Sports reforms, interaction (dis)order and stigma: coaching identities in context

Social identity has long been used by social scientists as a theoretical construct to understand both self and society. This article investigates how coaches’ identities are constructed, partly through the ways in which ‘athletes-turned-coaches’ perceive themselves and partly through how they are perceived by others in the context of South Korea where sports reforms are underway. Goffman's micro-sociological concepts of ‘stigma’ and ‘moral career’ are employed as a theoretical framework for this study, given the coaches’ erstwhile socialisation as athletes in the total institution of elite sports. Drawing on qualitative data collected through semi-structured interviews with thirty individuals, the analysis reveals that South Korean coaches are stigmatised, in that they are regarded as individuals with moral deformity on the grounds of their previous institutionalisation under a highly authoritative sports regime. Going further than the literature that focuses on self-perceptions of the stigmatised, this article examines the rarely considered vantage point of those who hold views stigmatising others, thus recognising the importance of understanding stigma as a relational phenomenon.