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From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports by Allen Guttmann
Originally published in 1978, From Ritual to Record was one of the first books to recognize the importance of sports as a lens on the fundamental structure of societies. In this reissue, Guttmann emphasizes the many ways that modern sports, dramatically different from the sports of previous eras, have profoundly shaped contemporary life.
- GenresSportsNonfiction
Paperback
First published October 15, 1979
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About the author
Allen Guttmann
22 books6 followersAllen Guttmann is Professor of American Studies at Amherst College. Among his many works related to sports "Women's Sports," named the book of the year by the North American Society for Sport History, as well as "Sports Spectators, The Games Must Go On," and "From Ritual to Record," all published by Columbia University Press.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
February 6, 2020
First two (maybe three) chapters are still useful. The rest can probably be skipped.
May 20, 2021
Guttmann’s classic From Ritual to Record is, in many ways, two books. The first “book” fits the title: it explains modern sport as something that comes out of but differs in essential ways from pre-modern sports. He provides a context and theory that attempts to account for the change. This first part of the book is (has been) the more important one for scholars of sport.
The second “book” is an attempt to try to account for the (somewhat) unique popularity of baseball and (American) football in America. Although this discussion is personally interesting, both because I’m a fan of both sports and because Guttmann makes extensive use of literature and film to provide illustrations and support of his ideas, it ultimately is too out of date to be all that relevant. Writing in the late 70s and appealing to data and sources from even earlier decades, Guttmann identifies some of the origins of some of the trends we see today (e.g. the slower growth of baseball relative to the growing popularity of football). But to be useful in a contemporary discussion of how American sports differ from the sports of other nations (and what that might tell us), we’d have to update most of that data.
Guttmann starts the “main” book with an attempt at a definition of sport. Working through the ideas of various thinkers, including Suits, Huizinga, Callois, Sutton-Smith, and others, Guttmann draws distinctions between play, games, and sport; and defines sport as a playful physical contest. I have several quibbles with his topology of play, games, and sport, in particular in the manner in which he treats play. He follows the line of thought (which I think is mistaken) that treats play as purely autotelic, with no room for the instrumental or the purposive. This leads, I think, to several errors in how Guttmann conceptualizes sport and its role in our lives. That aside, the general thrust of his description of sport are sufficient to make sense of his argument about the shift from pre-modern to modern sport. His discussion examines how sports modernized in terms of seven main characteristics:
• Secularism
• Equality of opportunity to compete and conditions of competition
• Specialization of roles
• Rationalization
• Bureaucratic organization
• Quantification
• Quest for records
While discussing all of these, secularism and quantification seem to be the essential characteristics. These are the ones he focuses on the most, and in many ways they undergird and explain the other characteristics. For example, the quest for records seems to me to be a function of quantification – since the statistics and measures used for the records are things quantified.
Guttmann explains secularism as the long term shift from the origins of many sports and games in terms of the sacred towards sports as secular. In most cultures, athletic contests were, like most things, bound up with religion, the sacred. The games honored the gods or the contests were themselves sacred rituals (not recreation). Most know that the ancient Olympics and other Pan-Hellenic games were (at least in part) sacred religious events.
As he argues, part of the development of the modern world is a process of secularization. By this Guttmann doesn’t mean an outright rejection or eschewing of religion. It is that things that were sacred move in to the mundane. Sport modernize by moving from the sacred realm into the ordinary, everyday world.
Guttmann does briefly touch on the idea that sports have become a kind of secular religion, that it involves many rituals and myths of its own (26). After all, what sports fan hasn’t prayed to the “sports gods” at some point! But Guttmann argues that the point and role of sport in our lives is secular: it’s not about the transcendent or the sacred. It’s about fun, play, and profit.
I think this might dismiss the idea of a sacred secular, if such a thing makes sense. It’s not a transcendence that is mystic or other-worldly; it’s of this world and time but still sacred insofar as it is acknowledged and seen as extraordinary and special. A sacred secular just might be an essential aspect of modern sport. We all, I think, have the need for the sacred and sport might be a secular, non-supernatural way to experience the sacred. Towards the end of chapter 2, Guttmann seems to suggest something like a sacred secular: “Once the gods have vanished from Mount Olympus or from Dante’s paradise, we can no longer run to appease them or to save our souls, but we can set a new record. It is a uniquely modern form of immortality” (55).
The other key element of modern sport is the quantification: the desire to measure and quantify each aspect of sports. Again this is a broad modern trend we see in most aspects of modern life. It deeply impacts sport because there is so much to measure! And these measures become a (or maybe even the) means of comparison and evaluation. How many yards? How many baskets? How many strikes? And this is before we even step in to the age of advance metrics!
Another element of the book is Guttmann’s critique of Marxist (and neo-Marxist) analyses of modern sport. Though he takes pains to point to some positive contributions, he rejects these approaches as the nonsense they are. (In the Afterword, added in 2004, he walks this critique back a little bit and is a bit more accommodating, while still nonetheless rejecting these approaches).
Guttmann’s conclusion about the development of modern sport is best summed up by his claim that: “The emergence of modern sports represents neither the triumph of capitalism nor the rise of Protestantism but rather the slow development of an empirical, experimental, mathematical Weltanschauung[a kind of world-view]” (85). The modernization process, in sport and elsewhere, is a function of this world-view: a view that looks to reason and evidence to understand, make sense of, and organize the world in which one lives. Modern sport is an outgrowth of this process. I’m inclined to think that capitalism (understood as the freedom of consenting adults to produce and freely trade goods and services) is equally a result of the same modernization process. But Guttmann’s point still holds that modern sport is not the result of market economies per se; it is rather a parallel, inherently modern development.
Guttmann’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of sport and how modern sport is different from early forms of sport. Though I am less convinced that modern sport is different in kind from earlier forms (though that may not be Guttmann’s point), I think Guttmann is right about the slow development of the world view that ultimate brings about what we recognize as modern sport.
The second “book” is an attempt to try to account for the (somewhat) unique popularity of baseball and (American) football in America. Although this discussion is personally interesting, both because I’m a fan of both sports and because Guttmann makes extensive use of literature and film to provide illustrations and support of his ideas, it ultimately is too out of date to be all that relevant. Writing in the late 70s and appealing to data and sources from even earlier decades, Guttmann identifies some of the origins of some of the trends we see today (e.g. the slower growth of baseball relative to the growing popularity of football). But to be useful in a contemporary discussion of how American sports differ from the sports of other nations (and what that might tell us), we’d have to update most of that data.
Guttmann starts the “main” book with an attempt at a definition of sport. Working through the ideas of various thinkers, including Suits, Huizinga, Callois, Sutton-Smith, and others, Guttmann draws distinctions between play, games, and sport; and defines sport as a playful physical contest. I have several quibbles with his topology of play, games, and sport, in particular in the manner in which he treats play. He follows the line of thought (which I think is mistaken) that treats play as purely autotelic, with no room for the instrumental or the purposive. This leads, I think, to several errors in how Guttmann conceptualizes sport and its role in our lives. That aside, the general thrust of his description of sport are sufficient to make sense of his argument about the shift from pre-modern to modern sport. His discussion examines how sports modernized in terms of seven main characteristics:
• Secularism
• Equality of opportunity to compete and conditions of competition
• Specialization of roles
• Rationalization
• Bureaucratic organization
• Quantification
• Quest for records
While discussing all of these, secularism and quantification seem to be the essential characteristics. These are the ones he focuses on the most, and in many ways they undergird and explain the other characteristics. For example, the quest for records seems to me to be a function of quantification – since the statistics and measures used for the records are things quantified.
Guttmann explains secularism as the long term shift from the origins of many sports and games in terms of the sacred towards sports as secular. In most cultures, athletic contests were, like most things, bound up with religion, the sacred. The games honored the gods or the contests were themselves sacred rituals (not recreation). Most know that the ancient Olympics and other Pan-Hellenic games were (at least in part) sacred religious events.
As he argues, part of the development of the modern world is a process of secularization. By this Guttmann doesn’t mean an outright rejection or eschewing of religion. It is that things that were sacred move in to the mundane. Sport modernize by moving from the sacred realm into the ordinary, everyday world.
Guttmann does briefly touch on the idea that sports have become a kind of secular religion, that it involves many rituals and myths of its own (26). After all, what sports fan hasn’t prayed to the “sports gods” at some point! But Guttmann argues that the point and role of sport in our lives is secular: it’s not about the transcendent or the sacred. It’s about fun, play, and profit.
I think this might dismiss the idea of a sacred secular, if such a thing makes sense. It’s not a transcendence that is mystic or other-worldly; it’s of this world and time but still sacred insofar as it is acknowledged and seen as extraordinary and special. A sacred secular just might be an essential aspect of modern sport. We all, I think, have the need for the sacred and sport might be a secular, non-supernatural way to experience the sacred. Towards the end of chapter 2, Guttmann seems to suggest something like a sacred secular: “Once the gods have vanished from Mount Olympus or from Dante’s paradise, we can no longer run to appease them or to save our souls, but we can set a new record. It is a uniquely modern form of immortality” (55).
The other key element of modern sport is the quantification: the desire to measure and quantify each aspect of sports. Again this is a broad modern trend we see in most aspects of modern life. It deeply impacts sport because there is so much to measure! And these measures become a (or maybe even the) means of comparison and evaluation. How many yards? How many baskets? How many strikes? And this is before we even step in to the age of advance metrics!
Another element of the book is Guttmann’s critique of Marxist (and neo-Marxist) analyses of modern sport. Though he takes pains to point to some positive contributions, he rejects these approaches as the nonsense they are. (In the Afterword, added in 2004, he walks this critique back a little bit and is a bit more accommodating, while still nonetheless rejecting these approaches).
Guttmann’s conclusion about the development of modern sport is best summed up by his claim that: “The emergence of modern sports represents neither the triumph of capitalism nor the rise of Protestantism but rather the slow development of an empirical, experimental, mathematical Weltanschauung[a kind of world-view]” (85). The modernization process, in sport and elsewhere, is a function of this world-view: a view that looks to reason and evidence to understand, make sense of, and organize the world in which one lives. Modern sport is an outgrowth of this process. I’m inclined to think that capitalism (understood as the freedom of consenting adults to produce and freely trade goods and services) is equally a result of the same modernization process. But Guttmann’s point still holds that modern sport is not the result of market economies per se; it is rather a parallel, inherently modern development.
Guttmann’s book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of sport and how modern sport is different from early forms of sport. Though I am less convinced that modern sport is different in kind from earlier forms (though that may not be Guttmann’s point), I think Guttmann is right about the slow development of the world view that ultimate brings about what we recognize as modern sport.
January 7, 2014
Allen Guttmann’s From Ritual to Record is a classic in the field of sports history, but one that even the author admits is more memorable for its first half than its second. In the first three chapters Guttmann explores the nature of contemporary sport in an attempt to define “modern” sport, while in the latter three he investigates what makes American sport unique by looking at baseball, football, and whether the national mentality can be said to be individualistic or cooperative. Guttmann’s argument starts off strong as he pursues a rigorous outline of “modern” sport and weakens somewhat as it attempts to tease out the nature of American society through the lens of organized play, but the work as a whole is engaging and informative.
Guttmann uses his opening chapter to set definitions to the nebulous terms that he will employ for the remainder of the book. He uses “play” to refer to “any nonutilitarian physical or intellectual activity pursued for its own sake” and “games” to denote “organized play”. From here he makes his most important point in the chapter by diverging from John Huizinga’s classic Homo Ludens and arguing that not all contests are games. While it appears that Guttman has missed, or at least chosen to ignore, Huizinga’s rationale for equating the two concepts, his definition is more useful; when not everything agonistic can be defined as play, Guttman’s hypotheses is left more open to falsifiability and is therefore imbued with more academic credibility.
Guttmann then proceeds to define “sport” as "nonutilitarian contests which include an important measure of physical as well as intellectual skill” and then moves on to his second chapter, where he outlines the seven characteristics of modern sport: secularism, equality, specialization, rationalization, bureaucratization, quantification, and records. A key point is that while many, if not all, of these characteristics have been present in some form in cultures since the age of the Greeks, only in the modern era have they become pervasive and systematic. His third chapter discusses – and rejects – Marxist and neo-Marxist interpretations of the emergence of modern sport and settles instead on a Weberian one, wherein modern sport arose out of the mathematical and intellectual traditions of the 17th century.
The remainder of Guttman’s work is not as solid, but is nonetheless intriguing. In chapter four he argues that baseball became more popular than other sports in the United States because it evoked a pastoral nostalgia and possessed a plethora of quantifiable elements. It failed to spread internationally, however, because the dawn of American hegemony came at a time when most countries had already accepted British sports such as football (soccer) and cricket; those that had not lived in more rural settings that left them with no need to evoke the pastoral nostalgia of baseball. Guttman’s fifth chapter argues that American football has become popular among the most socially restricted elements of society (such as the educated and the affluent) because it allows them a release without forcing them to be violent themselves. As society has required its members to restrain their primal urges more and more, and as baseball has lost the elements that invoke pastoral nostalgia, the former has risen in popularity at the expense of the latter. In his final chapter Guttman finds that, despite the pervasive idealization of Americans as individualists, the national character is one with greater appreciation for team sports and cooperativeness.
Many of Guttman’s ideas in the second half are derived through an analysis of national fiction in both the United States and the countries that he is using for comparative purposes, which is methodologically suspect and does little to strengthen his argument. Nonetheless, From Ritual to Record does provide a level of sophisticated insight into how “American” sports have been shaped into what they are today. Overall Guttman’s work, despite its flaws and outdated elements, is essential reading for anyone interested in an academic approach to sports history or seeking to understand what makes the sport of today “modern”.
Guttmann uses his opening chapter to set definitions to the nebulous terms that he will employ for the remainder of the book. He uses “play” to refer to “any nonutilitarian physical or intellectual activity pursued for its own sake” and “games” to denote “organized play”. From here he makes his most important point in the chapter by diverging from John Huizinga’s classic Homo Ludens and arguing that not all contests are games. While it appears that Guttman has missed, or at least chosen to ignore, Huizinga’s rationale for equating the two concepts, his definition is more useful; when not everything agonistic can be defined as play, Guttman’s hypotheses is left more open to falsifiability and is therefore imbued with more academic credibility.
Guttmann then proceeds to define “sport” as "nonutilitarian contests which include an important measure of physical as well as intellectual skill” and then moves on to his second chapter, where he outlines the seven characteristics of modern sport: secularism, equality, specialization, rationalization, bureaucratization, quantification, and records. A key point is that while many, if not all, of these characteristics have been present in some form in cultures since the age of the Greeks, only in the modern era have they become pervasive and systematic. His third chapter discusses – and rejects – Marxist and neo-Marxist interpretations of the emergence of modern sport and settles instead on a Weberian one, wherein modern sport arose out of the mathematical and intellectual traditions of the 17th century.
The remainder of Guttman’s work is not as solid, but is nonetheless intriguing. In chapter four he argues that baseball became more popular than other sports in the United States because it evoked a pastoral nostalgia and possessed a plethora of quantifiable elements. It failed to spread internationally, however, because the dawn of American hegemony came at a time when most countries had already accepted British sports such as football (soccer) and cricket; those that had not lived in more rural settings that left them with no need to evoke the pastoral nostalgia of baseball. Guttman’s fifth chapter argues that American football has become popular among the most socially restricted elements of society (such as the educated and the affluent) because it allows them a release without forcing them to be violent themselves. As society has required its members to restrain their primal urges more and more, and as baseball has lost the elements that invoke pastoral nostalgia, the former has risen in popularity at the expense of the latter. In his final chapter Guttman finds that, despite the pervasive idealization of Americans as individualists, the national character is one with greater appreciation for team sports and cooperativeness.
Many of Guttman’s ideas in the second half are derived through an analysis of national fiction in both the United States and the countries that he is using for comparative purposes, which is methodologically suspect and does little to strengthen his argument. Nonetheless, From Ritual to Record does provide a level of sophisticated insight into how “American” sports have been shaped into what they are today. Overall Guttman’s work, despite its flaws and outdated elements, is essential reading for anyone interested in an academic approach to sports history or seeking to understand what makes the sport of today “modern”.
February 18, 2013
I had two problems with this book. The constant use of fictional literature was not methodologically wrong, but it was annoying. I've read a number of books that quote endlessly from other books and summarize their plots. If I wanted to read those books I would have done so. The other problem I had was the deterministic use of the word primitive. I'm not so hard and fast with this one, but to assert that certain societies (such as the various Native American tribes) are primitive and have less complex structure than modern societies requires an explanation of the word primitive, or at least some standards affixed.
Other than that this book was really amazing. I loved the idea of religion and ritual in sports. The explanation of baseball as a cosmological setup was rather intriguing and the discussion of equality within sports as allowed by a lack of determinism due to secularism was also well worth reading. The anthropological tone of this book made it a nice breath of fresh air to the histories that tend to concentrate more on outliers than they do averages.
Other than that this book was really amazing. I loved the idea of religion and ritual in sports. The explanation of baseball as a cosmological setup was rather intriguing and the discussion of equality within sports as allowed by a lack of determinism due to secularism was also well worth reading. The anthropological tone of this book made it a nice breath of fresh air to the histories that tend to concentrate more on outliers than they do averages.
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