Fanship Habitus: The Consumption of Sport in the US

This chapter offers and tests a theory of “Fanship Habitus.” I posit habitus to be, as Bourdieu termed it, a generative principle that encompasses both the active acquisition of knowledge, a way of knowing and the effects that that way of knowing has. As such habitus is the both the incorporation and expression of social location, practices and the resulting cognitive structures which often are expressed through perceptual tendencies and their resultant dispositions. Bourdieu's habitus is what becomes to people their “second nature.” This research investigates that second nature in the class of people I see as active sport consumers among white, middle-class, middle-age American men. The data are drawn from a web-based survey of nearly 1,200 respondents and compared with the data from the US Census along the lines of income, education, race. I then use data from the Gallup Poll and the Miller Lite Study of American Attitudes towards Sport to argue that they are similar to only more exaggerated in their commitment to active sport consumption. Their social location, then, is validated as white, middle-class, American men. This location already carries a predisposition towards fanship, foreshadowing the theory.