Sociology of Sport Journal, 2015, 32, 89  -105

Official Journal of NASSS

http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/ssj.2013-0039 www.SSJ-Journal.com
© 2015 Human Kinetics, Inc. ARTICLE

Foucault, Flying Discs and Calling Fouls:

Ascetic Practices of the Self
in Ultimate Frisbee
Hamish Crocket
University of Waikato, Hamilton

Dominant analyses of sporting subjectivities suggest the contemporary athletic

subject embodies a win-at-all-costs instrumental rationality. Yet, as Carless and
Douglas (2012) argue, athletes are able to find less problematic alternatives to
this understanding of sport. In this article, I use Foucault’s concept of “practices
of the self” to undertake a sociological analysis of ethical subjectivities within
Ultimate Frisbee. I focus specifically on ascetic, or self-controlling, practices of
the self through which players create relationships between their self, Ultimate’s
moral code and others. I use this case study to argue that ethical subjectivities
offer a productive perspective for sociology of sport.

Les analyses dominantes des subjectivités sportives suggèrent que le sujet athlé-
tique contemporain incarne la rationalité instrumentale du vouloir gagner à tout
prix. Pourtant, comme l’avancent Carless et Douglas (2012), les athlètes sont
capables de trouver des alternatives moins problématiques à cette conception
du sport. Dans cet article, j’utilise le concept de Foucault de « pratiques de soi
» pour entreprendre une analyse sociologique des subjectivités éthiques au sein
du Disque Volant Extrême (Ultimate Frisbee). Je m’attarde spécifiquement aux
pratiques de soi ascétiques, ou d’autodiscipline, par l’intermédiaire desquelles
les joueurs créent des relations entre leur soi, le code moral du Disque Volant et
les autres. J’utilise cette étude de cas pour suggérer que les subjectivités éthiques
offrent une perspective constructive pour la sociologie du sport.

Long established critiques of dominant Western sports argue that success in

sport requires an instrumentally rational approach that is harmful to oneself and
others (e.g., Donnelly, 1996; Hughes & Coakley, 1991; Messner, 1992). These
critiques reveal a range of highly problematic practices, such as aggression and
violence toward opponents, playing when injured, verbal abuse of match offi-
cials, various forms of on and off-field cheating, excessive alcohol consumption,
misogynistic and homophobic behavior. Analyses of such behaviors have con-
sistently highlighted connections to particular forms of masculinity. Messner

Crocket is with the Department of Sport and Leisure Studies, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New
Zealand. Address author correspondence to Hamish Crocket at hamishc@waikato.ac.nz.

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(1992), for example, describes male-dominated North American team sports as

following a “Lombardian ethic” (p. 45), in which the body is an instrument of
violence “toward others, and ultimately toward oneself” (p. 62). Such critiques
retain their relevance today, particularly in light of increasing concerns regard-
ing acute and chronic brain injuries from collision sports (e.g., Gavett, Stern, &
McKee, 2011; Johnson, 2012).
However, these critiques might also be read as highlighting the importance of
examining other ways of performing sport. Indeed, as Atkinson (2010a) argues,
the rupturing of modernist boundaries within the contemporary, late-modern
moment provides multiple possibilities for developing “non-mainstream athletic
forms, identities, lifestyles and physical cultural practices that do not emulate or
replicate hyper-competitive, hierarchical and patriarchal modernist sport” (p. 1250).
Numerous scholars have begun to consider how other, potentially less problematic,
athletic performances might be lived into existence (e.g., Atkinson, 2010a, 2010b;
Beal, 1995; Denison, 2012; Douglas & Carless, 2006; Pringle & Hickey, 2010).
These studies are significant insofar as they offer empirical, localized examples
from both sport and “post-sport” (Pronger, 1998) physical cultures which explore
opportunities for participants to relate to themselves and others in a more caring
manner than instrumentally rational athletes who seek to dominate their opponent
and treat their own bodies as expendable tools in pursuit of victory (cf., Hughes &
Coakley, 1991; Messner, 1992).
In this article, I follow Pringle and Hickey (2010) by developing a Foucauld-
ian (e.g., 1984, 1988a) analysis of ethical sporting subjectivities. Specifically,
I examine three regularly performed “practices of the self” (Foucault, 1984)
through which many Ultimate Frisbee (Ultimate) players work to produce their
selves as ethical athletic subjects. The importance of these practices of the self
is twofold: Firstly, these practices play a significant role in how the Ultimate
players I studied understood themselves as athletes. Secondly, these practices
are important insofar as they offer ways of relating to opponents which allow
players “to play these games of power with as little domination as possible”
(Foucault, 2000a, p. 298). Simply put, I argue the practices of the self within
this article contribute to the formation of an athletic self which seeks to avoid
problematic behaviors associated with an instrumentally rational or win-at-all-
costs approach to sport.
My analysis hinges on the recognition that scholarly analyses of sports ethics
have progressively moved away from considerations of the merits of particular lists,
rules and duties toward an examination of practices and problematizations (Pringle
and Crocket, 2013; see also, McNamee, 2008; Morgan, 2006). This move toward
postmodern understandings of ethics resituates it as a sociocultural and historically
grounded phenomenon, ripe for sociological analysis. As Wenner (2012) observes,
scholars are increasingly recognizing that “ethical criticism has become inescapable
in narrative analysis and cultural critique” (p. 7). Subsequently, I argue, critical
analysis of ethical subjectivities represents a productive range of interpretive pos-
sibilities to the sociology of sport.
I begin with a brief introduction to Ultimate before reviewing literature
examining less problematic ways of performing sport. Following this, I outline my
theoretical assumptions, and describe my methodology. I offer my findings and
discussion, before giving my concluding thoughts.
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   91

Ultimate Frisbee
Ultimate is a competitive, noncontact, invasion-style team sport played with a flying
disc (Crocket, 2013; Griggs, 2011; Thornton, 2004). Like many other lifestyle
sport cultures (Wheaton, 2004), commitment to the game, as signaled through
attendance at weekend-long tournaments, is seen as the pinnacle of involvement
in Ultimate at both social and competitive levels. Ultimate is somewhat unusual
as a team sport insofar as it is self-refereed even at world championship level, and
players are expected to abide by a code of fair play, Spirit of the Game, which
forms the first clause of the rules.1 Spirit of the Game, as a moral code, might be
considered—in contrast to the sport ethic (Hughes & Coakley, 1991)—to require
athletes to place limits on what they are willing to do to achieve victory (Crocket,
2012). However, Spirit of the Game is interpreted and practiced in multiple ways
(Crocket, 2012; Robbins, 2004; Thornton, 2004), subsequently, insofar as it might
be seen as a “moral code,” this code is formed by a “complex interplay of elements
that counterbalance and correct one another, and cancel each other out on certain
points, thus providing for compromises and loopholes” (Foucault, 1984, p. 25; see
also, Crocket, 2012). In this article, I use Spirit of the Game as a placeholder for a
moral code that recommends a range of similar, but not necessarily synonymous,
limitations on athletes’ attempts to achieve victory. I do so to focus on the on-field
practices through which Ultimate players form their selves as athletic subjects.
I am not, however, attempting to create a dichotomous understanding which
casts Ultimate as ethical and other sports as unethical. As I demonstrate in my
literature review below, numerous scholars have considered how athletes might
find less problematic ways of being involved in sport. Following Douglas (2009),
however, I suggest that sports studies has tended to over-emphasize discourses
of instrumental rationality to the exclusion of other, potentially less problematic,
ways of performing sport. Thus, I use Ultimate as a case study to critically examine
practices within sport that involve greater consideration for others and self.

Literature Review
Drawing on Pronger’s vision of a “utopian post-sport physical culture,” Atkinson’s
(2010a, p. 1255, see also 2010b) ethnographies of fell runners and Ashtanga yoga prac-
titioners reveal radically alternative athletic subjectivities to those proposed by modern
sport. Within these sports many participants: “share preferences for entire physical
cultural styles of life which consciously subvert the idea that health, movement and
athletics are merely technological or rational ‘things’” (Atkinson, 2010a, p. 1254). In
many respects, postsport represents a style of participation, rather than the totality of a
physical culture. Postsports draw on elements of modern sports, and, accordingly, some
participants understand their engagement in decidedly modern terms (Atkinson, 2010b).
Nevertheless, it is the presence of, and possibilities for radical difference “unquestionably
calls us to examine the cultural possibilities of post-sport” (Atkinson, 2010b, p. 130).
A number of studies can be productively read in postsport terms. Beal (1995)
found that many young skateboarders were critical of dominant approaches to sport.
Her key informants emphasized skating with, rather than against, each other. Although
skaters were aware of differences in skill, these differences did not directly lead to
unequal access to participation or other forms of performance-related exclusion. In
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a similar vein, Wheaton (2004) argued that beyond a “laddish” core of windsurfers,
many male participants tried to avoid overt competition and shows of bravado, in
favor of being supportive of other surfers. Relatedly, Beaver (2012) identified the
cooperative, player-driven organizational structure of roller derby as significant to
the development of an inclusive ethos which spanned across competing clubs.
A related line of questioning involves the examination of alternative athletic
possibilities within modern sport forms. These studies enliven St. Pierre’s (2011)
claim that modernity’s structure “had always already been ruptured, ruined” (p.
613, emphasis in original).” An apposite example within this approach is Shogan’s
(1999) Foucauldian analysis of high-performance sport. Shogan argues:

Athletes, like other people, participate in a number of overlapping, conflicting

disciplines that together produce a distinctive hybrid identity for each person.
This hybridity guarantees that there will always be gaps in athletic identity—
gaps that can be exploited when it is necessary to refuse the homogenizing
impulses of modern sport. (p. 45)

Shogan argues, then, that despite high-performance sport being problematic,

we would be mistaken to accord its discourses a totalizing effect. Similarly, Denison
(2010) rejects the assumption, “that elite sport is bad in and of itself,” arguing this
stance risks ignoring “how practices and relationships take shape and form within
specific contexts, histories and traditions” (p. 472).
Adopting a narrative approach, Douglas and Carless (Carless & Douglas, 2012;
Douglas & Carless, 2006, 2009; Douglas, 2009) have extensively examined the
stories of self through which athletes give meaning to their sporting selves. They
acknowledge instrumentally rational stories of self are common: “the dominant
narrative or discourse within sporting contexts is one which demands that elite
athletes—indeed any athletes who wish to become successful—must dedicate their
lives to training, preparation, and competition” (Douglas & Carless, 2006, p. 15).
By examining athletes’ stories, however, Carless and Douglas (2012) reveal “a
more complex and multidimensional conception of what success is and might be”
(p. 389, emphasis in original). They identify among professional women golfers
(Douglas & Carless, 2006) and a range of elite athletes (Carless & Douglas, 2012)
a number of alternative stories of self, including narratives of discovery, relation-
ship, effort and embodiment. Importantly, these alternative narratives offer a more
sustainable and achievable sense of self.
Pringle and Hickey (2010) and Pringle and Crocket (2013) use Foucauldian
ethics to examine possibilities for less problematic ways of being involved in
sport. Pringle and Hickey’s participants had come to problematize select aspects
of their masculine sporting selves and, subsequently, worked to find new ways of
being involved in sport, such as starting a family-friendly rugby club, or refusing to
drink alcohol at club functions. In Pringle and Crocket, we analyzed how I came to
problematize gender inequities within the mixed (coed) Ultimate team I coached,
and subsequently sought to develop more inclusive playing strategies for my team.
Relatedly, Denison (2012, see also, 2010) developed a program of ‘ethical coach-
ing’ for middle and long distance running coaches. Denison’s program seeks to
reorientate power relations between athletes and coaches by empowering athletes
to make meaningful decisions about their own workouts.
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   93

Collectively these studies show a range of possibilities for alternative ways of

performing sport, from within both sport and postsport physical cultures. Each of
these studies retained a critical, contextualized focus, revealing how athletes and
coaches might work to find alternatives to the uncaring and exploitative instru-
mental athletic self. However, these studies typically focus on off-field situations,
individual’s stories of self, or player-coach relationships (for a significant excep-
tion see Beal, 1995). None of these studies consider what might be understood
as practices of ethical, fair, or spirited play among elite or nonelite adult athletes.
For example, Pringle and Hickey’s (2010) participants focused primarily on off-
field problems such as binge drinking at after match functions, and as such, did
not directly address ways in which an athlete might develop an ethical relation
toward others or oneself on the field of play. It is this lacuna within the field that
I address in this article.

Foucauldian Ethics
Foucault (1984) envisages ethics as a process of actively and critically forming
oneself in relation to a moral code. Noting that moral codes have historically been
slow to change, Foucault suggests moral codes alone are mundane. What is far more
interesting, he suggests, is the way individuals form relationships with their self in
connection to moral codes. He explains, “given a code of actions… there are differ-
ent ways for the acting individual to operate, not just as an agent, but as an ethical
subject of this action” (Foucault, 1984, p. 26). Foucault emphasizes diverse possi-
bilities as individuals might adhere to moral codes for different reasons, or discover
different ways of acting in relation to a moral code. Ethical behavior, then, cannot
simply be read from a moral code; rather, it is found in the process of developing a
relationship to oneself in the context of the moral codes in which one is immersed.
Foucault (2000b) argues a focus on active self-formation was particularly
relevant given postmodern skepticism of attempts to provide a lasting foundation
for ethics. He points out:
Most of us no longer believe that ethics is founded on religion, nor do we
want a legal system to intervene in our moral, personal, private life. Recent
liberation movements suffer from the fact that they cannot find any principle on
which to base the elaboration of a new ethics. (Foucault, 2000b, pp. 255–256)
Foucault rejects the possibility that ethics based on duty, rules, or virtues could
offer ontological or metaphysical security (Faubion, 2001). Foucault suggests,
instead, a sociohistorically contextualized approach offers a more robust way of
analyzing how individuals within particular situations come to understand their
selves as ethical subjects.
Foucault’s ethics have been productively used, particularly via the four part
process he names, technologies of the self, within sociology of sport (e.g., Markula
& Pringle, 2006; Pringle & Hickey, 2010; Thorpe, 2008; Wright, O’Flynn, &
Macdonald, 2006). These studies reveal individuals’ innovative actions within their
sporting lives to produce an ethical self, often with a focus on gender and gender
relations. As examples, Thorpe looked at multiple ways in which female snow-
boarders resisted dominant discourses of heterosexual femininity, while Markula
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and Pringle examined possibilities for exercise instructors developing alternative

discourses of participation to the dominant gendered discourses of weight loss and
body image. In contrast to these studies, in which individuals critique an aspect of
their sporting culture and draw on other aspects of their lives to develop both this
critique and alternative ethical practices, I focus on practices of the self recom-
mended to individuals by their sporting culture2.
In the process of developing his reinterpretation of ethics, Foucault (1984),
turned his attention toward “a history of ethical problematizations based on practices
of the self” (p. 13). In a later interview, Foucault (2000a) explained:

I would say that if I am now interested in how the subject constitutes itself
in an active fashion through the practices of the self, these practices are not
something invented by the individual himself [sic]. They are models he finds
in his culture and are proposed, suggested, imposed upon him by his culture,
his society, his social group.” (p. 291)
In this way, Foucault connects the ethical self-formation of an individual to
his/her social, cultural and historical context.
Foucault (1984, 1988) specifically outlined practices of the self from Ancient
Greece and Hellenic Rome concerning, among other things, diet, managing one’s
household, and one’s sexual activities. Such practices of the self were ascetic, that
is, they involved controlling or mastering certain aspects of oneself. In this way,
practices of the self in sport might be seen as ways in which athletes control aspects
of their athletic selves, for instance, their desire to win or their physical actions.
Collectively, a group of practices of the self and their associated problematizations
will allow athletes to work toward an idealized ethical sense of self.

Methodology
In this article I report a subsection of findings from a three-year ethnographic
research project exploring ethical subjectivities among Ultimate players (Crocket,
2012). As an interpretivist ethnographer (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005), I adopted
an explicitly postmodern framework, accepting “specific, constructed and co-
constructed realties” (Guba & Lincoln, 2005, p. 193). My research did not aim
to identify definitive truths about ethics, but rather to contingently locate ethical
problematizations and practices within a transnational physical culture.
I undertook multisited ethnography (Marcus, 2005), including participant
observation at social and competitive tournaments in New Zealand, Australia and
Europe, semistructured interviews with fourteen players from these countries and
North America, and textual analysis of books, blogs and DVDs. I entered the field
having already spent six years playing the game and, subsequently, I found that
other players readily accepted my research. I refer to all participants by pseudonyms
to preserve their anonymity.
Drawing Kvale (2007), I conducted “analysis as theoretical reading” (p.
117), analyzing my data in relation to Foucault’s ethics. Moreover, writing also
formed a significant part of my inquiry (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005). In this
way, like St. Pierre (2011), I found “much data—what we think with when we
think about a topic—were identified during analysis and not before” (p. 621,
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   95

emphasis in original). It was through this iterative process of moving between

writing, rereading my notes, transcripts and Foucault’s later work that I began
to sense, let alone make sense of, ascetic practices of the self within Ultimate.
Before writing, I had been captivated by Foucault’s fourfold technologies of the
self and had been missing depth and complexity both within my data and my
understanding of Foucault.

Findings
Before discussing three ascetic practices of the self in detail, I briefly consider
problematizations which inform these practices. As I described above, a key
aspect of Ultimate’s moral code is the placing of limits on the pursuit of victory.
In other words, players problematize excessively competitive behavior (Crocket,
2012). As examples, Mitchell told me winning was very important to him, “but
not the be all and end all of rules and injury and safety,” while Beth more radi-
cally stated, “I’m at the point now where I have no desire to win.” It is important
to recognize, then, that problematization of winning is shorthand for a spectrum
of perspectives.
Problematizations were often informed by an awareness of the dominance of
the performance narrative (cf., Carless and Douglas, 2012) within many sports.
As an example, Regina observed, “whereas in a lot of sports it really gets quite
aggressive… there’s a lot more respect in Ultimate.” Relatedly, Phillip problema-
tized players who changed their demeanor when on the field:
I guess I can’t understand why someone can change persona when they walk
onto the field. If it’s you that’s playing the sport, why not be the person that
you want to be off the field when you’re on it?
These examples offer problematizations of win-at-all-costs approaches to
sport. I found such problematizations to be common, without necessarily being
universally accepted, or uniformly expressed. In relation to these problematiza-
tions, certain practices of the self were recommended by Ultimate’s communi-
ties of players which aimed to achieve an ascetic mastery of one’s competitive
athletic self.

Moderation
I observed Ultimate players moderate their play in multiple ways to stay within the
rules of the games and produce a spirit of respect and camaraderie. For example,
on defense, players often end up in a position where their direct line to the flight
path of the disc is blocked by the body of the player they are guarding. In this situ-
ation, defenders must decide how to react. A range of strategies are possible, from
the immoderate deliberate foul, to somewhat more moderate attempts to dive or
run around the player, to not making a play on the disc at all. In these situations,
players typically moderate their play, avoiding deliberate fouls and making play-
by-play judgments on which strategy is appropriate.
Moderation as a practice of the self leads to a style of play in which heavy
collisions are actively avoided. Bradley explained:
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I’ve always felt an obligation to be slightly more aware of the people around
me due to the fact that I’m usually heavier than most of the people around....
so I’ve really taken a bit of a stance for that. I won’t do a reckless maneuver
when I can avoid it, even if it means I lose a point because of it, just because
it’s not worth hurting someone.
Bradley’s perspective, in which he explained that his size meant he should
take special care to avoid contact, contrasts with the attitude of Messner’s (1992)
gridiron linesmen who “felt a strong need to naturalize their capacities for aggres-
sion and violence” (p. 65).
Samantha also linked moderation to player safety, arguing, “you’re not always
going to get the Frisbee, the point’s going to be scored, it’s going to happen, there’s
no need to hurt someone.” In this way, Samantha accepted the truth that Ultimate
players need to moderate their behavior out of concern for others. Both Bradley
and Samantha, then, actively reject the fourth principle of the sport ethic (Hughes
& Coakley, 1991)—the refusal to accept limits in the pursuit of victory—by
openly acknowledging that they will concede points to avoid risking injuries to
other players.
Further, below the elite level, skilled players might further moderate their game
to allow less-skilled opponents a modicum of success. Regan told me:
At social tournaments generally, if it’s an A grader marking a B grader or C
grader, you generally don’t play the best you can, so you don’t put the hard-
est mark on possible and while you’re marking them, you’re generally giving
them pointers on things… to help their game improve.
Similarly, Samantha recommended, “If you’re up by a few points, you know,
go a bit easy on the d [defense]. You know, there’s nothing better than seeing a
new player catch the disc in the end zone.” These examples show how, at a social
level, skilled Ultimate players moderate their play to avoid completely dominating
weaker players.
I argue these considerations point to the problematization of excess competitive-
ness which if unchecked might otherwise override practices such as moderation. In
this way, Ultimate players’ problematization of excess competitiveness might be
similar to ancient Greek males’ attitudes to sexual conduct, whose “regimen of the
aphrodisia, with the need to moderate their practice, did not operate on the assump-
tion that sexual acts in themselves and by nature were bad” (Foucault, 1984, p. 117,
emphasis in original). The Ultimate players I studied did not see competitiveness
as a problem provided it did not come to control the conduct of Ultimate players
and cause them to engage in dangerous, illegal or disrespectful play.
Moderation as a practice of self offers a strong contrast with practices of vio-
lence within dominant Western team sports. As a stark example, one of Pringle’s
(2009) rugby playing participants explained, “The view in my mind is that each
Saturday I go to war.... I’m not the only one, there’s a group of us now that liken
it to going to war” (p. 224). Another of Pringle’s participants described a calculus
of reciprocated violence between opponents, suggesting that while a kick in the
head would usually be inappropriate: “if the guy who was on the ball had previ-
ously punched him, then maybe a kick in the head would be justified, I’m not sure,
certainly a kick in the kidneys” (p. 227). Although, as I explain below, players
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   97

often struggled to tolerate immoderate opponents, violence was avoided through

practicing moderation.
I found, however, that practices of moderation in Ultimate varied significantly.
The most striking differences were between elite and nonelite Ultimate. Simply
put, elite Ultimate has markedly higher levels of contact, which, as Robbins (2004)
suggested, are dynamic and constantly subject to reinterpretation. Yet, these higher
levels of contact do not mean that elite players are necessarily immoderate. Elite
players operate at a higher level of skill, speed and decision-making (Griggs, 2011).
In other words, elite-level players trust each other to make finer judgments about
when and where to throw their bodies in making a play for the disc. Regan told
me, at the elite level:
There’s a lot more contact, but it tends to be fairer contact. And if they think
they’ll get it, they dive. But they won’t do it to injure you like some other people
[in other sports] do. It does make the game a lot more physical.

I argue, then, that elite players do problematize excess competitiveness, albeit,

not in a manner which draws a consistent line between moderation and excess.
Higher levels of physicality mean there are more collisions. Yet, as Regan
suggested, elite players do not set out to injure other players. I observed players
show concern for injured opponents by calling a stoppage in play, or checking
on their wellbeing off field. In this way, the practice of moderation contributed
to a markedly different athletic self than Messner’s (1992) “instrumental male”
who “views other people as objects to be manipulated and defeated in his quest to
achieve his goals” (p. 62).
I did find instances of immoderate play, yet such instances rarely formed an
ongoing pattern. One exception I found to this was elite men’s college Ultimate
in the United States (see Burruss, 2010b). What I found to be more common than
wholly immoderate play were differing interpretations of how much moderation
was appropriate. In this way, my findings differ to Robbins (2004) description of
three clear sets of playing norms for different levels of play. Due to Ultimate’s small
player base, particularly outside North America, players who aspire to differing
levels of play are often on field together. Subsequently, rather than there being a
clear line of what is acceptable (although in particular, limited circumstances this can
be clear), there is a constant negotiation of what degree of moderation is required.
Players, teams, and cultures differ in terms of their understandings of moderation
and their ability to moderate their play as they wish. This range of interpretations of
moderation can lead to conflict on the field as players’ expectations of what should
be moderated vary significantly. In these situations, the practice of tolerance, which
I now address, is particularly relevant.

Tolerance
I also observed Ultimate players engage in practices of the self concerning tol-
erance. I use the term, tolerance, to refer to how players react to the conduct of
their opponents. There are two aspects of tolerance that concern physical contact.
The first is tolerance of incidental contact, or contact that does not affect play.
The second is tolerance for being fouled. In a similar manner to Robbins (2004)
98  Crocket

and Griggs (2011), I found, within fairly flexible limits, players attempted to
be tolerant of contact from others to promote a free flowing game. Relatedly,
discussions concerning when and how plays, or ‘bids,’ should be made on the
disc and what might be incidental or nonincidental contact were common at all
levels of the game.
Many players I observed tried to tolerate incidental contact, that is, any contact
that did not affect play. Because the game is self-refereed, tolerance requires players
to give up a possible illicit advantage. For example, a player might drop a catch a
split second before colliding with an opponent. In this situation, the player might
be the only person aware the disc had been dropped before the collision, and so
would be in a position to manufacture a foul call to regain possession of the disc.
A tolerant player, however, would not make this call.
Mitchell discussed a detailed example of this with me:
There were two catches I went to grab in the up wind goal and I was leaping
into the air and both of them bounced out of my hand…. And, I was up there
amongst defenders, and there were probably three of us, maybe four of us….
[The opposing captain] said to me in the team thing [combined team huddle
after the game], “you know, Mitchell, there were a couple of opportunities
where you didn’t call a foul and I’ve gotta commend you for it”. . . [but] I
didn’t see there was a foul there. . . . There wasn’t anything serious that made
me specifically miss it. To me, I was more angry at myself because I should
have dragged it down. For me, to hear that from [their captain] at the end of
the tournament, I was stoked because obviously. . . the spirit I played with was
respected by my opponents.
The opposition’s captain congratulating Mitchell for his tolerance shows how
social groups recommend practices of the self to individuals. Moreover, Mitchell’s
example came from a closely contested world championships bronze medal game.
Mitchell’s performance in this game, “thus constituted a trial period: a time when
his worth was tested, in the sense that it had to be formed, exercised and measured
all at the same time” (Foucault, 1984, p. 206).
Players also attempted to show tolerance for being fouled. Firstly, they tried
to work from the assumption that that their opponent was trying to bid on the disc,
rather than deliberately foul them. Often when contact did occur, a player would
be hit from behind, and, subsequently, not be prepared for contact. Although at
times players reacted angrily, for the most part, players tried to be tolerant of
contact insofar as they accepted that whether legal or not, contact was accidental,
rather than deliberate. As an example, Burruss (2010a) explained that the team he
coached agreed at the start of the season that, “we would extend to everyone we
played the respect that they were spirited and trying to do the right thing” (emphasis
in original). In situations where players believe contact has broken the rules, they
call foul, however, they do so on the assumption that the foul was not deliberate.
In addition, some players also tolerated play that they interpreted as overly
physical or aggressive. As an example, Regan told me:
I’ve always found if the player is aggressive and they fire their team up,
everyone fires up with them. And it generally just happens so they become a
little more aggressive; so you back off a wee bit and let them have their way.
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   99

And after a little while they settle down and the game just becomes the same
[as it was before].
Rather than responding to what he interprets to be excessively aggressive play
by retaliation or argument, Regan tolerates this while moderating his own play
further, which leads to his opponents calming down within a few points and the
game returning to lower levels of aggression. Regan’s tolerance in these situations
contrasts strongly with a rugby player interviewed by Pringle (2009), who explained
that when faced with aggression or violence: “I would feel that I needed to retaliate
otherwise I would be… deemed dominated” (p. 227, emphasis in original).
Espousing a similar practice to Regan, Bradley told me:
There are other circumstances of dangerous play when people forget that it
is a game, and so do long ridiculous jumps into the zone [when] people are
standing there. People have to jump out of the way…. And that’s just when
I’d say, when I’m picking them up off the ground [laughs], you know, “good
catch but you know you’ve got to watch yourself or you’ll just get hurt.”
I interpret Bradley’s response here as a practice of tolerance. He shaped his
behavior in an effort to prevent inflaming a situation of which he did not approve.
Both Regan and Bradley can be interpreted as having an ethical concern for relations
of power and domination between Ultimate players. Their strategies for dealing
with players who approached the game more aggressively than them involved “as
little domination as possible” (Foucault, 2000a, p. 299).
Whereas Mitchell felt that high levels of contact or aggression were acceptable
and that his task was to refrain from using it as an excuse for poor play on his part,
Regan and Bradley thought high levels of contact and aggression were inappropri-
ate, yet nevertheless found tolerance to be the best way of defusing this style of
play. Practices of tolerance, then, do not arise through a universal obligation to a
specific interdiction (Foucault, 1984). Instead, we see a range of interpretations
and enactments of practices of tolerance.
Newer players were regarded as deserving of high levels of tolerance from
other players for both accidental and deliberate infringements of Ultimate’s moral
code. Many players acknowledged that novices with backgrounds in traditional
team sports needed time to come to understand the importance of, and be able to
practice, moderation, tolerance and honesty. As an example, Gerald explained he
acted as a mentor for new players on his team:
If people are getting too angry, or getting very over the top with it, it’s just
nice to settle them down a bit, and say, “we’re playing this sport and you call
your own problems, you don’t need to shout at the other team.”
Similarly, opposition players also offered ad hoc mentoring. As an example,
an opposing player might call a rule infringement, either on the novice or on their
self, and then explain the infringement to the new player, or they might ignore a
rule infringement, and then later explain the infringement to the new player off
the field. Beyond these practices of tolerance actively socializing novices into
Ultimate’s subculture, attendance at weekend-long tournaments formed intensive
learning experiences with extensive time spent playing, watching and discussing
Ultimate.
100  Crocket

Tolerance was the practice of the self that players struggled with more than
any other. That players struggled with tolerance did not mean that it was not widely
valued; rather, it was a practice of the self that many players found difficult to
perform in the heat of the moment. As Mitchell explained, because players are
responsible for making and resolving all on-field calls, “there’s gonna [sic] be
calls you don’t agree with.” Yet he argued, “even if a referee was there, there’d
still be calls you didn’t agree with. And you’ve just got to accept it.” Samantha
described her own struggle to be tolerant: “if I’m slightly fired up I argue back.
Then when I go off court, I’m like, why did I do that?” Similarly, Bruce told me,
“in our league here we have a team who we are quite, quite competitive with and
it is very hard to keep your composure…. So, yeah it is something you have to
work on”. Although Bruce and Samantha accepted the importance of tolerance,
they recognized that practicing tolerance was a challenge. In this way, tolerance
as a practice of self demands constant effort to form oneself as the ethical object
of one’s actions: “the battle to be fought, the victory to be won, the defeat one
risked suffering–these were processes and events that took place between one and
oneself” (Foucault, 1984, p. 67).

Honesty
The third practice of self that I observed within Ultimate was honesty. This aspect
of Ultimate’s moral code is explicitly included within the rules: “players should be
mindful of the fact that they are acting as referees in any arbitration between teams.
In such situations, players must... be truthful” (World Flying Disc Association,
2009, p. 2). Of course, as I outlined in the section on tolerance, Ultimate players
accept there will be multiple perspectives on a given situation. Honesty, then, is
the practice of arbitrating disputes without deceit.
Players try to remain honest in tense situations. To return to Mitchell’s example
of tolerance of physical contact above, Mitchell was not only tolerant, he was also
honest in not calling a foul to avoid turning over possession after dropping the disc.
Had Mitchell called a foul—despite knowing the contact had not caused him to
drop the disc—his team would have retained possession regardless of whether his
opponents contested the foul or not.
Mitchell’s example is one of many situations in Ultimate where the person
who is regarded to have the best perspective to make an accurate call—for example,
whether a player has caught the disc in-bounds or out-of-bounds, or a player has
caught a disc before it hit the ground—also stands to directly benefit from making
that call. In these situations, to act with honesty is to perform an act of ascetic
mastery of the competitive self. Players are relied on to be honest in making calls,
rather than manufacturing calls to their team’s advantage. Mitchell’s example of
tolerance, then, was also a practice of honesty.
In my fieldwork and interviews, however, I found it was widely acknowledged
that a few players were dishonest. Dealing with such players, who were generally
also considered to be intolerant and immoderate, was a particularly challenging
task for many of my participants. Unlike refereed sports, Ultimate has no sanctions
for gamesmanship or professional fouls.3 When a foul is called, play is reset as
closely as possible to what would have happened if the foul had not occurred. There
is potential, then, for players to exploit this rule structure to their own advantage.
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   101

Phillip told me about two players who he felt were dishonest: “if I think about
[name of team], all I think about is [player A] and [player B] and I hate them. On
the field, I hate them.” In our ensuing discussion, however, Phillip turned the issue
on its head:
Hamish: That makes sense, but it [hating other players] jars a little bit with
how we like to think of ourselves as Ultimate players...
Phillip: Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, but in some ways it’s like player management
and dealing with players like that. I mean if we were bigger about it, we
wouldn’t let them bother us.
In doing so, he turned the ethical dilemma posed by other players’ dishonesty
to focus on his own actions and his desire to manage the situation positively through
practices of moderation and tolerance. This reinforces the way in which practices
of the self within Ultimate are closely linked.
I found practices of honesty to be of critical importance in Ultimate. Honesty
was viewed as underpinning self-officiated play. To be regarded as suitable or
desirable opponents, it was necessary for players and teams to produce themselves
as honest athletic subjects. The prime practice of honesty within Ultimate was in
offering an unmodified account of one’s perspective on a particular play, particu-
larly when this account placed one’s own team at a tactical disadvantage. While
some players did not appear to consistently perform honesty as a practice of the
self, these players were both notorious and rare.

Conclusion
In this article, I have examined moderation, tolerance and honesty as ascetic prac-
tices of the self. The Ultimate-playing community recommends these practices to
players in relation to the problematization of an excessively competitive approach
to playing sport. Yet, I have shown that players interpret and perform these practices
in a multitude of ways. As Foucault (1984) argued, ethics cannot simply be reduced
to a set of norms, as there are always possibilities for different interpretations and
innovations of practice.
The ethics these practices produce, then, is heterogeneous and inevitably
partial. Players’ enactments of practices of the self do not always form a con-
sensus, and at times this is a source of conflict on and off the field. I do not see
this as a weakness of Foucault’s ethics, nor of ethics within Ultimate; rather it
is a symptom of the postmodern condition. Indeed, given the fragmentation of
late-modern existence (Giddens, 1991) and the futility of searching for rules or
duties with universal scope (Bauman, 1993), a focus on how individuals might
shape a certain aspect of their existence with greater care for self and others is
particularly important. From this perspective, the expectation that everyone should
shape a certain aspect of their existence in identical ways is, at best, naïve, and
at worst, authoritarian.
The practices of the self I described were not all-inclusive. In my fieldwork, I
observed particular players who did not appear to perform these practices of the self,
or, more subtly, only performed these practices intermittently. From a Foucauldian
point of view, such players are not involved in, or are struggling to engage with, a
102  Crocket

process of ethical self-creation. However, these players do not prevent others from
creating their selves as spirited Ultimate players through practices of moderation,
tolerance and honesty.
The ascetic practices I have examined differ markedly from the problematic
practices critiqued within a range of achievement sports (e.g., Hughes & Coak-
ley, 1991; Messner, 1992; Pringle, 2009). Yet, it is entirely possible that similar
problematizations and practices exist, to varying degrees, within more mainstream
sports. Two points are relevant here. Firstly, the possibilities of ethical subjectivities
within mainstream sports are speculative rather than empirical, as they have not
yet received adequate scholarly attention. Secondly, Ultimate’s ethical possibilities
might yet remain distinct due to the prominence of ethical problematizations and
practices within the (sub)culture of the sport. In contrast, given the dominance of
the performance narrative within mainstream sport (Carless & Douglas, 2012),
athletes within these sports might need to draw on a more diffuse array of discursive
practices to engage in ethical problematizations and practices.
In a similar manner to Atkinson’s (2010b) fell runners and Ashtanga yoga
practitioners, whose participation he characterizes as postsport, a number of my
participants understood their involvement in Ultimate as part of a radical rejection
of modern sport. Concomitantly, other participants engaged in these practices of the
self while retaining a strong desire to win and adopting rationalized approaches to
training and performance. While I personally am attracted to the notion of a radical
postsport break, my engagement in this ethnographic project leads me toward an
understanding of a plurality of ethical subjectivities within Ultimate Frisbee. Sub-
sequently, I do not view either the moderate or radical positions as more authentic
or ethical than the other.
Although a number of studies within the sociology of sport have focused on
ethical sporting subjectivities, as a subfield it has yet to be given sustained attention.
This article makes a contribution by examining ascetic practices of the self through
which Ultimate players develop ethical relations to their selves and to others on the
field of play. The task of investigating possibilities for ethical self-creation within
sport and leisure is explicitly sociological and offers a productive way of develop-
ing critical understandings of contemporary sporting subjectivities.

Notes
1. However, there are two fledgling, semiprofessional leagues in parts of North America. These
leagues are refereed, yet retain specific ‘fair play’ clauses within their rules.
2. As a reviewer pointed out, my focus on practices of the self recommended by a specific
sport culture has parallels to research on alternative sports which have taken different theoretical
approaches. In particular, Beal (1995) found that skaters recommended the rejection of overt
competition and Wheaton (2004) found many nonelite windsurfers opposed ‘laddish’ forms of
masculinity.
3. Some levels of elite Ultimate in the United States have empowered third party observers to
issue individual and team warnings and penalties for such behavior. The appropriateness of the
observer system is widely debated with some arguing that observers “make better spirit” (e.g.,
Wiggins, 2010), some arguing for referees and others arguing that the presence of observers will
remove responsibility for spirited and honest play from players (for examples of this debate see,
Burruss, 2011; Parinella, 2005).
 Ascetic Practices of the Self in Ultimate Frisbee   103

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Richard Pringle, Bob Rinehart, Jason Laurendeau, the anonymous review-
ers and Michael Atkinson for their constructive feedback on earlier versions of this article.

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