion that a lot of people
can connect with.

Ben (46:32):
Yes, I wonder if, and please tell me if you know any
research that conceptualizes assuch.
But I wonder if there's maybeeven from the psychologist or
the sociologist perspective, ifwe view things like love or
attention or identity orinterest as a renewable resource
given an appropriate time.
What I mean by that is I can beinterested in something as long

(46:55):
as I do it every couple of daysat most.
If I try and do it every day,it runs out.
I mean it slowly regeneratesover a period of hours or days,
and I think there's evidencefrom the historical record that
that is the case.
And I always use the example ofassociation football in England
from the back end of theindustrial revolution towards,
I'd say, maybe the end of the80s or the 90s.

(47:17):
Before it went sort of global,was that there was at least
three generations there wherelove of the local team did not
diminish in the slightest, evenintergenerational.
Like people would go 60 years,70 years of their life fully in
love with their team and nothingwould change.
But in this modern world whereyou know, to quote the movie,
you can have everythingeverywhere all at once.

(47:37):
There is this either maybe it'sa competition thing, as in you
lose interest or you overplayyour hand, as in.
As I mentioned, there's toomany games per year this kind of
stuff, and that can we even usethe term like fan burnout, and
if we would just stop the gas onthat particular thing, maybe it
would reorganize itself.
What do you think?

Sam (47:57):
Yeah, yeah, I do think I think there's something
important to that.
Like well, you talked aboutlike diminishing, diminishing
returns earlier in ourdiscussion and the notion of
alienation.
Like I think you know, we cantalk about it in terms of kind
of the Marxist sense, but Ithink a lot of people really
feel that sense of alienation asfans.

(48:18):
Like I'm just thinking I hopemy family doesn't listen to this
podcast Like I have familymembers or friends where I can
just kind of tell, like whenthey're watching the Cleveland
Browns and it's year after yearafter year where they're getting
their hopes up for them to wina game or sort of get to the
Super Bowl, even though theydon't really know if the Browns

(48:40):
somehow magically made it to theSuper Bowl.
It's not as if they would stopsort of wanting them to go to
the Super Bowl.
They wanted to do it again andagain and again, but they can.
There's an exhaustion to that.
Like there's exhaustion interms of economics, in terms of
their finances, the amount ofmoney they're spending either by
consuming sort of food anddrink, or the money that they
spend on merchandise that theyreally wish they didn't spend,
but they feel like they have to,you know, in order to sort of

(49:04):
be kind of a supportive fan, butthen also like they'll watch
the game.
You watch an NFL football gameon Sunday and you're not happy
afterwards, like you've spentall this energy watching the
game and then the game's overand you're like, why did I just
do that?
Like now I'm tired, I got totake a nap or I got to do
something else, and it's not.

(49:24):
It wasn't nearly as enjoyableas I thought it was.
I think people feel that I'mtrying to think the late Mark
Fisher had this term for it.
It was like depressive anodoniaor something like that where
there's this sense that like wehave to kind of compulsively
look at our phones or engage insome sort of digital media or

(49:47):
pop culture in order to get thiskind of thrill and this thing
that we were desiring, but wenever quite get it.
It never is as satisfying as wehoped it was and it's really
kind of depressing that it'snever that satisfying but it
doesn't.
We don't stop sort of pursuingit, we just pursue it over and
over and over and we neverattain that fulfillment.

(50:08):
I just I'm just kind ofconvinced that people feel that.
You know, they really do feelthat that sense of alienation,
and that's where, that's wherethe conversation, I think, can
start.

Ben (50:21):
Yes, and I think that's a pretty good note to end on,
because that really does bringit down to the personal level.
You know, I think a lot ofpeople who listen to this
podcast are sports fans andmaybe they've experienced
something similar.
So, by the way, if anyone'slistening and has experienced
this, please let us know and wecan.
We can sit you down in a roomand interrogate you.
But yeah, I think maybe let'ssee run this at a personal level

(50:41):
and see what happens.
You know a little bit of takingyour foot off the gas on
certain things.
As I say, they don'tnecessarily have to be your work
or your livelihood or somethinglike that, but it can be your
recreation and enjoy the absencesuch that when it returns, it's
perhaps more fulfilling.
Because, I agree, this constantchasing of something that might
not actually exist without thedetriment to the environment and

(51:03):
your own bank balance, doesn'tseem, doesn't seem the right
approach.

Sam (51:07):
And the thing I was just thinking of, the Olympics.
Like there, in terms of UShistory I know Boi Jules Boykoff
had that more recent book onthe no Olympian movement and in
Los Angeles and then there's wewas like 1976 in Denver,
colorado, and the sort of sayingno to hosting the Olympic games
Like I think there's a prettysort of building movement of
people in the United Stateswhere they're looking at the

(51:30):
idea of hosting the Olympicgames and they see the negative
consequences of it and they sayno, like we don't want that, and
I think that's really, reallyuseful.
That's a really really usefulcase study in how people can
kind of reorient their desires.
Like there's this perceptionthat of course anyone would want
to host the Olympic games or goto the Olympic games and that's
just not the case.

(51:50):
You know, people are realizingthat there are other things that
they want or desire, either intheir cities or where they live
or how they engage in sport, andmaybe the Olympics is not that.
So I think there's a lot moreexamples of that type of
engagement sport.
That can give us a lot of clueson how to sort of move forward.

Ben (52:10):
Yes, and I think the perfect example of that is
unfolding right now.
To really link those thesethree themes that have held this
conversation together, aroundthe Commonwealth games and how
it's just been rejected byVictoria and Australia because
they think it's going to be afinancial disaster and there's
no host for both the upcomingone and the one after.
And it's raised all thesequestions of why?

(52:31):
Why does the Commonwealth gameexist?
Like it's this sort of weirdBritish empire sort of residue,
as it were.
As much as it is important tothe athletes as a stepping stone
, it is also sort of Olympicslight, as it were.
It's terrible for theenvironment because you're
flying from New Zealand,australia, england, etc.
And it doesn't really help thecommunity where it's based.
So why are we doing one ofthese things?

(52:51):
But yeah, at the risk of thiscould go on forever and ever.
I think we have to call it that.
Sam, thank you so much for yourtime, thanks for all of this
insight you're giving us, andkeep up the good work and maybe
in a few years come back aroundand we'll have some more
solutions.

Sam (53:05):
Yeah, sounds great.
Thanks so much for inviting meon.

Ben (53:16):
That was our conversation with Sam Clevenger.
Of course, this was by no meansan exhaustive or conclusive
discussion of these themes and,as you may have noticed, we
raise more problems than wesolve.
But such is the nature ofcomplex topics and I really will
endeavor to find the broadestarray of perspectives that I can
.
On this Next episode we discusssports relationship with

(53:36):
advertising.
Is advertising a tool forsports benefit, or perhaps the
other way around?
To find out, look forward toour next episode.
See you then.