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Sociological Theory 7:1

THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE: AN ETHNOGRAPHIC REPORT . ON STRATIFICATION AND OLYMPIC SWIMMERS

DANIEL F, CHAMBLISS Hamilton College*

Olympic sports,and competitive swimming in particular, provide an unusually clear opportunity for studying the nature of excellence. In other fields, it may be less clear who are the outstanding performers: the best painter or pianist, the best business- person, the finest. waitress or the best father. But in sport (and this is one of its attractions) success is defined more exactly, by success in competition. There are medals and ribbons and plaques for first place, second, and third; competitions are arranged for the head-to-head meeting of the best competitors in the world; in swimming and track, times are electronically ‘recorded to the hundredth of a second; there are statistics published and rankings announced, every month or every week. By the end of the Olympic Games every four years, it is completely clear who won and who lost, who made the finals, who participated in the Games, and who never participated in the sport at all.

Within. competitive swimming in par- ticular, clear stratification exists not only between individuals but also between de- fined levels of the sport as well. At the lowest level, we see the country club teams, operating in the summer-time as a loosely-run, mildly competitive league, with volunteer part-time coaches. Above that there are teams which represent entire cities and compete with other teams from other cities around the state or region; then a “Junior Nationals” level of competi- tion, featuring the best younger (under 18 years old) athletes; then the Senior Nationals level (any age, the best in the nation); and finally, we could speak of

world or Olympic class competitors. At’

each such level, we find, predictably, certain people competing: one athlete swims in a summer league, never r seeing

° “The author wishes to thank Randall Collins and Gary Alan Fire for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

swimmers from another town; one swimmer may consistently qualify for the Junior Nationals, but not for Seniors; a third may swim at the Olympics, and never return to Junior Nationals. The levels of the sport are remarkably distinct from one another. This is convenient for the student of stratification. Because success in swimming is so definable, and the stratification system so (relatively) unambiguous (so that. the - athlete’s progress can be easily charted), we can clearly see, by comparing levels

“and studying individuals as they move

between and within levels, what exactly produces excellence. In addition, careers in swimming are. relatively short; one can achieve tremendous success in a brief — period of time. Rowdy Gaines, beginning in the sport when 17 years old, jumped from a country club league to a world record in the 100-meter freestyle event in only three years. This allows the researcher to conduct true longitudinal research in a few short years.

In short, in competitive swimming one can rather quickly learn something about stratification; here is a prime location for studying the nature of excellence.”

I. THE RESEARCH

From January 1983 through August 1984 I attended a-senes of national and inter- national-class swimming meets conducted

' The gereral approach taken here derives from symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, as practiced by Berger and Luckmann (1966), Blumer (1986), Schutz (1971), and Schuw and Luckmann (3973). The sociology of sport literature is thin on swimming; however, the following are either classics or recent work which was helpful: Elias and Dunning (1986), Fine (1979, 1987),-Goffman (1961), Guttmann (1978), Lever (1983), and Rigauer (1981). Perhaps one of the finest pieces of social critique of sport

woven throughout David Halberstam’ 's The

Breaks of the Game (198). .

Spring 1989 JHE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

by United States Swimming, Inc.; the national governing body for the. sport. United States Swimming sanctions the selection process for American teams for international events (the Olympic Games, for example), and charters several thousand amateur swimming clubs around the coun- try with membership of several hundred thousand athletes, by far the majority of whom are children and teenagers. These clubs provide the organizational base for amateur swimming in America. The meets attended included both the Indoor (March) and the

Meet, the Seventeen Magazine Meet of Champions, the Speedo/Dupont Meet. of Champions, the 1984 Olympic Trials, and the 1984 Summer Olympic.Games. I carried standard press credentials, and was free to go anywhere and talk to anyone. At most meets | traveled with the Mission Viejo (CA) Nadadores, National Team Cham- pions at the time, sharing plane flights,

_ hotel accommodations, meals, and in- |

town transportation with them. I lived with the coaches and athletes of this team in a traditional participant observer role. It

was clear to all involved that I was there as .

a researcher; no deception was involved at any stage of the research. During: this period and several occasions since, I inter- viewed a total of somie 120 national and world-class swimmers and coaches.”

Over these years J frequently spent from 3 days to a month and a half in Mission Viejo (about an hour’s drive south of Los Angeles) living with coaches, visiting prac- tices, and interviewing swimmers, coaches and officials. The Wadadores gave me complete access to their practices, weight

2 Interviews were either recorded on tape (in the early stages of the research) or in written notes. Tape recording had a somewhat inhibiting effect on when and where interviews could be conducted, and so was abandoned. Interviews proceeded from a base of a few standard questions—e.g. “How did you begin in swimming?” “When did you first achieve national standing?” to 2 more open-ended conversation around issues of becoming a champion, finding the right coach, etc. For further details, see “Sources and Acknowledgements” in Chambliss, 1988.

Outdoor (August) National: Championships, the USS International

lifting sessions, team meetings, parties, and other events. In addition, I’ was present im Mission Viejo during the U.S. Olympic Team Training Camp, which was held there in July of 1984, and was the only non-staff member on the pool deck during the (closed) afternoon practices of the Olympic Team. In addition; I have recently completed five years of coaching a regional- level age group swimming team (children 7-16 years old) in New York State. In that capacity I traveled to many meets, from the smallest “country club” events to the Eastern Zone Championships, as well as other large meets east of the Mississippi . River. I have also coached in the southern U.S. and worked with beginners as well as National Age Group record holders.

In short, this report draws on extended experience with swimmers at every level of ability, over some half a dozen years. Observation -has covered the span of careers, and I have had the chance to compare not just athletes within a certain level (the view that most coaches have), but between the most discrepant levels as well. Thus these findings avoid the usual

“sociology of knowledge” problem of an observer’s being familiar mainly with ath- letes at one Jevel. When top-rank coaches, for instance, talk of what makes success, they are often thinking of the differences between athletes whom they see. within the top level of the sport. Their ignorance of the day-to-day realities of lower levels (learn-to-swim programs, country club teams) prevents them from having a truly comparative view. Or when sports journ-

-alists write about Olympic athletes, they

typically begin the research after the great - deed is done, and so lack a legitimate longitudinal view; the athlete’s memory of his or her own distant history will be distorted.

This study of Olympic swimmers, by contrast, (1) looks at different levels of the sport, and (2). was begun well in advance of the Games, when no one (obviously) knew who would win and who not; it was designed with the explicit idea of. seeing how the plant grew before the flower bloomed. The research was both cross- sectional (looking at all levels of the sport). and longitudinal (over the span of careers). . “72 THE NATURE OF EXCELLENCE .

By “excellence” I mean “consistent superi-

ority of performance.” The excellent athlete regularly, even routinely, performs better than his or her competitors. Consistency of supenor performances tells us that one athlete is indeed better than another, and that the difference between them is not merely the product of chance. This’ defi-

nition can apply at any level of the sport,-

differentiating athletes. The superiority discussed here may be that of one swimmer over another, or of all athletes at one level (say, the Olympic class) over another. By

. this definition, we need not judge per- formance against an absolute criterion, but only against other performances. There are acknowledged leaders on every team, as well as teams widely recognized as dominant.

To introduce what are sources of excel- lence for Olympic athletes, I should first Suggest—saving the demonstration. for later—what does not produce excellence.

(1) Excellence is not, I find, the product of socially deviant personalities. These swimmers. don’t appear to be “oddballs,” nor are they loners (“kids who have given up the normal teenage life.”)? If their

‘ achievements result from a personality characteristic, that characteristic is. not obvious. Perhaps it is true, as the mythology of sports has it, that the best athletes are more self-confident (although that is de- batable); but such confidence could be an effect of achievement, not the cause of it.* (2) Excellence does nor result from . quantitative changes in behavior. Increased training time, per se, does not make one swim fast; nor does increased “psyching up”, nor does moving the arms faster.

Simply doing more of the same will not

lead to moving up a level in the sport. (3), Excellence does nor result from

some special inner quality of the athlete.

“Talent” is one common name for this

3 In fact, if anything they are more socially bonded and adept than their peers. The process by which this

happens fits well with Durkheim’s (1965) description -

of the sources of social cohesion.

“ These issues are addressed at length in “The Social World of Olympic Swimmers.” Daniel F. Chambliss, in preparation. ~ ;

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

quality; sometimes we talk of a “gift,” or. of “natural ability.” These terms are generally used to mystify the essentially mundane processes of achievement in sports, keeping us away from a realistic analysis of the actual factors creating superlative performances, and protecting us from a sense of responsibility for our own outcomes. ;

So where does excellence—consistent superiority of performance—come from?

I. Excellence Requires Qualitative Differentiation Excellence in competitive swimming is achieved through qualitative differentiation from other swimmers, not through quanti- tative increases in activity. This means, in brief, that levels of the sport are quali- tatively distinct; that stratification is dis- crete, not continuous; and that because of these factors, the swimming world is best conceived of not as a single entity but as multiple worlds, each with its own patterns of conduct. , Before elaborating on these points, | should clarify what is meant here by “quantitative” and “qualitative.” By quan- tity, we mean the number or amount of something. Quantitative improvement en- tails an increase in the number of some

one thing one does. An athlete who

practices 2 hours a day and increases that activity to 4 hours a day has made a quantitative change in behavior. Or, one who swims 5 miles and changes to 7 miles has made.a quantitative change. She does more of the same thing; there is an increase in quantity. Or again, a freestyle swimmer who, while maintaining the same stroke technique, moves his arms at an increased number of strokes per minute has made a quantitative change in behavior. Quantitative improvements, then, involve doing more of the same thing.

By quality, though, we mean the-charac- ter or nature of the thing itself. A quali- tative change involves modifying what is actually being done, not simply doing more of it. For a swimmer doing the breaststroke, a qualitative change might be a change from pulling straight back with the arms to sculling them outwards, to the THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

” sides; or from lifting oneself up out of the water at the turn to staying Jow near the water. Other qualitative changes might include competing m a regional mect, -instead of local meets; eating vegetables and complex carbohydrates rather than fats and sugars; entering one’s weaker events instead of only one’s stronger events; learning to do a flip turn with freestyle, instead of merely turning around and pushing off; or traiing at near-competition levels of intensity, rather than casually. Each of these involves doing things differ- ently than before, not necessarily doing more. Qualitative improvements involve. doing different kinds of things.

Now we can consider how qualitative differentiation is manifested:

Different levels of the sport are quali- tatively distinct. Olympic champions don’t just do much more of the same things that summier-eague country-club swimmers do. They don’t just swim more hours, or move their arms faster, or attend more workouts. What makes them faster cannot be quan- titatively compared with lower level swimmers, because while there may be quantitative differences—and certainly there are, for instance in the number of hours spent in workouts—these are not, I think, the decisive factors at all> -

Instead, they do things differently. Their strokes are different, their attitudes are

different, their group of friends are differ- ent; their parents treat the sport differently, the swimmers prepare differently for their races, and they enter different kinds of meets and. events. There are numerous discontinuities of this sort between, say, the swimmer who competes in a local City League meet and one who enters the

5 Truc, the top teams work Jong hours, and swim very long distances, but (1) such workouts often begin after a swimmer achieves national status, not before, and (2) the positive impact of -increased yardage seems to come with huge increases, e.g. the

. doubling of workout distances—in which case one could argue that a qualizative jump has been made. The whole question of “how much yardage to swim” is widely discussed within the sport itself.

Compare the (specious, I think) ‘notion that a longer school day/term/year will produce educational improvements.

Olympic Trials. Consider three dimensions - of difference: ;

(1) Technique: The styles of strokes, dives and turns are dramatically different at different levels. A “C” (the lowest rank in United States Swimming’s ranking sys- tem) breaststroke swimmer tends to pull her arms far back beneath her, kick the legs out very wide without bringing them together at the finish, lift herself high out of the water on the tum, fail to take a long pull underwater after the tum, and touch at the finish with one hand, on her side. By comparison, a “AAAA” (the highest rank) swimmer, sculls the arms out to the side and sweeps back in (never actually pulling backwards), kicks narrowly with the feet finishing together, stays low on the turns, takes a long underwater pull after the turn, and touches at the finish with both hands. Not only are the strokes different, they are so different that the “C” swimmer may be amazed to see how the “AAAA” swimmer looks when swimming. The appearance alone is dramatically different, as is the speed with which they swim.

The same is true for all the other strokes (to a greater or lesser degree), and certainly for starts (dives) and turns. Olympic-class swimmers, to make one other observation, are surprisingly quiet when they dive into the water-—-there is little splash. Needless

to say, this is not true for a novice 10-year

old.

(2) Discipline: The best swimmers are more likely to be strict with their training, coming to workouts on time, .carefully doing the competitive strokes legally (i.e., without violating the technical rules of the sport)®, watch what they eat, sleep regular hours, do proper warmups before a meet, and the like. Their energy is carefully

Onc day at Mission Viejo, with some sixty swimmers going back and forth the length of a 50- meter pool, coach Mark Schubert took one boy out of the water and had him do twenty pushups before continuing the workout. The boy had touched the wall with one hand at the end of a breast stroke swim. The rules require a two-handed touch. ,

One hundred and twenty hands should have touched. one hundred and nineteen did touch. and this made Schubert angry. He pays attention to details. 74

channeled. Diver Greg Louganis, who won two Olympic gold medals in 1984, pfactices only three hours each day—not a long time—divided up into two or three sessions. But during each session, he tries to do every dive perfectly. Louganis is never sloppy in Practice, and so is never sloppy in meets.

(3) Attitude: At the higher levels of

competitive swimming, something like an inversion of attitude takes place. The very features of the sport which the “C” swimmer finds unpleasant, the top-level swimmer enjoys. What others see as boring— swimming back and forth over a black line for two hours, say—they find peaceful, even meditative®, often challenging, or

. therapeutic. They enjoy hard practices, look forward to difficult competitions, try to set difficult goals. Coming into the 5.30 AM practices at Mission Viejo, many of the swimmers were bvely, laughing, talking, enjoying themselves, perhaps appreciating the fact that most people would positively hate doing it. It is incorrect to believe that top athletes suffer great sacrifices to achieve -their goals. Often, they don’t see what they do as sacrificial at all. They like it. (See also, Hemery 1986).

These qualitative differences are what distinguish levels of the sport. They are very noticeable, while the quantitative differences between levels, both in training and im competition, may be surprisingly small indeed. David Hemery, who won a Gold Medal in the 400-meter intermediate hurdles at the 1968 Olympics, reports the results of interviewing world-class athletes in 22 different sports. “In many. cases, the time spent training [a quantitative factor, in Our terms] did not alter significantly from the start of specialization right up to the top level.” Yet very small quantitative differences in performance may be coupled with huge qualitative differences: In the finals of the men’s 100-meter freestyle swimming event at the 1984 Olympics, Rowdy Gaines, the gold medalist, finished ahead of second-place Mark Stockwell by

” From an interview with his coach, Ron O'Brien...

s Distance swimmers frequently compare swimming

to meditation.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

-44 seconds, a gap of only %o of 1%. Between Gaines and the 8th place finisher (a virtual unknown named Dirk Korthals, from West Germany), there was only a 2.2% difference in time. Indeed, between Rowdy Gaines, the fastest swimmer in the world that year, and a respectable 10-year old, the quantitative difference in speed would only be about 30%.

Yet here, as in many cases, a rather small .quantitative difference produces an- enormous qualitative difference: . Gaines was consistently a winner in major inter- national meets, holder of the world record, and the Olympic Gold Medalist in three events.

Stratification in the sport is discrete, not continuous. There.are significant, quali- tative breaks—discontinuities—between levels of the sport. These include differ- ences in attitude, discipline, and technique which in turn lead to small but consistent quantitative differences in speed. Entire teams show such differences in attitude, discipline, and technique, and consequently certain teams are easily seen to be “stuck” at certain levels.* Some teams always do well at the National Championships, others do well at the Regionals, others at the County Meet. And certainly swimmers typically remain within a certain level for most of their careers, maintaining through- out their careers the habits with which they began. Within levels, competitive improve- ments. for such swimmers are typically marginal, reflecting only differential growth rates (early onset of puberty, for instance) or the jockeying for position within the . relatively limited sphere of their own level.

J am suggesting here that athletes do not reach the top level by a simple process of

° For example: several well-known teams con- sistently do well at the National Junior Olympics (“Junior Nationals,” as it is called informally), and yet never place high in the team standings at the National Championships (“Senior Nationals”), the next higher meet. . :

These teams actually prevent theif swimmers from going to the better meet, holding them in store for the casier meet so that the team will do better at that lesser event. In this way, and in many others, teams choose their own level of success. THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

“working their way up,” by accumulating ‘sheer time in the sport; improvements across levels of the sport are not generated through quantitative changes. No amount of extra work per se will transform a “C” swimmer into a “AAAA” swimmer with- out a concurrent qualitative change in how that work is done. It is not by domg imcreasing amounts of work that one be- ‘comes excellent, but rather by changing the kinds of work. Beyond an initial improvement of strength, flexibility and feel, there is little increasing accumulation of speed through sheer volume of swim- ming. Instead, athletes move up to the top ranks through qualitative jumps: notice- able changes in their techmiques, discipline, and attitude, accomplished usually through a change in settings, e.g. Joming a new team with a new coach, new friends, etc, who work at a higher level. Without, such qualitative jumps, no major improvements (movements through levels) will take place.

We find the same phenomenon in other areas of endeavor. Carl von Clausewitz, writer of the classic 19th century text on military strategy On War, noted that great

generals (and he could have added, great.

swimmers and coaches)’® rise quickly. Especially in wartime, when battlefield performance is the vital need, there is no long period of apprenticeship before one achieves the highest ranks, no tedious “accumulation” of knowledge or skills: _ . . .The most distinguished generals have never risen from the very learned or really -emudite class of officers, but have been mostly men who, from the circumstances of their position, could not have attained to any great amount of knowledge. (p. 196). - .the only question therefore is, of what kind should

these ideas be. . (Clausewitz, etc, p. 197). .

(emphasis added}

The same pattern holds true in academic life. The leading figures of a discipline are not those whose quantity of production is so high—although that may give an added advantage to those who are widely read— but rather those who write the quality, or kind, of articles and books that are widely

75 read and talked about. No sheer number . of papers given at local conferences or published in minor journals “add up to” a single Sorokin-award winning. book (in © sociology), or an article in Daedalus.*" At the micro-level, simply increasing the number of hours one works each day will not produce a major change in status if the kind of work done remains the same.

It may be hard to believe this completely. It seems to contradict our “common sense,” what we know from daily experience. The fact is, when people around us do more, they do tend to do better. When we play in- a weekend softball game, sheer increased effort (at running the bases, say) brings increased success (“Would a bunch of guys really go at it this hard just for a beer?”). Children in Little League are told-—and their coaches believe—that hard work is the major cause of success (Fine 1987), . and swimming coaches widely believe that those who stay in the sport the longest and swim year-round will be more successful. The top swimming coaches in America fall into the same prejudice, attributing success often to “hard work” or “talent.” Since they habitually, unrefiectively, live at the top level (having spent almost their entire coaching career there), they never see what creates the differences between levels. The fact is, quantitative changes do bring suc¢cess—but only within levels of the sport.? Doing more of the same pays off, but only in very limited, locally’ visible ways. One can achieve a slight advantage over peers by doing more without changing the quality of what is done.

Having seen that “more is better” within local situations, we tend to extrapolate:* If I work this hard to get to my Jevel, how hard must Olympic swimmers work? If I

31 One realizes this in reading job candidates’ vitae: far'better to see one page that lists a i

‘Fellowship and a National Book Award than fifteen

pages of book reviews in the regional association’s journal. , -

‘ the determing factor that it is among jower level

athletes, many of whom do.not try very hard.

sacrifice this much to qualify for the State Championships, how much must ‘they sacrifice? We believe, extrapolating from . what we learn about success at our own level, that they must work unbelievably hard, must feel incredible pressure, must sacrifice more and more to become success- ful. Assuming implicitly that stratification in sports is continuous rather than discrete (that the differences are quantitative) we believe that top athletes do unbelievable things. In short, we believe that they must be superhuman.

This is really. several worlds, each with its own. patterns of conduct. The analysis pursued above can be taken. one step further. If, as I have suggested, there really are qualitative breaks between levels of the sport, and if people really don’t “work their way up” in any simple additive sense, perhaps our very conception of a single swimming world is maccurate. I have spoken of the “top” of the sport, and of “levels” within the sport. But these words suggest that all swimmers are, so to speak, climbing a single ladder, aiming towards the same goals, sharing the same values, swimming the same strokes, all looking upwards towards an Olympic gold medal. But they aren’t.’ Some want gold medals, some want to make the Team, some want to exercise, or have fun with frends, or be out in the sunshine and

water. Some are trying to escape their parents. The images of the “top” and the “levels” of swimming which J have used until now may simply reflect the dominance of a-certain faction of swimmers and coaches in the sport: top is what they regard as the top, and their definitions of success have the broadest political currency in United States Swimming. Fast swimmers take as given that faster is better—instead of, say, that more beautiful is better; or that parental involvement is better; or that

March and Olsen make a similar point with -

regard to educational institutions and organizations in general: organizations include a variety of consti- tuents with differing goals, plans, motivations, and values. Unity of purpose, even with organizations, cannot simply be assumed. Coherence, not diversity, is what needs explaining. March and Olsen, 1976.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

“well-rounded” children (whatever that - may mean) are better. The very terminology of “top” and “level” then, reifies the current ranking system.

Such reification is not only analytically suspect, it is also empirically incorrect. Most swimmers don’t want to win an Olympic gold medal. Some may have, at most, a vague, un-acted upon desire to go someday to: the National Championships. Of course, if an adult.asks what a child wants to accomplish in swimming, the child may say “I want to win the Olympics,” but this is more to impress or please the .

‘adults than really to announce the child’s

own intentions. When younger athletes talk about such goals, they are sharing fantasies, not announcing plans; and fan- tasies are more often enjoyed in their unreality than in their fulfillment.

So we should envision not a swimming world, but multiple worlds’ (and changing worlds is a major step toward excellence), a horizontal rather than vertical differen- tiation of the sport. What | have called “levels” are better described as “worlds”

' or “spheres.” In one such world, parents

are loosely in charge, coaches are teenagers employed as life guards, practices are held a few times a week, competitions are scheduled perhaps a week in advance, the season lasts for a few weeks in the summer- time, and athletes who are much faster than the others may be discouraged by social pressure even from competing, for they take the fun out of it.’ The big event of the season is the City Championship, when children from the metropolitan area will spend two days racing each other in many events, and the rest of the time sitting under huge tents playing cards,

‘reading, listening to music, and gossiping.

In another world, coaches are very power- fal, parenis seen only occasionally (and never on the poo! deck), swimmers travel thousands of miles to attend meets, they swim 6 days a week for years at a time, and the fastest among them are. objects of

*5 See Shibutani in Rose, 1962. on “social worlds”; Bhamer, 1969.

respect and praise. The big event of the season may be the National Champion- ships, where the athletes may spend much time—sitting under huge tents, playing cards, reading, listening to music and gossiping.

Each such world has its own distinctive types of powerful people and dominant athletes, and being .prominent in one world is no guarantee of being prominent m another.’* At lower levels, the parents of swimmers are in charge; at the higher levels, the coaches; perhaps in the Masters teams which are made up only of swimmers over 25 years old, the swimmers themselves. Each world, too, has its distinctive goals: going to the Olympics, doing well at the National Junior Olympics, winning. the City Meet, having a good time for a few weeks. In each world the techniques are at least somewhat distinct (as with the breast- stroke, discussed above) and certain de- mands are made on family and friends. In ‘all of these ways, and many more, each so- called “level” of competitive swimming is qualitatively different than others. The differences are not simply quantifiable steps along a one-dimensional path leading to the Olympic Games. Goals are varied, participants have competing commitments, and techniques are jumbled (again, ‘see March and Olsen, 1976).

This notion of the horizontal differen- tiation of the sport—of separate worlds within competitive swimming, rather than a hierarchy—may appear to be refuted by

Again, personal observations froma large number of cases. While there are significant differences berween swimmers of the Olympic class and a country club league, the basic sociability of their worlds is not one of them. |

** “Indeed. prestige ladders in the various worlds - are so different that a man who reaches the pinnacle of success in one may be completely unknown elsewhere.” Shibutani in Rose, 1962.

Similarly in academia: one may be a ‘successful Professor at the national level and yet find it difficult to gain employment at a minor regional university. Professors at the regional school may suspect hivher motives, be jealous, feel that he/she “wouldn't fit in,” “won't stay anyway,” etc. Many top-school graduate students discover upon entering the markets that no- name colleges have no interest in them, indeed. by attending 2 Chicago or Harvard Ph.D. program one may limit oneself to the top Fanks of employment

Opportunities.

the obvious fact that moving “up” to the

‘Olympic level is very difficult, while moving

“down” is apparently easy, as if a sort of gravity obtained. We all know that people don’t become Olympic champions in a day. It takes time to learn all those skills, pick up the techniques, develop the sta- mina, change the attitudes, practice the discipline. The physical work as weil as the social and psychological readjustments are significant. This difficulty seems to suggest

.an asymmetry to these worlds.

Less obvious, though, is that “shding back down” is empirically. difficult indeed. For one thing, techniques once learned and habitualized don’t detenorate over- night. Quite a few swimmers, years past retirement from the sport, can come out and with a few months’ practice do quite well. In 1972 a 16-year old named Sandra Nielson won three gold medals in the Munich Olympics in swimming. In 1984, just after turning 29, she entered the National Long Course Championships, placed in the finals, and swam faster than she had 12 years earlier—and with far less training.'? At that point she had been away. from competition for 10 years, re- turning only months before the Nationals. Nielson had lost very little of her ability.

Then too, there seem to be permanent or at least persistent effects of hard training; attitudes of competitiveness .and_ strat- egies for racing once learned are rarely forgotten.” And _ finally—perhaps as significantly—the social pressures. are strongly against “going back” to a lower | level of competition. Hotshots simply are not welcome in the country club leagues while they are hotshots, and if their skills do begin to deteriorate, embarrassment will more likely lead one simply to quit the sport rather than continue. This may be. roughly akin to the older professor who, rather than attempt to compete with

The training information comes from her coach and, liter, husband, Dr. Keith Bell.

2» Some anecdotal evidence from swimmers (c.g. Steve Lundquist) and coaches (e.g. Terry Stoddard) suggests that the physical effects of hard training can last for years, so that a swimmer in effect “rachets up” to higher levels with better training, and will not slow down appreciably ‘once’ the training load is reduced. 78

younger colleagues in a fast-moving field, begins to fill bis or her time with more committee’ duties. and foundation con- sultantships. Graceful senior retirement is preferable to humiliating decline.

All. of. this (admittedly provocative) argument is to suggest that the swimming

world is really several different worlds, |

and the “top” performers are better seen as different than as better. Even that formulation suggests that at one pomt the excellent performer could have been domi- nant at-a lesser level in that other world. But as Clausewitz pointed out, nm com- paring the highest commanders in Napo- jeon’s army with a colonel,

There are Field Marshals who would not have shone at the head of a cavalry regiment, and vice versa. (Clausewitz 1984, p.198).

Some people don’t even begin to shine, that is, until they reach the higher levels. For our purposes here, Clausewitz’s “vice versa” in the quotation abové reminds us of the separation of subworlds, and of the major points made: “levels” of swimming are qualitatively distinct; stratification in the sport is discrete, not continuous; and the sport is most- accurately seen as a collection of (relatively) independent worlds. .

Il. Why “Talent” does not lead to Excellence

Up to now, I have suggested that there are discrete. social worlds of competitive swimming, and that an athlete joins those different worlds by adopting the behavior patterns of members. This argument im- plies, first, that most people actually don’t want to belong to the highest rank, and second, that the role of effort is exagger- ated. 1 am suggesting that athletic excellence .is widely attainable, if usually unsought. Many people—let us say, hundreds of thousands in this country—have the physi- cal wherewithal to belong to the Olympic class. While. there may be an “entry level” of physical characteristics necessary for Olympic performances, that level may be quite low, and in any case is not measurable. At this point most readers will ask, Bus

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

what about talent?. “Talent” is perhaps the most pervasive lay explanation we have for athletic success. Great athletes, we seem to believe, are born with a. special gift, almost a “thing” inside of them, denied to the rest of us—perhaps physical, genetic, psychological, or physiological. Some have “it,” and some don’t. Some are “natural athletes,” and some aren’t. While an athlete, we acknowledge, may require many years of training and dedication to develop and use that talent, it is always “in there,” only waiting for an opportunity to come out. When children perform well, they are said to “have” talent; if perform- ance declines, they may be said to have “wasted their talent”. We beliéve it is that talent, conceived as a substance behind the surface réality of performance, which finally distinguishes the best among our athletes. But talent fails as an explanation for. athletic success, on conceptual grounds. It mystifies excellence, subsuming a complex set of discrete actions behind a single undifferentiated concept. To understand these actions and. the excellence which they constitute, then, we should first de- bunk this concept of talent, and see where it fails. On at least three points, I believe, “talent” is inadequate: ;

Factors other than talent explain athletic

success more precisely. We can, with a

little effort, see what these factors are in swimming: geographical location, par- ticularly living in southem California where the sun shines year round and everybody swims; fairly high family income, which allows for the travel to meets and payments of the fees entailed in the sport, not to

‘mention sheer access to swimming pools

when one is young; one’s height, weight, and proportions; the luck or choice of having a good coach, who can teach the skills required; inherited muscle structure —it certainly helps to be both strong and flexible; parents. who are interested in sports. Some swimmers, too, enjoy more the physical pleasures of swimming; some have better coordination; some even have a higher. percentage of fast-twitch muscle fiber. Such factors are clearly definable, and their effects can be clearly. demon- strated.. To subsume al! of them, willy- THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

nilly, under the rubric of “talent” obscures rather than illuminates the sources of athletic excellence. It’s easy to do this, especially if one’s only exposure to top athletes comes once _ every four. years while watching the Olym- pics on television, or if one only sees them in performances rather than in day-to-day training. Say, for instance, that one day I turn on the television set and there witness a magnificent figure skating performance by Scott Hamilton. What I see is grace and power and skill all fowing together, seem-

ingly without effort: a single moving picture, ©

rapid and sure, far beyond what I could myself do. In phenomenological terms, I see Hamilton’s performance “monothetic- ally,” at a single glance, all-at-once. (Schutz and Luckmann, 1973, p. 75) “His skating,” I may say, referring to his actions as a single thing, “is spectacular.” With that quick shorthand, I have captured (I believe) at a stroke the wealth of tiny details that Hamilton, over years and years, has fitted ' together into a performance so. smoothly that they become invisible to the untrained eye.”' Perhaps, with concentration, Hamil- ton himself can feel the details in his

movements; certainly a great coach can.

see ‘them, and pick out the single fault or mistake in an otherwise flawless routine. But to me, the performance is a thing entire. : Afterwards, my friends and I sit and talk about Hamilton's life as a “career of excellence.” or as showing “incredible dedication,” “tremendous motivation"— again, as if his excellence, his. dedication, his motivation somehow exist all-at-once. His excellence becomes a thing inside of him which he penodically reveals to us, which comes out now and then; his life and habits become reihed: “Talent” is merely the word we use to label this reification. Bui that is no explantion of success.

*Talent is indistinguishable from its effects. One cannot see that talent exists

2) “Now, no one can see in an artist's work how it evolved: that is its advantage. for wherever we can see the evolution, we grow somewhat cooler. The complete art of representation wards off all thought of its solution; it tyrannizes as present perfection.~ (Nietzsche 1984, p. 111)

uml after its effects become obvious. Kalinowski’s research on Olympic swim- mers demonstrates this clearly:

One of the more startling discoveries of our study has been that it takes a while to recognize swimming talent. Indeed, it usually takes being successful at a regional level, and more often, at a national level (in AAU swimming) before the child is identified as talented. (p. 173) : . ,

“They didn’t say I had talent until ] started to get really good [and made Senior Nationals at sixteen}; then they started to say I had talent. . .” (p. 174)

. . despite the physical capabilities he was born with, it took Peter several years (six by our estimate) to appear gifted. This is the predominant, though not exclusive, pattern found in our data on swimmers. Most of them are said to be “natural” or “gifted” after they had already devoted a great deal of time and hard work to the field. (p. 194)

. . whatever superior qualities were attni- buted to him as he grew older and more successful, they were not apparent then [before he was thirteen]. (p. 200)

The above quotations suggest that talent is discovered later in one’s career, the implication being that while the athlete’s ability existed all along, we were unaware of it until late. Kalinowski, like many of us, holds to the belief that there. must be this thing inside the athlete which precedes - and determines success, only later to be discovered. But the recurring evidence he finds suggests a different interpretation: perhaps there is no such thing as “talent,” there is only the outstanding performance itself. He sees success and immediately infers behind it a cause, a cause for which he has no evidence other than the success itself. Here, as elsewhere, talent (our name for this cause) cannot be measured,

_or seen, or felt, in any form other than the

success to which it supposedly gives rise.

In Kalinowski’s analysis, then—and the lay view is much the same as his—there Bes an analytic error of the first degree: the . independent and the dependent variables cannot be measured separately.”

= Yam nor saying “natural ability doesn’t matter.~ 1 am saying that to use “talent” as a way of 86

*The “amount” of ialent needed for athletic success seems to be strikingly low. It seems initially plausible that one must have a certain level of natural ability in order to succeed in sports (or music, or academics). But upon empirical examin- ation, it becomes very difficult to say exactly what. that physical minimum is. Indeed, much of the mythology of sport is built around people who lack’ natural ability who went on to succeed fabulously. An entire genre of inspirational literature is built on the theme of the person whose

even normal natural abilities have been |

destroyed: Wilma Rudolph had polio as a child, then came back to win the. Olympic 100 Meter Dash. Glenn Cunningham had his legs badly burned in a fire, then broke the world record in the mile. Such stories are grist for the sportwriter’s mill.

More than merely common, these stories are almost routine. Most Olympic cham- pions, when their history is studied, seem * to have overcome sharp adversity in. their pursuit of success. Automobile accidents, shin splints, twisted ankles, shoulder sur- gery are common in such tales. In fact, they are common in life generally. While some mecessary minimum of physical strength, heart/lung capacity, or nerve density may well be required for athletic achievement (again, 1 am not denying differential advantages), that mmimum séems both difficult to define’ and markedly low, at least in many cases. Perhaps the crucial factor is not natural ability at all, but the willingness to overcome natural or unnatural disabilities of the sort that most of us face, ranging from minor inconve- niences in getting up and going to work, to accidents and injuries, to gross physical impairments.

And if the basic level of talent needed, then, seems so low as to be nearly univer- sally available, perhaps the very concept of talent itself—no longer differentiating

among performers—is better discarded.

altogether. It simply doesn’t explain the differences in outcomes. Rather than talk about talent and ability, we do better to

explaining performance is to resort to tautology. The action of performing is reified—turned into a thing— and we.call it “talent.”

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

look at what people actually do that creates outstanding performance.

The concept of talent hinders a clear understanding of excellence. By providing a quick yet spurious “explanation” of athletic success, it satisfies our casual curiosity while requiring neither an em- pirical analysis nor a critical questioning of our tacit assumptions about top athletes. At best, it is an easy way of admitting that we don’t know the answer, a kind of layman's slang for “unexplained variance.”

-But the attempt at explanation fails. What

we call talent is no more than a projected reification of particular things done: hands placed correctly in the water, turns crisply executed, a head held high rather than low in the water. Through the notion of talent, we transform particular actions that a human being does into an object possessed, held in trust for the day when it will be revealed for all to see.

This line of thought leads to one more step. Since talent can be viewed only indirectly in the effects that it supposedly produces, its very existence is a matter of faith. The basic dogma of “talent” says - that what people do in this world has a cause lying behind them, that there is a kind of backstage reality where the real things happen, and what we, you and J, seé here in our lives (say, the winning of a gold medal) is really a reflection of that true reality back there. Those of us who are not admitted to the company of the

‘elect—the talented—can never sée what-

that other world of fabulous success is _ really like, and can mever share those experiences. And accepting this faith in talent, I suggest, we relinquish our

chance of accurately understanding ex-

cellence. . .

Still, we want to believe in talent. As Jean-Paul Sartre put it, “What people would like is that.a coward or a hero be born that way.””°, knowing that it protects us by degrading the very achievements that it pretends to elevate (Staples 1987); magically separating us from those people who are great athletes, ensuring that we are incomparable to them; and relieving those of us who are not: excellent of

Sartre 1957, p. 34. THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

responsibility for.our own condition. “To call someone ‘divine’,” Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote, “means ‘Here we do not have _to compete.’” (Nietzsche, 1984, p. 111) In the mystified notion of talent, the un- analyzed pseudo-explanation of outstand- ing performance, we codify our own deep psychological resistance to the simple reality of the world, to the overwhelming mun- .danity of excellence.“

Hl. The Mundanity of Excellence

cope don’t know how ordinary success ” said Mary T. Meagher, winner of 3 fold medals. in the Los Angeles Olympics, when asked what the public least under- stands about her sport. She then spoke of starting her career in a summer league country club team, of working her way to AAU meets, to faster and faster com- petitions, of learning new techniques, practicing new-habits, meeting new chal-

lenges.” What. Meagher said—that success

is ordinary, in some serise—applies, I believe, to other fields of endeavor as well: to business, to politics, to professions of all kinds, including academics. In what follows I will ty to elaborate on this point, ~ drawing some examples from the swimming research, and some from other fields, to indicate the scope of this conception.

Excellence is mundane. Superlative per- formance is really a confluence of dozens of smail skills or activities, each one learned or stumbled upon, which have been carefully drilled into habit and then are fitted together in a synthesized whole. There is nothing extraordinary or super- human in any one of those actions; only the fact that they are done consistently and correctly, and all together, produce excel- lence. When a swimmer learns a proper flip turn in the freestyle races, she will swim the race a bit faster; then a stream- lined push off from the wall, with the arms
To coin an ungainly but accurate phrase. I borrow the term “mundanity” from phenomenclogical philosopher Maurice Natanson, in The Journeying Self.

= Meagher’s entire career is described in detail in Chambliss, 1988.

squeezed together over the head, and a Jittle faster; then how to place the hands in the water so no air is cupped in them; then how to lift them over the water; then how to lift weights to properly build strength, and how to eat the right foods, and to wear the best suits for racing, and. on and on.”

Each of those tasks seems small in itself, but each allows the athlete to.swim a bit faster. And having learned and consistently practiced all of them together, and many more besides, the swimmer may compete in the Olympic Games. The winning of a gold medal is nothing more than the synthesis of a countless number of such little things—even if some of them are

done unwittingly or by others, and thus

called “luck.”

So the “little things” really do count. We have already seen how a very smal} (in quantitative terms) difference can produce a noticeable success. Even apparent flukes can lead to gold medal performances:

In the 100 Meter Freestyle event in Los Angeles, Rowdy Gaines, knowing that the starter for the race tended to fire the gun fast, anticipated the start, while not actually jumping the gun, it seems from video replays of the race that Gaines knew exactly when to go, and others were left on the blocks as he took off. But the starter turned his back, and the protests filed afterwards by competitors were ignored. Gaines had spent years

watching starters, and had talked with his coach (Richard Quick) before the race about this starter in particular. (Field notes; see Chambliss, 1988 for full description)

Gaines was not noticeably faster than - several of the other swimmers in the race, but with this one extra tactic, he gained enough of an advantage to win the race. And he seemed in almost all of his races to find such an advantage: hence the goid medai. Looking at such subtleties, we can say that not only aré the little things important; in some ways, the little things are the only things.

Peter Drucker, the dean of American management consultants, suggests a similar idea when he writes of business “practices,”

Such techniques are thoroughly explained in Maglischo (1982) and Troup and Reese (1983). 82

the little things which taken together produce excellence. In his widely-read books, especially The Effective Executive (1985), Drucker emphasizes that it is not magic, but rather the faithful execution of particular practices that leads to success in business:

. . .to be effective also does not require special gifts, special aptitude, or special

training. Effectiveness as an executive de- .

mands doing certain—and fairly simple— things. It consists of a small number of ‘practices. . . (Drucker 1985, p-. vii)

In swimming, or elsewhere, these prac- tices might at first glance seem very minimal indeed: .

When Mary T. Meagher was 13 years old and had qualified for the National Champion- ships, she decided to try to break the world record in the 200 Meter Butterfly race. She made two immediate qualitative changes in her routine: first, she began coming on time to all practices. She recalls now, years later, being picked up at school by her mother and driving (rather quickly) through the streets of Loutsville, Kentucky trying desperately to make it to the pool on time. That habit, that discipline, she now says, gave her the sense that every minute of practice time counted. And second, she began doing all of her tums, during those practices, correctly, m strict. accordance with the competitive rules. Most swimmers don’t do this; they tum rather casually, and tend to touch with one hand instead of two (in the butterfly, Meagher’s.stroke). This, she says, accustomed her to doing things one step better than those around her—always. Those are the two major changes she_ made in her training, as she remembers it.7”

Meagher made two. quite -mundane changes in her habits, either one of which anyone could do, if he or she wanted.

Within a year Meagher had broken the.

world record in the butterfly.

Here, then, is an area ripe for research in organizational studies: to what extent do mundane considerations lead to the success or failure of organizations, let

77 Interview notes.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

alone individuals? A willingness to spend ten minutes a year writing a Christmas card can maintain an old friendship for decades; a faulty telephone system, which cuts off one-quarter (or even one-tenth) of all incoming calls can ruin a travel agency or mail-order house; a president who simply walks around the plant once in a while, talking with the workers, can ‘dra- matically improve an organization’s morale -~~and its product (Peters and. Waterman, 1982); a secretary, that archetypal manager of mundane work, can make or destroy an executive, or even an entire division. At the lowest levels of competitive swimming, simply showing up for regular practices produces the greatest single speed im- provement the athlete will ever experi- ence”*, and at the lower levels of academia,

the sheer willingness to put arguments

down on paper and send it away to a journal distinguishes one from the mass of one’s colleagues in the discipline.” Again, the conclusion: the simple doing of certain _ small tasks can generate huge results. Excellence is mundane.

Motivation is mundane, too. Swimmers go to practice to see their friends, to exercise, to feel strong afterwards, to im- press the coach, to work towards bettering

a time they swam in the last meet. Some-

times, the older ones, with a longer view of the future, will aim towards a méet that is © sull several months away. But even given the longer-term goals, the daily satisfactions need to be there. The mundane social rewards really are crucial (see Chambliss, 1988, Chapter 6). By comparison, the big, dramatic motivations—winning an Olympic gold medal, setting a world record——-seem to be ineffective unless translated into shorter-term tasks. Viewing “Rocky” or

In teaching swim lessons, I have seen children make improvements of 20 and more seconds for a 50- yard swim (which takes about a minute) during the course of a single lesson. At the top level. swimmers spend years to improve one second in the same event. —

The fact that the reader might not believe this reveals more about the reader's own social world— namely of professionally active scholars—than the realities of life for the bulk of college professors. For many. simply participating in scholarship is a huge step. THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

“Chariots of Fire” may inspire one for several days, but the excitement stirred by a film wears off. rather quickly when confronted with the day-to-day reality of climbing out of bed to go and jump in cold water. If, on the other hand, that day-to- day reality is itself fun, rewarding, chal- jenging, if the water is nice and friends are supportive, the longer-term goals may well be achieved almost in spite of themselves. Again, Mary T. Meagher:

I never looked beyond the next year, and I never looked beyond the next level. [never thought about the Olympics when I was ten;

_ at that time I was thinking about the State Championships. When I made cuts for Regionals [the next higher level of compe- tition], I started thinking about Regionals; when I made cuts for National Junior Olym- pics, I started thinking about National Junior Olympics. . .I can’t even think about the [1988] Olympics right now.:. .Things. can overwhelm you if you think too far ahead- (interview notes) ,

This statement was echoed by many of the swimmers I interviewed. While many of them were working towards the Olympic Games, they divided the work along the way into achievable steps, no one of which

. was too big. They found their challenges in small things: working on a better start this week, polishing up their backstroke tech-

nique next week, focusing on better sleep .

habits, planning how to pace their swim. They concentate on what Karl Weick has called “small -wins:” the very definable, minor achievements which can be rather easily done but which produce significant effects”, not the least of which is the confidence to attempt another such “small win.” Weick’s article on the subject is, typically, insightful and suggestive. He says: :

A small. win is a concrete. complete, implemented outcome of moderate import- ance. By itself, one small win may scem unimportant. A series of wins at smal] but significant tasks, however, reveals a pattern

that may attract allies, deter opponents, and .

® For an application of this notion to college education. see Chambliss and Ryan. 1988.

lower resistance to subsequent proposals. Small wins are controllable opportunities that produce visible results. (Weick 1984,

p- 43).

For instance, many top swimmers are accustomed to winning races in practice, day after day. Steve Lundquist, who won two gold medals in Los Angeles, sees his success as resulting from an early decision that he wanted to win every swim, every day, in every practice. That was the immediate goal he faced at workouts: Just try to-win every swim, every lap, in every stroke, no matter what. Lundquist gained a reputation in swimming for being a ferocious workout swimmer, one who competed all the time, even.in the warmup. He became so accustomed to winning that he entered meets knowing that he could beat these people—he had. developed the habit, every day, of never losing. The

. short-term goal of winning this swim, in _ this workout, translated into his ability to

win bigger and bigger races. Competition, when the day arrived for a meet, was not a shock to him, nothing at all out of the ordinary.?!

This leads to a third and final point:

In the pursuit of excellence, maintaining - mundanity is the key psychological chal- lenge. In common parlance, winners don’t choke. Faced with what seems to be a tremendous challenge or a strikingly un- usual event such as the Olympic Games, the better athletes take it as a normal, manageable situation™ (“It’s just another swim meet,” is a phtase sometimes used by top swimmers at a major event such as the Games) and do what is necessary to deal with it. Standard rituals (such as the warmup, the psych, the visualization of the race, the taking off of sweats, and the like) are ways of importing one’s daily habits into the novel situation, to make it as normal an event as possible. Swimmers like Lundquist who train at competition-

" Interview notes.

An interesting paraliel:. some of the most successful generals have no trouble sleeping before and after major battles. For details on Ulysses Grant and the Duke of Wellington, see. Keegan. p- 207. 84

level intensity therefore have an advantage: arriving at a meet, they are already accus- tomed to doing turns correctly, taking legal starts, doing.a proper warmup, and being aggressive from the outset of the competition. If each day of the season is approached with a seriousness of purpose, then the big meet will not come as a. shock. The athlete will believe “I belong here, this is my world”——and not be paralyzed by fear or self-consciousness. The task then is to have training closely approximate competition conditions.

Consider the problem of “maintaining mundanity” in other professions:

(1) An actor in a play is called-upon to walk on stage, go to a table and pick up a telephone. On opening night, a novice performer will be nervous—but why? Surely walking across a room and answering a telephone are almost prototypically mun- dane events. But the actor’s challenge is to maintain a sense of mundanity while under abnormal conditions: in Schutzian terms (Schutz 1971), actors make the normally taken-for-granted world appear taken-for- granted, even when it is. not. Rehearsals,

especially the “competition intensity” dress -

rehearsals, are a device for easing the transition into the extra-mundane.

(2) A college commencement speaker finds himself asked to speak before an audience of thousands. .He believes that somehow this larger audience requires a larger message, that he must be a super- human to speak to them, with a message grand and inspiring—and he panics. But the most successful such speakers are those who enjoy speaking, or who at Jeast can maintain their composure, who keep their sense that this is just another speech, and not a life-changing event. They joke with the audience, they stand at ease at the podium, implicitly recalling how many speeches they have made or how many this audience has heard; and they know that sometimes the very. best speeches are

delivered in the belief that “the world will -

little note nor long remember what we sa

here.”> , (3) Perhaps I could suggest a final, more

%° For the forgetful reader, the phrasé comes from Lincoln's Gettysburg address.

SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

personal example of failing to maintain a sense of mundanity, from the world of academia: the imability to finish the doctoral thesis, the hopeless struggle for the magnurn opus. -Upon my arrival to graduate school some 12 years ago, 1 was introduced to an advanced student we will call Michael. Michael was very bright, very well thought of by his professors, and very hard working, claiming (apparently truthfully) to log a minimum of twelve hours a day at his studies. Senior scholars sought out his comments on their manuscripts, and their acknowledgements always mentioned him by name. All the signs pomted to a successful career. Yet seven years later, when J left the university, Michael was still there—still working 12 hours a day, only a bit less well thought of. At last report*, there he remains, toiling away: “finishing up,” in the common expression. ; In our terms, Michael could not main- tain his sense of mundanity. He never accepted that a dissertation is a mundane piece of work, nothing more than some words which one person writes and a few other people read. He hasn’t learned that the rea] exams, the true tests (such as the dissertation requirement) in graduate school are really designed to discover whether at some point one is willing just to turn the damn thing in. The mundanity of excellence is typically unrecognized. I think the reason is fairly simple. Usually we see great athletes only after they have become great—after the years of learning the new methods, gaining © the habits of competitiveness and consis- tency, after becoming comfortable in their world. They have long since perfected the myriad of techniques that together consti- tute excellence. Ignorant of all of the specific steps that have led to the perform- ance and to the confidence, we think that somehow excellence sprang fullgrown from this person, and we say he or she “has talent” or “is gifted.” Even when seen close up, the mundanity of excellence is — often not believed:

Every week at the Mission Viejo training pool, where the National Champion Nada-

Admittedly not first-hand. THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE

dores team practiced, coaches from around the world would be on the deck visiting, watching as the team did their workouts, swimming back and forth for hours. The visiting coaches would be excited at first, just to be here: then, soon—within an hour or so, usually—they grew bored, walking back and forth looking at the deck, glancing around at the hills around the town, reading the bulletin boards, glancing down at their watches, wondering. after the long flight out to Cali- fornia, when something dramatic was going to happen. “They all have to come to Mecca, and see what we do,” coach Mark Schubert said. “They think we have some big secret.” - (Field notes)

But of course there is no secret; there is only the doing of all. those little things, each one done correctly, time and again, until excellence in every detail becomes a firmly ingrained habit, an ordinary part of one’s everyday hfe.

CONCLUSIONS

The foregoing analysis suggests that we have overlooked a fundamental fact about Olympic-class athletes; and the argument may apply far more widely than swimming. or sports. ] suggest that it applies to success in business, politics, and academics, in dentistry, bookkeeping, food service. speechmaking. electrical engineering, sell- ing insurance (when the clients are upset. you climb in the car and go out there to talk with them) and perhaps even in the arts.* Consider again the major points: ©

1) Excellence ws a qualitanve phenom- enon. Doing more does not equal doing -better. High performers focus on quali- tative, not quannitative, improvements; it is qualitative improvements which produce significant changes in level of achievement, different levels of achievement really are distinct, and in fact reflect vastly different habits, values, and goals.

5 Professor Margaret Bates, an opera enthusiast, telis me that this “mundanity of excellence” argu- “ment applies nicely to Enrico Caruso, the great singer. who carefully perfected each ordinary detail of his performance in an effort to overcome a tecognized lack of “natura! ability.”

2) Talent is a useless concept. Varying conceptions of natural ability (“talent,” e.g.) tend to mystify excellence, treating it as the inherent possession of a few; they mask the concrete actions that create outstanding performance; they avoid the work of empirical. analysis and logical explanations (clear definitions, separable independent and dependent variables, and at least an attempt at establishing the

-“temporal priority of the cause); and finally,

such conceptions perpetuate the sense of innate psychological differences between high performers and other people.

3) Excellence is mundane. Excelience is accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed con- sistently and carefully, habitualized, com- pounded together, added up over time. While these actions are “qualitatively different” from those of performers at other levels, these differences are neither unmanageable nor, taken one step at a time, terribly difficult. Mary T. Meagher came to practice on time; some writers always work for three hours each morning, before beginning anything else; a business- person may go ahead and make that tough phone call; a job applicant writes one — more letter; a runner decides, against the odds, to enter the race; a county commis- sioner submits a petition to run for Con- gress; a teenager asks for a date; an actor attends one more audition. Every time a decision comes up, the qualitatively “correct” choice will be made. The action. in itself, is nothing special; the care and consistency with which it is made is.

Howard Becker has presented a similar argument about the ordinariness of appar- - ently unusual people in his book Oursiders (1961). But where he speaks of deviance, I would speak of excellence. Becker says, and I] concur:

We ought not to view it as something special, as depraved or in some magical way better than other kinds of behavior. We ought to see it simply as a kind of behavior some disapprove of and others value, studying ‘the processes by which either or both perspec- tives are built up and maintained. Perhaps the best surety against either extreme is close contact with the people we study (Becker. p. 376). 86

After three years of field work with world-class swimmers, having the kind of ' close contact that Becker recommends, I

' wrote a draft of some book chapters, full of stories about swimmers, and I showed it to a friend, “You need to jazz it up,” he said. “You need to make these people more interesting. The analysis is nice, but except for the fact that these are good swimmers,

there isn’t much else exciting to say about _

them as individuals.” He was right, of course.- What these athletes do was rather imteresting, but the people themselves were only fast swimmers, who did the particular things one does to swim fast. It “is all very mundane. When my friend said that they weren’t exciting, my best answer could only be, simply put: That’s the point.

REFERENCES

Becker, Howard §. 1973. Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press.

Berger, Peter, and Luckmann. Thomas. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City: Doubleday.

Bloom, Benjamin S. ed., 1985. Developing Talent in Young People. New York: Ballantine.

Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism.

» Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall.

Chambliss, Danie! F. 1988. Champions: The Making

_ of Olympic Swimmers. New York: Morrow.

———~. and Ryan, Daniel 3., Jr. “Big Problems Demand Small Solutions: Toward a General Stra-

tegy for Excelience in Education,” presented at the annual mectings of the New Engtand Educational Research Organization, April, 1988.

Clausewitz, Carl von. 1968. On War. Edited with an Introduction by Anaiol Rapoport. New York: Penguin.

Drucker. Peter, F. 1985. The Effective Executive. New York: Harper and Row.

. 1986. Managing for Results. New York: Harper

and Row.

. 1954. The Practice of Management. New York: Harper and Row..

Durkheim, Emile. 1965. The Elementary Forms ‘of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

Elias. Norbert, and Dunning, Eric. 1986. Ques! for Excitement. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Fine. Gary Alan. 1979. “Small Groups and Culture Creation: The Idioculture of Little League Base- ball Teams.” American Sociological Review 44: T33-745_

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. 1987. With the Boys: Little League Baseball and Preadolescent Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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Kalinowski, Anthony, G. “The Development of Olympic Swimmers.” and “One Olympic Swimmer,” in Bloom (1985), pp. 139-210.

Keegan, John. 1987. The Mask of Command. New York: Viking. ,

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Comment on Chambliss’s “The Mundanity of Excellence”

TIA DENORA University of Wales, Cardiff

Chambliss’s (1988) article is strongly oriented to the task of reconceptualizing talent in ways that make it accessible to study. He has attempted to shift the conceptual underpin- nings of talent from the realm of internal “states and traits” to the realm of external practices and behaviors, and he has done so in ways that reveal talent to be a “useless concept.” This is certainly an important achievement, and it is on these grounds that Chambliss’s article has justifiably been praised (see Kaplan 1989). Yet, to my mind, Chambliss’s. preoccupation with undermining the notion of talenr deflects attention from the more general explanation of stratification which he cites as one of the major purposes of his article. My comment, then, consists of the following: excellence, not merely talent, is a meaningless concept; Chambliss acknowledges this point but fails to develop its theoretical implications for a general theory of stratification. As a result, we learn more about swimming than about stratification. In other words, Chambliss’s piece contains an unresolved tension between his discussion of the mundane bases of “how to” succeed in swimming and his “explanation” of how stratification is produced and legitimated.

How to Succeed in Swimming by Really Trying

Through practical know-how, clever initiative, and application (and given certain material prerequisites), Chambliss tells us (p. 72), ome can take responsibility for one’s own outcomes and thereby can succeed. Excellence, which Chambliss defines as consistent superiority of performance,’ is produced through a “complex set of discrete actions” (p. 78). These actions consist of the manageable steps which lead to qualitative differences: “work... go ahead . . . care and consistency” (p. 85). More important than: natural ability, Chambliss suggests, is “the willingness to overcome natural or unnatural disabilites . of the sort most of us face” (p. 80). Thus the belief in talent : magically separates us from those people who are preat athletes, ensuring that we are incomparable to them; and relieving those of us who are not excellent of responsibility for our own condition (pp. 80-81). :

Here, then, is Chambliss the coach and quintessential American: excellence is winning; talent can be operationalized; virtually all people who really apply themselves can be winners; talent is useless as a concept. The concept of talent, then, is deconstructed so that access to excellence can be deregulated. In the process of this deconstruction, we Jearn that strata (i.¢., levels of excellence) are a function of mundane application. This, I think, is a weak theoretical explanation of stratification; moreover, it can easily result in

1 This definition is opposed to 2 more encomic definition—one not based on ranking (e.g., “blessedness” or “felicny”). According to Chambliss’s definition, excellence is derived from rank and cosnpetition; it is “the best”—a zero-sum conception of excellence. I do not think Chambliss would uphold this conception, if pressed. Yet, in the text of his article, this is bow excellence is conceived. _ .

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a celebratory conception of strata (and of excellence), especially ‘when applied to fields other than swimming. I will address this point below. . .

“Different Strokes for Different F ‘olks” : The Gap between Category and Instance and How It Is Bridged through Interpretive Work . .

Chambliss’s concern could be paraphrased as “What—specifically what practices—pro- duce excellence?” He tells us that-excellence in swimming is possible because :

the style of strokes, dives and turns are dramaticaily different at different levels . . . Not only are the strokes different, they are so different that the “C” swimmer may be amazed to see how the “AAAA” swimmer looks when swimming. Their appearance alone is dramatically different; as is the speed with which they swim (p. 73).

Excelience is produced, in other words, when differences of kind are treated within a culture (of swimming).as differences in degree. The implication of what Chambliss reports is that differences between a C-level and an AAAA-level breaststroke may be as great as the differences between an AAAA-level breaststroke and an AAAA-level crawl,? In other words, differences within categories may be as great as those between categories—perhaps greater in some cases. As Chambliss observes, this means that “the ‘top’ performers are better seen as different than as better” (p. 78). Ranking, then, is “not only analytically suspect, it is also empirically incorrect” (p. 76). This means, of course, that excellence (in swimming) is a meaningless concept analytically and empirically (though nor ethno- logically—that is, for those practitioners whom sociology studies) because it is constituted through discrete qualitative differences which are glossed as insignificant for the practical purposes of carrying on with the game or activity (and often for other reasons). This is

.t9 say that stratification—insofar as strata are conceived as indicating ranked perfor- mance—is produced through the folk methods which make the concept of excellence meaningful. What, then, makes possible the production of excellence as a folk category? How is a space constructed in which distinctions such as “fast, faster, fastest” become meaningful? Questions like these could Jead to a more general theory of how stratification is possible. Yet Chambliss is silent precisely on these sorts of issues. -

How, for example, does the inevitable. gap between a category (an official description of a stroke) and the diversity of practices that come to be seen as instances of that category provide.a resource for making meaningful the distinction between fast, faster, and fastest? How can excellence be conceived as a function of “what one can get away with” under the auspices provided by categories (e.g., the concept of a stroke)? Beyond jooking, as Chambliss has done, at the creative activities that produce qualitative differences, one would want to examine how the gap between the cultural category and particular examples of swimming is bridged by practical, interpretive “work.” Why, for example, would an AAAA swimmer at a C-level meet not be accused of cheating?”

2 Nevertheless, intracategorical differences often becomic invisible or seem Jess significant than intercategorical differences becanse of the conventions according to which they are perceived and evaluated. This is to say that two versions of “arms moving in circular motion” seem identical only because we focus on one characteristic and ignore many other (potential) characteristic ways of describing the stroke. A similar phenomenon occurs when we recognize other types of “family” resemblances. One focuses on certain common features and deflects

3 Along these lines, one also would want to examine the ways in which technologies of measurement can keep an activity meaningful {i.c., can produce “winners” and “losers”). For example, Rowdy Gaines would not have “won” the gold medal if the clock that measured swimming times could not register split seconds (image what would happen if only hourglasses were available!) or if the race had been much longer (the -44-second advantage given by the well-timed dive would have been a smaller proportion of the whole time in a longer COMMENT ON CHAMBLISS’S “THE MUNDANITY OF EXCELLENCE” 101

‘How. the Production of Excellence in Swimming Differs from the Production of Excellence in Other Fields

Chambliss suggests that although “in other fields it may be less clear who are the outstanding performers,” swimming can be seen as an ideal type because the strata of excellence and the movements within and between the strata are sharper and more concise. Unfortunately, Chambliss is not as clear as he could have been in explaining precisely how the production of excellence as a meaningful folk category in swimming is similar to and how it is different from the production of excellence as a meaningful folk category in other fields. This is to say that to conceive of the relationship between criteria of Measurement and performance in other fields as it occurs in swimming is to blind oneself to crucial and significantly different features of how excellence is produced im everyday - life. Moreover, it is to do so in insidious ways. ;

As a form of game, swimming occupies a finite province of meaning where certain rules are removed from negotiation. Performance in swimming, in other words, is judged (ranked) according to relatively fixed criteria: recorded. by video or perceived by referee, speed is measured by clock over distance and stroke. No matter how fast or how slow one swims or how one moves one’s arms and legs, dives, and so on,.one cannot redefine through the act of competing this particular rule: the criterion of evaluation is purely quantitative, once the folk activity of constituting differences in stroke techniques as

_ insignificant has taken place: shorter time is better performance. The act of swimming and the criterion of winning (measured time) are not interrelated.

Yet in most of the fields to which Chambliss alludes—“business, politics, academics.

. . the arts”—~the criteria of excellence often are qualitative. They are vaguer, multi- dimensional, and potentially contradictory; conformity to these criteria often is established only through the intermediate activity of interpretation. For example, Picasso was one of the best painters the world has known because people believe this, because important

_ people in the art world believe this, and because they can argue this in ways that are taken to be coherent and convincing. Moreover, reactions to Picasso are conditioned by what others have said (see, for example, DeNora 1986 for a discussion of music reception). The reactions are Jess fixed, more flexible. This means that the same kind of creative work which swimming permits at the level of realizing strokes (i.c., creatively bridging the gap. between description of strokes and particular instances of swimming) can be cared out in other fields at the level of realizing the evaluative criteria themselves. That is, the significant difference between criteria in games and in nongame fields is that. in the latter, criteria of worth often are constinated through reference to the activities they are merely meant to measure. :

_ This means that under some conditions, a 1 strategic set of practices can come to condition the criteria according to which they are defined as meaningful and are evaluated. In fields

such as the arts, politics, or academics, then, the coproduction of act and of value (.e.,

work practices and method of judging) is conceived of erroneously as a coincidence of

act and value.* Thus to generalize from swimming to other fields can result in the elision

Tace, and a greater proportion in 2 shorter). One can imagine, for example, that the sponsors who stand to make” moncy from employing champions for advertisements-——recall Gaines and Lundquist in the American Express advertisements—therefore would have a strong interest in technologies which are capable of registering minuscule differences in race time: without champions, there could be no advertisements—ano “breakfast of champions,” and so on. Along these lines, see Latour (1987).

« For example, in my research on the social bases of Beethoven’s greatness during his first decade in Vienna, } found that his increasingly powerful presence within the high-culmre music world (as this was constitnted by his and his aristocratic patrons” very practical strategies for how he was presented) interacted reflexively with the conventional criteria for musical value in late eighteenth-century Vienna. Beethoven was discussed as “Mozart's heir” although, in fact, objections to his music frequently were lodged on the basis that be was “un- 102 SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY

of what is sociologically most interesting: how the reflexivity between evaluative criteria and performance activity is itself employed as a creative resource for accomplishing distinction in a field. Moreover, to lide this sociologically interesting featmre—how the two-way alignment of activity to criteria occurs in specific “naturalistic” settmgs—is to cultivate an inappropriately meritocratic imagery of excellence and ranking.

In sum, attention should be devoted to the ways in which excellence is an achievement at the social, not only the individual, level. Such, attention would entail a critique of excellence rather than of talent, and would make Chambliss’s lessons on stratification more generally applicable outside the field of competitive swimming.

REFERENCES

Chambliss, D. 1988. “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers.” Sociological Theory 7: 70-87.

DeNora, T. 1986. “How Is Extra-Musical Meaning Possible? Music as a Place and Space for “Work.” Sociological Theory 4(1): 84-94. ;

. 1989. “Mozart's Spirit from Haydn's Hands? The Social Bases and Social Consequences of Beethboven’s Success and Vanguard Style during His First Decade in Vienna, 1792-1803.” PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of California, San Diego. .

Kaplan, S. 1989. “Report on the Theory Section Award.” Foomotes 17(8)- 5.

Latour, B. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Sociery. Cambridge, MA:

Mozartian.” Beethoven’s rise—the discovery of his excelience—entailed a “rediscovery” of Mozart such that Beethoven's rather idiosyncratic talent (from the Viennese perspective) could come increasingly to be seen as an “extension” of Mozart’s. The more Mozart changed, then, the better Beethoven looked. Reply to DeNora’s Comment

DANIEL F. CHAMBLISS Hamilton College

1 generally agree with DeNora’s effort to expand the “mundanity of excellence” argument,

although she attributes to me a purpose (a general explanation of stratification) I didn’t

intend. | wanted to show, through both logical and empirical arguments, that there need be no. ho mystery to becoming successful in Olympic swimming, or in anything else, for that matter. At the same time, I certainly acknowledge DeNora’s point that standards for success are socially defined, not naturally given. Also, perhaps explaining how standards are created and maintained is more sociologically interesting than how individuals meet already established standards. But I find no “tension” in saying simultaneously that 1) no inherent personal qualities are required for achieving excellence (my message), and that

2) larger social dynamics shape stratification systems as well as an individual's life

chances. Certainly excellence is socially constructed, as DeNora says. Standards of per-.

formance are conventional. But being socially constructed does nor render excellence (or

talent or achievement) “meaningless.” ,

The basic argument of “Mundanity,” derived from a field study of world-class compet- itive swimmers, falls into three parts: 1) Excellence, defined as “consistent. superiority of

_ performance,” is a qualitative phenomenon; different levels of achievement result from very different ways of behaving. In a sense, world-class athletes are not in the same sport as local-level participants. 2) “Talent” is useless in explaining varying degrees of achieve- ment; it is simply a reification of-the performances it purports to explain. 3) Excellence is mundane; it is “accomplished through the doing of actions, ordinary in themselves, performed consistently and carefully, habitwalized, compounded together, added up over time” (p. 85). There is no magic to becoming an Olympic gold medalist; in the colloquial phrase, anyone can do it. This argument can be generalized to other fields of endeavor,

including academic life. oo,

‘DeNora objects to this argument on at least three grounds.

First, she takes it to be the position of a “quintessential American” and says, “Chambliss tells us, one can take responsibility for one’s outcomes and thereby can succeed.” Not quite. I certainly don’t say that taking responsibility per se leads to success; it doesn’t. Nor do I underestimate the importance of “certain material prerequisites” for success—in swimming, for instance, the availability of a coach to teach the necessary skills, of a pool to swim in, of money to pay for travel and entry fees, of other swimmers to Compete _ with, and so on. Instead I was noting that a belief in “talent” seems to reduce one’s own

sense of responsibility for outcomes and lowers motivation to strive for success. This may

have an effect on one’s results. Jt does not mean that success is ‘worth having, or that people who don’t succeed are blameworthy.

Second, DeNora rightly says that the production of excellence is different in different fields, and that I don’t address this point in “Mundanity.” She holds that my argument, derived from sports, does not apply to the arts, where standards and performances are “coproduced.” She makes an important point, but J think DeNora too easily accepts a

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firm ‘distinction berween game (sport) and nongame (art) settings—that is, between fields in which rules are established before the competition and those in which the rules and the performances are coproduced. Granted, swimming rules are codified neatly in a pocket- sized book, whereas rules for doing art are not. All the same, rules exist in the latter setting, but they are not written up or officially formulated. Any young artist can tell you that there are a great many subtle requirements for gaining success in this nominally “pongame” field.

I suspect that sports and arts are not so different as DeNora believes. In sports, the rules are negotiable, even after a performance. Over the short modern history of compet- itive swimming, officials have validated any number of ex post facto changes im the definition of strokes. In the 1930s the butterfly was “invented” as an originally egal variation on the breaststroke. In the late 1970s, Tracy Caulkins won national and world titles swimming an illegal breaststroke,’ and the rules were changed to accommodate her style. Or consider that in the 1960s, when black players introduced the slam dunk into college and professional basketball, the rules were changed and changed again as ‘various self-interested parties debated whether the dunk constituted a legitimate shot. All of these are nice. cases of the “coproduction” of rule and performance in sport.

Even in art, coproduction is not really the norm. Look at DeNora’s examples of artists whose work changed the standards of art—-Ludwig van Beethoven and Pablo Picasso: These artists were not at all typical. They are famous as innovators, and the fact that they ~ changed the niles doesn’t mean that every working artist challenges all the old rules with each new work. ; .

DeNora’s distinction between game and nongame activities ‘is useful in many contexts, ~ but here I think it contributes to a “celebratory” (to use her term) miystification of success in art. I may refer the reader to the work of so respected a sociologist of art as Howard §. Becker (1982), who. volunteered in personal correspondence that the “Mundanity” argument fits the art world quite well indeed.

"Finally, DeNora.seems to hold that if a phenomenon (e.g., excellence) is socially | constructed, it is “meaningless.” What I say in “Mundanity” is that talent is a useless, not a “meaningless,” concept in explaining success because the purported cause (talent) is empirically indistinguishable from its effect (the sum of one’s performances). In the language of basic research methods, the independent and the dependent variables cannot be measured separaisly. Hence talent cannot be called the cause of performance.

This argument is nothing like DeNora’s effort to debunk excellence. She wants to say that standards of excellence vary, and that all such standards are relatively arbitrary constructions; therefore excellence is meaningless. Similarly, Eviatar Zerubavel suggested in a personal conversation that reference to different “levels” in a sport—say, the local level versus the Olympic level of performance—is misleading ‘because such levels are conventional constructions, and the lines separating levels are drawn by human beings. For the most part, 1 agree. Excellence, levels, and the very idea of achievement are all socially constructed. Swimmers can be judged by the beauty of their movements, by the technical finesse of their strokes, or by the speed with which they swim. The choice of standards is conventional, and it would be interesting to leamm why one standard rather — than another becomes dominant.

' Canlkins’s head dropped beneath the still surface of the water, although water “broke” over her head. There was wide agreement that this was 2 violation, but Canlkins was the finest swimmer in America, and possibly in the history of the sport. She also represented the best chance of the United States for defeating the East German women at the world championships and the Olympic Games. After much discussion, the rule was changed. Recently many swimmers have adopted the Canlkins style (sometimes called the “wave” style from its up-and- down undulations), and world record times have decreased considerably. REPLY TO DENORA’S COMMENT 105

But once given a standard—for example, the highest speed over a given distance—we still can define excellence provisionally as consistent superiority in’ meeting that standard.’ Then we can ask, as I do, what characterizes the people who meet it. This is what I attempted in “Mundanity.” ] wanted to understand the nature of excellence as it is enacted. I am pleased to find in DeNora a critical reader who is sympathetic to the direction, - if not always to the particulars, of that effort.

_ REFERENCE Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.