The Notre Dame Bengal Bouts: symbolic immortality through sport
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ABSTRACT:
The major objective of this article is to apply the concept of the postself to an ethnographic analysis of boxing at the University of Notre Dame, making additional use of Stebbins' work to account for amateur athletes. The sport act is an annual intracollegiate boxing tournament - the Bengal Bouts. Three types of methods were used to examine the self-concepts and attitudes of Bengal Bouters regarding the postself and symbolic immortality and to compare them to the professional athlete: interviews; participant observation; and mass media form data (biographies, newspaper accounts, sometimes written by former boxers; letters from the promoter, and official programs). I use the characteristics of the sport world that appear to cultivate the postself: (a) opportunity for role support; (b) engrossment through participation and communication; (c) comparison through measurement and records, and (d) recognition through awards and commemorative devices. For the Bengal Bouter, boxing may foster the development of and support for an attractive social identity, including the postself. The manifest function of the Bengal Bouts is to aid impoverished nations overseas; titles and awards are secondary. Through boxing, the Bouter contributes to the vicarious participation of spectators and to his own development through the personal and social rewards of the Bouts, including the potential for a symbolic immortality.
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