Social Structure and Interaction in Girls' Basketball: A Contribution to Socialization and Sport

175 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982.It was the purpose of this study to examine the role of organized, competitive sport in the social development of the individual. In line with the symbolic interactionist perspective, an in-depth analysis was made of the social interactions experienced by a varsity team of female athletes participating in high school basketball. Questions of particular concern included the nature of the interpersonal interactions experienced by athletes within the context of sport, the perceptions and interpretations by the athletes of those interactional experiences, and the potential implications of sport interaction for the social development of the athletes. Included was a theoretical and analytical treatment of such issues as the interrelated network and personal meanings of patterned interaction within sport, the influence on sport interaction of factors external to the athletes, the well-defined authority structure of sport as lodged in the position of the coach, and the expression of both a private and public sport self. Discussion generated from George Herbert Mead's conceptualization of the 'generalized other' and the 'I-Me' interplay when applied to sport. Such revealed the impact of the social structure on sport interaction as well as the nature of the social self likely to be developed through sport participation. For sport this seemed to involve the development and presentation of a sport self which is: (1) deliberate and disciplined in its articulation and movements, (2) socially restrained and under control, (3) sensitive to the imposition of the expectations and directions of others, and (4) able to effect the presentation of self in relation to others. As reflected in the perceptions of the athletes in the study, the sport experience seemed to translate predominantly into learning to work well with others and developing self control.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD