A reading on Sports and Culture in anthropology, as a way of reflecting on the Capiter Case

What Determines International Sports success?

Why do countries excel at particular sports?

Why do certain nations pile up dozens of Olympic medals, while others win only a handful? It isn’t simply a matter of rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, or even governmental or other institutional support of promising athletes. It isn’t even a question of a “national will to win,” for although certain nations stress winning even more than Americans do, a cultural focus on winning doesn’t necessarily lead to the desired result.

Cultural values, social forces, and the media influence international sports success. We can see this by contrasting the United States and Brazil, two countries with continental proportions and large, physically and ethnically diverse populations. Although each is its continent’s major economic power, they offer revealing contrasts in Olympic success: In the 2012 London summer Olympics, the United States won 104 medals, including 46 gold medals, compared with 17 and 3, respectively, for Brazil.

Americans’ interest in sports has been honed over the years by an ever-growing media establishment, which provides a steady stream of games, matches, playoffs, championships, and analysis.

Cable and satellite TV offer almost constant sports coverage, including packages for every major sport and season. The Super Bowl is a national event.

The Olympic games get extensive coverage and attract significant audiences. Brazilian television, by contrast, traditionally has offered less sports coverage, with no nationally televised annual event comparable to the Super Bowl. The World (soccer) Cup, held every 4 years, is the only sports event that consistently draws huge national audiences.

In international competition, a win by a Brazilian team or the occasional nationally known individual athlete is felt to bring respect to the entire nation, but the Brazilian media are strikingly intolerant of losers. When the now legendary swimmer Ricardo Prado swam for his silver medal in the finals of the 400 individual Medley (IM), during prime time on national TV in 1984, one news magazine observed that “it was as though he was the country with a swimsuit on, jumping in the pool in a collective search for success” (Isto E 1984).

Prado’s own feelings confirmed the magazine, “When I was on the stands, I thought of just one thing: what they’ll think of the result in Brazil.”

After beating his old world record by 1.33 seconds, in a second-place finish, Prado told a fellow team member, “I think I did everything right. I feel like a winner, but will they think I’m a loser in Brazil?” Prado contrasted the situations of Brazilian and American athletes. The United States has, he said so many athletes that no single one has to summarize the country’s hopes (Veja 1984a). Fortunately, Brazil did seem to value Prado’s performance, which was responsible for “Brazil’s best result ever in Olympic swimming” (Veja 1984a). Labeling Prado “the man of silver,” the media never tired of characterizing his main event, the 400 IM, in which he once had held the world record, as the most challenging event in swimming. However, the kind words of Ricardo Prado did not extend to the rest of the Brazilian team. The press lamented their “succession of failures” (Veja 1984a). (Brazil finally got swimming gold at the 2008 games in Beijing, with Cesar Cielo Filho winning the 50-meter freestyle race.)

Because Brazilian athletes are viewed as standing for their entire country, and because team sports are emphasized, the Brazilian media focus too exclusively on winning. Winning, of course, is also an American cultural value, particularly for team sports, as in Brazil. American football coaches are famous for comments like “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing” and “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” However, and particularly for sports such as running, swimming, diving, gymnastics, and skating, which focus on the individual, and in which American athletes usually do well, American culture also admires “moral victories,” “personal bests.” “comeback athletes,” and “Special Olympics” and commends those who run good races without finishing first. In amateur and individual sports, American culture tells us that hard work and personal improvement can be as important as winning.

Americans are so accustomed to being told their culture overemphasizes winning that they may find it hard to believe other cultures value it even more. Brazil certainly does. Brazilian sports enthusiasts are preoccupied with world records, probably because only a win (as in soccer) or a best time (as in swimming) can make Brazil indisputably, even if temporarily, the best in the world at something.

Prado’s former world record in the 400 IM was mentioned constantly in the press prior to his Olympic swim. Such a best-time standard also provides Brazilians with a ready basis to fault a swimmer or runner for not going fast enough, when he or she doesn’t make previous times. One might predict, accurately, that sports with more subjective standards would not be very popular in Brazil. Brazilians like to assign blame to athletes who fail them, and negative comments about gymnasts or divers are more difficult, because grace and execution can’t be quantified as easily as time can.

Brazilians, I think, value winning so much because it is rare. In the United States, resources are more abundant, chances to achieve more numerous, and poverty less pervasive. American society has room for many winners. Brazilian society is more stratified; together the middle class and the small elite group at the top comprise just about half of the national population. Brazilian sports echo lessons from the larger society: Victories are scarce and usually reserved for the privileged few.

Being versus Doing

The factors believed to contribute to sports success belong to a larger context of cultural values. Particularly relevant is the contrast between ascribed and achieved status. An ascribed status (e.g. age) is based on what one is rather than what one does. Individuals have more control over their achieved statuses (e.g., student, golfer, tennis player). American culture emphasizes achieved over ascribed status: We are supposed to make of our lives the best we can. Success comes through achievement. An American’s identity emerges as a result of what he or she does.

In Brazil, on the other hand, identity rests not so much on doing as on being, on what one is from the start – a strand in a web of personal connections, originating in social class and the extended family. Social position and network membership contribute substantially to individual fortune, and all social life is hierarchical. High status Brazilians don’t stand patiently in line as Americans do. Important people expect their business to be attended to immediately, and social inferiors readily yield. A high – status Brazilian is as likely to say “Do you know who you’re talking to?” as an American is to say “Who do you think you are?” – reflecting a more democratic and egalitarian value system (DaMatta 1991).

The following description of a Brazilian judo medalist (as reported by Veja magazine) illustrates the importance of ascribed status and privilege.

“Walter Carmona began judo at age six and became a Sao Paulo champion at twelve ...

Carmon… is fully supported by his father, a factory owner. Walter Carmona’s life has been comfortable – he has been able to study and dedicate himself to judo without worries. (Veja 1984b, P. 61)"

Faced with an athlete from a well-off family, American reporters, by contrast, rarely conclude that privilege is the main reason for success.

American media almost always focus on some aspect of doing, some special personal triumph or achievement. Often, this involves the athlete’s struggle with adversity (illness, injury, pain, or the death of a parent, sibling, friend, or coach).

The featured athlete is presented as not only successful but noble and self-sacrificing as well.

Given the Brazilian focus on ascribed status, the guiding assumption is that one cannot do more than what one is. One year the Brazilian Olympic committee sent no female swimmers to the Summer Olympics, because none had made arbitrarily established cutoff times. This excluded a South American record holder, while swimmers with slower times were attending from other countries. No one seemed to imagine that Olympic excitement might spur swimmers to extraordinary efforts.

American culture, supposedly so practical and realistic, has a remarkable faith in the possibility of coming from behind. These values are those of an achievement-oriented society where (ideally) “anything is possible” compared with an ascribed status society in which it’s over before it’s begun.

In American sports coverage underdogs and unexpected results, virtually ignored by the Brazilian media, provide some of the “brightest” moments. Brazilian culture has little interest in the unexpected.

Athletes internalize these values. Brazilians assume that if you go into an event with a top seed time, as Ricardo Prado did, you’ve got a chance to win a medal. Prado’s second-place finish made perfect sense back home, because his former world record had been bettered before the race began.

Given the overwhelming value American culture places on work, it might seem surprising that our media devote so much attention to unforeseen results and so little to the years of training, preparation, and competition that underlie Olympic performance. It probably is assumed that hard work is so obvious and fundamental that it goes without saying. Or perhaps the assumption is that by the time athletes actually enter Olympic competition all are so similar (the American value of equality) that only mysterious and chance factors can explain variable success. The American focus on the unexpected applies to losses as well as wins.

Such concepts as chance, fate, mystery, an uncertainty are viewed as legitimate reasons for defeat.

Runners and skaters fall; ligaments tear; a gymnast “inexplicably” falls off the pommel horse.

Brazilians place more responsibility on the individual. Less is attributed to factors beyond human control. When individuals who should have performed well don’t do so, they are blamed for their failures. It is, however, culturally appropriate in Brazil to use poor health as an excuse for losing. The American media, by contrast, talk much more about the injuries and illnesses of the victors than those of the losers.

― Conrad Phillip Kottak, Cultural Anthropology, Appreciating Cultural Diversity, Seventeenth Edition.