29
W hy do some foreign practices take root while others either arrive dead in the water or take hold only to wither and die? Modern diffusion studies have focused prima- rily on the structural aspects of diffusion, or the existence of tangible points of contact between adopters and adoptees, as well as the environmental contexts that modulate such inter- actions. But as Strang and Soule (1998:276) note, “[S]tructural opportunities for meaning- ful contact cannot tell us what sorts of practices are likely to diffuse,” whereas an “analysis of the cultural bases of diffusion speaks more direct- ly to what spreads, replacing a theory of con- nections with a theory of connecting.” According to this more culturally minded approach, diffusing practices are most likely to be adopted when they are first made congruent with local cultural frames or understandings, and are thus “rendered salient, familiar and com- pelling” (Strang and Soule 1998:276; see also Gottdiener 1985; Rogers 1995). In other cases, however, more than just “congruence” is need- ed for successful adoption; institutional sup- port, repeated exposure, and/or active instruction in the new practice are required for it to “take hold” in new settings. The original cultural pro- file of that practice is often transformed in the process (e.g., Appadurai 1996; Bhabha 1994; Guillén 2001; Watson 2002). Sometimes, more- over, it is the very difference in social, cultur- al, and political power between change agents Cross-National Cultural Diffusion: The Global Spread of Cricket Jason Kaufman Orlando Patterson Harvard University Harvard University This article explores the dynamics of cross-national cultural diffusion through the study of a case in which a symbolically powerful cultural practice, the traditionally English sport of cricket, successfully diffused to most but not all countries with close cultural ties to England. Neither network ties, nor national values, nor climatic conditions account for this disparity. Our explanation hinges instead on two key factors: first, the degree to which elites chose either to appropriate the game and deter others from participating or actively to promote it throughout the population for hegemonic purposes; and second, the degree to which the game was “popularized” by cultural entrepreneurs looking to get and keep spectators and athletes interested in the sport. Both outcomes relate to the nature of status hierarchies in these different societies, as well as the agency of elites and entrepreneurs in shaping the cultural valence of the game. The theoretical significance of this project is thus the observation that the diffusion of cultural practices can be promoted or discouraged by intermediaries with the power to shape the cultural meaning and institutional accessibility of such practices. AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW, 2005, VOL. 70 (February:82–110) #2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman Direct all correspondence to Jason Kaufman, Department of Sociology, 648 William James Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138 (jkauf- [email protected]), or to Orlando Patterson, Department of Sociology, 520 William James Hall, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138 ([email protected]). The authors thank Joel Ngugi and Michael Nguyen for their extraordinary efforts as research assistants. Cynthia Rockwell and Mary Quigley provided invaluable clerical assistance. The staff at the National Library of Canada was both helpful and accommodating. Andy Markovits pro- vided information and inspiration for our own endeav- or into “American exceptionalism” and the sociology of sport. Peter Moskos helped with baseball history. The authors also thank Jerry A. Jacobs and the edi- torial staff at ASR, as well as Michèle Lamont, Frank Dobbin, Chris Winship, and the members of the Culture Brown-Bag group at Harvard for their crit- ical feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Cricket article

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

Page 1: Cricket article

Why do some foreign practices take rootwhile others either arrive dead in the

water or take hold only to wither and die?Modern diffusion studies have focused prima-rily on the structural aspects of diffusion, orthe existence of tangible points of contact

between adopters and adoptees, as well as theenvironmental contexts that modulate such inter-actions. But as Strang and Soule (1998:276)note, “[S]tructural opportunities for meaning-ful contact cannot tell us what sorts of practicesare likely to diffuse,” whereas an “analysis of thecultural bases of diffusion speaks more direct-ly to what spreads, replacing a theory of con-nections with a theory of connecting.”According to this more culturally mindedapproach, diffusing practices are most likely tobe adopted when they are first made congruentwith local cultural frames or understandings, andare thus “rendered salient, familiar and com-pelling” (Strang and Soule 1998:276; see alsoGottdiener 1985; Rogers 1995). In other cases,however, more than just “congruence” is need-ed for successful adoption; institutional sup-port, repeated exposure, and/or active instructionin the new practice are required for it to “takehold” in new settings. The original cultural pro-file of that practice is often transformed in theprocess (e.g., Appadurai 1996; Bhabha 1994;Guillén 2001; Watson 2002). Sometimes, more-over, it is the very difference in social, cultur-al, and political power between change agents

CCrroossss--NNaattiioonnaall CCuullttuurraall DDiiffffuussiioonn:: TThhee GGlloobbaall SSpprreeaadd ooff CCrriicckkeett

Jason Kaufman Orlando PattersonHarvard University Harvard University

This article explores the dynamics of cross-national cultural diffusion through the study

of a case in which a symbolically powerful cultural practice, the traditionally English

sport of cricket, successfully diffused to most but not all countries with close cultural ties

to England. Neither network ties, nor national values, nor climatic conditions account

for this disparity. Our explanation hinges instead on two key factors: first, the degree to

which elites chose either to appropriate the game and deter others from participating or

actively to promote it throughout the population for hegemonic purposes; and second,

the degree to which the game was “popularized” by cultural entrepreneurs looking to get

and keep spectators and athletes interested in the sport. Both outcomes relate to the

nature of status hierarchies in these different societies, as well as the agency of elites and

entrepreneurs in shaping the cultural valence of the game. The theoretical significance of

this project is thus the observation that the diffusion of cultural practices can be

promoted or discouraged by intermediaries with the power to shape the cultural meaning

and institutional accessibility of such practices.

AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW,, 22000055,, VVOOLL.. 7700 ((FFeebbrruuaarryy::8822––111100))

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Direct all correspondence to Jason Kaufman,Department of Sociology, 648 William James Hall,Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138 ([email protected]), or to Orlando Patterson,Department of Sociology, 520 William James Hall,Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138([email protected]). The authors thank Joel Ngugiand Michael Nguyen for their extraordinary effortsas research assistants. Cynthia Rockwell and MaryQuigley provided invaluable clerical assistance. Thestaff at the National Library of Canada was bothhelpful and accommodating. Andy Markovits pro-vided information and inspiration for our own endeav-or into “American exceptionalism” and the sociologyof sport. Peter Moskos helped with baseball history.The authors also thank Jerry A. Jacobs and the edi-torial staff at ASR, as well as Michèle Lamont, FrankDobbin, Chris Winship, and the members of theCulture Brown-Bag group at Harvard for their crit-ical feedback on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

Page 2: Cricket article

and adopters that accounts for successful long-term diffusion.

One case that encompasses all of these fac-tors is the cross-national diffusion of cricket.Cricket originated in England as an informalrural game, though it quickly emerged into ahighly competitive sport. Over time, cricketevolved into an English national pastime, alongwith soccer, rugby, and horse racing (Allen1990). Cricket began diffusing to other countrieswhen British soldiers and settlers brought itwith them to the various colonies of the empire,and today, most Commonwealth countries sup-port active cricket cultures, though not all.

The case of Canada is particularly striking inthis regard. Cricket was popular in Canada andthe United States in the mid-nineteenth centu-ry—in fact, the first official international crick-et match in the world took place betweenAmerican and Canadian “elevens” in 1844(Boller 1994a:23). The game’s popularity rivaledthat of baseball until the late nineteenth centu-ry, after which interest declined sharply. Thegame languished in both countries until quiterecently, when new immigrants from theCaribbean and South Asia began arriving inNorth America in signif icant numbers(Gunaratnam 1993; Steen 1999). This pattern ofadoption-then-rejection poses important sub-stantive and theoretical issues regarding thecross-national diffusion of cultural practices.Given Canada’s—and to a lesser degree,America’s—demographic, cultural, andsociopolitical connections to Britain, the game’sunexpected demise there is puzzling, especial-ly in contrast to its successful diffusion in far less“British” parts of the Commonwealth. At thesame time, this disjuncture also seems at oddswith several important perspectives in the soci-ological study of diffusion.

SSIITTUUAATTIINNGG CCRRIICCKKEETT IINN DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN TTHHEEOORRYY

There is widespread agreement that diffusion isthe transmission, adoption, and eventual accul-turation of an innovation by a recipient popu-lation (Coleman, Katz, and Menzel 1966;Rogers 1995; Wejnert 2002; cf. Palloni 2001).Most sociological studies of the diffusionprocess aim to identify the mechanisms bywhich an innovation spreads as well as the rateat which it does so in a given population.

Although there is now a rich body of importantfindings about this process, several major prob-lems and gaps still exist.

One major failing of the diffusion literatureis the tendency to overlook cases where inno-vations are transmitted but eventually rejected,as well as cases where adoption might havebeen expected but did not occur. Palloni (2001:73–75) highlights two aspects of this problemin his important recent review of the field. First,he notes the common failure to try and accountfor the persistence of diffused practices in theirnew surroundings—how and why, in otherwords, do diffused practices become part of thelived experience of those who have adoptedthem? Second, he notes the obverse: that afterthe initial adoption of an innovation, mecha-nisms might arise that undermine its retention.Palloni (2001:73) adds that, “Despite the factthat this is a key part of a diffusion process, itis rarely mentioned and almost never explicit-ly modeled or studied.” The problem, we sus-pect, is that many diffusion studies track culturalpractices that are not commonly rejected, suchas the adoption of new, time-tested medical oragricultural practices. Strang and Soule (1998:268) observe, for example, that there is “a strongselection bias in diffusion research, where inves-tigators choose ultimately popular [i.e., widelydiffused] practices as appropriate candidatesfor study.” Issues such as the persistence andrejection of diffused practices are thus generallyoverlooked in the literature.

Another shortcoming of diffusion studies ishighlighted by Wejnert (2002:299–302), whonotes a tendency in the literature to ignore therole of characteristics unique to the practice orthing being diffused. Specific features of theinnovation being adopted, such as its potentialfor replication and change, play an important butoften overlooked role in the ultimate success orfailure of diffusion. By confining their studiesto simple physical objects or cultural routinesthat are diffused at the micro-social level, dif-fusion scholars have tended to create advancedformal models that overlook real-world obsta-cles to diffusion—those posed by the nature,complexity, continuity, and potential mutabili-ty of the innovations themselves. Wejnert (2002)also notes the often overlooked distinctionbetween innovations that are diffused at themacro- and micro-social levels. Those involv-ing large collective actors such as countries and

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––8833

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 3: Cricket article

industries likely have different consequencesand diffusion mechanisms than those thatinvolve mainly individuals or firms.

The dominant “relational” approach to dif-fusion research in sociology has improved ourknowledge of the role of social networks in thetransmission of information and ideas (e.g.Buskens and Yamaguchi 1999), but it tends tounderspecify the role of social structural factorssuch as class, status, and power in the adoptionor rejection of innovations. In this light, Burt(1987), Marsden and Podolny (1990), and Vanden Bulte and Lilien (2001) have revisedColeman, Katz, and Menzel’s (1966) classicstudy of the adoption of a new antibiotic drugamong a community of Midwestern doctors,but diffusion research has otherwise largelyneglected these topics. It is significant, noteMizruchi and Fein (1999), that sociologists havewidely overlooked the role of power inDiMaggio and Powell’s (1983) celebrated studyof the diffusion of organizational forms.Inequality, in particular, seems to be a neglect-ed subject in the diffusion literature. Rogers(1995:7) makes a distinction betweenhomophilous and heterophilous diffusionprocesses—that is, those in which the changeagents and adopters either share or do not sharecomparable social positions—but fails toexplore the ramifications of the latter situationin detail. As we will see in the case of cricket,status differences and the attendant mechanismsof distancing and inclusion can be decisive vari-ables in explaining the adoption of cross-nation-ally diffused cultural practices. It will be shownthat a top-down, or vertically heterophilous,process of diffusion best explains diffusionarysuccess in some cases.

Some sociologists who work within the insti-tutional framework of diffusion studies have,happily, attempted to address these concerns(see, e.g., Clemens and Cook 1999; Cole 1989;Dobbin and Sutton 1998; Guillén 1994; Lillrank1995; Meyer and Hannan 1979; Molotch,Freudenberg, and Paulsen 2000; Patterson 1994;Strang 1990; Strang and Meyer, 1993; Starr1989). While we applaud the temporal andcausal acuity of these studies, we think there arefurther insights to be gained from case studiesthat explore the cultural and structural com-plexities of the diffusion process in broad socio-historical terms.

The case study presented here will focus ona Western social practice that is, by any meas-

ure, an internally complex cultural entity withpowerful symbolic and political consequences(Appadurai 1996; Beckles and Stoddart 1995;Bourdieu 1978; Maguire 1999; Malcolm 2001;Miller et al. 2001; Nandy 2000; Patterson 1995;Stoddart 1988). It involves cross-national dif-fusion among large collective entities engagingbroad arrays of both practitioners and spectators.It illustrates both the successful diffusion of apolitically potent national cultural practice andthe potential for such diffusion to be discontin-ued midstream. Finally, the case of cricket high-lights the roles of social structure and “culturalpower” in the diffusion process.

We first dispense with several common expla-nations of the diffusion of cricket, each of whichhinges on one or another argument about nation-al culture. Instead, we demonstrate the need toconsider four aspects of the adopting countries’social systems that appear to mitigate the poten-tial diffusion of a cultural practice from a “dom-inant” power to its “subordinates”: socialstratification, secondary education, entrepre-neurship/network-building, and indexicalnationalism, or the frame of reference in whichcitizens measure their own national accom-plishments. Of the four, social stratificationseems to have had the most widespread (i.e.,generalizable) impact on the global diffusion ofcricket, though this occurred at least partiallythrough indirect effects related to the otherthree. Before explaining any of this in moredetail, however, we will enumerate our studypopulation, evaluate evidence relating to thepopularity of cricket and other sports in variouscountries, and outline the criteria by which wemeasure national sports cultures.

CCRRIICCKKEETT’’SS UUNNIIVVEERRSSEE:: TTHHEE SSTTUUDDYY PPOOPPUULLAATTIIOONN

As noted earlier, our primary concern here is thetransmission of a complex innovation betweenvery complex collective units.1 This presentsformidable problems of verification, made more

8844——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

1 Admittedly, one shortcoming of this particularcase study is that it pertains primarily to male athletesand sports fans in the countries in question.Nonetheless, we have no reason to expect that ourfindings would be different were we to study a sportor other “national” cultural practice with greatercross-gender appeal.

Page 4: Cricket article

difficult by the fact that there are limited datasources on sports during our period of focus—the mid-nineteenth through early twentieth cen-turies. Were our objectives similar to those ofmost current sociological studies of diffusion—estimating the rate and efficiency of diffusiongiven several different types of network struc-ture—such data problems would be insur-mountable. Our task, happily, is different andmakes far fewer quantitative demands on theavailable historical data. We are concerned,instead, with uncovering those covariates thatexplain ultimately successful or unsuccessfulcases of diffusion among the population of soci-eties exposed to the game of cricket. It will thusbe enough for us to define, first, the populationof British-influenced societies that were exposedto and that initially played the game (the popu-lation of potential long-term adoptees); and sec-ond, the success or failure of adoption in eachcase within that population, including caseswhere discontinuation followed successful adop-tion. Please note that the focus of our inquiry ison the early period when cricket was first beinginstitutionalized in England and spread through-out its colonies (i.e., the 19th and early 20th cen-turies). Much happened in the cricket worldafter World War II (when many of these coloniesgained independence) that we cannot accountfor here. Wherever possible, we try to accountfor late-twentieth-century manifestations of thegame, but our empirical focus is on the earlierperiod in which the game was either successfullyor unsuccessfully transplanted to the variousBritish settlements considered here.

One reason the global diffusion of cricketis of particular sociological interest is that itis so strongly associated with a specific coun-try of origin. Cricket was f irst played inEngland, and since its earliest years, global dif-fusion of the game has been controlled byEnglishmen and their cricket clubs. C.L.R.James (1963:164), the great West Indian socialanalyst, once wrote, for example, “Cricketwas one of the most complete products of thatprevious age to which a man like Dickensalways looked back with such nostalgia. .|.|. Itis the only contribution of the English educa-tional system of the nineteenth century to thegeneral education of Western civilization.”Similarly, J. A. Mangan (1986: 153), author ofThe Games Ethic and Imperialism, wrote,“Cricket was the umbilical cord of Empirelinking the mother country with her children.”

Moreover, the game was deliberately “export-ed” to the British colonies as part of Britishcolonial policy. According to one historian ofthe game, Brian Stoddart (1988: 658), “Cricketwas considered the main vehicle for transfer-ring the appropriate British moral code fromthe messengers of empire to the local popu-lations.”

International cricket has long since been dom-inated by ten core constituencies, each of whichis officially recognized by the InternationalCricket Council (ICC) as “qualified to playofficial Test matches.” The ICC was founded inEngland in 1909 and originally comprised justthree member countries: England, Australia,and South Africa. (South Africa was expelledfrom the Commonwealth, and thus the ICC, in1961 but was reappointed to the ICC as a “fullmember” nation in 1991.) In 1926, India, NewZealand, and a conglomeration of BritishCaribbean islands (the West Indies) were addedto the ICC’s membership, allowing them tocompete in global competition at the highestlevel. The remaining four full-member nationsare Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, andZimbabwe. These ten countries thus make upwhat one might view as those parts of the worldin which cricket has in fact attained the statusof “hegemonic sports culture.” Note the con-spicuous absence of Canada, itself a majorCommonwealth country. The United States isexcluded as well. These twelve nations—theworld’s ten major cricketing countries plus theUnited States and Canada—constitute the pri-mary set of cases analyzed here (see Table 1).

All of the foregoing reaffirms that the glob-al diffusion of cricket is more than just a caseof a popular sporting activity being adopted bysocieties around the world. Cricket has neverbeen an Olympic sport, and its main interna-tional body, the ICC, was originally anappendage of the British colonial state. Until1965, in fact, it was the express policy of theICC to admit only Commonwealth countries asmembers—the International Cricket Councilwas actually named the Imperial CricketCouncil until 1965, further evidence of its dis-tinct ties to the British colonial system. At thesame time, it is rather ironic that so many coun-tries with painful colonial histories—India andthe West Indies, for example—dominate thesport today. We will explore in detail all of thequestions raised so far, but first, we must out-

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––8855

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 5: Cricket article

line more specifically how we determine “suc-cessful” diffusion.

HHEEGGEEMMOONNIICC SSPPOORRTTSS CCUULLTTUURREE:: DDEEFFIINNIITTIIOONN AANNDD AAPPPPLLIICCAATTIIOONN

By what criteria do we designate some countriesas “cricket-playing countries” and others asmerely countries where cricket is played, or notplayed at all? In trying to define what exactlyconstitutes a national sports culture we borrowMarkovits and Hellerman’s (2001) concept of“hegemonic sports culture.” In their timelymonograph, Offside: Soccer and AmericanExceptionalism, Markovits and Hellerman askwhy soccer (i.e., “football” in international parl-ance) is not more popular in the United States.Americans play soccer, field an increasinglycompetitive World Cup squad, and have sup-ported professional soccer leagues of varyingsuccess, but, argue Markovits and Hellerman,soccer is still not a national pastime in America.By this they mean that there is not a large audi-ence for soccer among American sports fans.Soccer matches are not major events in America,players are not idolized, and the sport is not acommon topic of conversation as are football,baseball, and basketball. In other words, a hege-monic sports culture is one that “dominates acountry’s emotional attachments” (Markovitsand Hellerman 2001:10).

Nevertheless, measuring comparative levelsof “emotional attachment” to sport is extreme-ly difficult. Should emotional attachment bemeasured relative to those who are self-report-ed sports fans? Or should we more properlyconsider what percentage of the total populationis committed to, or at least interested in, a givensport? There is no clear answer to this question,nor do Markovits and Hellerman attempt toprovide one. They argue for a more qualitative,impressionistic approach: Are the local sportspages filled with soccer news? Do patrons atbars and cafes talk soccer with any frequency?Does one see soccer stars endorsing major prod-ucts on TV and in print media? How is soccerrepresented in the media relative to other sports?

To give but two brief examples, we searchedthe sports pages of one major Canadian andone major Australian newspaper (both with freeInternet editions) for the day July 17, 2002. TheSydney Morning Herald, a major daily news-paper from Sydney, Australia, contained anentire section devoted to cricket news(www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket). On this par-ticular day, it included 10 articles on cricket,spanning the range from “Wanted: Australianall-rounder” (i.e., a player who can pitch, field,and bat equally well) to news of the birth ofcricketeer Adam Hollioake’s son. This is exact-ly the kind of minutiae that constitutes a hege-monic sports culture. Fans are interested not

8866——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Table 1. The Study Population in Brief

Potential AdopterNations

Australia

British Caribbean(West Indies)

Canada

England

India (includingBangladesh &Pakistan)

New ZealandSouth AfricaSri LankaUnited States

Zimbabwe

Key Period of“Popularization”

1850s–70s

1830s–60s

1860s–90s

17th–18th centuries

1880s–1900s

1860s–90s1860s–80s1880s–90s1860s–90s

1890s–1900s

“Successful”Adopters

****

****

****

****

************

****

“Failed”Adopters

****

****

References

Cashman 1998a; Mandle 1973; Pollard1987

Beckles 1998a, 1998b; James 1963;Stoddart 1998a;

Boller 1994b; Hall and McCulloch 1895;Metcalfe 1987

Allen 1990; Brookes 1978; Dunning andSheard 1979; Mandle 1973; Sandiford1998a

Appadurai 1996; Bose 1990; Cashman1980, 1998b; Nandy 2000

Ryan 1998; Reese 1927Merritt and Nauright 1998; Stoddart 1998b Cashman 1998b; Perera 1998, 1999Boller 1994b; Kirsch 1989, 1991; Mrozek

1983Stoddart 1998b; Winch 1983

Page 6: Cricket article

only in the latest standings and scores but in thefuture prospects of leading teams and even thedaily ups and downs of players’ lives. In contrast,the Toronto Globe and Mail (www.globeand-mail.ca), one of Canada’s leading daily news-papers, did not post a single article about cricketon this day at the height of the warm-weatherseason in Canada. If this is any testament to thelocal salience of cricket, Canadians regard it asa marginal practice indeed.

Figure 1 illustrates a more systematic com-parison of cricket coverage in the sports pagesof online newspapers from 12 relevant countriesat four points in time (one day in each seasonof the year).2 Of the 12 articles surveyed, theUnited States, Canada, and Zimbabwe con-tained the fewest articles on cricket. Shortly,we will recount the history of cricket in the

United States and Canada in detail. We do notattempt to deal with the case of contemporaryZimbabwe owing to the vast disruptions expe-rienced in its political and economic systems oflate. We suspect that expressing an interest inanything as “British” as cricket in contemporaryZimbabwe could in fact be quite dangerous.This was not the case in earlier decades, how-ever, as evidenced by Zimbabwe’s admissioninto the top tier of “test match” cricket. Note,too, that England has the next lowest number ofcricket stories—an average of only about 8 per-cent of the sports coverage on these particulardays, though 17 percent of the sports coveragewas dedicated to cricket in the one “summer”edition we investigated. (There was no suchsummer “bounce” in the Canadian andAmerican newspapers that we examined.)Naturally, these percentages reflect not onlylocal interest in cricket but also the prevalenceof newsworthy events in other local sports. Ourconcern here is not on the exact distribution ofcoverage, however, but on the popularity ofcricket more generally. From what we found in

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––8877

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Figure 1. Average Percentage of Sports Stories about Cricket in Select National Newspapers

Note: Online editions: October 15, 2003; January 6, April 15, July 5, 2004

2 Actual newspapers searched were the EveningStandard (London, England—January) and the TimesOnline (London, England—October, April, and July);the Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney, Australia); theMail and Guardian (Johannesburg, South Africa); theTimes of India (Delhi, India); the New Zealand Herald(Auckland, NZ); the Jamaica Observer (Kingston,Jamaica); The Independent (Dhaka, Bangladesh);the News International (Islamabad, Pakistan); the

Daily News (Colombo, Sri Lanka); the Standard(Harare, Zimbabwe); the Globe and Mail (Toronto,Canada); and USA Today (United States).

Page 7: Cricket article

these newspapers, we can tentatively concludethat cricket has become a “hegemonic sportsculture” in much but not all of theCommonwealth. Our endeavor is to explain thisvariance in the diffusion of the sport.

Nonetheless, because much of the variance onthe dependent variable comes from the negativecases of Canada and the United States, it onlyseems fair to ask once again: Is cricket really thatunpopular in these countries? For a better per-spective on the popularity of the sport overtime, we consulted electronic indices to twomajor newspapers: the New York Times for theUnited States and the Globe and Mail forCanada.3 Using a keyword search, we docu-mented how many pages of newsprint includ-ed the word “cricket” each year. To provide areference point for articles about cricket, wealso did a comparable search for articles includ-ing the word “baseball.” This allows us not onlyto track the relative popularity of the two sportsbut also to control for variance in the amount ofnewsprint devoted to general sports reporting ineach newspaper over time. It is possible, if notlikely, that at least some of the articles bearingreference to these words are not actually aboutthe sports in question—American cricket clubssometimes held tennis and golf tournaments ontheir grounds in the early twentieth century, forexample—thus inflating somewhat the numberof “hits” counted per year. We were unable toaccess and analyze every article bearing one ofthese two words, so we opted instead merely tocount them all and discount discrepancies asrandom error. The data presented below is thusnot perfect evidence of the changing populari-ty of cricket and baseball in the United Statesand Canada, but it at least offers a proxy meas-ure of the prevalence of news coverage of thesport in two major national newspapers overtime (see Figures 2 and 3).

As shown here, baseball and cricket wereabout equally represented in the Canadian sportspages until 1900 and generally kept apace until1935, after which a large disparity appears infavor of baseball. The divergence is more obvi-

ous in the American paper: the number of base-ball references quickly begins outnumberingcricket references in the 1880s. Nevertheless,some readers might be surprised to learn thatcricket had a significant following in the UnitedStates in the 1850s and 1860s. Some readersmay also be surprised to learn that baseball isactually, and long has been, quite popular inCanada (Barney 1992). Not only did Canadahost two major-league baseball teams (until2005), but also baseball diamonds are a com-mon sight in most Canadian suburbs (Barney1989; Boller 1994b; Bouchier and Barney1988). “The game has been played, in one formor another, throughout the country since theearly 19th century,” writes sport historianWilliam Humber (1995:1). Though Canadianinterest in baseball may well have peaked withthe success of the Toronto Blue Jays in the late1980s and early 1990s, it seems fair to say thatbaseball is significantly more popular in Canadathan cricket.

TTRRAADDIITTIIOONNAALL EEXXPPLLAANNAATTIIOONNSS OOFF TTHHEEFFAAIILLUURREE OOFF CCRRIICCKKEETT IINN CCAANNAADDAA AANNDDTTHHEE UUNNIITTEEDD SSTTAATTEESS

In trying to explain the virtual absence of pop-ular interest in cricket in the US and Canada, weencountered several common arguments. Themost obvious, having to do with climate, istempting but ultimately unsatisfactory. True,Canadians are fanatical about ice hockey, adecidedly cold-weather sport; and true, mostof the leading cricket-playing nations do notsuffer particularly cold winters. On the otherhand, Canadians enjoy a wide variety of warm-weather sports, including not only baseball butalso f ield hockey, football, and lacrosse.Furthermore, England, where the game wasinvented, is hardly a “warm” country itself.Indeed, the game is played there only in thesummer season, which is subject to more rainthan many parts of Canada. Nor has cricket sur-vived in the more temperate parts of the UnitedStates or Canada. Weather, obviously, is not theanswer.

Some historians of cricket in the United Stateshave suggested that the sport is not more pop-ular among Americans because it is inconsistentwith their cultural worldview (Adelman 1986;Kirsch 1989, 1991). Cricket is a long, slow,tightly regimented game, they argue, whereas

8888——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

3 The New York Times index is supplied byChadwyck-Healey and available at http://histo-rynews.chadwyck.com. The Globe and Mail index issupplied by Proquest and was accessed through a sitelicense purchased by the National Library of Canada.

Page 8: Cricket article

Americans are always in a hurry and anxious forresults. According to nineteenth-century sports-writer Henry Chadwick (1868:52, quoted inKirsch 1991:12), for example, “We fast peopleof America, call cricket slow and tedious; whilethe leisurely, take-your-time-my-boy people of

England think our game of baseball too fast.Each game, however, just suits the people of thetwo nations.” True, cricket matches are gener-ally longer than baseball games; nevertheless,time itself does not appear to be a sufficientexplanation. While international test matches

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––8899

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Figure 3. American Sports Reporting: The New York Times, 1850–1950

Figure 2. Canadian Sports Reporting: The Globe and Mail, 1870–2000

Page 9: Cricket article

can last up to five days, many local matches areonly one day in duration. In Australia, for exam-ple, an abbreviated “limited overs” version ofcricket is popular with television audiences(Cashman 1998a). Anthropologist ArjunAppadurai (1996: 101) even argues that,“Cricket is perfectly suited for television, withits many pauses, its spatial concentration ofaction, and its extended format. .|.|. It is theperfect television sport.” Moreover, when playedby amateurs, among whom wickets fall quick-ly, the game easily adapts to a spirited afternoon“knock” no longer than amateur soccer or base-ball games. Note, too, that such perceptions areas much an effect of the differential status ofsports as a cause thereof: Americans’pejorativedescriptions of cricket are a product, as well asa cause of, the sport’s wider failure to reach“hegemonic” status in the United States.

Similarly, cricket has been described by someas a sport that requires too much submission(i.e., orderly behavior) for Americans. Neitherspitting nor swearing are officially condoned onthe cricket field, for example, and disagree-ment with match officials is strictly forbidden.4

Nonetheless, while some might criticizeAmericans for their ungainly habits, this wouldhardly appear to constitute a satisfactory soci-ological explanation, particularly whenAmericans are so attracted to other sports thatmake similar demands of players, such as ten-nis and golf. And, even if this is true ofAmericans, it still leaves the question ofCanadian habits unaccounted for. Given the fre-quency with which one hears Canadiansdescribed as modest, well-mannered, and com-munity-minded people (e.g., Frye 1971; Lipset1996), one would expect cricket to be wildlypopular in the Dominion. In fact, a Canadian,James Naismith, invented basketball (inMassachusetts, USA) with these very charac-teristics in mind: “If men will not be gentle-manly in their play,” he said in introducing thegame to its first players (Wise 1989:124), “it isour place to encourage them to games that maybe played by gentlemen in a manly way, andshow them that science is superior to brute forcewith a disregard for the feelings of others.” So

why didn’t Dr. Naismith merely foist cricketon these “ungentlemanly” young Americans?Such explanations echo, in homely terms, the“cultural understanding” argument of diffusionscholars. We discount such explanations as over-ly simplistic and, in some cases, patently biased.

This brings us to another popular explanationof “Americo-Canadian Exceptionalism”—Anglophobia. This perspective focuses onCanadians and Americans’ (presumably nega-tive) disposition toward England and theEnglish. True, a signif icant minority ofCanadians claim French, not English heritage,and a large percentage of Canada’s Anglo-pop-ulation also trace their heritage back to Scotlandand Ireland—all possible reasons for Canadianantipathy toward a cultural practice as Englishas cricket. On the other hand, one can easilyrefute such arguments with reference to othercricket-playing countries: Australia was popu-lated by many people of Scottish and Irish her-itage, for example, and a large portion of itsAnglo-population can actually blame the cru-elties of the English penal system for sendingtheir ancestors to Australia in the first place. Thewhite population of South Africa, another crick-eting nation, is also comprised of rival Englishand Dutch, as well as indigenous African, peo-ples. Why would Canadians be any more resist-ant to an English cultural practice like cricketthan their counterparts in these other formercolonies? Why, moreover, would Canadians bemore hostile to English culture than the descen-dants of peoples cruelly subjugated by theEnglish in places like Jamaica, Barbados, India,Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka? Finally,why would Americans be so enamored withtennis and golf, both sports with British ori-gins, but not cricket?5 While we will argue thatnationalism did play a signif icant role inAmerican and Canadian attitudes toward crick-et, we do not accept so facile an explanation astheir contempt for all things British. Cricket

9900——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

4 We are told by an anonymous reviewer familiarwith English cricket, however, that “county” cricketis rife with swearing and disputes with officials.

5 It should be noted, moreover, that the popularNorth American sports of baseball and football havedirect ties to the English games of “rounders” andrugby respectively (Dunning and Sheard 1979: 7). Inthe nineteenth century, two other British “publicschool” sports, rowing and track and field, weredirectly incorporated into American collegiate life aswell (Smith 1988).

Page 10: Cricket article

was widely perceived by American andCanadian audiences to be a British “affecta-tion” for reasons particular to the game’s historyin their respective countries. Explaining how thiscame to be is a major part of this project.

One related thesis about the decline ofAmerican and Canadian interest focuses onchanges in the rate of English immigration toboth countries (e.g., Metcalfe 1987). It is true thatmany early adherents of the game were Britishimmigrants, civil servants, and military person-nel, particularly in Canada, where British troopswere garrisoned until 1867. In the United States,moreover, some cricket clubs, such as the famousSt. George Club of New York, were largely peo-pled by British residents. Such ethno-nationalsocial clubs were exceedingly popular in theUnited States in the late nineteenth century(Kaufman 2002). Nonetheless, there is clear evi-dence that many “native-born” Americans andCanadians participated in cricket alongside theirBritish-born counterparts in the late nineteenthcentury. Consider, for example, the followingobservation made in the 1895 book, Sixty Yearsof Canadian Cricket (Patteson quoted in Hall andMcCulloch 1895:258): “The so-called Americaneleven in 1859 contained [only] one native-bornAmerican. .|.|. In 1860 the number of Americanshad slightly increased. And now, in 1894, allare native Americans ‘bar one.’” Furthermore,many of today’s dominant cricketing countrieshave scarcely any population of direct Britishdescent, and in the cases of Australia and NewZealand, one must still grapple with the questionof how a British sport like cricket survived andflourished in the face of declining immigrationflows and the declining influence of British cul-ture and identity on their own national cultures.In other words, we must go beyond the questionof cricket’s transmission to the foregoing coun-tries and ask how and why the sport was actu-ally adopted by locals and reconstructed as apersistent national pastime (the final, accultur-ation phase of cultural diffusion).

One final “common” explanation of the fail-ure of cricket in British North America is the ris-ing popularity of baseball, an American sportwith similar origins and style of play. There issome truth to this argument, at least to the extentthat the rise of baseball and the decline of crick-et do seem temporally related. Why this is so ishard to explain, however. Few Canadians wouldwillingly admit that they prefer American to

British culture. In fact, a large part of Canadiannational identity is focused around their verydistaste for Americans and American culturalhegemony (Frye 1971). Why would Canadiansreplace English cricket with a sport from acountry to which they are so poorly disposed?We take seriously the need to explain the rise ofbaseball and decline of cricket in two countrieswith distinctive cultural ties to cricket’s moth-erland, England. We turn first, however, to theinitial invention and diffusion of cricket in theBritish Empire.

AANNAALLYYSSIISS——NNEETTWWOORRKK--BBUUIILLDDIINNGG AANNDDCCLLAASSSS CCOOMMPPEETTIITTIIOONN IINN TTHHEE GGLLOOBBAALLDDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN OOFF SSPPOORRTT

TTHHEE IINNVVEENNTTIIOONN OOFF CCRRIICCKKEETT

AANNDD IITTSS OORRIIGGIINNAALL TTRRAANNSSMMIISSSSIIOONN

TTHHRROOUUGGHHOOUUTT TTHHEE BBRRIITTIISSHH EEMMPPIIRREE

Despite its stodgy reputation in America, crick-et was not originally an aristocratic game. In itsearliest incarnation cricket was, in fact, an agrar-ian pastime for modest farmers and craftsmen.Though historical precedents exist as far back asthe twelfth century, English cricket is common-ly thought to have come into its own in the sev-enteenth century (Allen 1990: 16–17; alsoBrookes 1978; James 1963:164). According tomost historical accounts, it was gambling thattruly inspired enthusiasm for cricket amongEngland’s upper classes (e.g., Allen 1990; James1963; Sandiford 1994). Country gentlemen foundthat they could field highly competitive teams byhiring skilled “players” (i.e., professionals) towork on their estates, thus inaugurating a long tra-dition of collaboration between “gentlemen andplayers,” in which elites and commoners playedcricket side-by-side (Warner 1950).

At the same time, English elites encouragedtheir colonial subjects to play cricket because ofthe game’s professed ability to discipline andcivilize men, English and native alike.6 The lit-erature on colonial cricket is rather explicit in

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––9911

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

6 Again, we regret the fact that women are not anespecially relevant part of this case study. The ques-tion of English colonial attitudes toward the moral“improvement” of women is certainly a topic worthfurther consideration, though it is far beyond thepurview of this particular study.

Page 11: Cricket article

this regard. After touring India and Burma withan amateur team from Oxford University, authorCecil Headlam (1903:168–69) commented,“[C]ricket unites, as in India, the rulers and theruled. It also provides a moral training, an edu-cation in pluck, and nerve, and self-restraint, farmore valuable to the character of the ordinarynative than the mere learning by heart of a playof Shakespeare.” Interestingly, Indian cricketwas originally supported by British and Indianelites alike. Britons like Lord Harris, governorof Bombay from 1890–95, sponsored tourna-ments between Indian and English teams.Similarly, cricket-playing was endorsed andencouraged by local elites as “an aristocraticgame which upheld traditional notions of socialhierarchy and patronage” (Cashman 1979:197;also Bose 1990). Thus, it was a win-win situa-tion for everyone concerned: cricket reaffirmedthe authority of English and Indian elites overtheir respective constituencies while providinga forum for social interaction between them.

The same was true elsewhere in the colonies.Cricket was promoted as an English sport forboth Englishmen and natives. In 1868, a famousall-Aborigine squad of Australian cricketerstoured England. Parsi teams from India came in1886 and 1888. Even in South Africa, non-whites were encouraged to play cricket, thoughon rigidly segregated terms (Merrett andNauright 1998:55–57). The British colonies inthe Caribbean are particularly well known fortheir legacy of interracial play (Beckles 1998a,1998b; Beckles and Stoddart 1995; Cozier 1978;James 1963; Sandiford 1998c). “From as earlyas the 1860s the secondary schools and church-es in Barbados deliberately began to use crick-et as a socializing and civilizing agent,” writeshistorian Keith Sandiford (1998c:1–2). “In thosedays the schools were dominated by headmas-ters who had come from Victorian Britainsteeped in the public school ethos which thenplaced great store in team sports.”

Indeed, the popularity of cricket in Englanditself owes much to its secondary educationsystem. Cricket was regarded as an importantright of passage for young British males, par-ticularly those schooled in the elite “publicschools” erected to train the future aristocratsof the empire (Mangan 1986; Penn 1999;Sandiford 1994; Stoddart and Sandiford 1998;Williams 2001).

[British] educators encouraged cricket participa-tion among their students in the profound convic-tion that it produced better citizens as well asscholars. .|.|. [They] argued that organized sportscould bring order and discipline to aggressivegroups of rich, spoilt and rebellious brats. .|.|. Thepublic schools established the cricketing cult fromabout 1830 onwards. By 1860 it was an essentialfeature of their curriculum. (Sandiford 1998a:14)

So central did cricket become to British eliteeducation that by the mid-nineteenth century,headmasters began hiring professional crick-eters to coach their boys to victory over rivalschools.

The creation of distinctly British secondaryschools throughout the colonies of the BritishEmpire also helped expose indigenous popula-tions to the game. In Jamaica, for example, theeducational system strongly promoted cricket inthe secondary schools where, because of themerit principle in admissions, a substantialminority of darker lads of working-class back-ground could be found. The same was true in theAsian Subcontinent, where promising younglads from low-status households were some-times sent to English-style boarding schoolsand thus introduced to cricket. The importanceof these schools in the cultivation of nationalcricket cultures is particularly evident in placeswhere the educational system followed a dif-ferent model. As Sandiford (1998b:4) pointsout, cricket languished in Anglo-Africancolonies like Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda,where, in the nineteenth century, “Europeancommunities remained only minute fractionsof the overall population and where the Victorianpublic school ethos never really took root.”British-run secondary schools there were morecommitted to religious education than to com-petition and sport. This attitude was likely aresult of the fact that British colonization beganin these countries rather late, by which time thegoals of imperialism had become somewhatmore modest.7 The virtual absence of a dedi-cated white settler population contributed to agarrison mentality in which the English sought

9922——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

7 Note, however, that English colonial policy inplaces like India did not originally embrace the angli-canization of their native populations either—thiswas an innovation of the mid-nineteenth century inIndia (Cashman 1998b:118).

Page 12: Cricket article

to mollify, rather than civilize, their centralAfrican subjects. Similarly, the British did notencourage indigenous participation in cricketin the Far East (Stoddart 1998b:136–37).

Several unique features of the game itselfappear to have facilitated its cross-nationaladoption and acculturation in many parts of theCommonwealth. That cricket requires no phys-ical contact between players explains in part itsdiffusion to mixed-race and deeply class-divid-ed colonies where “contact” sports like rugbyand soccer/football were either ignored, prac-ticed only among whites, or played along strict-ly segregated lines (meaning that white teamsonly played white teams, and so forth [Stoddart1988]). Interracial play was permissible aslong as it did not involve close contact, as withcricket. The formal attire of official cricketmatches also helped smooth the way for inte-grated play—even in the searing heat of Indiaand the Caribbean, players were expected towear white or cream flannel trousers and long-sleeved white shirts. It is significant, too, thateven the most minor of games required twoumpires dressed in authoritative white over-coats and that a cardinal principle of the gamewas that the umpires’ decisions were alwaysfinal. (The umpires were also invariably mem-bers of the elite class in interclass games.)These arrangements effectively curtailed anyrabble-rousing or arguments that woulddemean the “masters” or undermine the per-vasive atmosphere of noblesse oblige in thecolonial milieu. Thus, even in England, non-whites were permitted to play on local crick-et teams. In fact, one of the most famousbatsmen in all of English cricket history is aman known by the name of Ranjitsinhji, anative of India who originally learned the gameat Rajkumar College and later played at theUniversity of Cambridge before going on tobecome an English sports celebrity (Williams2001:22–32).

Another important feature of the game thatfacilitated interracial play was “stacking,” or“positional segregation,” within teams. Fromits earliest period in Britain, we find stackingalong class lines in cricket: bowling and wick-et-keeping were performed by low-status“players” while the roles of star batsmen andcaptain were mainly reserved for high-status“gentlemen.” The practice of stacking thusallowed elite Englishmen to recruit nonwhite

and lower-class players without compromisingthe social segregation prevalent in Englishsociety more generally. Gentlemen and play-ers were allocated separate changing roomsand entrances to the field of play; and separateaccommodations were arranged for team trav-el; team captains were exclusively drawn fromthe amateur (i.e., high-status) ranks; and “pro-fessionals were expected, independently of rel-ativities of age and skill, to call amateurs, ‘Sir,’and, particularly when young, to performmenial duties around the ground” (Dunningand Sheard 1979:181). Stacking was even moreimportant in multiracial British colonies, suchas Jamaica, Barbados, and India, where“natives” were generally expected to special-ize in bowling, thus leaving captaining, umpir-ing, and batting to their colonial overseers.Malcolm (2001) has shown that this patternwas not only transferred to the colonies but per-sists to this day in British cricket clubs where,as late as 1990, 70 percent of the bowlers wereof West Indian and other colonial ancestry.Until fairly recently, even the most superlativenonwhite players were barred from captainingtheir clubs or national teams (Coakley 1998).

Nonetheless, enthusiasm for and participa-tion in cricket became a national pastime inevery former major colony of the BritishEmpire except Canada and the United States.In the cricketing colonies, elite enthusiasm forthe game was transferred to the population atlarge. In the United States and Canada, on theother hand, cricket remained largely a sport forcountry club members and elite boardingschool students (Kirsch 1989, 1991; Lester1951; Melville 1998; Metcalfe 1987; Redmond1979). In other words, cricket culture had beentransmitted to, and adopted by, some portionof the American and Canadian populations,but it failed to persist or develop as a popularpastime in both cases. Understanding variancein the global diffusion of cricket thus requiresfurther investigation of the acculturationprocess, or the way the meaning and culturalsignificance of the game was transformed inthe process of diffusion. As mentioned earli-er, we do not f ind explanations based on“national values” or “cultural resonance” use-ful in this regard. Instead, we look carefully atthe social systems of each country, as well asactual histories of the game (and related games)in them.

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––9933

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 13: Cricket article

AADDOOPPTTIIOONN FFOOLLLLOOWWEEDD BBYY FFAAIILLEEDD

AACCCCUULLTTUURRAATTIIOONN:: EELLIITTEE VVEERRSSUUSS PPOOPPUULLAARR

SSPPOORRTTSS IINN CCAANNAADDAA AANNDD TTHHEE UUNNIITTEEDD SSTTAATTEESS

The most distinctive feature of the history ofcricket in both the United States and Canada isits elevation to a pastime for elites only. InCanada, for example, cricket “gained a firmfoothold among upper-class Canadians whowere to perpetuate the game through the privateschools. Cricket’s longevity and persistencewere directly related to its position within thehighest levels of Canadian society” (Metcalfe1987:8). Thus, one key to the rise and fall ofCanadian cricket was the changing role of thegame in Canada’s elite universities and sec-ondary schools. “Founded though they were byBritish public school alumni along British pub-lic school lines, the Canadian colleges refusedto perpetuate the elitism of their prototypes orto preserve their outmoded curricula”(Sandiford 1994:148; also Dunae 1981). By theend of the nineteenth century, only the mostelite boarding schools retained cricket, and eventhey began to encourage indigenous sports likehockey, lacrosse, and football in its stead(Mangan 1986:142–67). In the words of DonaldKing, Secretary to the Canadian CricketAssociation (quoted in Sayen 1956:98), “[S]omeof our private schools play the game and featureit as part of their normal curriculum, but the pri-vate school here is in the minority and when theboys leave they often go and live in an area inwhich there is no cricket or perhaps the lure ofgolf or tennis proves stronger than enthusiasmfor cricket when school days are over.” Canadianboarding schools “kept alive the cult of athleti-cism,” writes Sandiford (1994: 149), “but sawfit to promote a different brand of games. Thebehavior of the late-Victorian colleges in Canadadiffered markedly from that of their counterpartsin [for example] India and the West Indies.”

THE DISMAL FATE OF CRICKET IN CANADA.Translating these observations into sociologicaltheory about diffusion failure requires someconjecture but is ultimately rather straightfor-ward: As fewer Canadian elite schools devotedtime to training young men in the finer pointsof cricket, the quantity and quality of playdeclined. Without fresh infusions of talent orwidespread networks of league play, the gamegradually took on the air of a marginal, old-fash-

ioned pastime for antiquarians and Anglophiles.An 1895 account of Canadian cricket remarks,for example, that in Nova Scotia, “the sameplayers were continually engaged in fightingout the same contests year after year, save onlyvaried by the introducing of some fresh regimentor ship” (Wallace quoted in Hall and McCulloch1895:124). “Cricket clubs of any size in NovaScotia were few and far between,” adds Wallace.“It needed, therefore, all the efforts of lovers ofthe game to keep up the necessary interest.”Another 1895 commentator adds, “Only twoor three comparatively small schools act asfeeders to the ranks, always too rapidly deplet-ed by the cares of life, by anno domini, andperchance, obesity” (Patteson quoted in Halland McCulloch 1895:257–58). Sandiford(1994:148) concludes, “[D]uring the last quar-ter of the century, the game became associatedmore and more with an older and more old-fashioned Anglo-Saxon elite.”

The central feature of the Canadian story isthus the isolation of cricket as a class-specificpastime. The clubby “Britishness” of Canadianelites may be one reason for this split, but thekey causal factor remains the exclusivity of thesport, not its association with Britain per se. Inlooking at Canadian sports history of the latenineteenth and early twentieth centuries, onesees substantial evidence that cricket was anincreasingly insular pastime, practiced only bythose with the time and money to join exclusiveclubs. Contributors to an 1895 volume, SixtyYears of Canadian Cricket (Hall andMcCulloch, eds.), refer frequently to the gen-tlemanly, amateurish nature of the Canadiangame, as compared to its quasi-professionalEnglish variant. In addition, Canadian sports his-torian Richard Gruneau (1983:108–9) notesthat elite sports teams in Canada actually beganavoiding competition with non-elite teams in themid-to-late nineteenth century. Gruneau(1983:109) hypothesizes that “as the Canadianclass structure began to elaborate, and as mer-itocratic liberal values began to develop wide-spread support, members of the dominant classapparently became unable to tolerate the possi-bility of defeat at the hands of those they con-sidered to be their social inferiors. They alsomay have become progressively more alarmedat the prospect that commercialism in sportcould very easily get out of hand under suchconditions and vulgarize traditional upper-class

9944——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 14: Cricket article

views of ‘the nobility of play.’” Cricket hadbecome for them something precious, part oftheir heritage, an elite pastime more akin toancestor worship than play. In England, by con-trast, cricket remained something spirited andboisterous, as well as highly competitive, thusfacilitating the incorporation of low-status“players” into the game.

COUNTERFACTUAL: THE RISE OF BASEBALL IN

THE UNITED STATES. This last observation pointsto a second facet of cricket’s ultimate rejectionin North America: its failure to cultivate massappeal through frequent matches in which largecrowds, intense rivalries, and spirited fans mightbring the sport to the attention of major portionsof the population. The history of American base-ball provides a telling comparison with that ofcricket in both the United States and Canada.Though baseball and cricket both began as rel-atively informal leisure games in the UnitedStates, baseball was later blessed by a cadre ofbrilliant entrepreneurs determined to make it the“nation’s pastime.” One such person was A. G.Spalding, star player, manager, league organiz-er, and sports manufacturer. To call Spalding animpresario or a marketing genius would be a bitof an understatement. He engaged in every partof the game, from promoting star players andintercity rivalries to squelching nascent effortsat labor organization among players (Levine1985).

In addition to cricket, baseball had otherrivals for people’s time and money in the UnitedStates—crew regattas were major business forsome time, for example, as were bicycle races,track meets, and college football games (Smith1988). Spalding helped secure baseball’s placein American national culture through a two-part strategy: On the one hand, he promotedthe highest possible level of play with the widestpossible audience by creating and managing asystem of professional league play throughoutNorth America. On the other hand, he built amanufacturing and marketing empire devoted toselling youngsters the accoutrements of thegame—the Spalding name still stands prominentin the world of sporting goods. In the late 1870s,after a successful career as player and manag-er, Spalding published an official rulebook forthe game and also licensed official merchandisefor play. Spalding also produced bats and ballsof different sizes and shapes for players of var-

ious abilities and backgrounds. Noting thatAmerican educators were increasingly inter-ested in finding healthy leisure pursuits for stu-dents, Spalding donated equipment and trophiesto groups like the Public School Athletic League(Levine 1985:110–12).8 Spalding is even cred-ited with inventing the now widely discredited“Cooperstown myth,” by which the origins ofbaseball were explained in a compelling storyof its humble but ingenious small-town roots(see Spalding [1911] 1992).

Note too that A. G. Spalding worked hard tocurry the interest of elites, as well as the mass-es, in baseball. Upon returning from an 1889“world tour” in which Spalding traveled with ahand-picked squad of professionals to Australia,Sri Lanka [then Ceylon], Egypt, Italy, France,and the British Isles, Spalding had his teamgreeted by a grand parade in New York City andthen hosted a 300-person banquet attended by“Teddy Roosevelt, Mark Twain, local politi-cians, baseball officials, Yale undergraduates,and ‘popular members of the New York StockExchange,’” among others (Levine 1985:107).Spalding’s biographer, Peter Levine (1985:108)describes the tour’s final, April 19th, stop inChicago in terms worth repeating: “As theChicago Tribune described it, ‘the streets werethronged’ with a crowd that ‘represented allclasses. Businessmen were in it, toughs andsports .|.|. also a great many ladies. And theywent fairly crazy.’” The parade was concluded“over expensive cigars and fine brandy at areception attended by Chicago’s elite. .|.|.” Thus,Spalding made sure that the sport appealed toeveryone, elites notwithstanding. He offeredthem a distinctive, exclusive niche from whichto enjoy the game.

At the same time, Spalding contributed tothe emerging American consensus that cricketwas an effeminate game for men too preciousto play baseball. In his best-selling 1911 book,America’s National Game, Spalding boasts([1911] 1992:7), “I have declared that Cricketis a genteel game. It is. Our British Cricketer,having finished his day’s labor at noon, may don

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––9955

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

8 PSAL was founded in New York City in 1900with the support of Andrew Carnegie, John D.Rockefeller, and J. Pierpont Morgan. It soon spreadto other cities around the United States (Levine 1985:110–12).

Page 15: Cricket article

his negligee shirt, his white trousers, his gor-geous hosiery and his canvas shoes, and sallyforth to the field of sport, with his sweethearton one arm and his Cricket bat under the other,knowing that he may engage in his nationalpastime without soiling his linen or neglectinghis lady. .|.|. Not so the American Ball Player.He may be a veritable Beau Brummel in sociallife. He may be the Swellest Swell of the SmartSet in Swelldom; but when he dons his BaseBall suit, he says good-bye to society, doffs hisgentility, and becomes—just a Ball Player! Heknows that his business now is to play ball, andthat first of all he is expected to attend to busi-ness. .|.|. Cricket is a gentle pastime. Base Ballis War! Cricket is an Athletic Sociable [sic],played and applauded in a conventional, deco-rous and English manner. Base Ball is anAthletic Turmoil, played and applauded in anunconventional, enthusiastic and Americanmanner.”

Naturally, Spalding was mischaracterizingthe nature of English cricket, and English soci-ety more generally. The English aristocracy hadlong prided itself on the rough and tumble sportspracticed at its most elite boarding schools. Therelevant point is that Spalding, and many likehim, were contributing to the development of aspecifically North American perception of crick-et. Indeed, this stereotype of elite British soci-ety likely attracted some American andCanadian men to the game—Canadian crick-eters increasingly focused on cultivating a gen-tlemanly ideal of elegant, amateur play. As forthe United States, an 1875 description of life atHarvard College (Vaille and Clark 1875:421)says the following of the Harvard Cricket Club,founded in 1862: “Though never very popularwith the athletes of the College, it has alwaysfound supporters enough to keep it in a moder-ately vigorous existence.” Thus, the emergingimage of cricket as an ultra-elite pastime bothrepelled and attracted followers.

At the same time, however, many of thewealthy sons of American and Canadian soci-ety eschewed cricket for baseball, perhaps, inpart, because of late-nineteenth-century rheto-ric about the manliness of American culture. The1875 Harvard Book does not include referenceto a college baseball team, for example, but the1887–88 Annual Report (Harvard College 1889:29) proudly reports a gift of $25,000 from Mr.Henry Reginald Astor Carey to build appropri-

ate facilities for “the Baseball Nine.” In fact,beginning in the 1860s and 70s, baseball becamean intensely popular sport at the nation’s mostprestigious colleges. America’s first recordedintercollegiate game took place in 1859 betweenAmherst and Williams. Bowdoin, Middlebury,Dartmouth, Brown, Trinity, Hamilton,Princeton, and Kenyon all had organized teamsby 1862. “By the end of the 1870s, a group ofeastern colleges, consisting of Amherst, Brown,Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, wereplaying regular home and away series of games”(Smith 1988:59). College teams also regularlyplayed professional teams, and play wasextremely competitive; so much so that the col-leges began offering “financial incentives” toespecially talented players (Smith 1988:62–66).

The incipient professionalization of collegeathletics presented America’s elite college pres-idents with something of a conundrum, anoth-er key to understanding the trajectories of cricketand baseball in the United States and Canada.Baseball’s popularity grew through the result ofexcessive promotion, intense competition, anda do-anything-for-victory mentality amongcoaches and players. Aspiring athletes atAmerica’s elite colleges were clearly attractedby the glamour and notoriety of the game. (Poshsummer jobs playing exhibition baseball atresort hotels and other financial “perks” forplaying were probably also attractions.) At thesame time, college masters and alumni object-ed strongly to this development; they preferreda sports ethic closer to Spalding’s stereotype ofEnglish cricket—leisurely, good-natured, andsafe. College presidents had previously tried toban excessively violent sports to no avail—American-style tackle football was first devel-oped at Harvard College, where it wasrepeatedly and unsuccessfully banned by thepresident. American college presidents respond-ed to the emergence of pay-for-play with equalreproach. Even the notion of hiring professional,full-time coaches for college teams was origi-nally considered anathema by college boards(Mrozek 1983; Smith 1988; Townsend 1996).

American college masters eventuallymanaged to minimize financial incentives forstudent-athletes, but the wider “professionali-zation” of certain sports continued nonetheless.Crew, football, baseball, and track and fieldattracted enormous audiences, particularly whenrival schools, such as Harvard and Yale, had

9966——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 16: Cricket article

their annual meetings. Winning teams oftenreceived valuable cash prizes. Competitionbecame increasingly defined around key datesand rivalries. Thanksgiving Day became a focalpoint of the college football season, for exam-ple, and competitive schools could bring in tensof thousands of dollars at the gate. Major crewregattas and track meets could also bring incrowds of 10,000 or more (Smith 1988:30–34).By this time, therefore, any college athlete stilldevoted to cricket would had to have asked him-self why he was willing to forego the glory andgammon of the era’s more popular sports—especially baseball, which essentially requiresthe same skill-set as cricket.

Whereas football, crew, and track and fieldall remained more or less confined to the col-legiate arena, baseball supported a number ofprofessional leagues in addition to the collegeteams. An 1888 New York Times story (“TheGame Was Stopped”) reports a crowd of 40,000spectators at a professional baseball game out-side of Philadelphia; so many, in fact, that thegame was “called” after a mob of unseated fanssurged onto the field at the end of the firstinning. Pro-am baseball games were also a com-mon occurrence, which surely contributed to thesport’s popularity on college campuses.American baseball, in sum, increasinglyresembled English cricket: a sport in whichelites and commoners shared a passion for thegame, one in which gambling, professionalism,and a willingness to do anything to win werefundamental.

CRICKET IN THE UNITED STATES. The place ofcricket in late-nineteenth-century Americansociety could hardly be more different: Thoughcricket was originally popularized in the UnitedStates by working-class immigrants from theBritish Isles, it later became a sport practiced byonly a select few Americans (Melville 1998:16–17, 25). Note, moreover, that while theincreasing popularity of baseball did present aformidable challenge to American cricket, thetwo games existed comfortably side-by-sidethroughout the 1850s and 60s. It was notuncommon, in fact, for cricket and baseballteams to challenge one another to matches intheir rival’s sport (Melville 1998:67). In truth,it was American elites’ exclusivist attitudetoward cricket that led to the sport’s declineamong the population at large. As in Canada,

American cricket players increasingly retreatedto small, elite clubs, and competition with rival“elevens” was quickly restricted to a smallcoterie of suitable teams (Kirsch 1989:221–22).

Over time, the sport’s snooty image took a tollon the popularity of cricket among Americansat large, an image that elites sought to cultivate.In contrast to the robust English tradition of“gentlemen and players,” American cricket clubsstrictly forbade professionals from play, even ifit meant bitter defeat at the hands of travelingEnglish and Australian teams. Melville (1998:77; also 120–22) notes that, “As the old-line[American] competitive cricket clubs went intodecline, their roles were assumed by cricketorganizations dedicated to providing an envi-ronment of more socially selective participationupon strictly amateur lines.” A 1907 New YorkTimes story (“Cricket”) quips, “Once more thegame of cricket has been shown to be a lan-guishing exotic in New York.” It noted, “A vis-iting team of Englishmen have worked theirwill upon the local cricketers. .|.|. In the West,New York is supposed to be the seat and centreof Anglomania. But the West ought to be soft-ened when it sees how very badly New Yorkplays the Anglican national game. Cricketally[sic] speaking, Philadelphia is theAnglomaniacal town.” Indeed, with the excep-tion of a few New England college teams, crick-et thrived only in Philadelphia by the end of thenineteenth century. As early as 1884, a NewYork Times story (“Philadelphia Cricketers”)joked, “Residents of American cities wherecricket is not played, except by a few homesickEnglishmen, assert that it is played inPhiladelphia because cricket is the slowest ofgames and Philadelphia the slowest of cities.”

Regardless of the Philadelphians’ supposedmotives, it is true that a handful of Philadelphia-based teams provided the bulk of Americantraining and participation in the sport during thelate nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.One finds little evidence, furthermore, that thePhiladelphians were concerned about the over-all decline of interest in American cricket; infact, they appear to have encouraged it. Theyconfined the game to prestigious country clubslike the Merion and Belmont Cricket Clubs,founded in 1865 and 1874 respectively. Sportshistorian George Kirsch (1991:15) sums up thePhiladelphia scene, and the American milieumore generally, by saying,

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––9977

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 17: Cricket article

“The upper-class ‘Proper Philadelphians’whopatronized the sport after the Civil War did notwish to convert the masses. They preferredtheir leisurely game because they were ama-teur sportsmen who had plenty of time forrecreation. They supported the English gameuntil the early twentieth century, when tennisand golf became more popular amusements forthe upper class. Elite Boston cricketers andworking-class English immigrants also kept thegame going into the 1900s. But by the eve ofthe First World War very few were still alivewho could recall the days when cricket had achance to become America’s national pastime.”

Approximately120 cricket clubs are said tohave existed in the Philadelphia area at onetime or another, at least ten of which still existtoday. One might hypothesize that cricketthrived there in part because of the nature of elitePhiladelphian society in the late nineteenth cen-tury. Says E. Digby Baltzell, a sociologist whohas studied the American elite in detail, “[T]heflowering of New England was the product ofan aristocratic social structure led by men withdeep roots in the governing class of the socie-ty, going back to the glacial age; Philadelphia’sGolden Age, on the other hand, was the prod-uct of a heterogeneous and democratic socialstructure whose leadership elites came largelyfrom elsewhere and from all classes within thecity” (Baltzell [1979] 1996:54). By our think-ing, then, social mobility in Philadelphia mighthave prompted its “old-money” elite to lookfor ways to segregate themselves from the city’snouveau riche and upwardly mobile popula-tions. Boston Brahmins had no such cause forstatus anxiety, given their long-standing domi-nance of the city’s cultural and urban affairs,though they did establish other forms of elitecultural institution in their midst (DiMaggio1982). Nor were social mobility and status anx-iety unique to Philadelphia at this time. Thus,we think that there is a more salient explanationof the Philadelphia-phenomenon in Americancricket, one that mirrors the success of Americanbaseball at the national level.

Cricket seems to have survived inPhiladelphia primarily because there was a crit-ical mass of clubs ready to field competitiveteams. Thus, though comparable numbers ofelite men in other cities may have been inter-ested in cricket, they failed to build (elite) crick-et leagues that would sustain (elite) interest inthe game over time. Put in more formal terms,

the Philadelphians created a network “dense”enough to sustain a local cricket culture; theystayed above the “threshold” at which interestin collective pursuits risks extinction(Granovetter and Soong 1983). HaverfordCollege, the University of Pennsylvania, andPrinceton University dominated the late-nine-teenth-century game largely because of theirproximity to the “cricket nurseries” ofPhiladelphia (Lester 1951), and the formerremains a central hub of American cricket to thisday—Haverford not only pays a professionalcricketer to instruct its current “elevens” but alsomaintains a special library collection devoted tothe history of the sport.9 Elsewhere in the coun-try (and in Canada), elite clubs failed to createviable leagues and thus faltered. The absence ofa strong cricket culture in the notably stratifiedAmerican South also makes sense in light of thisexplanation. The rural focus of late-nineteenth-century Southern elites seems to have predis-posed them against team sports of any kind.Southern leisure activities were generally moregrounded in agrarian pastimes like hunting,fishing, and riding. Only much later, followingthe rise of large state universities in the South,did team sports like football, basketball, andbaseball become mainstays of sporting culturefor Southern elites and non-elites alike.

Nonetheless, even with the exception ofPhiladelphia, it would appear that the popular-ity of cricket in both the United States andCanada suffered primarily from the exclusion-ism of its elite practitioners. North Americancricket prevailed, though weakly, in places wherestatus anxiety was high among wealthy familiesand where these families established and main-tained multiple dense networks of rival cricketclubs. In both Canada and the United States, anegalitarian ethos encouraged economic elitesto cultivate exclusive status-based activitieswith which to maintain their superior positionin the social system. Cricket was not aninevitable response to this status anxiety, but itwas one viable option.

9988——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

9 The C. C. Morris Cricket Library at HaverfordCollege is an especially useful repository of infor-mation about the past and present of American crick-et. Online information, including a historical map ofPhiladelphia cricket clubs, can be found athttp://www.haverford.edu/library/cricket.

Page 18: Cricket article

At the same time, however, even elite tastesbegan changing in the early twentieth century.Increasingly, America’s wealthiest families“placed maximum importance on the pleasur-ing of the individual sportsman taken as a con-sumer, albeit a wealthy one, and on gratificationas a suitable goal in his life” (Mrozek 1983:106). Country clubs, though still popular,increasingly built their reputations on the qual-ity of their clubhouses, tennis tournaments, andgolf courses. According to the sporting news ofthe day, even long-standing cricket clubs beganhosting tennis and golf tournaments on theirgrounds. Cricket was languishing.

The obvious irony here is that elitism spelledthe death of a once-popular pastime in twocountries known for their exceptional egalitar-ianism. Thus we ask: Why would elites in othercountries not have done the same? How didcricket become so popular in these societies?Answering these questions requires that we lookback at the cases in which cricket was success-fully adopted and espoused by wide segmentsof the population, places like Australia, NewZealand, India, South Africa, and the WestIndies. Despite their vast social and political dif-ferences, what do all these countries have incommon beside their British colonial roots?

AADDOOPPTTIIOONN AANNDD SSUUCCCCEESSSSFFUULL AACCCCUULLTTUURRAATTIIOONN::CCRRIICCKKEETT EELLSSEEWWHHEERREE IINN TTHHEE CCOOMMMMOONNWWEEAALLTTHH

It would appear that, in part, it was the very lackof a rigid social system that encouraged elitistattitudes toward cricket in the United Statesand Canada. Cricket became a marker of highsocial status, and the game was thus not pro-moted among the population at large.Conversely, rigid social stratification systems inother British colonial societies appear to havenurtured segregated but inclusive cricket cul-tures. In India, for example, love for the gamewas spread through the organization of match-es between rival ethno-religious groups, each ofwhich welcomed talented players from withintheir communities regardless of rank (Bose1990). C. L. R. James’s autobiographicalaccounts of Trinidadian cricket culture supportsimilar conclusions. In Trinidad, as in Jamaicaand Barbados, blacks and whites sometimesplayed cricket together (though not as equals).Individual cricket clubs were established at eachrung of the social hierarchy, from the lowest-

caste blacks to lighter skinned “browns” andwhites. “I haven’t the slightest doubt that theclash of race, caste and class did not retard butstimulated West Indian cricket,” writes James(1963:72). Thus we see that the specific crite-ria of social stratification are less importantthan the existence of a cohesive vertical hier-archy in the receiver nation. Racial, socioeco-nomic, and/or ethno-religious differences couldprovide the basis of stratification with the sameresult: elites’ decision either to actively pro-mote or at least passively to permit the accul-turation of cricket among lower social strata.

There are three mechanisms underlying thisprocess in the case of cricket: First, colonialelites, comfortable in their place atop the socialhierarchy, had little reason to discourage thosebeneath them from playing a game that paidsymbolic homage to British cultural and polit-ical hegemony; in fact, elites tended to regardcricket as a good means of “civilizing” nativesin their own image. Given a rigid social system,furthermore, emulation of those at the top hadbenefits for those at the upper-middle and lower-middle rungs, particularly among nonwhitesseeking “entry” into a white-dominant world.With opportunities for upward mobility soseverely limited, moreover, cricket providedthose of the lower castes some means of sym-bolic competence—that is, by competing againstthose of other castes, races, and classes, low-caste cricketers could assert themselves in waysnot permitted in ordinary society (Malcolm2001).

Thus cricket was attractive to all major stra-ta in these colonial societies. Even in Australiaand New Zealand, where class mobility wasrelatively more common, yearning for status inthe eyes of England created opportunities for“liberation cricket.” Having been settled large-ly by working-class British immigrants, manyof them “transported” to Australia as criminals,the Antipodes have long had a sense of cultur-al inferiority to England. British culture thus hadan elevated status for Australians and NewZealanders of all classes. Understanding theAustralian and New Zealand cases nonethelessrequires a bit of extra background information,to which we now turn.

AUSTRALIA AND NEW ZEALAND. Though con-temporary Australia and New Zealand are egal-itarian, socially mobile societies much like the

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––9999

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 19: Cricket article

United States and Canada, matters were sig-nificantly different in the nineteenth century, thekey years in the global diffusion of cricket.Socioeconomically, early Australian societywas stratified into three classes: an upper-crustof absentee (mostly English) landlords; a mid-dle class of émigré soldiers, artisans, and pro-fessionals; and a lower class of emancipatedprisoners, their offspring, and the vast hordesof freemen tending sheep and sharecropping onother people’s land (Clark 1995; Hughes 1986;Stone and Garden 1978). The key point aboutlate-nineteenth-century Australia for our con-cerns is that its wealthiest citizens did notattempt to build strong institutional barriersbetween themselves and the rest of society.This may be the result of the elite’s relativesense of security atop the Australian statushierarchy, though we suspect that it stems moredirectly from the fact that Australia was still arelatively new settlement at the time. Its rich-est citizens had yet to accumulate wealth orexclusive social networks comparable to thosein the eastern United States and Canada. Theseparate classes desperately needed one anoth-er in the struggle to settle this vast, isolated con-tinent. In the continent’s burgeoning cities, forexample, where Australian cricket truly thrived,the mercantile elite actively embraced the work-ing classes, both socially and politically(Connell and Irving 1980). The presence ofmany British military men, moreover, coupledwith the colony’s distance from England, madeEnglish pastimes particularly valuable toAustralians, particularly those activities thatdid not require fancy concert halls or awarenessof the latest fads and fashions. Thus, Australia’svarious social strata cooperated in a nation-wide effort to cultivate British ideals and socialpractices, cricket foremost among them (Clark1995; Hughes 1986). The Sydney Gazette,according to one account (Pollard 1987:10),stated in 1832 that “cricket was now the pre-vailing amusement of the colony and that nogentleman could expect to ‘dangle at a lady’sapron strings’unless he could boast of his crick-et prowess.”

Nonetheless, urban elites did establish somefairly exclusive cricket clubs in Australia—theMelbourne Cricket Club was founded in 1838on such grounds, thus prompting the formationin 1839 of a rival middle-class club, theMelbourne Union Cricket Club (Pollard 1987:

40–42). In this way, Australian cricket resem-bled the stratif ied game in other Britishcolonies, such as India and the Caribbean. Thekey to the widespread popularity of cricket inAustralia was, again, the decision of its wealth-iest citizens to “share” the game with those oflower strata. Competitiveness trumped exclu-sivity in the minds of Australia’s socioeco-nomic elite, in other words, much as it haddone in eighteenth-century England. Havingissued a challenge of one thousand pounds toany team in Australia that could beat it, theprestigious Melbourne Cricket Club signed acontract with a professional English cricketerto bolster its competitiveness with rival clubs.The MCC also hired a groundskeeper to ejectnonmembers from club grounds. Both prac-tices resembled the English cricket tradition infull flower—assiduously maintaining status-group distinctions while facilitating whateverintegration was necessary to maintain the high-est possible level of play (Pollard 1987:46–47;Dunning and Sheard 1979:181). This compet-itiveness also helped cultivate large audiencesfor the game: Match organizers for the MCCinsisted that “spectators would not attend crick-et unless the best players were on view.”(Pollard 1987:143). They were clearly inter-ested in popularizing the game among thewidest possible audience. In only a fewinstances, such as distant Tasmania (original-ly known as Van Dieman’s Land), did anythinglike the American and Canadian elites-onlyattitude manifest itself. Pollard (1987: 37)refers, tellingly, to the fact that Tasmaniancricket did not thrive owing to “the strangereluctance of the strong, prestigious clubs inHobart and Launceston to hire professionalplayers to coach and strengthen their teams.”

Over time, Australian cricket remained anational pastime despite the democratizationof its social, political, and economic systems. Inthe late nineteenth century, teams were oftenstratified by class and ethnic background, whilea spirit of inclusive competition prevailednonetheless (Cashman 1984). The widespreadrole of publicans in promoting Australian crick-et personifies its popular nature: “[P]ublicansquickly realised that the promotion of cricketstimulated their business,” notes one historian(Pollard 1987:10). Creation of neighborhoodand trade-based cricket clubs was, moreover, asource of tremendous pride for urban boosters

110000——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 20: Cricket article

in cities like Sydney and Melbourne (Cashman1998a; Pollard 1987). Sydney, in particular,struggled to distance itself from its origins as anEnglish penal colony. Excellence at cricketappeared early on as a way for locals to makea statement about “the character of colonialsociety and the nature of the imperial relation-ship.” “Thrashing the mother-land” was an indi-rect expression of “the love-hate relationship ofa youthful colonial society attempting to defineits identity and a greater sense of nationhood”(Cashman 1998a:36, 39; see also Mandle1973:525–26). Hence, a long Australo-Englishrivalry began early on, and it is still a source oftremendous interest to Australian sports fans,particularly given their long-standing domi-nance over increasingly weak English teams.More important still is the fact that intra- andinter-provincial leagues were actively promot-ed early on in Australia, thus stimulating the cre-ation of adequate playing grounds andcompetitive teams throughout the country.10

Cricket evolved along similar lines in NewZealand. Though New Zealand was never hometo any English penal colonies, its wealthier cit-izens shared with those of Australia the sensethat they needed to prove themselves in the eyesof the British. New Zealand cricket has itslongest and strongest legacy of play in theprovince of Canterbury, “the most English ofNew Zealand provinces” and one founded uponeconomic principles designed to perpetuate therigid social order of the English countryside(minus the truly poor). Here, class stratificationand inclusive Anglophilia promoted cricket asa healthy pastime for all, excepting the nativeMaoris (Ryan 1998).11 Christchurch was hometo both exclusive and “open” clubs. Elite schoolsbegan early on to train young men in the game,and the hiring of professional coaches fromEngland was also common beginning in the1890s (Reese 1927:41, 49). A steady stream of

English and Australian immigrants providedready instruction and talent. Interprovincial playwas also quite popular—when an annual matchwas first arranged between the neighboringprovinces of Canterbury and Otago, “it wasagreed that the teams should wear the greatEnglish university colours,” Canterbury inOxford’s dark blue, Otago in the light blue ofCambridge (Reese 1927:36). The creation ofseveral annual prizes—the Plunket Shield forbest “major” team (generally those from majorcities) and the Hawke Cup for best “minor asso-ciation,” as well as the Heathcote WilliamsShield for best secondary school team—helpedcreate the kinds of well-anticipated sports rival-ries vital to the creation of a “hegemonic sportsculture.”

Promotion of the game in minor populationcenters through the Hawke Cup competitionwas clearly important to the long-term survivalof the game in New Zealand. Emphasis amongNew Zealand cricketers was not on the socialstatus generated by membership in elite clubsbut on the prestige gained by winning. This wasso much the case that a visiting Australian star,Warwick Armstrong, reportedly advised thatthe “various [Kiwi] associations are too inclinedto pick the coach who can help his province towin matches. What is really wanted is the coachwho can impart knowledge and keenness to theboy” (quoted in Reese 1927:76). In sum, NewZealand, like Australia, followed a somewhatdifferent path to “hegemonic” cricket thanBritish colonies in which a minority white elitedominated a majority colored population.Cricket helped Antipodean elites cultivate theirEnglishness, but the size and isolation of theirEuropean settlements limited the extent to whichthey could be truly exclusive. Everyone involvedin the game aspired to gentility but none wasexcluded on the grounds of wealth or socialstanding. “Proper conduct, rather more thanheredity, was the mark of an amateur gentle-man,” comments one history of Australian crick-et (Pollard 1987:65).

THE ASIAN SUBCONTINENT. Interestingly, itwas not originally the intent of the British topopularize cricket in the subcontinent of Asia.British soldiers are said to have played the gamein India as early as 1721, but it was not until themid-nineteenth century that Indians actuallybegan to play. Then, too, it was primarily the

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––110011

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

10 Interestingly, rugby was first promoted inAustralia as a way for local cricketers to keep inshape over the winter months (Hickie 1993).

11 It is not clear to us why white New Zealandersdid not work to promote the game among Maoris inthe same way that Australians did among theAborigines. It may be related to the Maoris’ fierceresistance to white settlement in the early years of thecolony, but we were not able to confirm this.

Page 21: Cricket article

“middle-man” Parsi population that first culti-vated the game. The Parsis were an ancientimmigrant community in India known for theirwealth and success at business. “It was no acci-dent that the first community [in India] to takeup the game were the Parsis,” comments one his-torian (Cashman 1979:190–91). They were “awealthy entrepreneurial group who acted as cul-tural brokers between the British and Indiansociety. .|.|. In the tradition of colonial elites, theParsis took up the game of cricket, along withother imperial customs, partly to demonstratetheir fitness for the role of collaboration.” Parsisuccess at the game also prompted India’s eliteHindu and Muslim populations to take an activeinterest in it (Bose 1990:32).

From the start, indigenous participation inIndian cricket was centered around elites:Princes would build ornate cricket grounds andinvite guests to watch them play. The princeswould rarely even bowl or field the ball, rely-ing on hired players to provide them easily hitballs. This provided valuable opportunities forIndians of lower social strata to get involved inthe game. Audiences, too, were carefully seg-regated; Europeans from Indians, commonersfrom elite, men from women, and so on(Cashman 1998b:126–67; Cashman 1980). “Socricket prospered,” comments Bose (1990:36),“not because the different communities mixedbut because they did not. Competition, not co-operation, was the spur.” Thus, elite membersof India’s vastly segregated social systemembraced the game as a way of distinguishingthemselves vis-à-vis the British and one anoth-er. Important for our purposes is the fact that tal-ented nonelites were encouraged to play thegame. The relative security of elites within theirown communities, as well as their competi-tiveness with elites in rival ethno-religiouscommunities, allowed for this kind of segre-gated-integration.

“By the 1930s,” writes Cashman (1998b:123), “there were many cricketing princes, play-ers and patrons, who lavished great sums ofmoney and energy to secure the top prizes incricket, control of the game and captaincy of theside. .|.|. Cricket prominence provided theprinces with more clout in the Chamber ofPrinces and enhanced their status with theBritish.” Rivalry between Indian and Englishsides developed from this, which subsequentlyhelped cultivate further talent and interest

among the public at large (Appadurai 1996;Bose 1990). The widespread incorporation ofIndians into the British civil service system inIndia also exposed many indigenous men to thegame. By 1947, when India became independ-ent, cricket was a national passion, if not yet thenational passion. Jawaharlal Nehru, first primeminister of India, further encouraged partici-pation in the sport, himself having been edu-cated at Harrow in England. In Bombay, wherecricket has, perhaps, its longest history on thesubcontinent, and where the Indian televisionand film industries are centered, star cricketersare given all the adulation and fame of theirBollywood counterparts (Cashman 1998b:130).Televised matches in indigenous languages havealso helped build and maintain a wide fan base,as has the transference of regional political ten-sions onto the wicket—international test match-es between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, andSri Lanka are, today, rabidly nationalistic eventsreplete with hooliganism, jingoism, and some-times outright violence (Appardurai 1996;Nandy 2000).

THE WEST INDIES. The historic status hierar-chies that nurtured passion for cricket in Indiansociety have a close parallel in the West Indies,where the game is equally popular today.Though originally cultivated by and for whiteelites in the British Caribbean, high-status blacksand Indians were provided some training in thegame early on, thus leading to the eventual for-mation of cricket clubs for nonwhites. Clubswere rigidly stratified on color and class lines.Nonetheless, the status hierarchy was suffi-ciently rigid that space could be created forinteraction and competition among them—justso long as it remained on the field. Beating ateam from an adjacent status position was afeat worthy of respect, and though it did not ulti-mately change the social order, it did at least pro-vide an outlet for status emulation andachievement. The possibility of being recruit-ed to play professionally in England was furtherincentive for talented athletes from poor fami-lies to devote time and energy to the game.Because the symbolic stakes were high, more-over, large audiences would often turn out towatch and successful players would receivegreat acclaim. “Supporters of the respectivesides had invested considerable amounts ofemotional capital in the outcome,” notes

110022——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 22: Cricket article

Stoddart (1998a:84), a development that laterextended to international matches with some-times violent consequences (Patterson 1995).

Thus we see another case where the relativestability of the status hierarchy within a socie-ty promoted a segregated but inclusive cricket-ing culture, one that gained valuable momentumfrom the muted tension of competition amongstatus groups. Unique to the West Indies is thenature of their international “test” match status:rather than play as separate national teams, the“Windies” have traditionally comprised topplayers from throughout the Caribbean. Thecontemporary game in the Caribbean is thusless oriented around national pride than aroundracial and ethno-Caribbean solidarity (Beckles1998b).

SOUTHERN AFRICA. The case of South Africanand Zimbabwean cricket is a bit more compli-cated and follows lines distinct from, thoughcomparable to, those already described. Thelarge presence of British military personnelprovided a ready pool of talent for the game insouthern Africa, but its diffusion to indigenousand Afrikaner populations was somewhat errat-ic. Some Afrikaners openly played cricket beforethe onset of the Boer War, and they gladly joinedthe British in a white unity movement during theApartheid era, but the early twentieth centurywas a less active period for Afrikaner crick-eters in the aftermath of the war. British whites,meanwhile, staked the very reputation of theirsettlements on the game. The small size of theAnglo-white population in South Africa meantthat class distinctions among them were muted;cricket became a focal point of colonial life.Indeed, British South Africans and Rhodesianswere in some ways more “British” than theBritish (Winch 1983). In colonial Rhodesia, forexample, one memoirist noted, “Where previ-ously one had to be a member of the la-di-daclass to get a job in the Civil Service, now youhad to beat the hide off a ball,” meaning thatprowess at cricket was sufficient means ofattaining status and respect in the British com-munity (G. H. Tanser quoted in Winch 1983).

Vitally important to the long-term success ofcricket in southern Africa is the fact that theBritish allowed nonwhites to play the gamethere. Before the early 1900s, when govern-ment-sponsored race policies began their longdescent toward apartheid, British settlers actu-

ally encouraged segregated play among middle-class blacks and Asians. “Because the ideolo-gy of respectability was crucial for theaspirations of middle-class blacks,” they notonly aspired to play the game well but also pro-vided an example for less “respectable” blacks(Stoddart 1998b:56). Again, the relative stabil-ity of the status hierarchy in these societiesallowed for the diffusion of the game from thetop-down. Blacks were excluded from whitecricket clubs, as well as the national teams, butthey learned to play and to watch the gamenonetheless. In the ensuing years, politics havebeen the greatest barrier to “hegemonic” crick-et in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Oppositionto apartheid limited South African participa-tion in international test matches for a goodpart of the twentieth century, and the politicalturmoil in contemporary Zimbabwe may meanthe permanent demise of cricket there.

Though the particulars motivating cricketadoption thus varied from one British colony toanother, the development and perpetuation of ahegemonic cricket culture required in each casethat members of high-status groups remainedinterested not only in cultivating their own crick-et skills but also in sharing the game with thoseof lower orders. This did not occur in the UnitedStates or Canada.

DDIISSCCUUSSSSIIOONN

CCRRIICCKKEETT AANNDD SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL MMOODDEELLSS OOFF

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN

Our analysis suggests an important extension ofcurrent diffusion theory. It is widely acceptedamong scholars in the field that diffusion ismost likely to succeed where change agentsand adoptees share the same culture and socialcategory (especially the same socioeconomicstatus). Thus Rogers (1995:7) asserts as “anobvious principle of human communication thatthe transfer of ideas occurs most frequentlybetween two individuals who are similar orhomopholous,” this being “the degree to whichtwo or more individuals who interact are simi-lar in certain attributes such as beliefs, educa-tion, social class, and the like. .|.|.” Rogerscontrasts this with situations where relationsare heterophilous (i.e., the social position ofthe change agent is different from that of theadopters) and notes that this can present a majorobstacle to successful diffusion. The ideal sit-

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––110033

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 23: Cricket article

uation in the initial adoption phase, he argues,is thus one in which change agents and poten-tial adopters “would be homophilous on allother variables (education and social status, forexample) even though they are heterophilousregarding the innovation” (Rogers 1995, 7; forsimilar views see Strang and Meyer 1993;Wejnert 2002).

We are inclined to agree that homophilousdiffusion is indeed true in many, perhaps most,cases, especially those involving the intra-soci-etal transfer of simple innovations among indi-viduals. Our study, however, indicates that thereis an important class of diffusion processes inwhich just the opposite might occur—i.e., casesin which a distinctly heterophilous relationshipbetween change agents and would-be change-adopters promotes diffusion. In the case ofcricket, it is precisely the stable status-inequal-ity between those who brought the game fromEngland and the lower-status colonial popula-tions that adopted it that accounts for the suc-cessful diffusion of cricket. In such cases (i.e.,top-down, or heterophilous, diffusion), it is theauthority and high social status of changeagents, combined with their willingness notsimply to transmit but actively to participate inthe promotion of the innovation, and their desireto continue their engagement with it even afterit has begun to spread down and across thesocial hierarchy, that accounts for successfuldiffusion.

As shown in the case of cricket, all three ele-ments are necessary for this kind of top-downdiffusion to work: It is not enough for elitessimply to introduce the innovation; they arerequired to promote it actively and to persist inlending it their prestige by continuing to prac-tice it themselves. Where they do not, one of twooutcomes, both fatal for the long-term accul-turation of the innovation, is likely: One possi-bility is that the innovation becomes a fad,thereby enjoying a brief period of widespreadpopularity because of its upper-class origins, butlater being abandoned by the elite transmittersbecause of this very popularity, thereby trig-gering a decline in overall popularity. The his-tory of fashion is replete with examples of this(e.g., Crane 2000). Another possible “negative”outcome is that status-insecure first-adopters“capture” the innovation, thus preventing itsdiffusion into the population at large. Precisely

this happened to cricket in Canada and theUnited States, as we have seen.

Naturally, the nature of social stratification inthese Commonwealth countries is not sufficientto explain the success or failure of cricket ineach country; nor does it fully explain the failedcases of Canada and the United States. Our ear-lier discussion of the rising popularity of base-ball in the United States offers several keys torefining our explanation. Baseball was aggres-sively promoted throughout the United States byleague-owners, sporting goods manufacturers,and “star” players. Inter-urban play helped pro-mote widespread audiences. Youths wereencouraged to play in and out of school, and thenecessary equipment and playing grounds weremade widely available. Similar efforts weremade for football and basketball in the UnitedStates, and for cricket throughout much of theCommonwealth. Cross-class participation insuch sports was supplemented, in other words,by intense efforts to recruit spectators, as wellas new talent, to the games. At some point, suchself-promotion seems to cross a threshold atwhich the game’s popularity fuels itself: base-ball was so popular and baseball rivalries sointense that even American elites flocked to it,thus leaving cricket virtually no following what-soever. Absent celebrity players and carefulmarketing, crew and track and field, in con-trast, lost momentum and popularity amongAmerican audiences.

The lessons here are rather simple: On thesupply side, would-be audiences must be offereda steady stream of well-publicized eventsbetween evenly matched, talented teams. Annualmatches, such as Thanksgiving Day collegefootball games or “The Ashes,” a biennial crick-et match between England and Australia, helpsolidify a sport’s place in the public mind (cf.Schudson 1989). On the demand side, a surfeitof opportunities whereby talented athletes canfind selective incentives to devote time andeffort to one sport over another also appears tomake a difference. Such factors, it should benoted, can also erode support for a sport evenafter it has been successfully adopted. The pop-ularity of professional rugby in the Antipodes,for example, and the spread of basketball to theCaribbean, both potentially represent threats totheir nations’ hegemonic cricket cultures.

The evolution of the game in each country,then, is the result not only of the relative status

110044——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 24: Cricket article

position of interested parties but also such intan-gibles as the rise of sports entrepreneurs devot-ed to the promotion of a specific sport; the riseof competitive league play, which helps drawregular ‘fans’ from different strata of society;and the rise (or demise) of other seasonal sportscompeting for the same talent and audiencebase. Nonetheless, we feel that of these multi-ple factors, it is social stratification that liesmost fundamentally at the heart of the matter.The extent to which an elite cultural practice likecricket was shared with or shielded from thegeneral population was a direct result of elites’own sense of their place atop the social hierar-chy. Had American elite cricketers felt less anx-ious about their social position, for example,they might have popularized the sport alongthe same lines as baseball (or golf and tennis).

CCOONNCCLLUUSSIIOONN

WWHHAATT MMIIGGHHTT WWEE LLEEAARRNN

FFRROOMM TTHHEE GGLLOOBBAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN OOFF CCRRIICCKKEETT??

We began this project with both substantive andtheoretical questions in mind. Theoretically, wequestioned the propensity of diffusion modelsto emphasize solely structural or exclusivelycultural factors in the adoption process. That is,we wondered what, besides cultural affinity ornetwork ties, accounts for the successful diffu-sion of a cultural practice from one society toanother. Furthermore, we wondered what soci-ological theories of diffusion might gain byconsidering examples where diffusion was ini-tially successful and then failed. Substantivelyspeaking, we wondered why Canadians were notmore enthusiastic about cricket given theirstrong cultural and political connections toEngland. This case seemed especially com-pelling in light of all the recent attention put onglobalization and the would-be homogeniza-tion of world culture. What might the global his-tory of cricket tell us about other potentiallydiffusible phenomena, particularly those thatbear with them such strong relations to theircountry of origin?

With regard to cricket, we have identifiedseveral factors that seem closely related to vari-ance in the success or failure of the sport incountries connected to the former BritishEmpire. Beyond merely being exposed to thesport, settler societies needed to dedicate timeand resources to nurturing indigenous support

for the game. In other words, some portion ofthe population needed to devote itself to play-ing cricket (adoption), and some larger portionneeded to be persuaded to care about it (accul-turation). We note, too, that in the final, accul-turation phase, the game appears to take oncultural valence unique to its people; in otherwords, it becomes part of the national patrimo-ny, as opposed to a simple cultural import. Insome colonial societies, for example, cricketdeveloped as a way for settlers to prove their“Britishness,” whereas in others, excellence atthe game offered an opportunity for natives lit-erally to beat the British at their own game. Inthe unique case of Australia, moreover, bothelements combined into a fiercely nationalist butultimately anglophilic love of the game.

More specifically, cricket was elevated to anational sporting pastime in societies whereplayers and audiences were recruited from anarray of social class backgrounds. In the UnitedStates and Canada, elites literally took cricketfrom the public sphere and confined it to theirown social circles. This contrasts sharply withthe history of cricket in the other colonies of theBritish Empire, where racial inequality, selec-tive access to secondary education, and quasi-feudal land allocation systems limitedsocioeconomic mobility. Those at the top of theeconomic system felt comfortable sharing theirpastimes with the masses. Elites actively pro-moted and stuck with the game even after itbecame a sport practiced by low-status membersof society. Thus, cricket became a popular sportplayed and enjoyed by all.

The very nature of the game itself, we haveargued, was also an important part of the diffu-sion process: Cricket’s strong identificationwith English imperialism made it attractive toboth those who cherished the “mother coun-try” and those who wished for nothing morethan symbolically to defeat it. The sport’sabsence of physical contact, its strictures onrowdiness, and its low costs when played infor-mally—bats, balls, and stumps can all be hand-made—also contributed to its diffusionthroughout much of the British Commonwealth.

We argue, furthermore, that it was the rela-tive social mobility of mid-nineteenth-centuryAmerican and Canadian society that promptedelites there to protect their cultural patrimonyfrom the masses. This reasoning is comparableto that offered in explanation of the development

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––110055

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 25: Cricket article

of other forms of exclusionary cultural practice.According to Elias ([1939] 2000), for example,economic elites in late medieval Europeresponded to the status pressures of defeudal-ization by promoting specific repertoires of eti-quette by which they might differentiatethemselves from the masses. In a more moderncontext, social elites in late-nineteenth-centuryBoston responded to similar status pressure bycultivating tastes for European music, art, andtheater, as well as creating exclusive social ven-ues in which to partake of them (DiMaggio1982; Levine 1988; see Dunae 1981 andGruneau 1983 for comparable analyses ofCanada). Seen from this perspective, equality ofeconomic opportunity promoted elite efforts tolimit equality of cultural opportunity.

In the big picture, the history of cricket high-lights an important feature of global culturemore generally. Global cultural diffusion reliesnot simply on the transmission of cultural “sig-nals” from place to place, but also on: (1) Therelationship among different categories of recip-ients in host societies, particularly with respectto the distribution of social status among them,as well as the equality of opportunity to gainsuch status; and (2) the ability of some groupsof recipients to dominate or otherwise limitaccess to cultural imports, thereby “capturing”such imports for themselves. While limitingaccess to high-status goods might only makethem more attractive to lower-status consumers,there is a point of diminishing returns at whichpopular interest will peak and subsequentlysubside. Thus, for example, ownership of rawcommodities like diamonds and pearls maybecome more prevalent as their price increas-es; not so for cultural practices that are more eas-ily “protected.”

Access to cricket in the United States andCanada was “overprotected,” so to speak, thusforestalling its acculturation as a “hegemonicsports culture.” In point of fact, any culturalgood or practice can be so protected if itrequires: (a) repeated points of contact, as in thecase of anything that must be learned, replen-ished, or maintained; (b) extensive gatekeep-ing, as with cultural practices that aresufficiently sophisticated, esoteric, or non-obvi-ous as to require explanation, instruction, orprior evaluation by specialists; and/or (c) wide-spread collaboration, as with “social” goodssuch as musical performances or team sports

that require interaction with groups of com-petitors and/or co-participants. While nearlyanything can be had for the right price, some cul-tural commodities are simply too “social” tobe assimilated without ready and consistentsupport. Thus, the global diffusion of culturalpractices requires not only that those in “receiv-er” societies show interest in these practices, butthat the resources necessary to adopt them arewidely available. This access often hinges onindigenous elites’ desire and ability to keepsuch resources to themselves.

We see here an important dimension of thecross-cultural diffusion process otherwise over-looked; something we have called, borrowing aterm from Rogers (1995), heterophilous, or top-down, diffusion. While popular tastes and con-sumer agency play a large role in the receptionand adoption of easily accessible foreign culturalgoods and practices—so-called homophilouspaths to successful diffusion—indigenous elitessometimes play an even more important role incasting imported cultural goods or practices ashigh- or low-brow items. Elites’ ability to con-trol access to such goods has significant rami-f ications for popular retention thereof.Presumably, cross-national variation in the dif-fusion of many such items can be explained inexactly this fashion. Thus, it may be that futurestudies of cross-national cultural diffusionshould pay as much attention to elite as to pop-ular tastes. So, too, should the institutionaliza-tion of such tastes across public and privatevenues be of increasing concern to those inter-ested in the topic. Neither value nor venue area priori features of cultural imports, we argue.Diffusion scholars must then strive for renewedsensitivity toward the culturally specific mean-ings of the items or practices being diffused, aswell as toward the social strata associated withand/or in control of access to their use.

Jason Kaufman is John L. Loeb Associate Professorof the Social Sciences at Harvard University, wherehe teaches comparative/historical sociology, poli-tics, and culture in the Department of Sociology. Hiscurrent research focuses on the comparative politi-cal development of the United States and Canada. Arelated project seeks to explain Vermont’s unusualpolitical trajectory from anti-statist Republicanstronghold to bastion of the radical left. He is authorof For The Common Good? American Civic Lifeand the Golden Age of Fraternity, as well as articleson urban politics and fiscal policy; AIDS/HIV poli-cy; ethno-religious and labor fraternities; civilian

110066——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 26: Cricket article

militias; and cultural capital and educational attain-ment.

Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor ofSociology at Harvard. His work addresses, in com-parative/historical terms, the interactive causal roleof culture and seeks to unravel the neglected prob-lem of continuity. Applications include the natureand dynamics of slavery and resistance; the con-struction and diffusion of freedom, globalization,and reggae music; the sources and problems of eth-nic identity; and the persistence of poverty and gen-der relations in the Caribbean and America. He iscurrently completing a book on the meaning andexperience of freedom in America. Recent publica-tions include “Culture and Continuity” in Matters ofCulture: Cultural Sociology In Practice, edited by J.Mohr and R. Friedland, as well as papers on ancienthelotic slavery and ethnic stratification in Englandand the Americas.

RREEFFEERREENNCCEESS

Adelman, Melvin L. 1986. A Sporting Time: New YorkCity and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820–1870.Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Allen, David Rayvern. 1990. Cricket: An IllustratedHistory. Oxford, England: Phaidon Press.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large:Cultural Dimensions of Globalization .Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Baltzell, E. Digby. [1979] 1996. Puritan Boston andQuaker Philadelphia. New Brunswick, NJ:Transaction Publishers.

Barney, Robert. 1992. “In Search of a CanadianCooperstown: The Future of the Canadian BaseballHall of Fame.” Nine: A Journal of Baseball Historyand Social Policy 1.

Barney, Robert. 1989. “Diamond Rituals: Baseballin Canadian Culture.” Pp. 1–21 in Baseball History2: An Annual of Original Baseball Research, edit-ed by Peter Levine. Westport, CT: Meckler.

Beckles, Hilary McD. 1998a. The Development ofWest Indies Cricket, vol. 1 The Age of Nationalism.Barbados: Press of the University of the WestIndies.

———, ed. 1998b. A Spirit of Dominance: Cricketand Nationalism in the West Indies. Barbados:Canoe Press.

Beckles, Hilary McD and Brian Stoddart, eds. 1995.Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture.Manchester, England: Manchester UniversityPress.

Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture.London, England: Routledge Press.

Boller, Kevin. 1994a. “International Cricket:Launched by a Hoax.” The Canadian Cricketer22:23.

———. 1994b. “The 49th Parallel Divide: The

Story of Canada and the United States at Cricket.”The Canadian Cricketer 22: 24–25.

Bose, Mihir. 1990. A History of Indian Cricket.London, England: Deutsch.

Bouchier, Nancy and Robert Barney. 1988. “ACritical Examination of a Source on Early OntarioBaseball: The Reminiscence of Adam E. Ford.”Journal of Sport History 15:75–90.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1978. “Sport and Social Class.”Social Science Information 17:819–40.

Brookes, Christopher. 1978. English Cricket: TheGame and Its Players Throughout the Ages.London, England: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Burt, Ronald. 1987. “Social Contagion andInnovation: Cohesion vs. Structural Equivalence.”American Journal of Sociology 92:1287– 335.

Buskens, Vincent and Kazuo Yamaguchi. 1999. “ANew Model for Information Diffusion inHeterogeneous Social Networks.” SociologicalMethodology 29:281–325.

Cashman, Richard. 1979. “The Phenomenon ofIndian Cricket.” Pp. 180–204 in Sport in History:The Making of Modern Sporting History, edited byRichard Cashman and Michael McKernan.Queensland, Australia: University of QueenslandPress.

———. 1980. Patrons, Players and the Crowd:The Phenomenon of Indian Cricket. New Delhi,India: Orient Longman.

———. 1984. ‘Ave a Go, Yer Mug! AustralianCricket Crowds from Larrikin to Ocker. Sydney,Australia: Collins.

———. 1998a. “Australia.” The Imperial Game:Cricket, Culture and Society, edited by BrianStoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford. Manchester,England: Manchester University Press.

———. 1998b. “The Subcontinent.” The ImperialGame: Cricket, Culture and Society, edited byBrian Stoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford.Manchester, England: Manchester UniversityPress.

Chadwick, Henry. 1868. American Chronicle ofSports and Pastimes 1:52.

Clark, Manning. 1995. A Short History of Australia.4th rev. ed. Victoria, Australia: Penguin Books.

Clemens, Elisabeth S. and James M. Cook. 1999.“Politics and Institutionalism: ExplainingDurability and Change.” Annual Review ofSociology 25:441–66.

Coakley, J. J. 1998. Sport in Society. St. Louis, MO:Mosby.

Cole, Robert E. 1989. Strategies for Learning: Small-Group Activities in American, Japanese, andSwedish Industry. Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press.

Coleman, James S., Elihu Katz, and Herbert Menzel.1966. Medical Innovation: A Diffusion Study.Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.

Connell, R. W. and T. H. Irving. 1980. Class Structure

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––110077

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 27: Cricket article

in Australian History: Documents, Narrative andArgument. Melbourne, Australia: LongmanCheshire.

Cozier, Tony. 1978. The West Indies: Fifty Years of TestCricket.Brighton, England: Angus and Robertson.

Crane, Diana. 2000. Fashion and Its Social Agendas:Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press.

“Cricket.” 1907. New York Times, Sept. 21.DiMaggio, Paul J. 1982. “Cultural Entrepreneurship

in Nineteenth-Century Boston.” Media, Culture,and Society 4:33–50.

DiMaggio, Paul J. and Walter W. Powell. 1983. “TheIron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphismand Collective Rationality in OrganizationalFields.” American Sociological Review 48:147–60.

Dobbin, Frank and John R. Sutton. 1998. “TheStrength of a Weak State: The Rights Revolutionand the Rise of Human Resources ManagementDivisions.” American Journal of Sociology 104:441–76.

Dunae, P. A. 1981. Gentlemen Emigrants: From theBritish Public Schools to the Canadian Frontier.Vancouver, Canada: Douglas and McIntyre.

Dunning, Eric and Kenneth Sheard. 1979.Barbarians, Gentlemen and Players: ASociological Study of the Development of RugbyFootball. New York: New York University Press.

Elias, Norbert. [1939] 2000. The Civilizing Process.Rev. ed. Oxford, England: Blackwell.

Frye, Northrop. 1971. The Bush Garden: Essays onthe Canadian Imagination. Toronto, Canada:Anansi.

“The Game Was Stopped.” 1888. New York Times,May 21.

Gottdiener, M. 1985. “Hegemony and Mass Culture:A Semiotic Approach.” American Journal ofSociology 90:979–1001.

Granovetter, Mark and Roland Soong. 1983.“Threshold Models of Diffusion and CollectiveBehavior.” Journal of Mathematical Sociology 9:165–79.

Gruneau, Richard. 1983. Class, Sports, and SocialDevelopment. Amherst, MA: University ofMassachusetts Press.

Guillén, Mauro F. 1994. Models of Management:Work, Authority, and Organization in aComparative Perspective. Chicago, IL: Universityof Chicago Press.

———. 2001. The Limits of Convergence:Globalization and Organizational Change inArgentina, South Korea, and Spain. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Gunaratnam, Visva. 1993. “I Have a Dream.” TheCanadian Cricketer 21: 11.

Hall, John E. and R. O. McCulloch. 1895. Sixty Yearsof Canadian Cricket. Toronto, Canada: Bryant.

Harvard College. 1889. Annual Reports of the

President and Treasurer of Harvard College,1887–1888. Cambridge, MA: Harvard College.

Headlam, Cecil. 1903. Ten Thousand Miles ThroughIndia and Burma: An Account of the OxfordUniversity Authentics’Cricket Tour with Mr. K. J.Key in the Year of the Durbar. London, England:Dent.

Hickie, Thomas V. 1993. They Ran with the Ball: HowRugby Football Began in Australia. Melbourne,Australia: Longman Cheshire.

Hughes, Robert. 1986. The Fatal Shore: The Epic ofAustralia’s Founding. New York: Vintage.

Humber, William. 1995. Diamonds of the North: AConcise History of Baseball in Canada. Toronto,Canada: Oxford University Press.

James, C.L.R. 1963. Beyond a Boundary. London,England: Hutchinson.

Kaufman, Jason. 2002. For the Common Good?American Civic Life and the Golden Age ofFraternity. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kirsch, George. 1991. “Massachusetts Baseball andCricket, 1840–1870.” Pp. 1–15 in Sports inMassachusetts: Historical Essays, edited byRonald Story. Westf ield, MA: Institute forMassachusetts Studies, Westfield State College.

Kirsch, George. 1989. The Creation of AmericanTeam Sports: Baseball and Cricket, 1838–72.Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Lester, John A., ed. 1951. A Century of PhiladelphiaCricket. Philadelphia, PA: University ofPennsylvania Press.

Levine, Lawrence W. 1988. Highbrow/Lowbrow: TheEmergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Levine, Peter. 1985. A. G. Spalding and the Rise ofBaseball: The Promise of American Sport. NewYork: Oxford University Press.

Lillrank, Paul. 1995. “The Transfer of ManagementInnovations from Japan.” OrganizationStudies16:971–89.

Lipset, Seymour Martin. 1996. AmericanExceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword. NewYork: Norton.

Maguire, Joseph. 1999. Global Sport: Identities,Societies, Civilizations. Oxford, England: PolityPress.

Malcolm, Dominic. 2001. “‘It’s Not Cricket’:Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Inequalities.”Journal of Historical Sociology 14: 253–75.

Mandle, W. F. 1973. “Games People Played: Cricketand Football in England and Victoria in the LateNineteenth Century.” Historical Studies 15(60):511–535.

Mangan, J. A. 1986. The Games Ethic andImperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal.London, England: Frank Cass.

Markovits, Andrei S. and Steven L. Hellerman. 2001.Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

110088——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 28: Cricket article

Marsden, Peter and Joel Podolny. 1990. “DynamicAnalysis of Network Diffusion Processes.” SocialNetworks Through Time, edited by J. Weesie andH. Flap. Utrecht, Netherlands: ISOR.

Melville, Tom. 1998. The Tented Field: A History ofCricket in America. Bowling Green, IN: BowlingGreen State University Popular Press.

Merrett, Christopher and John Nauright. 1998. “SouthAfrica.” Pp. 55–78 in The Imperial Game: Cricket,Culture and Society, edited by Brian Stoddart andKeith A. P. Sandiford. Manchester, England:Manchester University Press.

Metcalfe, Alan. 1987. Canada Learns to Play: TheEmergence of Organized Sport, 1807–1914.Toronto, Canada: McClelland and Stewart.

Meyer, John and Michael Hannan, eds. 1979.National Development and the World System:Educational, Economic and Political Change,1950–1970. Chicago, IL: University of ChicagoPress.

Miller, Toby, Geoffrey Lawrence, Jim McKay, andDavid Rowe. 2001. Globalization and Sport,London, England: Sage Publications.

Mizruchi, Mark S. and Lisa C. Fein. 1999. “TheSocial Construction of Organizational Knowledge:A Study of the Uses of Coercive, Mimetic, andNormative Isomorphism.” Administrative ScienceQuarterly 44: 653–83.

Molotch, Harvey, William Freudenburg, and KristaE. Paulsen. 2000. “History Repeats Itself, butHow? City Character, Urban Tradition, and theAccomplishment of Place.” American SociologicalReview 65:791–823.

Mrozek, Donald J. 1983. Sport and AmericanMentality, 1880–1910. Knoxville, TN: Universityof Tennessee Press.

Nandy, Ashis. 2000. The Tao of Cricket: On Gamesof Destiny and Destiny of Games. New Delhi,India: Oxford University Press.

Palloni, Alberto. 2001. “Diffusion in SociologicalAnalysis.” Pp. 67–114 in Diffusion Processes andFertility Transition: Selected Perspectives, editedby John B. Casterline. Washington D.C.: NationalAcademy Press.

Patterson, Orlando. 1994. “Ecumenical America:Global Culture and the American Cosmos.” WorldPolicy Journal 11:103–17.

———Patterson, Orlando. 1995. “The Ritual ofCricket.” Pp. 141–47 in Liberation Cricket, edit-ed by Hilary McD Beckles and Brian Stoddart.Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers.

Penn, Alan. 1999. Targeting Schools: Drill,Militarism and Imperialism. London, England:Woburn Press.

Perera, S. S. 1998a. The Janashakthi Book of SriLanka Cricket, 1832–1996. Colombo: JanashakthiInsurance.

———. 1998b. “Notes on Sri Lanka’s CricketHeritage.” Crosscurrents: Sri Lanka and Australia

at Cricket, edited by Michael Roberts and AlfredJames. Petersham, Australia: Walla Walla Press.

“The Philadelphia Cricketers.” 1884. New York Times,July 15.

Pollard, Jack. 1987. The Formative Years of AustralianCricket, 1803–1893. North Ryde, Australia: Angusand Robertson.

Redmond, Gerald. 1979. “Some Aspects of OrganizedSport and Leisure in Nineteenth-Century Canada.”Loisir et société/Society and Leisure 2:73–100.

Reese, T. W. 1927. New Zealand Cricket, 1814–1914.Christchurch, New Zealand: Simpson andWilliams.

Robertson, R.1992. Globalization: Social Theoryand Global Culture. London: Sage Publications.

Rogers, Everett M. 1995. Diffusion of Innovations.4th ed. New York: Free Press.

Ryan, Greg. 1998. “New Zealand.” Pp. 93–115 in TheImperial Game: Cricket, Culture and Society, edit-ed by Brian Stoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford.Manchester, England: Manchester UniversityPress.

Sandiford, Keith A. P. 1994. Cricket and theVictorians. Aldershot, England: Scholar Press.

———. 1998a. “England.” Pp. 9–33 in TheImperial Game: Cricket, Culture and Society, edit-ed by Brian Stoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford.Manchester, England: Manchester UniversityPress.

———. 1998b. “Introduction.” Pp. 1–8 in TheImperial Game: Cricket, Culture and Society, edit-ed by Brian Stoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford.Manchester, England: Manchester UniversityPress.

———. 1998c. Cricket Nurseries of ColonialBarbados: The Elite Schools, 1865–1966.Barbados: Press of the University of the WestIndies.

Sayen, Henry. 1956. A Yankee Looks At Cricket.London, England: Putnam.

Schudson, Michael. 1989. “How Culture Works:Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacyof Symbols.” Theory and Society 18:153–80.

Smith, Ronald A. 1988. Sports and Freedom: TheRise of Big-Time College Athletics. New York:Oxford University Press.

Spalding, Albert G. [1911] 1992. America’s NationalGame. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.

Starr, Paul. 1989. “The Meaning of Privatization.” Pp.15–48 in Privatization and the Welfare State, edit-ed by Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn.Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Steen, Rob. 1999. The Official Companion to the1999 Cricket World Cup. London: Boxtree.

Stoddart, Brian. 1988. “Sport, Cultural Imperialism,and Colonial Response in the British Empire.”Comparative Studies in Society and History 30:649–73.

———. 1998a. “West Indies.” The Imperial Game:

CCUULLTTUURRAALL DDIIFFFFUUSSIIOONN AANNDD CCRRIICCKKEETT——––110099

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman

Page 29: Cricket article

Cricket, Culture and Society, edited by BrianStoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford. Manchester,England: Manchester University Press.

———. 1998b. “Other Cultures.” The ImperialGame: Cricket, Culture and Society, edited byBrian Stoddart and Keith A. P. Sandiford.Manchester

Stoddart, Brian and Keith A. P. Sandiford, eds. 1998.The Imperial Game: Cricket, Culture and Society.Manchester, England: Manchester UniversityPress.

Stone, Derrick I. and Donald S. Garden. 1978.Squatters and Settlers. Sydney, Australia: Reed.

Strang, David. 1990. “From Dependency toSovereignty: An Event History Analysis ofDecolonization 1870–1987.” AmericanSociological Review 55: 846–60.

Strang, David and John Meyer. 1993. “InstitutionalConditions for Diffusion.” Theory and Society22:487–511.

Strang, David and Sarah Soule. 1998. “Diffusion inOrganizations and Social Movements: FromHybrid Corn to Poison Pills.” Annual Review ofSociology 24:265–90.

Townsend, Kim. 1996. Manhood at Harvard: WilliamJames and Others. Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press.

Vaille, F. O. and H. A. Clark, eds. 1875. The Harvard

Book: A Series of Historical, Biographical, andDescriptive Sketches. Cambridge: Welch, Bigelow.

Van den Bulte, Christophe and Gary L. Lilien. 2001.“Medical Innovation Revisited: Social Contagionversus Marketing Effort.” American Journal ofSociology 106:1409–35.

Warner, Sir Pelham. 1950. Gentlemen v. Players,1806–1949. London: George G. Harrap.

Watson, James L. 2002. “Transnationalism,Localization, and Fast Foods in East Asia.” Pp.222–32 McDonaldization: The Reader, edited byGeorge Ritzer. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine ForgePress.

Wejnert, Barbara. 2002. “Integrating Models ofDiffusion of Innovations: A ConceptualFramework.” Annual Review of Sociology28:297–326.

Williams, Jack. 2001. Cricket and Race. Oxford,England: Berg.

Winch, Jonty. 1983. Cricket’s Rich Heritage : AHistory of Rhodesian and Zimbabwean Cricket,1890–1982. (Bulawayo, Zimbabwe : Books ofZimbabwe).

Wise, S. F. 1989. “Sport and Class Values in OldOntario and Quebec.” Pp. 107–129 in Sports inCanada: Historical Readings, edited by MorrisMott. Toronto, Canada: Copp, Clark, Pitman.

111100——––AAMMEERRIICCAANN SSOOCCIIOOLLOOGGIICCAALL RREEVVIIEEWW

#2117-ASR 70:1 filename:70105-kaufman