This ethnography compares the behavior of pickup basketball players in two gyms. One gym, the Richmond YMCA, had one basketball court, while the other, the Babylon Tower, had eighteen. Through the presentation of field notes and statistics, the author argues that players create and manipulate norms that maximize the duration and competitiveness of their games. Due to a dearth of courts, players at the YMCA used norms that maximized playing time. Due to an excess of courts, players at the Tower used norms that maximized competitiveness. The findings add to extant work on norms by showing how resource availability affects norm usage.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Caillois, R.
1961. Man, play, and games.New York: Free Press.
2.
Carlston, D.1983. An environmental explanation for race differences in basketball performance.Journal of Sport and Social Issues7:30-51.
3.
Charmaz, K.
1983. The grounded theory method: An explication and interpretation.Contemporary field research, edited by R. Emerson, 109-126. Boston: Little, Brown.
4.
Coleman, J. S.
1990. Foundations of social theory.Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University.
5.
Ellickson, R.1989. A hypothesis of wealth-maximizing norms: Evidence from the whaling industry.Journal of Law, Economics & Organizations5:83.
6.
Ellickson, R. C.
1991. Order without law: How neighbors settle disputes.Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
7.
Glaser, B. G.
, and A. L. Strauss. 1967. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for grounded research.New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
8.
Goffman, E.
1961. Encounters: Two studies in the sociology of interaction.Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
9.
Guttman, A.
1988. A whole new ball game: An interpretation of American sports.Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
10.
Hobbes, T.
[1651] 1962. Leviathan.Glasgow, Scotland: Fontana.
11.
Homans, G. C.
1950. The human group.New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
12.
Remnick, D.1995. Back in play.The New Yorker71 (May 8): 38-44.
13.
Schwartz, B.
1975. Queuing and waiting: Studies in the social organization of access and delay.Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
14.
Simmel, G.
[1910] 1971. Sociability. In On individuality and social forms, edited by D. Levine, 127-140. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
15.
Taylor, M.
1990. Cooperation and rationality: Notes on the collective action problem and its solutions. In The limits of rationality, edited by K. S. Cook and M. Levi, 222-240. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
16.
Wielgus Jr., C.
, and A. Wolff. 1980. The in-your-face basketball book.New York: Everest House.
