The aesthetics of sport and the arts: competing and complementary

Abstract

Sport has a distinctive aesthetic that derives from its ontological basis in competition, indeterminism and emergence. The aim in sport is to compete, rather than the production of aesthetic value. An effective way to secure the latter, however, is pursuit of the former: competition in sport is at least part of the explanation of its aesthetics. The dramatic spectacle of sport, on the other hand, can also be explained by the metaphysical indeterminism that it must assume. If sporting outcomes were either deterministic or entirely indeterministic, sport would have no interest for us. Instead, outcomes are produced by actions that dispose towards certain outcomes without necessitating them. Finally, emergence is productive of aesthetic values especially in team sports, where the whole can be substantially more than (or less than) the abilities of the individual players. These three features, taken together, account for the special nature of the sporting aesthetic.     

Club Identity/Class Identity: Negotiations of Popular Memory by Followers of the Australian Football League

A lot of the fun in contemporary sports talk relies on shared understandings about the culture of competitive sporting teams. The purpose of this paper is to explore how often humorous discourses are negotiated by sport fans as they narrate a sense of their own history and identity as followers of professional sports teams. This analysis draws on research conducted with followers of the Australian Football League (AFL), which included 21 life story interviews. As an oral historian, I was interested in how individuals negotiated popular ideas about Australian football in the ‘composition’ of their memories. This attention to the dynamic between the public and personal is described as a ‘popular memory approach’ to oral history. In this paper I explore the place of class in popular understandings about AFL club cultures. I argue that the role class plays in popular discourse around sporting club cultures is revealed more fully when we examine the ways in which individuals – in this case followers of AFL teams – make sense of it.     

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.     

Exploring referee abuse through the lens of the collegiate rugby coach

Referees are valuable contributors to the legitimacy of a sporting contest. Despite this, abuse in sport has become a growing concern and is regularly noted as an obstacle with which referees must contend. Continued abuses have been associated with referee discontinuation and have been noted as a detrimental influence in the recruitment and retention of referees. Sporting organizations, coaches, and players all feel the impact when there is an inadequate supply of referees. Coaches have been noted as a primary perpetrator of referee abuse; thus, in this study, the authors utilize a phenomenological approach to explore perceptions of referee abuse through the lens of the collegiate rugby coach. Data were collected from 15 participants, all of whom completed two phone interviews. Five factors that influence one's perceptions of and proclivity towards referee abuse emerged from the data: (a) personal characteristics/philosophies, (b) relationships, (c) social influences, (d) organizational expectations, and (e) culture. Implications to practice and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

Introduction: Other peoples' games: Indigenous peoples and sport in North America

This article seeks to explore some theoretical and methodological issues that have arisen in a wider study into sport, gender and sexuality. The study aims to bring together, in creative ways, different academic traditions of history, literature and gender studies through a common medium – the novel. My foundational assumption is that knowledge may be both generated and uncovered through fictional representations such as Tom Brown's Schooldays (1857), This Sporting Life (1960) and Fever Pitch ([1992] 2000). The questions the article poses are: what are the epistemological implications of reading sporting histories through fictional representations? How might we theorise about the lived reality of historical actors through a reading of sport novels? How can fictional texts be read alongside more traditional archival material? I argue that the novel allows access to theoretical thinking that enables an examination of human conditions such as the need for fantasy, intuition and myth, which other archival material might not reveal, thus enriching our understanding of the past.     

Action theory and the value of sport

I present a corrective to the formalist and conventionalist down-playing of physical actions in the understanding of the value of sport. I give a necessarily brief account of the Causal Theory of Action (CTA) and its implications for the normativity of actions. I show that the CTA has limitations, particularly in the case of failed or incomplete actions, and I show that failed or incomplete actions are constitutive of sport. This allows me to open up the space for another model, drawn from Aristotle, for failed or incomplete actions, conceived of as ‘doables.’ This avoids some of the problems of the CTA. I explain the importance of difficult but doable actions, at which athletes often fail, and suggest that this establishes pro tanto value. Finally, I claim that this account of the actions that are constitutive of sport deepens our understanding of the value of sport as a whole.     

Ways of Seeing,Ways of Telling: From Art History to Sport History

Art and sport tend to be regarded as very dissimilar areas of human endeavour. Yet, the excellence of human achievement attained in both fields promotes a similarity of consideration that suggests a degree of commonality in the respective methodologies of scholars working on the history of art and the history of sport. A particular sensitivity for sport historians has involved wanting to appear to be doing more than telling stories about great sportspeople and sporting contests. While this is an understandable concern, sport historians risk engaging in something other than ‘sport history’ if they allow anxiety to compromise the discussion of their core subject matter. The history of the history of art reveals a related tension over the existence of a canon of great artists. This tension has not been, and need not be, resolved. Sport historians do well to consider its negotiation as they think through ways to enhance their own modi operandi.     

Examining social identity and intrateam moral behaviours in competitive youth ice hockey using stimulated recall

Social identity – identity formed through membership in groups – may play an important role in regulating intrateam moral behaviour in youth sport (Bruner, M. W., Boardley, I., & Côté, J. (2014). Social identity and prosocial and antisocial behavior in youth sport. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 15(1), 56–64. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2013.09.003). The aim of this study was to qualitatively examine this potential role through stimulated recall interviews with competitive youth-ice-hockey players. Twenty-three players (M_age = 13.27 years, SD = 1.79) who reported engaging in high, median or low frequency of antisocial teammate behaviour (determined through pre-screening with the Prosocial and Antisocial Behaviour in Sport Scale [Kavussanu, M., & Boardley, I. D. (2009). The prosocial and antisocial behavior in sport scale. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 31(1), 97–117. doi:10.1123/jsep.31.1.97]) were recruited from eight youth-ice-hockey teams in Canada. Interviews involved participants recalling their thoughts during prosocial/antisocial interactions with teammates, prompted by previously recorded video sequences of such incidents. Thematic analysis of interview data revealed all athletes – regardless of reported frequency of intrateam antisocial behaviour – felt prosocial interactions with teammates enhanced social identity. In contrast, the perceived influence of antisocial teammate behaviour on social identity differed depending on athletes’ reported frequency of intrateam antisocial behaviour; those reporting low and median frequencies described how such behaviour undermines social identity, whereas athletes reporting high frequency did not perceive this effect. The study findings highlight the potential importance of intrateam moral behaviour and social identity for youth-sport team functioning.     

The role of science in the practice of talent identification: a case study from gymnastics in New Zealand

Abstract

Talent identification is an example of a practice where ‘scientism threatens to engulf us all.’ Talent identification and development are areas where models perceived to be scientific have been uncritically adopted into sporting practice due to the belief that they represent best practice. In this article, I track the changing talent identification systems adopted in the sport of rhythmic gymnastics in New Zealand over approximately 20 years. The findings revealed that those in decision-making positions originally adopted the perspective of scientism in introducing a physical ability test which they perceived to have scientific value. However, scientific testing was later removed owing to the now empowered gymnastics coaches drawing on what Foucault referred to as local knowledge, acquired through their own experiences. Their experiences resulted in the coaches believing in the importance of what Latour described as social practices being more significant in talent identification than scientific testing.     

An Analysis of Playground Surface Injuries

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of skill competence and tactical sophistication during a games unit conducted following the features of sport education provided by Siedentop (1994). One team of six players was followed through a 30-lesson season of “Ultimate.” Using Gréhaigne, Godbout, and Bouthier's (1997) formula for an efficiency index, together with a number of other measures of skill and tactical competence, it was determined that these students made significant improvements in selection and execution dimensions of the game. Furthermore, lower skilled students did not feel marginalized within their teams and believed they had equal opportunities for improvement. The key reasons for developing competence in this setting were the sufficient length of the season to allow for significant practice opportunities and the consistent team membership throughout season, which allowed all players to develop a sense of usefulness. This curriculum model provides one way students can develop skills through a system of game playing, provided sport education units are structured to prevent the more skillful players from dominating the games.     

‘It’s alpha omega for succeeding and thriving’: parents,children and sporting cultivation in Norway

It has become increasingly apparent, internationally, that childhood is a crucial life-stage in the formation of predispositions towards sports participation and that parents are increasingly investing in the sporting capital of their children via a process of ‘concerted cultivation’. It is surprising, therefore, that parents’ involvement in the development of their children's sporting interests has received so little attention in Norway, given that sport is a significant pastime for Norwegians and participation has been steadily increasing – among youngsters, in particular – over the past several decades. Through a qualitative case study of a combined primary and secondary school in a small Norwegian city, this study sought to add to recent explorations of the role of parents in children's sporting involvement in Norway. As expected, it was evident that sport becomes taken for granted and internalised very early on in Norwegian children's lives. Less expected was the recognition that children's nascent sporting interests were often generated by sports clubs via early years schooling and, therefore, that parents played only one (albeit very important) part in the formation of their youngsters’ early sporting habits. Thus, parents, sports clubs and early years schooling appeared to form something akin to a ‘sporting trinity’ in youngsters’ nascent sporting careers. These findings may have implications for policy-makers looking towards Norway for a ‘recipe’ for sports participation.     

Jordanian national football Muslimat players: Interrupting Islamophobia in FIFA's hijab ban

Background: Though musli m females exclusion from physical activities and sports has concerned scholars for years, they are still being theorized out of context and out of history and not as agents in their own lives. Within the prevailing context of the ‘War on Terror,’ muslim females are becoming more racialized in sports and are unnecessarily constructed as needing protection and void of any agency. In 2010, a crisis emerged out of the International Federation of Association Football's (FIFA) erratic interpretation of Law 4 which excluded muslim females players with a head/cover gear deemed unsafe on the field. This crisis highlighted the importance of understanding not only the targeted exclusion of muslim female players but also the importance of working with muslim female national football players and the possibilities of them resisting the racializing and gendering logics of a mega-sport institution such as FIFA.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand how five women football players on the Jordanian national team negotiated FIFA's ‘hijab ban’ of 2011. Particularly, it seeks the perspectives of the players themselves – whether they are wearing the head and/or neck cover or not and whether their muslimness is visible or not – and their stories of how they negotiated FIFA's ‘hijab ban’ (2011–2012).

Methodology: This paper is part of a larger critical qualitative study based on (1) dialogical interviews with five football players on the Jordanian national team, (2) material the players crafted and used to campaign against FIFA's ‘hijab ban,’ (3) players’ journals, (4) email correspondence and (5) web-based campaigning material. I deploy arab-muslim feminist scholars’ more complicated understanding of the hijab and theorize of how muslim women's bodies are regulated by two interconnected hijabophobias, the Islamist and Western-Islamophobic.

Findings: The findings are organized in the following themes: (1) experiencing humiliation and injustice, (2) exposing FIFA's Islamophobic standpoint and (3) resisting through solidarity and activism. The results suggest that the muslim female football players on the Jordanian national team exposed the FIFA's Islamophobic hijabophobia in its interpretation of Law 4. They acted with resilience and political savviness to regain the right to play while being muslim female under FIFA's laws. This suggests that muslim females are active agents in their own lives and on a global level. They are able to counter the racializing injustices produced by very powerful sport institutions. Non-muslim/Western policy-makers, researchers, teachers and trainers working among muslim women and youth need to consider this example as a frame to their participatory research, critical pedagogies, and physical education (PE) and sport curricula. They need to recognize that we are living a moment in history in which muslim women's bodies are sites of both the Islamist and the colonialist anxieties in their struggles for power. Thus, they need to urgently be engaged in the theories and pedagogical approaches that challenge both the Islamist and the Islamophobic hijabophobias in sport and PE.     

The ‘East Asian’ Olympic Games: what of sustainable legacies?

Sport has proven to be an unstoppable globalising force. The Olympic Movement has come to epitomise modernisation and the extent to which Western sport has become globalised. The philosophy of Olympism, once resting upon just two pillars of Excellence in Sport and Culture has since 1994 been underpinned by a third, the Environment. All of the Olympic Games host cities now have to support a responsible concern for environmental issues and with that the very sustainability of ‘our’ culture, and sport itself. They must do so by bequeathing a holistic positive legacy from their Games. This paper will analyse the three ‘Asian’ Olympic Summer Olympic Games – Tokyo 1964, Seoul 1988 and Beijing 2008 – by looking at the cultural, sporting and environmental legacies each has left.

The discussion of the concept of sustainability as an element of culture will embrace Littig and Griessler’s idea that social sustainability is about the quality of societies expressed through the nature-society relationships and is not merely an economically based notion.1 ?1.?Littig & Griessler, ‘Social Sustainability’, 72. In this paper we consider the three Asian Summer Olympic Games. Each has been related to a specific nodal point in the host country's national history, as a means of illustrating, indeed emphasising, the always unique impacts of context on event and process. Yet we propose that, locked as they are in distinct epochs and differing cultural, political and economic contexts, they are nonetheless marked in common by an Asian discourse heavily reliant upon economic and nationalistic motivations.

The progressive analysis of each Games demonstrates that although each was unique, particularly in regards to the expectations stakeholders had of ‘their Olympics’, all three host nations represented themselves as ‘modern hybrids’ by simultaneously demonstrating their modernised characters and emphasising their ancient cultures. The analysis demonstrates the holistic impact of these events by reference to the wide range of economic, social, cultural and sporting changes that have emerged for each host from each festival. The evaluation of the nature and significance of these legacies reemphasises the impact of the Olympic Games as a vehicle for social change and illustrates the transformative power of sport at national and global levels.     

高等体育院校借力高水平赛事塑造形象的策略

高水平赛事汇聚大众传媒和社会公众的关注,是赛事组织方塑造品牌形象的重要契机.通过对高校形象内涵的分析,提出高等体育院校在公众中存在刻板印象,可借力高水平赛事的举办,发挥自身优势,开展多方互动,自塑、他塑与合塑品牌,消弭负面刻板印象,树立良好形象.     

Competition as cooperation

Games have a complex, and seemingly paradoxical structure: they are both competitive and cooperative, and the competitive element is required for the cooperative element to work out. They are mechanisms for transforming competition into cooperation. Several contemporary philosophers of sport have located the primary mechanism of conversion in the mental attitudes of the players. I argue that these views cannot capture the phenomenological complexity of game-play, nor the difficulty and moral complexity of achieving cooperation through game-play. In this paper, I present a different account of the relationship between competition and cooperation. My view is a distributed view of the conversion: success depends on a large number of features. First, the players must achieve the right motivational state: playing for the sake of the struggle, rather than to win. Second, successful transformation depends on a large number of extra-mental features, including good game design, and social and institutional features.     

Sportbezogenes Handeln in virtuellen sozialen Netzwerken

Adolescent living environments are highly influenced by the media and virtual social networks are becoming increasingly more important as mediators of the social environment and as distinct realities. In virtual rooms adolescents can interact, present themselves, show their social embedding in relationships and groups, and experience recognition and affirmation. Social networks offer space for dealing with juvenile developmental tasks and productive negotiations of identities. The increase in internet-based leisure patterns in adolescence is often described as a displacement of sport activities, although current studies report rather independent or engaging relations between physical and media activities. In social networks, such as facebook or instagram, a multitude of sporting scenes and topics can be found, whether this involves (audio)visual representations of individual sport activties, fan affiliation to professional sport, or virtual fitness programs. This study analyzes the meaning and relevance of the sport-related use of social networks for sport activties and the development of sporting identities. In qualitative guideline interviews with young adults (n =10) from various sporting contexts, three meaningful threads of a sport-related use of social networks for sport activities were identified: organization of sport activities, improvement of sporting abilities, and increase in motivation. Furthermore, the interviews disclosed three relevant concepts of sporting identities within the sport-related use of social networks that largely correspond with developmental tasks. The empirical findings reveal differentiated insights into the meaning of the sport-related use of social networks and confirm a high relevance for sport activities of young adults and the development and negotiation of their sporting identities.     

从体育学与法学的视角对球场暴力概念的重构

从体育学的视角看,球场暴力就是在体育活动中,竞技人员与竞技人员之间、竞技人员与非竞技人员之间和单纯的非竞技人员之间所发生的暴力行为;而暴力行为的危害性不甚相同,对其进行层次性划分实有必要。从法学的角度看,竞技人员与竞技人员之间的球场暴力行为,一般由有关的体育社会团体加以处罚;而竞技人员与非竞技人员之间和单纯的非竞技人员之间所发生的暴力行为,则应当由公安机关进行处理,其中竞技人员对非竞技人员进行的暴力行为,应当实行“双罚制”,既要由体育社会团体对其进行处罚,也要求公安机关依法追究其行政责任。