Making Men: Rugby and Masculine Identity (Sport in the Global Society)

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This text looks at how an understanding of rugby can provide insight into what it has meant to "be a man" in societies influenced by the ideals of Victorian upper and middle classes. It shows that rugby has been a means of promoting male exclusivity, but also been a means of cultural incorporation.

Making Men: Rugby and Masculine Identity (Sport in the Global Society) Review

Prospective readers take heed: this is not a book about the glories of rugby union football. It's not about epic battles, soaring victories and crushing defeats, the heroes and the zeroes. This is not a book about sport; it is penetrating social science in the context of sport. This is a serious scholarly work, complete with compulsory academic-speak like "hegemony" and "pedagogy," even "bourgeoisie," and really deep academic-speak laden passages such as, "...the racial and patriarchal ideology of residual Celtic supremacy." If you're looking for a light diversion about playing rugby, this most certainly is not it. If you're a hunchbacked tight-five scrummie who's best when rucking and raking in the mud and the blood, this is not your kind of book.

But, if you're a rugby enthusiast and/or player with intellectual thinking a bit more expansive than the pitch and the pub, looking for a truly fascinating series of well researched and easy to follow studies of how your sport has influenced much larger social, societal, cultural, and national issues, then you'll most likely enjoy this.

Despite the title, this book isn't a gender studies examination of masculine identity within the context of Rugby Union Football (rugby). If you're anticipating a forced collection of touchy-feely work on masculine identity and other squishy gender issues in the context of rugby, this book will disappoint. There is one article which is mainly devoted to the book's inaccurate sub-title, Nauright's quasi-concluding article prior to the formal conclusion, in which he explores some aspects of gender identity and labeling. The rest of the book does take on issues of masculinity and its public perception and development in the context of rugby, but these discussions take place almost exclusively to set the stage for the much larger and arguably more interesting issues. Sure, there are passing references to the male culture of rugby, almost all of them negative, highlighting gender exclusivity, drinking, brawling, and what is portrayed unfairly as sexist ritual and institutional misogyny. Reading these passages, I wonder if any of the authors actually have ever played the sport.

The discussion of male identity takes place always in the context of how this was a precursor and then concurrent aspect of the building of larger national identity. There are many, eventually repetitive references to what would become an English vision of modern (read "Industrial Revolution") manliness: rural, strong, fit, and more than anything willing to engage in activities of explicit physical risk. The discussions of male-ness in this book center on an Industrial Revolution intelligentsia worried that factory work and the tyranny of technology would rob the English Man of his stamina, his connection to the land, of his vigor and his strength, his ability to withstand physical and spiritual hardship, and ultimately the Empire. The discussion is very much rural-vs.-urban, but is also economic and social, landed-vs.-dispossessed and gentry-vs.-peasant. Into this surprisingly strong and strident public discussion arrives rugby, a sport accessible at first to only some, and eventually to all, in which the ideals of English masculinity could be first regained, then strengthened, and then showcased, first domestically then internationally.

This leads to the real core of this book, which I found much more interesting than the predictable gender positions within rugby. It is the surprisingly influential and arguably pivotal role rugby played in the development and growth of national identity and then nationalism in England and Wales (by implication, Ireland and Scotland), and in the colonies of South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia. In a nutshell: rugby emerged as a class-restrictive sport, which rapidly became a location of class-transcending social mixing. As coalescing Industrial Revolution economic classes bonded over a common love, so was born mutual dependence, respect, and the basis for a larger understanding of common cause and purpose. So was born pride and societal/cultural definition, from which nationalism rapidly grew: ". . . the `mateship' associated with rugby served to transcend class boundaries and weld men together under a canopy of common masculinity."

There are 12 articles across 244 pages. The articles are arranged in a basic chronological order, starting with the opener discussing rugby in British public schools in the 1830s on, up to the final chronological article on the role of rugby in South Africa in the latter half of the 20th century.

For someone looking for some great quotes on maleness and rugby, the unique attributes of the sport, this book is a trove: rugby as "...physical combat without (having to resort) to uncontrolled violence;" the rugby player as "warrior-philosopher;" rugby as a display of "healthy animalism," and; the rugby pitch as "...a testing ground-a place where manliness was learned, character developed and manhood discovered." There are hundreds more to choose from.

The scholarly citation is quite good throughout, with ample opportunities to examine sources and seek out additional reading. I think it was a poor editorial decision, however, to use chapter end notes rather than traditional footnotes, as the moving back and forth to the end of the chapter interrupted the flow of my reading. The book is scholarly, after all, let the footnotes fall where they should. There is a surprisingly comprehensive index, another solid aid for the researcher and student.

Bottom line: If you're looking for a straightforward history of rugby, tales of storied matches, ancient rivalries, and wins/losses, this book isn't for you. If you are a serious gender studies student or reader, this book will deliver somewhat on the book's subtitled promise of masculine identity examination, largely confirming all of the worst rugby stereotypes. But, if you're a sports-minded intellectual accustomed to serious academic writing and with the basic background in current political science, economics, history, and the world system, looking for something interesting that ties all of them together convincingly, then this book will be as revealing and pleasurably surprising for you as it was for me.

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