Contested Rules: An Explanation of How Games Change

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Abstract
Games such as basketball, hockey and different codes of football change their rules frequently, but little is known of the particular interactive processes through which such changes are impelled. Building upon an earlier ethnomethodological perspective on games- playing, an explanation is offered which conceives rule changes as the unintended and unanticipated outcome of the interaction between groups who have different interests in the games-playing process. Rule changes are impelled because game legislators (rules committees) do not and cannot wholly anticipate the ways in which their legislative action will be interpreted by game-players and by coaches. To explain how games change, the rules need to be understood as both the medium and the outcome of the interaction processes amongst interdependent interest groups.

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