Ethnomethods -- what people do

Sport is, quite literally, a folk-science. The moderns have in sport composed a particularly effective ‘ethnomethod’ (Latour, 2003) to encapsulate a notion – and to nourish the discourse – of a universal humanhood. Where human rights, religions, and literary canons have failed, sport has succeeded, as has capitalism in constructing the consumer. And these are not new thoughts -- the discourse of sports has always been saturated with brotherhood and communication. Sport as universal language is a Babel's tower, tacitly built not to wake up the ‘crossed-out god’ (Latour, 1993); Running up and down ‘the athlete’s stair’ (Deleuze & Guattari, 1986) to stitch the Leviathan.