Varea, Valeria

2016

9789876936903

https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/18881

es

Ediciones CICCUS

1

Perspectivas socio-culturales para pensar el deporte

Book

Publication

'Sport' can be defined as a "physical activity that is performed as a game or competition, that involves training and rules" (Real Academia Espanola, n.d.). However, we know that many physical activities (e.g. dance) are not considered sport. There are activities that after many years are considered sport, and some others that after a few years, are not considered sport anymore. Many people claim that sport includes those physical activities that society has decided to call them 'sport', therefore, sports are socially defined and socially constructed. Furthermore, sports are not neutral activities. They reflect and reinforce meaning and values, and these meanings and values differ from culture to culture. Sports are aspects of the social world that are created by people as they interact with one another under the social, political and economic conditions that exist in their society (Coakley et al., 2009). If we consider sport as a social institution, we could agree that sport includes people who have a significant effect in determining behaviours, motivations and meanings. We can study sport from two main perspectives: a biological perspective or a socio-cultural perspective. This books embraces a socio-cultural perspective to examine sport, its processes and its problems. By adopting a socio-cultural standpoint, this book aims to 'make the familiar strange' in order to be able to study it (Kirk, Nauright, Hanrahan, Macdonald, & Jobling, 1996). When researchers have investigated familiar phenomena (what is more familiar than a soccer game on a Sunday afternoon?), they needed to 'step back' to see and analyse the topic using 'strange eyes'. This also means to be able to challenge taken-for-granted truths and to belie some well-known myths. Study from a socio-cultural angle implies questioning social, cultural, historical, pedagogical and psychological phenomena. Some of the main topics that are included in a socio-cultural viewpoint are, for example, 'race', social class, sexuality, masculinity, femininity, disability, among many others. Some of these themes will be studied in this book, particularly in close relationship with sport. In this way, this book aims to re-think sport from a socio-cultural and worldwide perspective.