ABSTRACT
Constructionists insist that theory is integral to historical practice. Writing in 1929, Werner Sombart insisted that ‘the writer of history who desires to be more than a mere antiquarian must have a thorough theoretical training in those fields of inquiry with which his work is concerned’. This is not to deny that historians must ‘have a knowledge of sources and [the] ability to criticize them’. However, Sombart deems these skills as belonging to the ‘mere “hodman,”’ the one who undertakes only ‘menial’ tasks. ‘Theoretical training makes the true historian’, says Sombart adding his rail, ‘no theory – no history!’2 Clouding the debate are imprecise definitions of theory. Whereas the ‘hard’ or ‘natural’ scientists define theory as a formal arrangement of concepts explaining a specific phenomenon,3 historians accept theory as a ‘framework of interpretation’ which sets out questions, directs practitioners to particular sources, organises evidence and shapes explanations, and thereby gives ‘impetus to an inquiry and influences its outcomes’.4 Certainly in sport history ‘frameworks of interpretation’ rarely proceed beyond simple descriptions of systems or processes that barely justify the theory label.
