A Life Surrounded by Sport History,as a Non-Sporting Critical Feminist

Abstract

I am a historian, specialized in sport history and in women’s history, and started my research career in Finland in the mid-1970s. The main framework of my research has been popular movements and voluntary organizations in sport, from the nineteenth century to nowadays, with a social historical, grassroots and minority emphasis. Class, gender, language and ethnicity have been the main points of view in my work. In my paper, I discuss less my relation to sport history as science and its theories and methods. Instead, I approach the subject more as a personal process: how I, as a non-sporting woman, came into sport history and women’s history in sport, and which circumstances and contacts have been forming my research interests and life. At the end, I discuss sport historians’ contemporary relation to the understanding of (sport) history and its representations, asking how is the responsibility of the past affecting our ways to understand and interpret the past.     

Situated knowledges,sports and the sport science question

Abstract

In this article, I will elaborate on the feminist scholar Donna Haraway’s understanding of the concept of situated knowledges. I believe it is a concept that can be usefully applied to sports and sport science, in that it may create stories about the intertwined relationship between sport science and the narratives of sport science – stories we can believe in.     

Negotiating Difference: How Aboriginal Athletes in the Maritimes Brokered their Involvement in Canadian Sport

Aboriginal perspectives on experiences in sport in Canada are largely missing from the existing body of literature on sociocultural aspects of sport, but this is especially the case in terms of Aboriginal people from the Maritimes region of Canada. Such an absence impedes our understanding of sport as an important cultural institution that can be used to normalize certain social practices, as well as challenge them. In this paper, we aim to contribute to the body of knowledge on Aboriginal sport by examining the lived experiences of nine elite Aboriginal athletes from the Maritimes, specifically those who won a Tom Longboat Award, through a postcolonial lens. In doing so, we reveal some of the nuanced power relationships that shaped their involvement in organized, competitive sport – distinctions that are not often addressed in the scholarly literature and thus limit our understanding of the complex and sometimes difficult realities of Aboriginal sport development in Canada. The participants’ stories tell us a great deal about the recipients as individuals, about Aboriginal peoples’ involvement in contemporary sport, and how the ways in which they negotiated difference within sport marked their lives.     

The influence of body discourses on adolescents’ (non)participation in physical activity

Drawing on semi-structured interviews with older adolescents, this article examines how healthism, ideal body discourses and performative body discourses influence their (non)participation in physical activity (PA) and their identity construction concerning exercise, sport and physical education. We illustrate that body transformation through PA, and related slim body desire and the fear of masculinised female bodies, affect adolescents’ decisions to engage in or drop out of sport. Also, a non-hegemonic body shape combined with a display of low physical competence triggers classmate and teachers’ rejection and marginalisation, affecting adolescents’ construction of embodied identities and preventing them from being active. Finally, adolescents who are competent in sport are less influenced by ideal body discourses than by performative body discourses. We highlight the health promotion effects of these hegemonic discourses and suggest strategies to challenge them.     

民国时期中国武术的身体政治逻辑及其现代意义

运用文献资料法和逻辑分析法,从身体政治角度探究民国时期中国武术运变的逻辑机理。研究认为:中国武术在尚武强国的身体觉醒中得以重新出场,期望通过中华新武术的身体正名、体育化武术的身体博弈和学校武术的身体训育达到改造国民身体的目的,实现了从末技到国术的话语蜕变、从拳师到教师的身份重构、从工具到符号的价值跃迁,由此完成了身体的“国族化”实践,彰显了中国武术的责任担当与历史使命。因此,深刻理解民国时期中国武术身体政治的底层逻辑,对准确把握中国武术发展的认知理据、实践进路和价值旨归具有重要现实意义。     

中国近代体育与身体政治互嵌的文化审视

中国古代对于身体的发展一直是重修养而轻锻炼,讲究以养为主。在近代中国,外国帝国主义入侵,中国社会变为半殖民地半封建社会。当时一些先进思想人开始反思中国社会的发展落后于西方的原因,并希望通过改革使中国重新走向民族复兴之路。因此,中国开始引入外国的身体锻炼方式,希望通过身体的锻炼来增长军事实力,实现民族振兴,所以,在整个近代历史中,各个领导人开始将身体的改造纳入政治的范畴,希望通过实施身体政治来改变国家不断被外国侵略者侵犯的情况。但是,新中国成立之后,带有人文主义的体育事业不断发展,我们发现,近代的将身体作为政治目标进行改造的体育思想已经不再适合中国的国情,因此,了解中国近代国情,以及提出身体政治的近代背景和它的局限性,可以使当今体育的发展更有针对性,更符合时代的要求。     

Gendered performances and identity construction among UK female soccer players and netballers: a comparative study

This paper examines the gendered performances and identity construction of UK female University soccer players and netballers (n?=?31). Focus group interviews explored their sporting experiences with reference to body perceptions, and perceptions of their sporting bodies outside sporting contexts. Three themes resulted from data analysis, these being; (1) UK culture, body performances and femininity, (2) sporting culture, body performances and femininity and (3) transiency of body satisfaction across sport and non-sport contexts. Findings suggest that sport may not always provide an opportunity to challenge and resist dominant discourses. In both netball and soccer, a range of surveillance and management practices were used that served to perpetuate the value of a ‘feminine’ and assumed heterosexual body, and legitimize their sport participation through an emphasis on a hyper-femininity. The influence of sport subcultures on gendered performances and identity construction, along with implications for marketing sports participation to women are discussed.     

‘Sport qua science’: Michel Serres’ ball as an asset of knowledge

Abstract

This article concerns the use of sport as an asset of knowledge in academia. The background to this is sport’s neglected role and isolation in academia, save for in sundry sports sciences. By mapping the academic use of philosopher Michel Serres’ sport metaphors, a new perspective of the relationship between sport and science is explored. A mixed-methods approach was chosen to review the literature using Serres’ concept of the ‘quasi-object’. The findings show that the concept appeals to a wide array of disciplines within the social sciences and the humanities. The article suggests that there exists a parallel sport science in academia that flies under the radar of regular sport disciplines, a sort of ‘sport AS humanities’. This proposed ‘sportive science’ focuses on other aspects of sport than its already existing sport study counterparts. Thus, sport qua science acknowledges its topic as an asset of knowledge, not as a mirror of society.     

‘Being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’: the dancing body-subject and inhabited transcendence

Sports studies is currently dominated by the intellectualist approach to understanding skill and expertise, meaning that questions about the phenomenological nature of skilled performance in sport have generally been overshadowed by the emphasis on the cognitive. By contrast, this article responds to calls for a phenomenology of sporting embodiment by opening up a philosophical exploration of the nature of athletic being-in-the-world. In particular, the paper explores the conceptualisation of immanence and transcendence in relation to the embodied practice of dance, engaging with Merleau-Ponty’s important insight that the body can be a source of transcendence. I also draw on data from in-depth qualitative interviews with professional contemporary dancers to explore dancers’ concepts of ‘being in your body’ and ‘being in the moment’, and to suggest that during the actual embodied practice of dance, dancers do not experience transcendence and immanence as they are conceptualised in philosophy. Rather, I argue, dancers experience a third mode of being that is somehow in-between these two binary terms. I have called this ‘inhabited transcendence’.     

美国学校体育性别歧视的司法规制探析

在美国,由政府资助的学校所开展的体育运动禁止性别歧视,主要法律依据是1972年《教育法修正案》第9章。法院在处理相关案件时将所涉体育项目区分为身体对抗性运动和非身体对抗性运动。在一所公立学校,对于对抗性运动,学校只有男队或女队时,一般不允许异性参加。对于非对抗性运动,学校只有男队时,允许女性参加男队,只有女队,则一般不允许男性参加女队。同时有男女运动队时,男女运动员应该享受平等的机会和待遇。美国追求学校体育领域的性别平等,是在承认男女客观存在的生理差别基础上,摒弃基于生理差别特别是社会性别而形成的偏见,使得男女都享有平等的机会并最终达到实质上的平等。     

健康智慧的体育项目——无线电测向运动

无线电测向既是竞技体育项目,也是军事体育项目。该项目有它独特的魅力和特点,它跨越科技、体育两个领域。无线电测向运动集体育性、科技性和趣味性于一体,通过训练和活动在知识技能、身体素质、运动能力、心理品质等方面都能得到有效提高和锻炼,而且还能培养国防意识。     

Girls and Women and the Role of Sport in Different Age Groups: Poland 1918–1939

Abstract

In this paper, the role of sport in the processes of creating the modern woman in the interwar Poland will be examined. The analysing of the women’s press shows how the publicists use the hygiene and the woman’s body in discourse of age and in building the new emancipated, strong woman. How they incorporated ideas young body, active lifestyle, and images of modern women – la Garçonne created in USA and West Europe and presented them to the Polish audience.     

‘Let them see a different path’: social attitudes towards sport,education and development in Sāmoa

Drawing on ethnographic data collected over 12 months of field research, this paper contributes to the growing body of literature on sport for development (SFD) by giving voice to alternative constructions of the educative potential of SFD. It does this by exploring the social attitudes of youth, educators, community leaders and government officials in the Pacific island nation of Sāmoa towards sport, education and development. Imagining sport to be like ‘school outside’, my Samoan interlocutors construct sport as an educative platform that prepares young ‘academically unfit’ men to engage an increasingly global political economy in ways classroom education cannot. Viewing international sport as a form of ‘development education’, my interlocutors perceive the educative value of SFD as being rooted in the potential for sport to help move underperforming boys into transnational flows of remittances to the family. In this way, Samoans perceive sport as enabling ‘at risk’ youth to serve their families, to learn English and to become globally minded, ultimately equipping them with the skills needed to achieve transnational futures once beyond their reach. In allowing a grassroots understanding of SFD to emerge, the paper challenges the assumption that the institutions of sport and education are compatible, mutually reinforcing and complementary. Specifically, viewing sport as an alternative to schooling may serve to reintegrate underperforming young men back into an education-to-employment pipeline, but it also carries important implications for the de-skilling of youth and the perpetuation of their positions of marginality. The paper calls into question the role of education and sport in and for development, highlighting important questions that SFD stakeholders should consider.     

本科大学独立学院学生健身需求的分析

采用文献资料法、问卷调查法与数理统计法,对独立学院学生的健身需求情况进行了分析。研究表明:多数学生关注自身的健康;多数学生认为健康状况与就业有关系;学生了解健身的途径主要是体育课;多数学生尚未养成健身习惯;兴趣、意志品质、认识和设施器材、校园体育文化气氛、天气环境是影响学生健身的因素;科学锻炼的理论和方法等是学生健身过程中所需求的。     

‘Science Slam’ and sportification processes in science

Abstract

Sport’s relation to society could be grasped in its connection to science. Thus, there seem to exist two parallel processes: the scientification of sport and the sportification of science. Undoubtedly, science has become an important part in the development of sport, particularly in elite sport. As regards the relation between science and sport, an opposite trend has also been observed, in which sport logic influences the (popular) presentation of science. In this respect, this essay talks about the ‘sportification of science’, by making reference to ‘Science Slam’ and ‘Grand Prix in Science’.     

Stories of Haka and Women’s Rugby in Aotearoa New Zealand: Weaving Identities and Ideologies Together

Abstract

Sociology and history are intimately related to each other and cannot be clearly separated or isolated from each other which resonates with a Māori view of time (the past, present, and future are not distinct entities) and realms (the spiritual and human in particular). This paper uses pūrākau and storytelling to explore how haka performed by strong women in tribal narratives, in Māori contexts, and in women’s rugby creates a more nuanced understanding of the embodied discourses associated with intersecting identities (gender, race, ethnicity, class) in and around the sport of rugby union. As a Māori woman, heavily invested in the sport of rugby union, how did the words and actions of Māori women from my past influence my present and my future and how was this embodied and experienced through haka? In particular, my 10 years as a member of the New Zealand women’s rugby team and my understanding of the histories or pūrākau (tribal stories) of strong women in te ao Māori (the Māori world) inform this paper. This will help to illustrate how history and sociology are intimately connected and highlights how intersecting stories told through time, from different perspectives can influence key learnings in sport.     

竞技仪式的重构：体育表演学在中国的发展态势

体育表演学是运用人类表演学的理论和方法,对体育有关的文化活动进行研究的一门学科。本文运用文献资料法等方法对体育表演学在中国的发展进行综述,试图对体育表演学在中国的发展有一个相对较为全面的认知,认为：中国关于体育表演学的研究相对比较少,尽管有部分学者致力于体育表演学的研究,也发表了相关研究成果,然而从严格意义上讲,中国尚未形成完整的体育表演学理论体系,没有明确的学科概念,对体育表演学的研究还处于初步探索阶段。     

Federal Government Involvement in Australian Disability Sport, 1981–2015

Abstract

Few historical accounts of Australian sport policy have explicitly profiled the federal government’s involvement in disability sport. In this paper, we draw on the concept of ableism as a lens to address this lacuna. In doing so, we profile the history of the Commonwealth government involvement in disability sport and explore how the policy of ‘mainstreaming’ has emerged through partnerships led by the Australian Paralympic Committee with National Sporting Originations (NSOs) and government. We highlight that whilst these changes have arguably made mainstream NSOs more aware of their legal obligations and have led to positive changes in the provision of opportunities for people with a disability through the development of ‘Paralympic pathways’, there is some evidence of potential caveats of ‘mainstreaming’. Specifically, we point to an emerging body of evidence which suggests that despite these policy measures, people with disabilities still report being marginalized and excluded from ‘mainstream’ sporting programmes. Therefore, we question if less governmental leadership is the right path given the limitations of the present policy framework. Additionally, we highlight how performance-based funding mechanisms such as ‘Winning Edge’ are narrowing who is eligible for funding and thus curtailing finite resources for only the most ‘abled’ of the disabled.     

论现代思维方式下体育功能的强化

从转变思维方式的角度,探讨高科技时代思维方式的特征及其与运动人体科学的关系,以强化体育的功能,减少导致异化的因素,使体育运动健康发展。现代思维方式具有大系统思维突破简单性、大开放思维突破封闭性、大目标思维突破孤立性、大科学思维突破狭隘性等特征。体育的教育功能、政治功能、社会功能、经济功能等需要进一步强化。     

功能动作训练在竞技体育中的前沿实践

功能动作训练的重要意义在于优化人体各个动作模式、预防运动损伤、加强康复效果和质量、提高运动员的耐用性和延长运动寿命。在我国高水平运动训练前沿实践领域,现代动作科学理论与前沿方法的应用,正体现在我国多支顶级水平国家队常规系统的训练中,日益广泛和深入地实施功能动作训练,为运动队和运动员们创造超乎寻常的运动成绩,为他们备战2012年伦敦奥运会保驾护航。