In an attempt to understand and debate whether violence in modern sport has continued to increase over time, it is first necessary to question what is meant by the term violence. Olweus (1999), quite narrowly, suggests that violence is the “use of physical force”. [1] It defines violence/violent behavior as "aggressive behavior in which the actor or aggressor uses his or her own body as an object (including a weapon) to inflict (relatively serious) injury or discomfort to an individual” (1999: 7). . However, as the study of violence has continued to expand, so has its characterization. The World Report on Violence and Health (WRVH, 2002) states that violence is "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, against another person, or against a group or community, which results in or has a high probability of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, poor development or deprivation. More specifically, violence in sport has been defined as “behavior that causes harm, occurs outside the rules of the sport and has no relation to the competitive objectives of the sport” (Terry and Jackson, 1985: 2). . However, although it is not an easy task to formulate a concrete and comprehensive understanding of violence, it is clear that there has been a continued increase in the frequency and severity of acts of violence in sport in the modern era (Leonard, 1988). However, it remains problematic to give a definitive answer to such a complex question since, for example, the Australian government has stated that there is no concrete data on the extent of sports violence, but that sports associations have indicated that there was no concrete data on the extent of sports violence. There has been an increase in violence in recent years (Wenn, 1989). The difficulty consists in assessing whether this level of violence has always been present in sport but appears, due to different influencing factors, to be a recent phenomenon which continues to increase. increase in today's world. This essay will examine both player/on-field violence and spectator violence. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayDuring the period before the fall of the Roman Empire, violence in sport was inherently a fundamental tenet of society that , far from undermining or offending Social norms were in fact endorsed and adopted by both athletes and spectators and became part of ordinary working-class society. The famous historian Josephus described how Titus treated his captives of the Jewish rebellion. “The number of those destroyed in fights with wild beasts, among themselves or in flames exceeded 2,500” (Grant, 1999: 28). This approach was not met with shock among the Romans. In fact, violence was such an integral part of society and sport that gladiators swore an oath when signing their pledge; “I agree to be burned by fire, to be chained, to be beaten, to die by the sword” (Grant, 1999: 45).[2] Furthermore, historically, violence was not only present in sport, but was a sport in itself, as was the case in Ireland in the 19th century (Conley, 1999). From a sociological point of view, this approach to sport reveals an attitude towards life, death and the suffering of others very different from that which dominates in the contemporary West (Dunning, 2002: 47), in the extent to which much of the West is liberaland democratic and recognizes the importance of human rights and the essential right to life. If it is argued that violence in sport today continues to be unambiguously widespread, it is useful to look to the law for empirical evidence. There are many professional sports leagues and other governing bodies that monitor violent activities and provide what are considered appropriate sanctions. There are some important judgments which indicate the position adopted by the law as it stands vis-à-vis violent actions in sport; in the 1969 case[3] for example, the court ruled that this was a case of self-defense. However, more importantly, they recognized that there was no difference between sporting competitions and real-world violence and so, as the McSorley affair (2000) later highlighted, violence in sport is considered criminal assault if one person uses unjustified and intentional force against another. with the intent to cause injury. The crime usually involves a threat of harm, coupled with inappropriate contact with the other person. This has enormous consequences in that it indicates that any action deemed violent and unnecessary can result in a criminal conviction because it is considered assault and therefore illegal. However, the question remains; Does the introduction and expansion of the law on violence in sport mean that violence is now less common or is the law now a very necessary tool that must be used because the level of violence continues to increase? Research has suggested that the causes of sport violence are provocation from the other team or competition, encouragement from coaches (Reilly, 1995; O"Brien and Wolff, 1996), peer pressure, the desire to winning, because it is an implicit part of the game (Scher, 1993; Weinstein, et al., 1995; Pilz, 1996), revenge and retaliation, and the result of patterns of behavior (Pooley and Golding, 1987) If these results are accurate, it suggests that violence has a high probability of occurring in sport when it occurs when it is used to make the difference between winning and losing, and when officiating is weak, sanctions are not. not severe, so there is no real fear of harmful penalization, coaches do not want or cannot control their players, nor even encourage them to break laws (Clark, 1981). to the extent that, despite the increase in the number of legislative and regulatory bodies, violence continues to be a very real problem in sport. Additionally, a problem is that it can be virtually impossible to gauge when these causes occur: there is no specific way to know how coaches react in a locker room or how players feel before a game. Furthermore, it has been argued that among men, some are influenced by society's macho image (Messner, 1992; Messner and Sabo, 1992; Coakley, 1998) and, in trying to be perceived as strong, fit and fearless, tend to engage in high levels of violence to illustrate their masculinity. Another difficulty in assessing whether violence in sport has actually increased in today's world is the fact that it is generally recognized that "rough body contact" is considered an integral part of some sports (Smith, 1983).[4] This “contact” is essentially in accordance with the rules of the sport already specified by the relevant regulatory body and is entirely legitimate even when the same type of behavior outside the sporting context is defined as criminal, such as for example assault. THEathletes, because they participated consensually, implicitly accepted the inevitability of violent contact and the likelihood that they would receive a few blows during "hits and falls." They thus implicitly admitted the probability of minor injuries, or even the possibility of serious injuries. A good example is that of Stuart Mangan[5]. When the question of whether violence in sports is increasing is asked in the light of such a sad case, at first glance it becomes easier to answer it in the affirmative and, not only that, it also becomes possible today today to assert that such a norm of violence is in fact acceptable to spectators and is not contrary to the norms of a modern democracy. However, it should be noted that athletes cannot reasonably be said to have accepted injuries sustained as a result of physical assaults that violate the written and unwritten rules of the sport. This means that no act of violence can ever violate the terms of the specific sport in question, which essentially means that today sport and violence have clear parameters. Another interesting feature that is worth examining in order to to comprehensively answer the question is this notion of “borderline violence” (Smith, 1986) which consists of behaviors that violate the official rules of the sport but remain acceptable to players and fans as a “legitimate part” of the game. Such activity - a fight or headbutt in ice hockey or an intentional foul in the penalty area of ​​a football club - is rarely, if ever, subject to a court hearing and there are increasingly a tendency to deal with these types of problems through sanctions imposed by referees, umpires, or league administrators. A good example of this occurred in 1997 when the Nevada Commission censored and banned boxer Mike Tyson for biting his opponent (NY Times, 1997). The most extreme rule infractions – those that upend both the formal rules of the sport and the laws of the land – normally elicit a more severe formal response, particularly when the violence results in serious injury. If we accept that sport, by its very nature, inevitably incorporates some level of violence and discord, it once again becomes more difficult to truly assess whether violence has become and continues to become more prominent in sport or if the very existence of sport has meant and continues to mean that violence has always been part of it. In sport, sport is often equated with pure violence (Atkinson and Young, 2008). Elias (1993) suggests that sport thrives in regulated societies where violence in general is kept to a minimum (liberal democracies for example) because disagreements are resolved politically in the normal way. Sport thus functions, in these societies, as a "rescue institution", a "mimetic battle" that allows people to flourish and catharsis without "acts of violence... without inflicting physical injury or death to other human beings. "Essentially, this sport is a way to express anger and frustration. However, because sport is close to violence, it is also in the context of sporting events that violence tends to manifest first when the society (because of unemployment, poverty, discrimination, etc.) begins to collapse Hooliganism is just one example given by Elias of this phenomenon. This essay will now focus on the second type of violence. aforementioned Sometimes, fans do more than complain Sports team fan violence dates back to Roman times, when supporters of chariot racing teams were frequently involved in large ones.?