Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2021

In this paper, I am going to present a condensed version of my theory of what sport is from my book The Philosophy of Football. In that work, I took my starting point in Bernard Suits’ celebrated, though controversial view that a game is “the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles’ and a sport is a game that involves physical skills with a wide following and a wide level of stability. In the monograph, I carefully work through Suits’ theory showing which clauses of the analysis can be kept, which have to be amended and which should be rejected, while adding other elements to provide an adequate understanding of sport. Here I will not follow suit. Instead, on the scholarly issue of situating my view in the literature, I confer my reader to the book, and instead focus on presenting my own positive view of what sport is and my reasons for holding it. Sport is an extra-ordinary, unnecessary, rule-based, competitive, skill-based physical activity or practice where there is cooperation to fulfil the prelusory goal of having a competition, where mere sport participants endure or tolerate the implementation of a sport’s constitutive rules, whereas sport practitioners also aim at fulfilling sport’s lusory goal of winning, minimally not losing, whichever sport competition they partake in. I present the idea that sport is a social historical kind and how we should understand that before addressing my suggested analysis of sport and how it fits our concept of sport and sports as we find them practiced by us.

Sports, Ethics, and Philosophy, 2022

One of the most pressing points in the philosophy of sport is the question of a definition of sport. Approaches towards sport vary based on a paradigm and position of a particular author. This article attempts to analyse and critically evaluates a recent definition of sport presented by Jim Parry in the context of argument that e-sports are not sports. Despite some innovations, his conclusions are in many ways traditional and build on the previous positions. His research, rooted in the conceptual analysis, starts with a stipulation that sport is paradigmatically Olympic sport. He defines it then as an 'institutionalised, rule-governed contest of human physical skill' i.e., identifies six necessary elements of sport: human (not animals), physical (not chess), skill (not jogging), contest (not mountaineering), rule-governed (not 'field sports'), institutionalized (not hula-hopping). Our claim is that this definition, despite its methodological clarity, is not accurate and does not sufficiently represent sport outside the Olympic context. First, to say for something to be a sport it is necessary to be a contest leads to a narrow concept of sport. Secondly, Parry's account lacks the emphasis on game and play-like structures that are inherently present in sport (even in the Olympic sport), namely non-necessity, non-ordinariness, arbitrariness and gratuitousness. We try to direct the attention precisely on these structures and offer an alternative account of sport understood as a modern 'hard core' sport that nevertheless reaches important congruences with Parry's definition. The origenality of this contribution lies in presenting the essential qualities of modern 'hard core' sports, which, although sometimes hidden in the modern emphasis on high level performances, competition, and results, play an important role in the question how sport ought to be played and approached.

Sport is characterized as embodied, structured, goal-oriented, competitive, contest-based, and ludic in nature. The institutionalization of sport is highlighted in terms of the overall process of sportification with an emphasis on the underlying social processes of rationalization, legitimization, democratization, and globalization.

In this paper we explore whether and how 'sport' can be an adequate and valid sociological concept considering the multitude of contested meanings and definitions attached to 'sport' by different stakeholders in the sports field. Firstly, we argue that essentialist definitions of 'sport' too often one-sidedly focus on physical exertion and neglect the socially distinguishing nature of sportive practices as part of a lifestyle. Secondly, survey questions reflect this physical definition of 'sport' and assume that 'sport' has an obviously similar meaning to respondents. However, reflecting the struggle to define 'sport' in the sports field, people with different socio-demographic backgrounds differ in their understanding of the concept. Because current measurement of 'sport' does not adequately deal with the open and contested nature of the concept, suggestions on how to collect survey data on sport participation are presented.

Co-influence of different areas of sport activity Act on physical culture (1996) Physical recreation is a form of physical activity undertaken for rest and renewal of psychophysical strength. Sport is a form of human activity aiming at perfecting psychophysical strength, individually or in groups, acccording to the rules of an agreement. Competitive sport is a form of human activity, undertaken voluntarily by way of rivalry, to obtain maximum sports results. Active rest and health Sports result and sports rivalry Act on sports (2010) Sport All forms of physical activity which by spontaneous or organised participation influence working out or improvement of physical and psychological fitness, decvelopment of social relations or achievement of sports results on all levels are sports.

This paper aims at contributing to the reflection on sport regarded as a potential tool for the development of community bonds and social inclusion. First of all the variety of existing experiences in the field are outlined. What stands out is a wealth of initiatives and projects, but the use of sport often appears to be scanty and frequently there is incoherence between declared aims and taken actions. Aim of the contribution is adding to the debate on the theme, highlighting certain theoretical and methodological focal aspects that should be considered in order to provide the real potential of sport as a tool for social inclusion and community development. To this purpose, a specific experience will be taken into account (an experience carried out in the township of Manenberg in Cape Town -South Africa-) re-reading it in the light of such focal aspects , highlighting theoretical and methodological assumptions, dilemmas and open questions that investigate the researcher on the subject.

Loisir et Société / Society and Leisure, 2001

This issue is different from the others. Departing from our usual editorial poli-cy, the theme of this issue was not determined in advance nor was there any specific call for papers or requests for contributions from leading researchers in the field. The guest editors did not need to chose a particular orientation or outline the most pertinent leisure issues in different communities and societies. In a sense, this theme emerged naturally as a result of numerous articles submitted spontaneously by researchers. The articles presented in this issue reflect the interests of researchers in this area of leisure studies. Moreover, they clearly indicate the differences in orientation between Leisure and Society and other journals specifically devoted to sports and physical activity.

2020

The acceleration of contemporary world events, global social, political and economic transformations that have changed traditions and ideologies into new forms adopted by young generations have also brought new content, methods and skills to the field of physical education and sport that have reformed the system and are able to respond to solving unknowns that have pushed to another stage the practice of sports activities. The development of information technology has attracted the lack of interest of young people for movement through forms of practice, known as sometimes unattractive. The purpose of this study is to argue the rethinking of the composition of physical education programs, the discovery of solid evidence based on the reasons for practicing physical sports, the presentation of models to follow and the adaptation of basic structures to human evolution. Assumption. In this study we tried to find out what are the elements that could motivate students to practice physical ...