ABSTRACT
Ability can be defined as possessing the means (in the form of a configuration of physical and/or mental behaviours and habits) to do something, such as performing sporting skills. As well as being a particular kind of (practised) ability, sporting skill is also a physical form of capital. Talent, on the other hand, is usually taken to refer to an individual’s ‘natural’ or ‘inborn’ abilities of a particular kind, such as sporting talent. While physical capacities (such as genetic predispositions in relation to height and shape and even visual acuity) may be a ‘gift’, sporting skills are abilities inasmuch as they are behaviours that have been learned (and, almost invariably, practiced). Sociologists argue that many claims regarding ‘ability’ and ‘talent’ are inherently ideological in nature (see Evans et al., 2007) insofar as they tend to individualize success and failure, encouraging those who do not succeed (at sport, for example) to internalize the belief that failure is entirely their own fault.
