Rugby is the world, and you don't even know it

Teamwork, just like the "real world" (Bellete, Parker)

I have been around many rugby clubs in various places in my time on this green earth, and one thing has become clear to me: the Rugby club is a microcosm of the larger world. That is why, to me at least, it made sense to analyse this social network with its super connector, and its power structures, to try to prove this idea to the masses.

“By definition, power is never equally distributed” (Kuttainen, Victoria (2016) slide 28) and typically the person who holds the most power within a club, the person who is the pre-eminent super connector with the strongest links around, is the president of the club. They typically have a naturally strong charismatic power (Kuttainen, Victoria (2016), and like many leaders in the outside world they utilise their charisma to develop strong links with those within their field.

As for the power within the club on an individual, I view the Rugby network as a variation of the Panopticon (Foucault, M. 1991), with the goal of this variation, sub-genre if you will, being to produce typical “masculine” behaviour in the individuals involved. The pressure to actually do the “masculine” behaviours are rarely ever explicitly stated with just the thought of the group caring, much like the possibility of the guards in the Panopticon watching, causing members of the group to act a certain way.

This sort of club interaction also demonstrates our inherent need for social power, also described as the need to “belong” (Maslow, A. H. 1943). The shared experience of the masculine activity leads, in many cases, to the people who participate in it strengthening their interpersonal links, or put another way they are turning the “space” of the rugby team into a “place” (Tuan, Y-F. 1977) by participating in these activities.

Sounds oddly familiar, doesn’t it? 

Interesting watch of the week (Liu, E 2013)

Bibliography 

Bellete, Parker (03/08/2014) (image) retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204374621263549&set=t.100001640171830&type=3&theater

Foucault, M. (1991). ‘Panopticism’. In Discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. London: Penguin, pp.195-228.

Kuttainen, Victoria (2016) BA1002: Our space: Networks, narratives and the making of place, lecture 2: Power. Powerpoint slides. Retrieved from http://learnjcu.edu.au

Liu, E (2013, September) Eric Liu: Why ordinary people need to understand power. retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Eutci7ack 

Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation.Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396. doi:10.1037/h0054346

Tuan, Yi-Fi. (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience, 3-7. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis. ISBN 0816608083

Turkle, S. (1995). ‘Panopticon’. In Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet