ABSTRACT
The publication in 1979 of Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players constituted, we venture to suggest, an event of some academic significance. It was the first monograph-length sociological study of sport undertaken using an ‘Eliasian’, that is, ‘figurational’ or ‘process-sociological’ perspective. 1 Indeed, it was one of the first book-length studies in the sociology of sport to be published per se. As such it marked—and, we like to think, made a small contribution to—the growing maturity of what then still remained a fledgling field of sociological endeavour: the sociology of sport. It is a field that has subsequently grown apace and has since become one of the most vibrant areas of the subject overall.
