ABSTRACT
One reason for the popularity of sport as a spectator activity is its ability to slip the power-knowledge mechanism of the workaday world into reverse gear. The popular choice to invest large amounts of scarce leisure time and of psychic energy in watching sport does little to oppose the system of power and knowledge. Spectating is popular because what it changes is the position of the spectator in that system. Spectating involves intense horizontal relationships of community with other fans, whether on a massive scale in the stadium in front of the TV in the family rec room or the sports bar. The institution of education works, via official qualifications, to convert knowledge into employability and to formalize the mutual convertibility of economic and cultural capital. Via its continuous ranking of every performance of every body the educational system individuates students into a precise statistical hierarchy which, as its end result, legitimates economic and political inequality.
