The Modernisation of Sociability in Sport: The Jura Department seen Through the Eyes of the Local Press During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century

Sport is often perceived as physical activity or spectacle. It is also a relational and spatial phenomenon. At the end of the nineteenth century, in eastern France, close to Switzerland, the Jura area felt the first convulsions of sportivisation. The rationalisation of behaviours permitted the expansion of a particular social space which the newspapers helped to construct. The transformation of a traditional system into a modern social and cultural dynamic was a gradual process which took four decades. The sports phenomenon began to reflect a more generalised modernisation of the region. The records show the initial fracturing of an inward looking groupuscular model. The meetings and journeys among the towns then structured a new sociability based on the sharing of common rules and values which the press helped to validate. Finally, with the growing custom, the matches and past victories ended up functionally combining the local culture with a sports ambition which the local weeklies supported thanks to their enthusiasm for their home town. Before the First World War, the Jura society was ready to welcome the subsequent sports phenomenon because it had developed a whole network able to organise and manage it. The newspapers played a prominent role in disseminating as well as recording the transformation of this sociability.