Global Perspectives on Sport and Physical Cultures

Annette Hofmann, Gerald R. Gems, Maureen Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781134821822
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Études relatives au genre

Global Perspectives of Sport and Physical Culture is a compilation of diverse essays derived from the works of prominent international scholars that address significant international issues relative to sporting practices from a historical perspective. A variety of movement cultures are examined and analysed, such as various aspects of the turner and gymnastic movements, the transnational development of dance, competitive sport, non-competitive performance, and mountaineering.

Michael Krüger´s introductory chapter sets a framework for analysis with a historiographical and philosophical treatment of modern sport as an example of nationalism, internationalism and cultural imperialism. The succeeding chapters discuss the confrontation of commercialization with national interests, the importance of gender in the construction of various movement cultures, as well as the conditions and circumstances that effect societal and cultural change. This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Global Perspectives on Sports and Movement Cultures: From Past to Present – Modern Sports between Nationalism, Internationalism, and Cultural Imperialism

Michael Krüger

Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The presentation uses the slogan of the ISHPES-congress ‘Global perspectives on Sports and Movement Cultures: From Past to Present’ in Qatar, by focusing on the development of modern sports which involve nationalism, internationalism, and cultural imperialism. Theoretical considerations on sports history and universal history form the introduction to the presentation. Sports have indeed become universal and taken on global perspectives, but both factors are based on local, regional, and national physical cultures. In a second step, the thesis of sport as a ‘pattern of modern universal culture’ (Bausinger) is discussed. Deep structures of anthropologically based categories of (natural) physical cultures like running, jumping, or throwing are differentiated from surface-oriented structures such as man-made sport. The notion of sport as a dominant, but permanently changing form (and content) of modern physical culture is described and explained with respect to the work of Allen Guttmann and Norbert Elias.

This paper is closely related to the slogan of the ISHPES-congress ‘Global Perspectives on Sports and Physical Cultures: From Past to Present’ which took place in Qatar 2014. This undoubtedly broad topic includes universal approaches to sports history. The aim of this paper is to reflect on and discuss theoretically these various approaches to sports and games – in the broadest sense of these words – with respect to their universal and global understanding. In fact, a direct motif for these reflections entails the attempts of Arabic states, especially Qatar, to gain access to global sports and sports events by organizing world championships like that of handball (2015), athletics (2019), and soccer (2022), which are discussed intensively in the world press. Simultaneously, mainly in the Islamic world, opposition to Western culture is increasing. Islamism and Islamic terrorism are not least motivated by a fundamental challenge from Western culture and civilization that is regarded as faithless and sinful. No doubt, modern sport is part of the powerful tradition of that Western culture and civilization.

In the past, various volumes on universal histories of sport and physical education were published, some by German scholars like Carl Diem, Horst Ueberhorst, and Henning Eichberg and some by anglophone historians like Richard Mandell and Allen Guttmann, mostly written in English.¹

In 1925/1926, the German scholar Gustav A.E. Bogeng (1881–1960) edited a two-volume book titled Geschichte des Sports aller Völker und Zeiten (History of sport of all people and times) which can be regarded as one of the first attempts to publish a universal history of sport.² Numerous famous historians and anthropologists participated at this ambitious project.

In a sense, Guttmann has written the most chronologically and geographically comprehensive books on the social and cultural history of sport. He considered all relevant aspects concerning international, universal, and global issues of sport and physical culture. Therefore, this paper is dedicated to him. It follows in his footsteps as much as possible, and even attempts to go a few small steps further.

A major issue for Guttmann was the question of whether modern sports are distinctive from premodern forms of physical culture, movement culture, exercise, games, and sports. This cannot be answered without clear criteria defining the difference between the two. In 1978, when Guttmann wrote his comprehensive book From Ritual to Record: The Nature of Modern Sports, he analyzed the remarkable difference between the formal-structural characteristics of premodern and modern sports. He did this by focusing on seven characteristics: secularism, equality, specialization, rationalization, bureaucracy, quantification, and, finally, the quest for records. In sum, striving for records seemed to be ‘The Nature of Modern Sports.’³ Guttmann did not invent these characteristics through his own intuition and understanding, but with regard to the famous German sociologist Max Weber. With the exception of the quest for records, these characteristics seemed to demonstrate rather strikingly the force of the instrumental rationality (Zweckrationalität) of that modernity. By contrast, and that argument may be used as a major critique of the Guttmann–Weberian interpretation of modern sport, sport and games are in fact irrational, in the sense that it does not seem rational to run as fast as possible around a stadium just to arrive again at the starting point.

Weber was chiefly responsible for inspiring the contemporary dispute about modernity and the development of modern societies, by contrast to premodern or – as one could argue 100 years after Weber – postmodern societies as well, or societies and cultures choosing alternative paths to the future such as major parts of the Islamic world actually do.

At the end of this paper, the historiographical problem of defining the nature of modern sports, according to the Weberian criteria employed by Guttmann, is considered once again.

Modern Sport is Universal

Sport has become truly universal and taken on truly global perspectives, but this universalization has taken place concurrently with the persistence based on local, regional, and national physical culture that is not readily understood if we limit ourselves to Guttmann's paradigm. One consequence of the limitations of Guttmann's paradigm is that local and regional traditions of physical culture and sports have not been researched at the same level of scholarship as universal sports. The failure to do justice to local and regional tradition is partly a result of the narrowness of the evidentiary base, partly a result of historians lacking an interest in acquiring the relevant knowledge, the ‘Erkenntnis leitende Interesse’ (interest-led knowledge), as the philosopher Jürgen Habermas argues.⁴

This notion refers to the tradition of German scholars with regard to philosophical and theoretical reflection, but really just means the simple experience that only we can ourselves know what we are interested in. And we are usually interested in such knowledge with promises to deliver some form of profit or commercial value, or it could conform to some social ideal or nonmaterial value. In short, what we know about the history of sport and physical culture is the result of social, cultural, and, not least, political power.

We know much more about European and American sports and physical cultures than about those of Asia, Africa, South America, Oceania, and also of the Middle East, including Arabic countries and the Gulf region.⁵ The reason for this lack of knowledge is not only a lack of appropriate sources and documents, but also a deficiency of current research, depending of course on the level of education and cultural development of these regions of the world.

Guttmann and other scholars, for example, the German-Danish historian Henning Eichberg, are aware of these deficiencies in the cultural historiography of sport and physical education.⁶ Their work entails many remarks about the lack of cultural studies and the challenge of providing more and better knowledge about the various histories of sport and physical culture beyond the confines of the Western or European world. An additional problem is to translate, analyze, or process and to communicate such knowledge of other physical cultures.

Eichberg once referred to detecting the sand under the boulders of civilization which means, with respect to our topic, to jettison the burden of the so-called civilized modern sport, which is in fact an invention or construction of modern and powerful civilization or even ethnocentrism, imperialism,⁷ and colonialism,⁸ or at least eurocentrism.⁹ Instead, we ought to seek out the local and regional traditions reflected in modern sports. To express this criticism with respect to the neglected history of body and movement culture beyond the ‘civilized world’ of modern sport, for example, the Arabic and Islamic cultures, we should examine the Arabic sand, even though the boulders of Western and sporting civilization impede its detection. To say in different words, we should not only expect to find oil under the sand, but also, metaphorically speaking, the Arabic culture of games and physical education.

It is certainly the case that the current status of sports history is, among other factors, a social construction of Western researchers, often male researchers. Therefore, some postmodernist scholars (who are still mostly Western males) call for a deconstruction of this history and demand, by contrast, a cultural and linguistic turn of sport history.¹⁰ I think there is some validity in these demands. However, historical research is based on empirical facts, documents, and sources. Cultural approaches in sport history are therefore just as plausible and useful as hard work on both documents and theoretical considerations.

Sport, Physical Culture, or Movement Culture – Just a Matter of Words?

From a universal and even pedagogical perspective, the question has been raised of whether the word (or term) sport is adequate for expressing the variety of human movements at various times and in various cultures. Authors like the Austrian physical educator Stefan Größing, for example, prefer the word movement culture, in order to distance himself from sport as a special type of modern body culture of the west, including morally questionable tendencies like aggressiveness, commerce, doping, cheating, and so on.¹¹ Recently, with an international perspective, Gavin Ward argued in favor of the term movement culture instead of sport. ‘Movement Culture maintains the educational purpose of Physical Education by developing meaningful subject matter and contextualised learning that reflect contemporary and evolving participation in Sport.’¹²

In fact, Größing argued in terms of a tradition of German and Austrian Leibeserziehung, which translates as physical education in English. However, Leibeserziehung is different from and in fact more than just physical education. It includes more than physical exercises, sport, and games, to include the overall education of pupils' bodies and minds, by means of various bodily and movement experiences. In fact, Leibeserziehung means the human body inspired by the soul and, therefore, entails more than mere physical training and fitness. In summary, the German concept of Leibeserziehung focused first on the child as an object of education of body and mind, and second on body exercises or sport and games as cultural phenomena, which seem more or less appropriate for educational purposes. Contents and forms of cultural practices had to be proved for their use for educational purposes (Bildung), and was the educational idea of the concept of Leibeserziehung.

In fact, physical education is the worldwide terminus technicus for obligatory school sport. From a pedagogical perspective, German-speaking theorists of physical education since the 1920s argued that sport, especially the excesses of ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Sport in the Global Society: Historical Perspectives
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Foreword
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Foreword
• 1. Global Perspectives on Sports and Movement Cultures: From Past to Present – Modern Sports between Nationalism, Internationalism, and Cultural Imperialism
• 2. Reconsidering the Female Tradition in English Physical Education: The Impact of Transnational Exchanges in Modern Dance
• 3. Gender and Sports within the Equine Sector – A Comparative Perspective
• 4. Gold Medals and White Economy: Winter Olympic Games and the Making of the French Elite (1959–2013)
• 5. Sporting Events Organized in Venice: Male Boating and the Amazing Case of Women’s Rowing Contests
• 6. Climbing Beyond the Summits: Social and Global Aspects of Women’s Expeditions in the Himalayas
• 7. Diversity versus Unity: A Comparative Analysis of the Complex Roots of the World Gymnaestrada
• 8. Between Traditions and New Challenges: 25 Years of the International Society of the History of Physical Education and Sport (ISHPES)
• Index