‘It’s always on’. Rituals and social structure within an international touch rugby team

Abstract

This article investigates the processes of group formation. Utilising a ritual framework, it looks at how the Sweden Touch (rugby) team formed and bonded together to compete in the 2022 European Championships. Based on autoethnographic data, I focus on the role of rituals in bonding players as a group within Team Sweden and with the wider Touch community, contributing to creation of the space within which matches took place. This space is analysed with Mary Douglas-derived theory of sociocultural viability. Utilising the theory’s typology of social solidarities, I track the changing forms of social relations within the groups. I argue that the player-group was initially structured as an individualist network, which morphed into a hierarchical group through the actions of participants. Subsequently, an alternative egalitarian social organisation manifested among players, at times contesting the dominant social orderings. These changes are observable in the ritual activities of the player group.