Emblematic Legitimacy: Sports, Organizations, and Symbols

Abstract

Research in this dissertation is a recontextualization of social and cultural theories into the rich world of symbols and their meanings within sports as a totemic phenomenon. The purposes of this dissertation are to investigate the social power of symbols and their ability to legitimate through the two-pronged analysis of sports as a modern form of the religion of totemism and the usage of symbols in organizational legitimacy. Modern sports use symbols which are embraced and utilized in an array of meanings and identify-forming interactions. Through the investigation of the symbol-focused organizational context of sports totemism, this dissertation develops the theoretical concept of emblematic legitimacy for symbol-based legitimation. In this dissertation, I combine Emile Durkheim’s theories of totemism and Max Weber’s theories of authority with various other theorists to (1) explore how the numerous groups we belong to are religious phenomena, (2) the importance of a sense of the sacred in sports and nuances of the nature of the sacred broadly, and (3) how, though totemism is often thought an archaic phenomenon, it is still operating today. Chapters use theorists Victor Turner, Marcel Mauss, Robert Bellah, George Ritzer, and Robert Hertz, among others, to elucidate many facets of sports totemism and organizational legitimacy, such as: (1) how legitimacy is a social fact related to the sacred’s emphasis on respect (2) symbols like sports teams exist in networks with each other and connect to the sacred’s spatial and temporal dynamics as in stadiums (3) sporting events are a ritualistic gift exchange of emotions which become embodied and remembered in symbols (4) there are multiple sites of the sacred like sports and the nation which can overlap and interlock resulting in syncretized symbolism (5) and sports totemism is a powerful social force that brings people together, as when a sports hero dies, and the powerful meanings of symbols are an actively constructed process. These explorations of sports totemism and symbols within legitimation reveal how people live lives expressed in symbols which interact with and empower people, organizations, and other symbols, not only in sports, but also in every domain of social life.