A Model of Discipline: The Rule(s) of Midnight Football and the Production of Order in Subjects and Society

David Ekholm,Magnus Dahlstedt

doi:10.1177/0193723520919818

Abstract

This article explores the rationalities of social change of a sports-based intervention, midnight football, carried out on two sites in the suburban landscape of Sweden. Based on interviews with coaches and managers and on-site observations, we examine how rationalities and technologies of social change are promoted, how technologies of social change are assumed to operate within the intervention, and how the intervention objectives are formed in relation to the technologies promoted. The analysis is guided by a Foucauldian perspective on disciplinary and pastoral power. It displays how various conceptualizations of risk underpin the intervention, and, in particular, technologies of spatial and temporal diversion. Youth are (dis)located to perceived sites of order and rule, as midnight football is portrayed as a regulated arena in opposition to outside sites of disorder. To form and visualize the rules of law, coaches, ascribed the position of role-models and law-makers, have a particularly important role to play, embodying law, rule, and conduct. In addition, disciplinary power operates through normalizing sanctions, stressing the corrective influence of coaches and readjustment of youth conduct. The technologies promoted are underpinned by goals to form a certain order of subjects, where ideals of conduct can be transferred and proliferated to the world outside, forming order and security in society. Those deemed at-risk and in need of social change, are addressed by means of discipline and control. Conclusively, the technologies promoted appear more as a symptom of existing patterns of inequalities and segregation than as a solution to the challenges confronted.

Highlights

Following increased segregation—in terms of geographic, socioeconomic, and ethnocultural divisions—and social exclusion in the suburban landscape of Sweden, social inclusion has become, as with many welfare states, recurrently spotlighted as a central objective in social policy (Sernhede et al, 2016)
We focus on the rationalities and technologies of promoting social change imbued in interventions, spotlighting in particular the social policy objectives anticipated that are articulated
Based on interviews with representatives of midnight football and on-site observations, we aim to explore how rationalities and technologies of social change are envisioned in the discourse of the intervention

Summary

Introduction

Following increased segregation—in terms of geographic, socioeconomic, and ethnocultural divisions—and social exclusion in the suburban landscape of Sweden (cf. Backvall, 2019), social inclusion has become, as with many welfare states, recurrently spotlighted as a central objective in social policy (Sernhede et al, 2016). Today, sportsbased interventions have emerged as a common feature of social policy, often promoting social change through a variety of strategies and objectives targeting youth, and youth of a migrant background, in distressed urban areas This development has been conceptualized as part of a neoliberal trend in sport and social policy (Hovden, 2015; Silk & Andrews, 2012), emphasizing the merits of competition, individualization, and responsibilization (e.g., Coakley, 2011b) as well as discourses on control and surveillance made possible through sport activities (e.g., Hartmann, 2016). This policy development and context have facilitated two distinct, yet associated, modes of governing, that is (on one hand), individual empowerment and development of competences for a competitive society, and (on the other hand) a hard neoliberalism based on control and punitive measures targeting the populations of deprived and distressed residential areas rather than causes of social problems (Bustad & Andrews, 2017)

Objectives

Discussion

Conclusion