The Idea of Amateurism

Amateurism my be variously considered to be about doing things for the love of them, doing them without reward or material gain or doing them unprofessionally. It is a development of the idea of the amateur, a French word primarily indicating action or consumption arising from taste rather than instrumental self-interest. The appendage of an ‘-ism’ to amateur indicates (as with ‘racism’ or ‘capitalism’) either or both of a belief or a doctrine which stresses the role of the amateur or a tendency to act as if the distinction between amateur and non-amateur were important. The earliest references to amateurs in English were in the eighteenth century, but it is only in the second half of the nineteenth that the word amateurism (as opposed to amateurship) comes into common use. ¹ Amateurs and amateurism can exist in a wide variety of human activities, but it is only in sport that amateurism has been carefully defined and redefined and aroused social and political emotions of an intensity that has led non-amateurs to be described as ‘vermin’ and ‘performing monkeys’ and non-amateurism as the ethical equivalent of ‘touching pitch’. However, although what follows is about amateurism-in-sport, I shall argue that not only are there important parallels with amateurism in other fields (such as sex, gardening and music), but it is the general principle of amateurism which poses an interesting and neglected ethical and political issue for the twenty-first century, and not specifically amateurism-in-sport.