Sport and Friendship

My aim in this paper is to make the case for encouraging friendship in sport. First, I argue that sport is especially conducive to friendship. Second, I argue that since friendship is life‐enhancing then to participate in sport and not to have made friends is to have failed to take a life‐enhancing opportunity. Third, I argue that there are sporting benefits to be had from sporting friendships. Finally, I say something about the role of friendship in sport achieving its broad political aim of helping ‘to build a better and more peaceful world’.     

Taking a Knee,Making a Stand: Social Justice,Trump America,and the Politics of Sport

ABSTRACT

This essay analyzes the role of sport protest under the current United States presidential administration. Protest has long been a feature of sporting rituals; social unrest in this realm is not new. However, at this moment, activism in sport allows us to see larger political alliances, affinities, and solidarities in a particularly useful way. I argue that the world of sport is fostering discussion, debate, and dissent that are uncommon and largely unavailable in other spaces, which, in turn, is opening up a new counterpublic. I offer two examples of challenges athletes have made to anti-Black racism, class inequality, and sexism, with one highly visible, and one less visible. And I contend that these actions are refusals that both draw on and differ from the iconic sporting refusal of the 1960s Civil Rights era–the image of the Black athlete standing alone on the victory stand–by highlighting the role of symbolic action in prompting democratic deliberation.     

Students' Experiences in Sport-Based Physical Education: More Than] Apologies are Necessary

Those of us who have been participants in sport for much of our lives often find it a time-consuming and irrelevant task to defend the joys and rewards of physical activity to the uninformed or the uninitiated. Some physical education teachers are amazed at the energy they must spend motivating students to dress and participate in physical activity at the lowest intensity levels (Ennis, 1995). Even physiologists are modifying the “criteria” for health-enhancing exercise to make it more palatable for the majority of Americans who enjoy a sedentary lifestyle and are unconcerned with target heart rate zones. While many Americans watch sport, far fewer participate in sport as aphysical activity. Corlett, in his efforts to focus on the benefits of sport, glazes over the problems insidious in some sporting contexts. I will focus on problems plaguing sport-based, public school physical education that lead to discriminatory and abusive practices. I am most concerned with the policies used to perpetuate discriminatory sporting practices in schools, and believe disenfranchised individuals deserve an apology.     

Reconsidering Teamwork

Teamwork is often seen as an inseparable part of sport. Other than work done by sport psychologists, however, the topic has received scant attention. The broad aim of this article is to stimulate discussion on the topic. Specifically, I examine how we can think about and “do” teamwork in an alternative way to that presented in current psychological literature. I illustrate how a psychologistic model of teamwork—teamwork as cohesion—is based on a positivist metaphor and argue that this is simply one possible interpretation. I then propose a different metaphor that has its roots in constructionist thought. I suggest that this constructionist metaphor leads to alternative research questions and methodologies and helps us to understand teamwork more wholly.     

Competition in Physical Education: Avoid,Ask, Adapt or Accept?

Competition is an essential part of youth sport. But should it also be part of the curriculum in physical education? Or are competitive activities incompatible with the educational context? While some researchers have argued that physical education should embrace the sporting logic of competition, others have criticized the negative experiences it can create for some students in school. In this article, we draw on insights from the philosophy of sport as well as educational philosophy, with the aim of questioning and critically examining the integration of competitive activities in physical education. We present and discuss four normative arguments (AVOID, ASK, ADAPT, and ACCEPT) that can each in their own way inform and guide future talks on the topic.     

Peer relations and access to capital in the mathematics classroom: a Bourdieusian social network analysis

The aim of this article is to explore the structure of social capital in peer networks and its relation to the unequal access of educational resources within mathematics classrooms. We hypothesise that learners can gain access to mathematics through friendship networks which provide more or less help from peers that might sustain (or curtail) their mathematics learning based on a Bourdieusian framework. We report a social network analysis of mutually-recognised helping within friendship groups. This is complemented by observation and interviews that illustrate how different classrooms have different network structures, positioning learners of different ethnic minorities and genders in significantly different ways regarding access to learning. We argue that friendship networks mediate social capital and access to further cultural capital, and that this may help explain structural differences in attainment. Because ethnicity and gender, inter alia, mediate friendship networks, they also mediate access to capital in the classroom.     

Universality of Socio‐moral Development: a cross‐sectional study in Poland

The concept of friendship has had a great deal of attention within recent years from philosophers. However, this attention restricts itself to friendship between adults and rarely considers the issue of friendship between children. The issue of friendship and how we socialise with others ought to be an important concept for education, yet schools rarely take the forming, nurturing and nourishing of friendship beyond helping to deal with disputes between friends when they disrupt school life. I wish to argue that whilst friendship is critical to the development of character and can properly be seen as part of ‘an invitation to the moral life’, it also has value in and of itself as part of the flourishing life.     

‘Six packs and big muscles,and stuff like that’. Primary school‐aged South African boys,black 1 and white,on sport

This paper explores the salience of sport in the lives of eight‐year‐old and nine‐year‐old South African primary school boys. Drawing on ethnographic and interview data, I argue that young boys' developing relationship with sport is inscribed within particular gendered, raced and classed discourses in South Africa. Throughout the paper I show differences and durability of meanings across the social sites that affect and position blacks, white, boys and girls. It is argued that young boys' early association with sport is centrally about identity and doing sport, or at least establishing interest in sport is one important way in claiming to be a real boy. The findings have implications for the call by the South African Government to get the nation to play.     

Future Directions in the Movement Arts and Sciences

I argue in this paper that sport should be retained as an important part of the educational rationale for physical education. I consider Siedentop's critique of physical education and his alternative in the form of Sport Education. Siedentop's goals for youth sport and physical education and use of the work of Alisdair McIntyre are explored. It is argued that if we work to experience activities that are inherently pleasurable and intrinsically satisfying, then there is a possible future for activities such as sport. I conclude that school physical education is well placed to take up this challenge of sustaining sport as a moral practice and that the pedagogical tools already exist to do this in the form of a critical pedagogy.     

Mean girls,homosociality and football: an education on social and power dynamics between girls and women

Relationships between girls and women have typically been explored through the lexicon of ‘friendship’ or, where there is a presence of sexual desire, ‘lesbian’. This article suggests the complexity and impact of female (same-sex) sociality, and its relationship to heteronormativity and power dynamics between girls and women runs deeper than the terms ‘friendship’ or ‘lesbian’ give rise to. Exploring social and power dynamics amongst girls and women, this article explores how gender is policed and negotiated within a framework of homosociality. Drawing on empirical research within a women's Australian Rules football team, I explore the complexity of female same-sex bonds, the negotiation of gender embodiment and performance within female homosocial spaces, and the emergence of women's own lexicons in making sense of their relationships with other women in this particular social sphere, further considering how this might be applied to other female homosocial spaces, including same-sex educational and sporting sites.     

Administrator

Scholars have sought to identify the complexity and multidimensionality of the phenomenon of sexual identity formation since the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1973 (Bayer, 1981). This article addresses the manner in which the needs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer [LGBTQ] students can be addressed against the backdrop of Kleinman's phenomenological objectives of physical education. I argue for expanding the movement landscape in physical education to include alternatives to sport that lead to self-realization and acceptance of self. I promote the spirit of the content of significant movement including heightened awareness, sensitivity and acceptance, and realization of self as opposed to the spirit of sport. In this sense, LGBTQ students can come to know self as subject through meaningful movement experiences rather than power and performance sports. I also argue that the physical educators examine teaching practices that promote hegemonic masculinity and femininity, as well as individual views toward LGBTQ students.     

便携式活动计数器的设计

针对人们运动量的不定量性，提出了便携式活动计数器的设计方法。该计数器可以准确地测试人们在运动过程中的运动量，有利于人们的身体健康。     

A good education: girls' extracurricular pursuits and school choice

This paper draws on the case studies of six girls between the ages of 10 and 13 and considers their transition to secondary school and involvement in extracurricular sports. Within it, I explore how the girls' understandings of ‘a good education’ affects both their academic and extracurricular/sporting choices. Despite government educational targets which seem to value ‘performative’ academic results, I argue that ideas about a ‘well‐rounded student’ continue to hold particular resonance for middle‐class parents and students. Conversely, I suggest that models of excellence and achievement within education are increasingly echoed in students' sporting participation and that this has specific consequences for working‐class and middle‐class students. I draw particular attention to the girls' experiences of these systems with a view to their ability to convert physical capital accrued in physical activity into other forms of social or cultural capital.     

放松训练在短跑运动中之我见

随着科学技术的发展和运动技术水平的不断提高,要求训练更加科学化系统化,而放松训练则是一个比较重要的环节。根据短跑的技术要求,放松训练对田径运动水平的提高,对其它运动项目的发展都有重要意义。     

Amateurism and Professionalism as Moral Languages: In Search of a Moral Image for Sport

In this paper, amateurism and professionalism are treated as moral images, that is, as moral ideals whose point is to enliven and enrich our involvement in sport. Treating them as such enables one to assess their moral fitness as models of sporting conduct, an assessment made imperative by the apparent demise of the amateur ideal and the triumph of the professional ideal. That assessment is made more urgent because the eclipse of amateur sport by professional sport is a morally problematic development: While athletes are entitled to make a living off their athletic accomplishments, they are not entitled to turn sport into a commercial exploit, because doing so compromises and imperils the central goods that underpin and galvanize sport's practice.     

The Well-Played Game: Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Sport

Accomplished philosophical accounts of sport's sociopolitical purpose have aimed at a critical analysis of the political dimensions of sport. Such accounts have tended either to condemn or to promote variously existing or hoped-for political ideologies with respect to sport; most significantly, ideologies of a capitalist, neo-Marxist, or “mainstream” socialist (Marxist) sort. Only the Marxist accounts, however, have succeeded in recognizing both the inherently playful (the essentially free) nature of sport and its sociopolitical status (its detemkate content). Neo-Marxist accounts have failed in the former respect, capitalist accounts in the latter. It is the purpose of this essay to give a synthetic interpretation of the philosophical groundwork of these judgments about modem socialist sport in terms of Hegel's ontological contributions to Marxist thought, in terms of what Marx made of these contributions in respect to humanity's social and political life, and in terms of the implications of Marxist thought for modem sporting activity.     

Friends,peers and higher education

Theorists of friendship in contemporary society have suggested that our relationships with peers are characterised by their emphasis on openness, disclosure and emotional communication. Moreover, Beck and Beck‐Gernsheim argue that friendship, as a deliberately sought, trusting partnership between two people, can play an important role in countering some of the negative consequences of a market‐driven society, ‘acting as a shared lifeline to take the weight of each other’s confusions and weaknesses’. However, drawing on a series of in‐depth interviews with students from nine different higher education institutions, this paper will argue that such theorists overlook significant complexity in the ways in which young adults choose to ‘order’ their friendships. Indeed, it will suggest that highly individualised and ruthlessly competitive approaches to academic study can be maintained alongside more socially cooperative relationships with friends and peers, played out in non‐academic arenas. The paper will discuss the implications of this for both sociological theorising about friendship, and policy and practice within the higher education sector.     

Working out Intimacy: Young people and friendship in an age of reflexivity

Drawing upon a longitudinal, interview-based study of Australian secondary school students, this article explores young people's friendship experiences and attitudes to intimacy and the interpersonal. The discussion develops in relation to the work of Anthony Giddens on detraditionalisation and reflexivity, and Nikolas Rose on modernity and the self. First, I argue that feminism and psychotherapeutic ways of constituting and knowing the self are reconfiguring the cultural meanings of intimacy. Second, I suggest that this reworking of intimacy has differential and uneven effects and has particular consequences for the production of gendered subjectivities. Third, I raise some critical questions about the extent to which either Giddens's or Rose's account can properly capture the gendered and situated experiences of intimacy. I offer examples in which gender is being rearticulated in new yet familiar ways and note some persistent tensions in desires for connection and community versus autonomy and freedom. Carol Gilligan's work on gender differences in orientations to autonomy and connection is briefly revisited. Overall, it is argued that we need to take more account of how class, location and schooling differences influence dispositions to friendship and the interpersonal, and this is elaborated through a discussion of the 'relationship orientations' of two white Australian young men.     

Social Mobility,Ethnicity and Sport

This paper considers the extent and possible cultural significance of Afro‐Caribbean male involvement in U.K. sport. An appraisal of the available evidence on ethnic differences in participation, at school and post‐school levels, is undertaken in an attempt to show that not only do members of the group in question seem to place a high value on achievement in sport, but that a growing number may now perceive a sporting career as a potential means of upward social mobility. It is suggested that the apparent orientation of Afro‐Caribbeans towards sport is conditioned by both class and ethnic‐specific factors. The respective influences of the parent culture, school, peer group and mass media are considered, along with the structure of opportunities in both the popular professional sports and the expanding area of recreational sport, in an attempt to assess the causes and consequences of this phenomenon.