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French Rugby Football: A Cultural History
As France's oldest team sport, rugby football has throughout its 125-year history reflected major changes in French society. This book analyzes for the first time the complex variety of motives that have led the French to adopt and remake this rather unlikely British sport in their own image. A major site for the construction of masculine, class-based regional and national identities, France's tradition of 'Champagne rugby' continues to be as subject to dramatic upheavals as the society that produced it. The game's precocious professionalism and endemic violence have not infrequently caused the French to be cast as international pariahs. Such isolation, exacerbated by internal politics, has led the French not only to encourage the extension of the sport beyond its British imperial base (into Italy and Romania, for instance), but also to engage in some uncomfortable tactical alliances, most obviously with apartheid South Africa.Taking his analysis both on and off the field, the author tackles these issues and much the relationship of sport and the state (including particularly the Vichy period and the period under de Gaulle); professionalization; the persistence of colonial and postcolonial structures (including the role of ethnic minorities); and gender issues - especially masculine identities. At the same time he links the evolution of the sport to the broader context of French socio-economic, political and cultural history.This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in the cultural analysis of sport or French popular culture.
288 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2001
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 14, 2017
Dine argued that the hegemony of rugby in southwest France is because of historical reasons, as is the identification of rugby union with conservative construction of French identity. He noted that the French are considered “exceptional” as they are the only non-English speaking nation to play rugby as a primary sport, and the only one outside the former British Empire. It should be noted that though soccer is king in France, the southwest part of the country has more conservative and anti-centralist impulses which embrace rugby instead.
Dine argued that rugby arose as an upper class sport from Anglophile university students, but quickly spread to Paris and the provinces, where it became hegemonic in the southwest. By the 1920s, working class people had taken over the sport, and “shamateurism” became common, where talented players were offered cushy factory jobs to play for certain clubs, which led to French expulsion from international rugby in the 1930s. The 1930s also saw the rapid expansion of rugby league, which embraced professionalism and swelled with working class participation, and saw its suppression by the Vichy government and handing over of funds to rugby union.
After the war, Dine notes, rugby union and its officials were amongst the only Vichy associated institution not purged, as De Gaulle believed it to be key to constructing French national identity, as was sports in general. Therefore, rugby union became the dominant form of play, and a decidedly conservative anti-Parisian one. French rugby teams developed fierce rivalries with England and New Zealand, while having mixed relations with the South African team during apartheid, sometimes playing and sometimes boycotting play versus springbok. Today, Dine observed, rugby is decidedly white and not diverse, as opposed to the rainbow look of the soccer team’s makeup. Therefore, rugby is the conservative sport of France dominant in mainly the southwest, while soccer is the forward looking progressive France, metaphorically.
Key Themes and Concepts:
-French rugby has a reputation for extra violence, which Dine says is exaggerated.
-French “indiscipline” as disregard for rules and “French flair” for style.
-Permanent front line in rugby is the metaphor for need to defend nation.
-Way to prove manliness of individuals, only ones capable of upsetting New Zealand. They are “rugby’s chosen people.”
-Rugby union wasn’t challenged by of a lack of will to tackle cultural collaboration.
-Rugby is ideologically loaded as representing provincial rebellion against urban elites.
Dine argued that rugby arose as an upper class sport from Anglophile university students, but quickly spread to Paris and the provinces, where it became hegemonic in the southwest. By the 1920s, working class people had taken over the sport, and “shamateurism” became common, where talented players were offered cushy factory jobs to play for certain clubs, which led to French expulsion from international rugby in the 1930s. The 1930s also saw the rapid expansion of rugby league, which embraced professionalism and swelled with working class participation, and saw its suppression by the Vichy government and handing over of funds to rugby union.
After the war, Dine notes, rugby union and its officials were amongst the only Vichy associated institution not purged, as De Gaulle believed it to be key to constructing French national identity, as was sports in general. Therefore, rugby union became the dominant form of play, and a decidedly conservative anti-Parisian one. French rugby teams developed fierce rivalries with England and New Zealand, while having mixed relations with the South African team during apartheid, sometimes playing and sometimes boycotting play versus springbok. Today, Dine observed, rugby is decidedly white and not diverse, as opposed to the rainbow look of the soccer team’s makeup. Therefore, rugby is the conservative sport of France dominant in mainly the southwest, while soccer is the forward looking progressive France, metaphorically.
Key Themes and Concepts:
-French rugby has a reputation for extra violence, which Dine says is exaggerated.
-French “indiscipline” as disregard for rules and “French flair” for style.
-Permanent front line in rugby is the metaphor for need to defend nation.
-Way to prove manliness of individuals, only ones capable of upsetting New Zealand. They are “rugby’s chosen people.”
-Rugby union wasn’t challenged by of a lack of will to tackle cultural collaboration.
-Rugby is ideologically loaded as representing provincial rebellion against urban elites.
July 24, 2011
A very good piece of sports history that tells a story of French rugby as urban upper class in Paris and resolutely rural in the south and west. France, the only really significant non-English speaking rugby nation (OK – South Africa only gets half-way there), is a sports enigma: Dine takes us a good way towards an explanation.
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