Ethical Considerations in Rewarding of Sports Winners: A Comparison of Traditional Luhya Community and Contemporary Systems

Abstract

Leisure activities in traditional Luhya society formed an integral part of life in the community. These included singing, dancing, and wrestling. Competition was added to these activities to fulfil the natural human need for self-actualisation. With globalisation, leisure is quickly losing its creative energy and instead becoming more demanding on expenditure. The rewards bequeathed on global winners of competitions are sometimes overwhelming to the recipients especially when they are ill prepared for it. This paper interrogates the rewarding system of winners in the traditional Luhya society to explore how the traditional Luhya society rewarded its heroes compared with modern leisure competitions. The methodology of the study was ethnography, which entailed visits to where sporting activities took place, video recording, tape recording and document analysis focusing on newspapers. The data was analysed qualitatively and the research found that competitions took place in bull and cock-fighting, wrestling, tug-of-war, dancing and boat rowing, and different rewards commensurate with the society’s ethical values were given out.