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@Institute of Sports Science
Wilhelmstraße 124, 72074 Tübingen
As part of the Early Career Researchers (ECRs) we want to offer you an opportunity to meet new and old friends, to develop connections in your research area and to support your research career.
PhD students and grad students are considered as Early Career Researchers (ECRs).
The day prior to the congress, we offer an Early Career Workshop, in which ECRs have the opportunity to connect with each other. We will start the day with a joint breakfast. After breakfast, ECRs have the opportunity to attend sessions on topics relevant to ECRs along their academic journey.
@Institute of Sports Science
Wächterstraße 67, 72074 Tübingen
S3
Room: Hörsaal
This workshop focuses upon the publishing process from three perspectives: Author, Reviewer and Editor. First, the intention is to increase transparency about the process of working with your paper after you hit ‘submit,’ including the processes that the paper goes through once it has left the author’s desk. I will first discuss the process of publication from the Editorial perspective, including the technical check, initial reviews from the editorial team, and reviewer selection. We will then take the perspective of a Reviewer, and discuss what the reviewer is likely to ‘see,’ what they are likely to focus upon, and how they may construct their feedback. Third, and moving back to the Editorial perspective, we will talk through editorial procedures taken once reviews of a paper are received. We will then complete the session by moving back to the perspective of the Author by talking through what you can do, as an author, to negotiate the often difficult and sometimes ‘distal’ process of responding to
reviewer comments. We will finish the session by co-creating a list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’, share experiences, and talk about good practice to ensure the publishing process runs as smoothly from the perspective of all three roles.
Room: S1
For our scientific work to make a difference in our societies and to reach a wide audience, it is important that it is communicated in accessible ways beyond peer-reviewed scientific journals. Podcasts have become one popular platform for science communication which allows for people to get in contact with research via informal conversations while going for a walk, for example. In this ECR workshop, I will share the story of the Physical Activity Researcher Podcast and the challenges and joys along the journey. We will explore why and how early career researchers might engage with podcasting. Additionally, we will discuss using blogs and Twitter in our science communication and
how these can be not only useful, but enriching activities in our working lives. However, we will also discuss the negative sides of social media and how to avoid them.
Room: S4
The landscape of higher education has been transforming in complex ways over the past three decades and COVID and other global changes present new challenges. The aim of this early career workshop is to provide a forum for students and early career scholars to meet to consider the opportunities and challenges that they currently face or may face in the future. Following a brief overview of the state of higher education, including the impact of COVID-19 on universities (for example, the consequences of turning education into an export commodity, state/university dependency on international students and the impact of the pandemic on international study and student recruitment), we will explore the challenges of contemporary research and teaching. This
will include discussing more foundational elements of developing and maintaining a successful academic career including: how to choose a thesis topic of significance; how to make your research relevant to multiple audiences; how to navigate through the research and publication process; the
importance of teaching and related experience; understanding what makes a candidate attractive to
a university employer; and discussing the potential impacts of COVID-19 and government policy on career opportunities in higher education.
Room: Hörsaal
This workshop focuses upon the publishing process from three perspectives: Author, Reviewer and Editor. First, the intention is to increase transparency about the process of working with your paper after you hit ‘submit,’ including the processes that the paper goes through once it has left the author’s desk. I will first discuss the process of publication from the Editorial perspective, including the technical check, initial reviews from the editorial team, and reviewer selection. We will then take the perspective of a Reviewer, and discuss what the reviewer is likely to ‘see,’ what they are likely to focus upon, and how they may construct their feedback. Third, and moving back to the Editorial perspective, we will talk through editorial procedures taken once reviews of a paper are received. We will then complete the session by moving back to the perspective of the Author by talking through what you can do, as an author, to negotiate the often difficult and sometimes ‘distal’ process of responding to
reviewer comments. We will finish the session by co-creating a list of ‘do’s’ and ‘don’ts’, share experiences, and talk about good practice to ensure the publishing process runs as smoothly from the perspective of all three roles.
Room: S1
For our scientific work to make a difference in our societies and to reach a wide audience, it is important that it is communicated in accessible ways beyond peer-reviewed scientific journals. Podcasts have become one popular platform for science communication which allows for people to get in contact with research via informal conversations while going for a walk, for example. In this ECR workshop, I will share the story of the Physical Activity Researcher Podcast and the challenges and joys along the journey. We will explore why and how early career researchers might engage with podcasting. Additionally, we will discuss using blogs and Twitter in our science communication and
how these can be not only useful, but enriching activities in our working lives. However, we will also discuss the negative sides of social media and how to avoid them.
Room: S4
The landscape of higher education has been transforming in complex ways over the past three decades and COVID and other global changes present new challenges. The aim of this early career workshop is to provide a forum for students and early career scholars to meet to consider the opportunities and challenges that they currently face or may face in the future. Following a brief overview of the state of higher education, including the impact of COVID-19 on universities (for example, the consequences of turning education into an export commodity, state/university dependency on international students and the impact of the pandemic on international study and student recruitment), we will explore the challenges of contemporary research and teaching. This
will include discussing more foundational elements of developing and maintaining a successful academic career including: how to choose a thesis topic of significance; how to make your research relevant to multiple audiences; how to navigate through the research and publication process; the
importance of teaching and related experience; understanding what makes a candidate attractive to
a university employer; and discussing the potential impacts of COVID-19 and government policy on career opportunities in higher education.
@Institute of Sports Science
Wächterstraße 67, 72074 Tübingen
S3
Room: B7N19; Building B Level 7
Building HZM Basement
Room: VBN3; Building HZM Basement
Room: VBN3; Building HZM Basement
Room: N6; Building HZM 1st Floor
Chair: Davide Sterchele
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Chair: Jochen Mayer
Room: 7E02, Building HZM Ground Floor
Objectives: This study aims to evaluate the impact of the program taught to Sports Science students by the Spanish Anti-Doping Agency AEPSAD, called "Vive Sin Trampas", whose objectives are to offer knowledge about doping and raise awareness against its use. Methods: To determine its effectiveness, the study was carried out on a sample of 145 students participating in the program who had to complete a questionnaire prior to the course and two other questionnaires after completing it, one after a week (answered by 54 students) and another after 4 months (answered by 46 students). Findings: Through statistical analysis it was observed, in the students, a substantial increase in knowledge about doping substances and their impact after completing the program, considering them to a greater extent harmful in the short and long term and less beneficial for performance, as well as an increase in moral rejection of doping in sport, although the latter cannot be considered statistically significant. However, they did not consider that there was greater control over doping or greater severity in the sanctions after completing the course. Discussion: Evaluation of educational programs is necessary to increase its impact. Conclusions: AEPSAD’s "Vive Sin Trampas" program increases knowledge and awareness of the impact of using doping substances in sport.
Amateur sport is one potential ingredient for the pursuit of “a good life” in late modern societies. However, people have diverse ways of justifying why (and how much of) amateur sport is valuable in the overall context of how one is leading one’s life, and whether pursuing amateur sport at the expense of other life domains is justified. In our study, we were interested in understanding the everyday philosophies and moral registers that amateur martial artists draw on to make sense of, and justify, the pursuit of martial arts as a life project. We used Foucauldian discourse analysis to explore the constructions of appropriate ways of engaging with martial arts in potku.net, the biggest martial arts discussion forum in Finland. Six discussion threads with 401 entries formed our primary data. In our analysis, we identified two dominant discourses, “the balanced life”, drawing mainly on utilitarian ethics, and “the committed life”, drawing on existentialist and virtue ethics, that were used to justify one’s practice. The balanced life discourse, which measured the worth of the practice by the fruits it brings, was the dominant moral register. Existentialist ethics provided an alternative perspective with the claim that the martial arts practitioner is both free and responsible to create his or her own meaning, and that the value of one’s project cannot be judged solely from the outside. The balanced life discourse was especially prevalent in more experienced practitioners' entries. The findings show that there are tensions in the moral registers practitioners draw on in justifying the worth of martial arts in their lives.
Chair: Hanna Vehmas
Room: B9N22, Building B Level 9
Gender stereotypes about sportswomen lead to gender inequalities and discrimination, which can result in a decline of women’s participation in sport, especially in sports associated with masculinity. Combat sports, such wrestling, have a long tradition and association with hegemonic masculinity, such as aggression, domination, and violence. The gendered associations of sport disciplines, however, may vary depending on the socio-historical context, whereby women’s participation is structured both by broader gender norms and by the status of the sport in a particular national context. In Croatia, wrestling is considered a masculine sport and women’s opportunities are limited. As such, women’s entry into wrestling disrupts traditional gender norms and could be a step towards equality in sport.
The purpose of this research is to analyze constructions of sex and gender from the perspective of women wrestlers in Croatia. The study draws on 10 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with active and former elite women wrestlers. The findings indicate that women wrestlers face numerous gender inequalities, discrimination, and stereotypes that are enacted on the interpersonal, organizational, and societal levels. Despite the increasing support from their families and friends, women wrestlers have inadequate working conditions and insufficient resources from sport institutions. Even so, the women did not perceive wrestling to be a predominantly masculine sport and, in some cases, critically analyzed the sex-segregated structure of the sport. The paper discusses the implications for gender constructions of wrestling and for sport priorities in Croatia.
The study’s objectives were to analyse best practices across six European countries (Bulgaria, England, Finland, France, Poland and Spain) to help grow women’s football in relation to three axes of: governance, visibility and development. An online survey was completed by 1,129 respondents across all six countries who were all affiliated with women’s football, either as a player, coach or club official. Participant demographic data was collected, alongside both Likert-scale and open-ended questions to ascertain perceptions of equality and examples of best practices to support women’s football. Focus groups and individual interviews were then conducted with 61 participants to further analyse examples of best practices, and to question how the associated socio-cultural conditions had been overcome to enable successful implementation. Focus group and interview data were thematically analysed through an inductive approach. Multiple themes were identified across all countries and contexts. A sustained existence of women’s football being stigmatized was recorded. This marginalized women’s football to the periphery of the cultural space when compared to men’s football because of socially reproduced hegemonic masculine ideologies that prioritised men’s football. Examples of best practices came from separatist women’s only football clubs who had greater agency to implement initiatives. Sharing of training facilities, coaching knowledge and online social media platforms was recorded by clubs that had integrated men’s and women’s teams together. The presentation concludes by offering stakeholders theoretically informed recommendations on the value for implementing several strategies in the hope of continuing to develop European women’s football.
Sport in general and in particular men’s team sport have long been regarded as typical ‘bastions of homophobia’. Considering there are no openly gay men among active elite team sport athletes in the relative gay friendly society like the Netherlands, men’s team sport may still be regarded as an arena with a low acceptance of homosexuality. Former studies showed relative positive attitudes towards gay men among male team sport players that could be interpreted as signs towards a more inclusive masculinity in men’s team sport. Simultaneously, results showed how a heteronormative culture was reproduced by the continuing prevalence of homonegative microaggressions. Over the last ten years Dutch national government supported policy initiatives by a gay-straight alliance including sport federations to enhance a more inclusive climate for LGBT people, with a specific focus on men’s team sports from grass root to professional levels (and in particular football). However, the impact of such initiatives on the day-to-day playing culture in men’s sport teams are yet unclear. Our main research question is: what are the experiences, attitudes and opinions regarding the acceptance of homosexuality and the prevalence of homonegative microaggressions in men’s sport teams and what developments can be witnessed in recent years? We will present and discuss the results of data currently being collected through webbased questionnaires among men active in grassroot team sports, identifying as either gay, bisexual or heterosexual and among professional hockey and football players. Outcomes will be compared to earlier measurements among all these groups in 2010.
This presentation explains the development and use of a novel material method for understanding how gender relations are negotiated by women boxers. The entanglement between the material items of a boxer’s kit bag and the gendered culture of boxing is explored with a particular focus on the active nature of gender embodiment. Using the items contained in their boxing kit bag, participants ‘kitted up’ as they normally would in preparation for an agreed event – training session or competition – whilst talking about each item as they did so. This method was developed to explore the sensory, embodied experiences that women boxers have with their kit and how objects act as active agents in the negotiation of identity. Visual and audio data was collected using a semi-structured conversation. Thematic analysis of the kit bag, verbal transcripts and the images recorded of the interaction between the boxers, their kit and the researcher were conducted. The presentation will offer a critical analysis of 5 preliminary themes identified in this work: (i) purposeful desexualization (ii) protection (iii) focus/intention (iv) confidence and empowerment (v) women aren’t small men. By foregrounding the material in our methods and analysis, we can attend to the importance of things, how they affect us and what impact they have on our sense of self. Using a novel approach to data collection can advance knowledge of complex and contested gender relations in female boxing which has implications for practice and policy.
Chair: Annika Frahsa
Room: A3M04, Building A Level 3
Thierry Henry, former Arsenal Football Club star player, has stirred up the social media world when he announced on March 26th, 2021, on his now-deleted Twitter account, that he was quitting all social media, as “The sheer volume of racism, bullying and resulting in mental torture to individuals is too toxic to ignore.” Though English Premier League clubs engaged in awareness-raising campaigns, new insecurities targeting the athletes’ identities are growing from the rise of social media and online interactions. This study examines the comments posted by users on the Instagram’s accounts of four professional football players immediately after their team (Manchester City) lost the 2021 UEFA Champions League final. Using the lens of disruption of athletic identity (Hickey & Roderick, 2017), we are pointing out that cyberviolence can deeply affect athletes and potentially spark identity dilemmas. We used Kavanagh & Jones’ typology of virtual maltreatment (2014) to isolate the comments collected into four categories: virtual emotional maltreatment, virtual discriminatory maltreatment, virtual physical maltreatment, and virtual sexual maltreatment. The two categories with the highest proportions of comments were virtual emotional and discriminatory maltreatments, including significant racist online abuse. Moreover, athletes with greater media exposure or higher number of followers tend to be more targeted. This methodology and the results show that online abuse towards high-profile athletes is a significant social problem, potentially provoking instant damage and altering their sense of self. Sports institutions and social media companies must implement policies of prevention, risk reduction and control to better protect athletes.
The relationship between physical activity and mental health has been addressed in recent years, paying attention to both the type (aerobic or anaerobic) and the amount of physical activity (frequency of performance, duration of the session). Much less frequently, the extent to which the context of physical activity might be enhancing or diminishing the mental health benefits of physical activity has been studied. Our aim in this paper is to examine the statistical association between physical activity and mental health in the Spanish population, in three different contexts (leisure, work and commuting), replicating the design of some previous studies (Vittengl, 2021; Werneck et al., 2021). To address the research objective, data from the latest European health survey, conducted in 2020, have been used. The results confirm the existence of significant differences depending on the context of physical activity, controlling for gender, age, education and employment, among other variables. This illustrates the importance of context and its differential statistical association with the beneficial nature of physical activity on mental health. The paper concludes with the formulation of some hypotheses about the mechanisms that might be involved in these results, as well as how they could be tested in future research.
Chair: Ansgar Thiel
Room: N16, Building C Level 3
Naturalization has been a buzzword in China's sport with several foreign footballers becoming Chinese national since 2019, which is an unprecedented phenomenon. The reason for naturalization is straightforward: enter the 2022 FIFA World Cup, which is also an important step to fulfill the Chinese football dream and become a sports power. Although the national men’s team failed again, naturalized players have challenged the conventional idea of Chinese nationality and citizenship. Additionally, most of them have no genuine connection to China and they can hardly speak Chinese even though some of them have Chinese linage, which makes people feel it is a trade of nationality motivated by money. Therefore, their special identities and sports performance have become the focus of Chinese people’s attention and have been hotly debated on social media. Several nationalism theories in terms of ethnosymbolism, invented tradition and imagined community will be adopted to explore Chinese people’s perceptions of nationality and national identity through naturalization in China. This article employs thematic analysis to examine 22 semi-structured interviews and social media extracts from Sino-Weibo users’ comments and posts about football naturalization in China. In their discussion, we can understand how Chinese people’s attitudes are divided about this issue and their recognition of what it means to be Chinese. In a sense, football and nationalism are both a matter of inclusion and exclusion to these naturalized athletes in terms of constructing their controversial identities as new members of the Chinese nation whether in an ethnic, cultural, or civic way.
Since transnational migration processes have changed societies sustainably national identity has become a prominent topic in public and political discussions. Within this debate sport in general and elite football in particular play a crucial role. The case of Mesut Özil – a prominent German international with Turkish background – signing a club jersey for the Turkish President Erdogan just before the FIFA-World Cup 2018 initiated an intense public debate on international players migrant background and national identification. Knowing that many of these German born top talented players are confronted with this ‘national team question’ during their youth career, current research on this topic has particularly focused on reconstructing the decision-making process by asking for the role of ethnic and national identity within this process. However, there is little empirical knowledge on the inverse interdependency: the impact of the decision-making process on national identity development. The presentation addresses the question of how the national team question affects the player’s national identity development. Based on the results of a qualitative study combining expert interviews with biographical mappings with German-born youth internationals with Turkish background the presentation provides empirical insights into trajectories of national identity development within the players’ (international) career.
Chair: Mike Sam
Room: D4A19, Building D Level 4
This paper investigates the co-construction of hyperandrogenism as a sports-medical pathology, by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Athletics (WA) on the one hand, and media reporting on the other. In the last decade, the term hyperandrogenism became the buzzword regarding eligibility criteria for women elite athletics. According to so-called ‘hyperandrogenism regulations’, which were effected by WA in 2011 and IOC in 2012 and which were effective until 2021, certain female athletes with a higher-than-average testosterone level were required to regulate their hormone levels in order to compete. In their regulations however, WA and IOC enacted hyperandrogenism in a different way than ordinary medical parlance suggests, that is, hyperandrogenism originally only referred to medical conditions mainly caused by Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and is hence not an equivalent to Intersex-Variations. In this paper I assume, that the news media took over WA’s and IOC’s usage of hyperandrogenism and consequently contributed to their enactment of the term. My aim was thus to scrutinize the development of this co-construction and furthermore the medias role in the stabilization of this re-newed sports-medical pathology. Drawing on discourse-analytical methodology, I analyse 32 Norwegian news articles dating from 2011 to 2020 regarding the appearance and development of hyperandrogenism, it’s framing and social meaning making. My findings show how the framing of hyperandrogenism in my data material develops from a vague medical condition to an axiomatic diagnosis. Regarding social meaning making it shows for instance, that one single person, has become the collective symbol of hyperandrogenism, which enables othering processes that are embedded in Western media discourse.
This paper investigates the co-construction of hyperandrogenism as a sports-medical pathology, by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and World Athletics (WA) on the one hand, and media reporting on the other. In the last decade, the term hyperandrogenism became the buzzword regarding eligibility criteria for women elite athletics. According to so-called ‘hyperandrogenism regulations’, which were effected by WA in 2011 and IOC in 2012 and which were effective until 2021, certain female athletes with a higher-than-average testosterone level were required to regulate their hormone levels in order to compete. In their regulations however, WA and IOC enacted hyperandrogenism in a different way than ordinary medical parlance suggests, that is, hyperandrogenism originally only referred to medical conditions mainly caused by Polycystic Ovary Syndrome and is hence not an equivalent to Intersex-Variations. In this paper I assume, that the news media took over WA’s and IOC’s usage of hyperandrogenism and consequently contributed to their enactment of the term. My aim was thus to scrutinize the development of this co-construction and furthermore the medias role in the stabilization of this re-newed sports-medical pathology. Drawing on discourse-analytical methodology, I analyse 32 Norwegian news articles dating from 2011 to 2020 regarding the appearance and development of hyperandrogenism, it’s framing and social meaning making. My findings show how the framing of hyperandrogenism in my data material develops from a vague medical condition to an axiomatic diagnosis. Regarding social meaning making it shows for instance, that one single person, has become the collective symbol of hyperandrogenism, which enables othering processes that are embedded in Western media discourse.
In late October, 2021, Hungarian sport was shaken by an interview with a multiple Olympic medallist and world champion swimmer, one of the most well-known elite athletes in the country, in which he claimed to have been verbally and physically abused by his coach for more than 10 years. Although such issues had come up a number of times, none had as big of an impact as this one. The objective of the paper is (1) to present the chronology of events, interviews and responses related to this case, (2) to describe the historical and sports-cultural context in which these incidents took place, and (3) to find possible explanation to the reactions of the various stakeholders. The texts processed for the study were published between 29 October 2021, the date when the interview with the swimmer was published, and 15 December, a few days after the investigation committee set up by the Hungarian Swimming Association published their report. Besides showing similarities to other national contexts, the results also reveal some of the particularities of the Hungarian sports nation discourse, in which, at times success was enough to legitimize coaches’ violent acts and athletes’ humiliation. Even so, the dynamic of reactions also underlines the existing demand for a change and the uncertainty of how to proceed with it.
Objectives
This paper is the result of a larger project on how media sports changed during the Covid-19 pandemic. We attempt to show how esports is assessed by sports and esports journalists. We examine how they define esports, yet our goal is not to answer whether competitive playing of video games is "real" sport. Our analysis is focused on relations between sports and esports, and based on the opinions of the journalist on changes observed during the pandemic.
Methods
Our research is purely inductive, as we conducted 15 in-depth interviews and used the so-called conventional content analysis. We have studied journalists representing the top-tier media in Poland thus having expert knowledge and particularly interested in the issue of esports.
Findings
The popularity of esports is growing and our respondents confirmed this. Nevertheless, they differed considering the main aim of the article, i.e. judging whether esports could be seen as a "true" sport, and this relates to the discussion about recognizing and legitimizing esports and deciding its place in cultural, social, economic, or media landscapes.
Discussion
Studying insiders is important in finding theoretical contributions to esports and formulating practical recommendations, as the insiders' voice indicate directions as to how esports should be analyzed. E.g. considering how esports was gaining popularity during the lockdown, one can say that sports and esports not only coexist, but the "symbiosis" between them seems inevitable.
Conclusion
Being a journalist of a given type turned out to be an important variable during the research, as we noticed clear differences in opinions between "traditional" and esports journalists.
Chair: Laila Ottesen
Room: C9A03, Building C Level 9
The object of my research is to build and structure an offer of physical and sporting activities adapted to socially vulnerable children who live in priority neighborhoods for urban policy in the Hauts-de-France region. Children who, a priori, attest to a distant relationship to sports practice. To do this, our approach uses a multidisciplinary approach (sociology, psychology, physiology). Sociology is used through the use of scientific literature, to select our sample and identify factors positively and negatively associated with physical activity. Indeed, it has been widely demonstrated that it is the precarious populations that are the most affected by social inequalities in health, that these populations have social uses of the body that are very far removed from the various health recommendations in terms of practice. In addition, the various sociological findings lead us to focus on children in order to build a health habitus as early as possible, since it is at this age that primary and secondary socialization shapes the individual. Moreover, our approach considers that the notion of habitus alone cannot explain individual behaviors. Social psychology will also be mobilized to observe the inter-individual and intra-individual variations that can explain the behavior of children, their parents and their teachers in relation to physical and sporting activity (feeling of competence, representation about sports practice, etc.). Finally, the physiology of exercise will be used during the exploratory phase, to pass tests of physical conditions and to carry out an inventory of the physical fitness levels of children. During this communication, I will present the methodology of the survey, in particular its exploratory phase (questionnaires, tests of physical conditions, etc.) which will allow us to obtain elements about the social characteristics of the children, to draw up a fine portrait of the context, their social, physical and psychological environments. It is only following these field surveys that we will be able to set up our experiments in the selected schools. This research is therefore based on exploration, followed by the construction of protocols, the content of which depends on this exploration and literature reviews.
Sport is considered to be beneficial for both the individual and for society. Although these advantages are highlighted during COVID, the restrictions due to COVID forced people to look for alternatives to continue their sport participation during COVID. Despite the fact that the COVID-restrictions apply to everyone, some people may be affected disproportionately by the restrictions. We aimed to study whether COVID impacted the sport participation of low educated and individuals with financial problems disproportionately.
We assumed low educated and people with financial problems to have relatively little resources (e.g. knowledge, contacts and money) to adapt to the COVID-procedures. Subsequently, low educated people and individuals with financial problems were expected to be more likely to decrease their level of weekly sport participation or completely quit participating in sport during COVID.
Using high-quality data from the representative Dutch panel of Longitudinal Internet studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) we have compared an individual’s level of weekly sport participation before and during the COVID-pandemic. Our findings suggest that the level of weekly sport participation of low educated people and individuals with financial problems decreased most strongly during the COVID-pandemic. This implies that the COVID-pandemic caused increasing educational and financial inequality in sport participation.
With these results our study contributes to the body of knowledge on the broader societal impact of COVID on issues of social exclusion. It thus may inform policymakers to critically assess and intensify sport promotion policies directed at vulnerable groups in society.
Since 2014, 2.3 million people have crossed the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa on makeshift boats, arriving on the European shores (UNHCR, 2022). Given its geographical position, Lampedusa has been a focal point of the boat migration during the so-called “refugee crisis”. Indeed, the island hosts a temporary refugee camp.
The study seeks to understand the sporting context of Lampedusa, looking at the inhabitants of the island and the passing asylum-seekers. To do so, data has been collected through semi-structured interviews with local experts, and then inductively analysed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). This study is part of a larger PhD project, investigating “Sport for Development and Peace” efforts in Sicily.
Results have shown that sport in Lampedusa is formally inaccessible for asylum-seekers hosted in the temporary refugee camp. However, through a hole in the fence of the reception centre, asylum-seekers can escape the centre and informally play football with members of the local community. These experiences of play and connectedness are positively valued by the inhabitants of Lampedusa.
Overall, football in the island is one of the activities where the two different social groups can bond over and feel connected, driven by a common sense of belonging to the sport that fosters inclusion. Nonetheless institutional barriers prevent such activities to take place. Recently, barriers have been exacerbated due to the Covid-19 pandemic, inhibiting asylum-seekers to escape from the reception centre and fostering segregation from the rest of the population.
Objectives: The relevance of work control for employees’ work and non-work outcomes is widely recognized, including for sport and other physical activity [PA]. However, this is the first study to assess how the relationship between control over work and leisure-time PA relates to country-level job security and PA opportunity structure in the European context.
Methods: We answer our research question with high-quality cross-national data from the European Social Survey 2014 on 14631 respondents in 18 European countries. Secondary data from Eurostat, World Bank and EWCS are used to enrich these data. We analyze the data through multi-level modeling.
Findings: Our findings suggest that workers with more control are more physically active in their leisure time. In countries with greater job security or PA opportunity structure, the differences between workers with varying degrees of job control are smaller.
Conclusion: Workers with work control are more physically active in leisure time, regardless of education and occupation among others. Our results thus underscore that in the general European context work control is an essential resource for workers. The cross-level moderations suggest a compensation effect of country job security and PA opportunity structure, as workers with little job control profit the most from living in such contexts.
Chair: Torsten Schlesinger
Room: N14, Building C Level 3
To what extent do social identities impact the physical activity participation of ethnic minorities? Which social processes prevail and influence self-consciousness and eventually form human behaviour? With the increasing trend of migration and ever-changing dynamics in society, health and physical activity inequalities remain a socially relevant challenge for migrants and marginalised communities. As ‘the most unknown’ ethnic minority in the UK, this ethnographic research investigates the social processes that impact the physical activity behaviour of British Chinese communities. At a cursory glance, the Chinese communities in the UK seem to share a homogenous identity, the ethnicity, but a closer look reveals diverse differences in culture, generations, language and so forth. Thus, the research takes a figurational approach and is particularly guided by the theory of established-outsider. As a community largely consisting of immigrants and descendants, there remains an overlapping identity for the British Chinese, who simultaneously play the role of the established and the outsider due to their interdependent network within the society. The ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a Chinese community centre in Birmingham, UK, has revealed preliminary findings that the we-image of the Chinese themselves create ‘group disgrace’ that affect the self-identity and prevent them from engaging in physical activity with the established British society. The findings of this research contributes to the policy-making and well-being of ethnic minorities in general.
Organized sport is an extremely popular hobby for children worldwide and is expected to offer joy, play and building of social relations for its participants. However, youth sport is also a space which has been shown to produce multiple formations of exclusion, bullying and violence in different contexts (Spaaij et al 2014; Long et al 2017; Hakanen et al 2019).
Much research on these joys and pains of youth sport has had tendencies to focus on simple categorical factors with quantifying gaze and to reduce the interpretation of the phenomena into a unit of individualized human based on theories looking for causalities and explanatory models. However, this kind of research is often unable to explore the complexity of the intensive emotional and affective aspects of sport practices which both enable the joyful, communal embodied movement as well as close off these possibilities with restricting and harming patterns of social-material relations.
In the presentation, I argue for the importance of sport sociology to engage with theories that intend to sustain the complexity of the phenomena they are studying. By using examples from my empirical ethnographic study on youth sport in Finland, I present possibilities that sport sociology has for reminding us of the material, affective and relational, in other words messy, nature of the world. I argue that in interdisciplinary research, this perspective on complexity is crucial if we aim at finding novel ways to know which is only possible by staying with the trouble.
When action sports participants are asked to justify risk taking, they often legitimize their actions by referring to some kind of “intrinsic” motivation. The motivation for risk-taking is explained as a burning inner drive to “live life to the fullest” and the athletes often express that they do what they do purely for their own sake. These athletes often express an ideology of individualism, transcendence, and boundary-pushing. But where do these ideas come from? In this paper I explore the historical roots of this “weltanschauung”. I will argue that the world view in action sports can, at least partly, be traced to vitalist and neo-vitalist philosophy.
Vitalist philosophy seeks to oppose mechanistic thinking. Actions are not seen as a response to external, causal influences, but are understood through the principle of self-organization. From Spinoza and Nietzsche to Weber and Heidegger and to Neo-vitalists as Deleuze and Guattari, ideas of the self-organization principle has been expressed in different ways. My argument in this paper is that these ideas have entered society as part of a late modern ideology that is often highlighted within action sports, and that are used to explain risk taking behavior from both athletes themselves and researchers. Finally, I will argue that the vitalist thoughts do not suffice to explain risk-taking behavior since it (at least to some extent) omits the social logic of actions.
Chair: Magnus Ferry
Room: N15, Building C Level 3
By employing an attentive, inquisitive, and open style, coaches are to develop their ability to find out the athletes’ needs and ways of thinking. This is a matter of discovering each athlete’s specific circumstances, experiences, emotions, and personality. When the coach sees the world from the athlete’s standpoint, her basis for choosing the suitable approaches and methods will be changed. What happens when care is linked to discussions on elite sport and coaching, and when it is linked to educational strategies and concepts? And how would the incorporation of care practices in coaching influence the percentage of female coaches at the elite level?
The empirical material for this article stems from a mentoring programme for aspiring coaches held under the auspices of Olympiatoppen, Norway’s elite sport development organization. In total, 11 mentors and eight coaches, both male and female, were interviewed.
We believe there is a risk of relational coaches being assigned the role as the new ‘priesthood’ who guide and oversee their athletes’ lives down to the minutest detail. Specifically, this entails that the coach establishes a relationship to the athlete that leads her to open the door into all aspects of her life – her pains, problems, desires, and dreams – and where the aim is still to use this knowledge to improve the coaching and hence the performance. This represents an administrative form that exploits the characteristics of what Foucault called “pastoral power”.
Despite the longstanding ethnic and cultural diversity of the playing workforce in (some) elite level sports, there has been a minimal throughput into senior coaching positions at professional sports clubs globally. In response, some sports organisations have developed new interventions designed to address racialised inequities in sports coaching, This paper offers an empirical and theoretical examination of the English Football League’s (EFL) Voluntary Recruitment Code (VRC): a positive action intervention modelled on the US NFL ‘Rooney Rule’ designed to establish inclusive practices of coach recruitment and increase the representation of racially minoritized coaches at men’s professional football clubs. This paper draws on interviews with football stakeholders (n=19) and minoritized coaches (n=26) to ascertain their perceptions, experiences, and reflections on three inter-connected areas of focus. Firstly, the operational and attitudinal implementation of the VRC at clubs. Secondly, the effectiveness of the VRC in engendering its intended operational and representational impacts at clubs. Thirdly, critical reflections as to the ways in which the VRC might be reformulated and reimplemented to better stimulate the conditions through which equality of opportunities, experiences, and outcomes might be realised. The paper will conclude from a Critical Race Theory (CRT) perspective that measures of this kind should be strongly interventionist and transformational in their policy intentions and ideological scope, and engender a holistic legislative and pedagogical approach to tackling racialised inequities. Further, in doing so, they should seek to challenge and disrupt dominant liberal discourses of meritocracy, race-neutrality, colour-blindness, and hegemonic Whiteness in football and sporting contexts.
Chair: Martin Roderick
Room: H2C14, Building H Level 2
Objectives:
Over the last 20 years, the growing recognition of sport as an “enabler of sustainable development” has allowed S4D to emerge as a research field explored by various disciplines.
For this presentation, I give an overview of the disciplines involved in S4D, their theoretical ap-proaches and methods, as well as interconnections and debates amongst the researchers. To conclude, I will present future directions for greater interdisciplinary research in the field.
Methods:
Findings are generated from a bibliometric analysis of articles from the Web of Science. Using VOSViewer, co-keyword, co-citation and co-author analyses are run to visually map the field and identify disciplinary clusters. In addition, a narrative analysis of the publications associated with each disciplinary cluster is presented.
Findings:
The field is dominated by few names, representing specific disciplines with weak connections. Researchers with similar disciplinary backgrounds mainly stay amongst themselves. They engage various theoretical approaches in line with their disciplinary background, but cooperation is limited. Methodological debates lead back to the lack of understanding of the other discipline.
Discussion:
S4D has struggled for recognition due to its multidisciplinarity. If S4D scholars stay in disci-plinary isolation and do not move towards a common “new research agenda”, the field will be stuck in a confusing theorization process without prospects for further academic or practical development.
Conclusion:
Further development is possible if the field succeeds in evolving from multidisciplinarity to interdisciplinarity. To manage this, finding a common language and problem views as well as unifying theoretical approaches and methods are indispensable steps to take.
REFERENCES UPON REQUEST.
The oral presentation will focus on presenting a conceptual model named "the milestones of the uses of Sport for development and peace". Physical activities and sport have been used to serve multiple international development issues since 2000. Football matches are organized to build social peace between divided populations, sports activities are offered to bring young people back to school, and/or sports tournaments are organized to regain possession of territories that have been contested and affected by armed conflicts. Although current research offers a variety of perspectives on sport for development based on several scientific disciplines, many questions remain unanswered. In particular, researchers are questioning the uses in which sport is implemented, the forms that sport takes in the context of development, and the goals that are targeted through sport, such as education, health, gender equality, reduced inequality and peace, among others. This milestones model aims to clarifying the uses, forms, features and purposes of sport that international, national, regional or local organizations set up on the field. We present a model with two milestones (why and how), levers and mechanisms to help practitioners to position themselves in SDP, as well as for researchers to map the mechanisms of using sport to serve development, and more particularly by focusing on the sustainable development goals established by the United Nations on different scales.
Over the past 15 years, the field of sport-for-development (SFD) has experienced significant growth and diversification across research and practice. In this presentation, we focus on two distinct yet interrelated objectives: First, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the theoretical and conceptual developments within SFD. And second, we identify how this original work has been extended or expanded by recent scholarship. In doing so, we address the call from scholars who have illuminated the need for theory building and critical dialogue within SFD to help further legitimize and develop the field (Lyras & Welty Peachey, 2011; Schulenkorf & Spaaij, 2015).
Taking a sport-focused perspective (see Chalip, 2006), we reviewed the SFD literature and identified a total of 38 articles that included SFD-focused theory or conceptualizations. Out of these, five distinct theoretical and conceptual frameworks emerged: the Ripple-Effect Model (Sugden, 2010), Sport-for-Development Theory (Lyras & Welty Peachey, 2011), the Sport-for-Development Framework (Schulenkorf, 2012), Programme Theory (Coalter, 2013), and the Sport-for-Health Model (Schulenkorf & Seifken, 2019). In analyzing the utilization of these contributions across all scholarly work, we focused on the studies’ levels of engagement: from merely mentioning SFD theories/concepts, to engaging with them, to applying them as guiding frameworks.
Overall, our analysis highlights that to date, the majority of SFD scholarship is borrowing theories from other disciplines rather than engaging with, applying, and extending the five SFD-derived theories. We conclude our presentation with a critical discussion of the status quo, and by suggesting conceptual advancements that may contribute to further theoretical development in and around SFD.
Chair: Fabien Ohl
Room: VBN3, Building HZM Basement
The subject of the paper is the genesis of football chants sung by Legia Warszawa fans. The author attempts to reconstruct the process of creating these chants and to identify the cultural inspirations that accompany this process.
So far football chants have been considered by social sciences and humanities mainly through the prism of selected textual motifs, most of the published works have also been limited to the cultural circle of the British Isles – the present work tries to go beyond these schemes.
The paper uses Philip Tagg’s concept of axiomatic triangle, dividing music into folk music, art music and popular music.
The author created a database of over 200 Legia fan chants, which were analysed for their source using critical discourse analysis. The research material collected for this paper was gathered using primarily autoethnography, participant observation, semi structured in-depth interviews (41 active and engaged Legia Warszawa supporters were surveyed from 2018 onwards, more than half of whom can be described as ultras: people directly involved in organising and preparing the cheering [flags, special settings, chants] and leading it during the match) and internet research.
This is the first step towards creating a new, original and universal typology of football chants.
This paper explores the role of alcohol consumption for football supporters attending matches in Scotland and England; the implications of current alcohol restrictions for fan practices; and the broader exposure of fans to alcohol sponsorship and marketing in a naturalistic real-world setting. The study utilises participatory ethnographic research methods to yield rich data on contexts, forms, and experiences of alcohol consumption among football fans. Six observations were conducted in total (3 in England, 3 in Scotland), and involved equipping and training groups of fans to use audio-visual recording equipment to document their alcohol-related experiences and perspectives on match-days. Participants were subsequently invited to view and to discuss the video and audio data which they had collected. Discussions allowed for participant reflections and interpretations on the recorded events, activities, and comments, for example on the role of alcohol consumption in social relations within fan groups, the types of alcohol consumption that occurred during different stages of the day, and how fans viewed and experienced regulations on alcohol consumption. The study is part of a wider research project focusing on the importance and role of alcohol consumption within football supporter cultures, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
The subject of this article is the theoretical and methodological framework of researching the fans’ perception of football rivalries. We attempt to elaborate the optimum and reliable method of investigating football fans in a wide scope and from an international comparative perspective. Despite numerous examples of both qualitative and quantitative research on football fans all around the world, no comprehensive methodology binding those approaches has been offered so far. In our paper we present the triangulation of selected qualitative and quantitative (CAWI) research methods and techniques drafted for researching the fans’ perception of football rivalries in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary. The article presents the results of the qualitative component of our research (50 in-depth interviews with fans of Legia Warszawa, Slavia Praha, Slovan Bratislava and Ferencvaros) and its impact on the subsequent quantitative component (planned CAWI survey open to all football fans in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary). The offered analytical framework in an original and innovative approach in analysing rivalry-related aspects of football fandom and has never been used for that purpose before.
ENTRANCE: BG Unfallklinik
bus 19 (Bühl Römerstraße), 18 (Oberndorf Feuersee), 13 (Hauptbahnhof/ Aixer Straße) or 5 (Derendingen Käppele/ Hauptbahnhof)
to NECKARBRÜCKE
CROSS THE STREET to the bus stop
take bus 1 (Stauden) or 7 (Pfrondorf)
EXIT: Landhausstraße
@Institute of Sports Science, Wilhelmstrasse 124, Spielhalle
Chairs of the panel:
Prof. Brent McDonald, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia
Prof. Ansgar Thiel, Eberhard Karls University Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Confirmed panel members:
Prof. Stephan Zipfel, Vice-Dean of the Medical Faculty Tübingen, Head of the Department of Psychosomatic and Psychotherapeutic Medicine, University Clinic Tübingen, Germany
Prof. Richard Giulianotti, Professor of Sociology, School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, UK
Prof. Tricia McGuire-Adams, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Ottawa, Canada
Prof. Parissa Safai, Assoc. Professor, School of Kinesiology & Health Science, York University, Toronto, Canada
Keynote: Jeremy Freese
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Sociology is often identified as a “perspective” or style of explanation, for which references to genetic differences represent the epitome of Not Sociology. Yet, everyone from the most casual fan to the most sophisticated sports scientists recognizes in sporting achievements an obvious role of physiological and other traits that are genetically influenced. Just as much is recognized that sporting triumphs are typically not just sheer physiological triumphs but represent longrunning investments in preparatory environments. Sports therein provide an easier site to consider ways that biology, psychology, and society intersect in human differentiation and attainment than other domains of human affairs in which discussions of biology—and especially genetics—are inevitably more fraught. As such, bio-psycho-social thinking with respect to sport might not just help illuminate phenomena specific to sport but may have more general usefulness for the social sciences. This argument will be advanced with references to a variety of sports, but perhaps most notably with respect to women's skeleton.
Chair: Klaus Seiberth
Room: N5, Building HZM 1st Floor
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted in different ways the professional sports world, which stopped its events for a certain period. Nevertheless, lockdowns were heterogeneous, and each type of sport had to adapt to a new reality regulated by the virus. If risk management has always been a preoccupation for sports mega-events, they have, since the COVID-19 pandemic, focused mainly on global health risk management. Inspired by the theoretical framework proposed by Beck’s sociology of risk (1992), our presentation will focus on understanding how the pandemic risk of COVID-19 is concretely managed by sports international federations. To answer this question, we carried out an ethnographic study based on four international federations: International Judo Federation, World Athletics, Union Cycliste Internationale and International Federation of Association Football. Within each of these sports, we interviewed a selected number of international athletes, medical officers, representatives of athletes’ commissions, and event organizers through semi-structured interviews. In addition, we attended several events organized by these institutions where we adopted a posture of observation. Our results show that while each sport has implemented their own COVID-19 countermeasures, a transfer during the pandemic has occurred: 1) in risk management from a global level to a local level; 2) of responsibility from international federations to local event organizers as well as athletes and their entourage who have to implement COVID-19 protocols. This transfer of a macro-institutional risk to a set of micro-risks relating to the actors seems characteristic of the management of Sport Mega-Events during this pandemic.
Not only that the 2020 European Football Championship was organised in several major European cities, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was postponed and finally organised in diverse covid-regulated environments. Among the host cities, Budapest was among the few to host the allocated four matches with limited restrictions. The present research aimed to examine impacts of EURO2020 perceived by inhabitants of Budapest along perceptions connected to economic, social, environmental and tourism dimensions. Data collection was conducted on a representative sample of Budapest residents (N=1003, aged 18+) considering gender, age and place of residence through telephone enquiry over a 5-day period prior to the event. The developed questionnaire integrated surveys from previous research applying considerations for national character. Socio-demographic background, involvement in sport, status of quality of life and attitude to pandemic period was also measured. In contrast to the intensive national and international public debate connected to the event we found that over half of the population either planned to be present in person at the stadium or in fun-zones, to follow matches through television in pubs or from home. As expected, attitudes expressed were influenced by age, education, and sport participation of respondents. Relation to sport in general indicated more positive perceptions about hosting the event, which was reinforced by love of football; gender differences were fading, but still noticeable. The majority of residents were positive on overall impacts; those interested in football were less influenced by the pandemic situation in Europe. The representative sample of local residents allows more opportunities for interpretation of results.
Objectives: The study's objective is to determine what aspects can affect the international prestige of the non-hosting countries through Olympic success.
Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 stakeholders from Iranian sports officials and sport managers. The sampling technique was convenience sampling. Interviews were conducted through Skype. Data were analyzed thematically with the thematic analysis (TA) method.
Findings: Four themes emerged in interviewees' speeches that are connected to the study's goals, which are about how elite sporting success can effect on international prestige of non-hosting Olympic countries like Iran : (1) sporting success at the Olympic Games, (2) fairness, (3) sport and diplomatic relations, and (4) media coverage.
Discussion: The study results are congruent with the existing research literature concerning the four emerged themes. The results indicated that countries like Iran can enhance their international image through Olympic success since Iran cannot currently host Olympic games.
Conclusion: Interviewees believed that the international diplomatic relations between Iran and other western countries are not as good as before; therefore, sports can play a vital role in the country's relations and its image. The results suggest that the concept of international prestige through sporting success is notably essential for a country where the foreign public may not have a positive attitude toward that country. As a soft power tool, sports can play this role and help to build a positive image for that country. However, there are some serious concerns, like the asylum seeker issue.
Chair: Ansgar Thiel
Room: 7E02, Building HZM Ground Floor
Objectives
Against the background of the recent European ‘refugee crisis’ and its long-term consequences, this project investigates the research question ‘What do sport biographies of refugee professional footballers look like?’.
Methods
To assess this question, eight competitive footballers with a refugee background and two football experts were interviewed via a teleconference. The video material was examined using methods of qualitative content analysis and interpreted through a socialisation theoretical framework.
Findings
The results show that the careers of the interviewees were strongly influenced by the adverse events related to their forced migration. Therefore, migration phases instead of conventional age-related developments have a higher explanatory power for these cases. After their resettlement, the direct and indirect consequences of these events on the re-inclusion in football can be clearly viewed in relation to factors such as: distortions in the perceived time; current suboptimal performance level; difficult relationship with football clubs; unstable personal situation; and strong ambition to achieve sporting goals.
Discussion
Building upon the respondents’ experiences and suggestions, the discussion focuses particularly on the conception of measures to adequately support sport inclusion in organised football from the perspective of the German sport system and refugee athletes.
Conclusion
The former professional athletes interviewed for this study, who migrated to Germany during the ‘refugee crisis’, play football today at the amateur level. How to promote talented people who have experienced forced migration is a relevant topic from both a scientific and social perspective in times of recurring ‘migration crises’.
Objectives
Doping confessions constitute major crises for athletes. We know from communication studies that they regularly turn to different self-presentational strategies to reconstruct their spoilt identities (Yar 2014). However, little is known of how confessions affect and change the subjective construction of a sporting career as a whole.
Methods
Therefore, we conducted a case study of the former professional cyclist Michael Barry who admitted to doping in 2012. Most interestingly, Barry wrote two autobiographies—one before his confession and one afterwards. Using narrative analysis (Riessman 2008; Douglas & Carless 2014), we systematically compare these autobiographies to reveal how the autobiographical construction of his professional career changes after the confession.
Findings
We will see that the narrative type turned from a story of success to one of decline, which include aspects of, first and foremost, social relationships, sporting success, and passion for cycling.
Discussion and conclusion
Our presentation adds not only more subtle insights into athletes’ self-presentational strategies already known, but also shows how self-understanding and identity construction changes by the narration of a different self. The results from this case study may thus provide sensitising concepts for more comprehensive studies in the future.
Literature
Douglas, K., & Carless, D. (2014). Life story research in sport: Understanding the experiences of elite and professional athletes through narrative. Routledge.
Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Sage.
Yar, M. (2014). Crime, deviance and doping: Fallen sports stars, autobiography and the management of stigma. Palgrave MacMillan.
Given its popularity, it’s not surprising that football is of interest to scientific disciplines such as physiology, biomechanics or sociology.
In 20 years, the number (per year) of scientific publications has multiplied by 55. However, this growth is not necessarily accompanied by consideration of these scientific productions in the staffs of professional teams. Why is this so? Our research deals with this enigma by qualifying it and trying to explain it. Studies like that of Opar et al. (2012) show that despite verified and justified evidence of the use of the Nordic hamstring exercise (as a means of preventing hamstrings), only 16.7% of the clubs questioned use it totally or partially.
Faced with various findings of this type, we decided to question the circulation of scientific knowledge devoted to football from scientific journals to practitioners in the field. The objective of our work is in a way to improve the popularization and use of scientific knowledge by the technical staff of professional football clubs, without modifying the original scientific results. To do this, we first developed a base of scientific knowledge stabilized over numerous articles (N= 317). We then intend to carry out field surveys in clubs, with technicians (questionnaires and ethnographic observations in training centers in France).
This communication will allow us to come back to our first results allowing us to identify the factors which facilitate, and limit or even prevent, the circulation and the putting into practice of some scientific knowledge which is nevertheless useful to football.
Beyond this description, we wish to use the notion of boundary object to interpret our results (Star and Griesemer, 1989). This will be useful for discovering artifacts that facilitate, prevent or disguise knowledge. But also to analyze how passages are made or not made entirely: indeed it is likely that knowledge does not pass and that it is more simply replaced by information (Stehr and Ufer, 2010). The use of the notion of border-object does not necessarily lead to the discovery of this object, but will orient the interpretation of the collected discourses of practitioners (and their practices) to potentially identify translations.
The comparatively high salaries of professional football players during their active athletic career should allow them to accumulate an adequate level of precautionary savings for a financially autonomous post-sport career. However, not all players succeed in accumulating sustainable financial assets. Therefore, the question arises what forms of financial precaution do professional footballers engage, and to what extent do practices of financial precaution differ between players? Financial precautionary practices of footballers are theoretical framed by socially determined assessments of the future and observations and socialization experiences within certain social structures that influence precaution-related decisions.
To analyse financial precautionary practices among professional football players, we consider a wide range of players (principle of contrasting) regarding characteristics such as sporting success, course of sports career, income and social origin. Narrative interviews were conducted with 25 German (former) professional footballers. We used qualitative content analysis to analyze precautionary practices and their underlying motivations. Furthermore, reconstructive elements were included to create different precautionary types.
The results reveal that players show different strategies of precaution, and they deal with both career-specific as well as precaution-related risks quite heterogeneously. Although the players are aware of the uncertainties and risks related to their professional football careers, it does not say much about the concrete implementation of adequate precautionary practices. Accordingly, three precautionary types that characterize three distinct patterns of precautionary saving practices are identified: “The cautious”, “The poor dogs” and “The careless”.
Our findings contribute to a better understanding of precautionary saving practices
among football players, which provide perspectives to develop preventative concepts for sustainable financial planning.
Chair: Christine Dallaire
Room: B9N22, Building B Level 9
Our research provides an understanding of how knowledge about gender in UK Higher Education sport courses is taught and experienced. We discuss our recent research on the ways in which gender relations on Higher Education sport courses are manifest and experienced by students and staff. Drawing on data from two projects, one a case study and one a larger analysis of gender and curriculum on UK HE sports courses, we critically discuss current curriculum design and the ways in which knowledge about gender is made visible, where and how. We then consider the ways knowledge about gender can be marginalised, as well other examples of presenting knowledge as gender neutral. Drawing on the voice of student and staff we critically discuss the ways in which learning or teaching about gender is experienced. We frame our discussion by utilising Elias concepts on the sociology of knowledge to consider who decides what knowledge is taught, and how this is related to broader power relations, and how it is taught and valued on courses.
The significance of this research is that students often go on to work in the sport sector where issues of everyday sexism, the gender pay gap and issues around equality are being contested and reinforced. As sociologists of sport our pedagogy and curriculum content is central to addressing issues of equity and diversity in sport.
Spanish sports literature is devoid of studies investigating the voices of gay athletes. Using semi-structured interviews, the purpose of this research was to examine the contextually relevant experiences of three gay elite athlete in the Spanish sport context. Our investigation covers multiple personal and institutional layers of the sporting complex, which are analysed using Cunningham's (2012) multilevel model for understanding the experiences of LGBT+ people.
Our findings show the sport context to be a heteronormative, masculinised and cisgender social field. Male homosexuality was almost invisible except when antigay language was used. Considering this environment, our interviewees at the beginning chose to remain in the closet, which contributed to low levels of wellbeing. However, at some point they chose to come out and they experienced relief and felt included from some of their teammates, trainers, managers and supporters. Afterwards decided to be proactive and become role models so as to make visible and normalise homosexuality in the sports settings. Our research also provides new insights into the nature and prevalence of microaggressions regarding sexual orientation that will help organisations and managers to develop specific strategies and programmes to foster inclusivity.
The sports environment, and more specifically football, is well known for being a context in which hegemonic notions of masculinity are still prevalent (e.g. Anderson & McGuire, 2010, Burgess, Edwards & Skinner, 2003). This poses several challenges for female* researchers conducting ethnographic fieldwork in explicitly gendered contexts. Research suggests a number of potential issues, among others, being patronised, marginalised and subjected to sexist attitudes (e.g. Horn 1997, Lumsden 2009, Pini 2005, Tarrant 2016, Wolfers-Pommerenke, fc).
Drawing on over 60 hours of audio-recorded interactions among male professional and elite football players from Germany in the locker room, on the side-line and substitutes’ bench before, during and after football matches and training, as well as interviews with 21 players, I critically reflect on my own role as the researcher and marked outsider in many respects. My particular focus is the kinds of gendered and often sexualised identities the players regularly assign to me in discursive interaction – largely ignoring professional identity categories. Based on my own experiences, the methodological implications of tolerating and challenging heterosexist treatment during fieldwork are discussed. Findings show that in ethnographic research projects the construction of gendered and sexualised identities is potentially always relevant to data collection and research outcome. Ultimately, the paper aims to open a discussion about the challenges faced by many researchers entering gendered environments such as male sports and calls for greater reflexivity and transparency with regards to the role of the researcher.
Sporting opportunities for females continue to grow, which include what are seen as masculine sports, such as football, rugby and cricket. This is, in part, due to the increased widespread media coverage of women’s sports, such as the 2019 Women’s Football World Cup. The Women’s Rugby World Cup, which was due to be held in New Zealand in 2021, has been rescheduled due to Covid-19 to 2022, will be known as the ‘Rugby World Cup’, removing the gender differentiation between the men’s and the women’s game . Within tennis, initiatives such as the ‘She Rallies’ scheme developed by the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA), along with Judy Murray, aim to encourage more girls and women into playing and coaching tennis. Campaigns led by charities such as ‘Women in Sport’, first developed in 1984, and the WTCA (Women’s Tennis Coaching Association), founded in 2015, are making an increasing impact globally, with an overall goal to provide equal opportunities for women in the sporting world.
Despite this, sports remain gendered and stereotypical with greater participation for females in traditional female sports such as gymnastics and dance, whereas for those participating in sports such as rugby or football are likely to be labelled as ‘masculine’ or as ‘lesbians’. This gendered division is even more apparent when looking at coaching in sport and the focus of research looked at one sport in particular, tennis, where female tennis coaches are still vastly under-represented with the majority of coaches being male. Research explored the barriers, inequalities and discrimination that female tennis coaches experience.
Chair: Fiona Dowling
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Gender equality in sports governance remains a distant goal, with the pace of progress described by some as ’glacial.’ Gender Inequality is common at all levels of sport governance, including at the global, organizational-cultural and interpersonal scales. The ERASMUS+-funded SWinG programme represented one attempt to challenge this inequality by developing of a model for change, and through mentoring and empowering women to run for election in sports governance. Ten multi-sectorial programme partners developed and piloted a new, transferable approach to support aspiring women leaders to be elected into decision-making positions. As part of the programme, a mentoring programme aligned 20 aspiring sports leaders with 20 women leaders from the business sector over three years across Europe. We evaluated the programme using a multi-method, naturalistic evaluation approach utilizing data from multi-point semi-structured interviews and focus groups, analysis of administrative records, timelines and meeting records, and evaluative surveys. The nine intellectual outputs, webinars and written resources produced during the programme were well received. Moreover, despite significant disruption to the programme and many elections due to COVID-19, many programme goals were achieved. Only two mentees did not progress as intended, whilst eight were elected to decision-making positions and a further six moved towards this goal. Notably, mentees’ initial misgivings were assuaged by mentors, who often had different perspectives on barriers to election. Although change was primarily enacted at the interpersonal level during SWinG, future work will focus upon challenging the wider socio-cultural context of gender inequality in sports governance.
In recent decades, increasing emphasis has been placed on the role of universities in ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education. Higher education strategies such as critical feminist service-learning (CFSL) can help achieve true university-community engagement to achieve social good while allowing students to develop academic competencies, values, and social responsibility. This study analyzes the impact of a university physical activity-based CFSL project implemented at a woman's prison. The study combined quantitative and qualitative research methods. Eighty-one students (24 women and 57 men) participated in the project over the 3 years in which it was run (2017-2018, 2018-2019, and 2019-2020). Aspects related to the four principles of CFSL were analyzed using data collected from questionnaires and reflective learning journals completed by the students and a semi-structured interview with the prison sports instructor. Our findings show that participating in the project brought about significant changes in students' beliefs and preconceptions about prisons, and helped them to develop their critical awareness. They also show that the project strengthened the collaborative relationship between the establishments and agents involved. In conclusion, CFSL is a powerful higher education strategy that can be used to show future educators and practitioners how sport and physical activity can drive social justice and contribute to the achievement of the United Nation's 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.
Chair: John Horne
Room: N16, Building C Level 3
At the turn of the millenium the emergence of gay&lesbian (later lgbt+) sports clubs increased in the Netherlands, in the run-up towards and as a legacy of the Amsterdam Gay Games 1998. Apart from this katalysing international sports event, the foundation of gay sports initiatives were influenced by a flourishing activist/political gay rights movement lgbt+ subculture since the 1980ies. Sport participation in ‘separate’ clubs contradicts to mainstream (policy) discourse on integration and inclusion. Especially in a relative inclusive society for lgbt+ people like the Netherlands, the need and neccesity of lgbt+ sports initiatives has been contested. With our study we have mapped developments in numbers of Dutch lgbt+ sports clubs, their membership size and profile, personal meanings and social significance.
We collected data through desk and archive research, an online questionnaire among members (n=263) of 24 lgbt+ sports clubs and interviews with 28 initiators and board members of these associations.
Results show that since 2005 numbers and membership size of many ‘old’ clubs declined and aged. At the same time many clubs have opened up towards the broader lgbt+ community (eg by changing names) and new initiatives continued to emerge. Apart from serious training/competition and the sociability with ‘likewise people’ as the main personal motivations and meanings for members, lgbt+ clubs also contributed to the visibility of safe sport spaces that enforced emancipation and belonging. However, normative and exclusionary dynamics also exist within lgbt+ sports clubs and with ongoing lgbt+ inclusion in mainstream sports spaces, future perspectives constitute important challenges.
Objectives
This paper explores the relationship between different groups of the same Indigenous people and discusses if and how sport activities originating from traditional industry symbolizes the Indigenous people as a whole. The reindeer symbolizes the Indigenous people of the North Calotte (the northern part of the Nordic countries Norway, Sweden and Finland, as well as the Kola Peninsula of northwestern Russia) – in media coverage, as tourist attraction, in education, etc. Although only approximately 10 per cent of the Sámis are involved in reindeer husbandry, it occurs as vital among “all” Sámi sports actors including sports clubs outside reindeer husbandry areas.
Methods and Findings
Empirically, several observations reinforce each other and the symbolic value of the reindeer originating sports disciplines: (i) the Norwegian state’s reasons for subsidizing Sámi sports is the role as bearers of Sámi tradition and culture; (ii) the Sámi parliament’s focus on reindeer racing – despite small in number of participants – when proposing a new organization for Sámi sport all together; (iii) interviews of representatives in Sámi sport clubs. In this chapter, I analyze the symbolism of reindeer originating disciplines of Sámi sports. Disciplines originating in reindeer husbandry refer to reindeer racing and lassoing.
Discussion and Conclusion
Employing Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence, I discuss how some Sámi groups position themselves in an interior position versus other groups (referred to as “real Sámi” by the inferiors) because they live closer to the reindeer and some of the reindeer sports.
A rich body of academic literature in various national contexts has explored how commentators and journalists of televised football (re)construct racial/ethnic stereotypes, most notably that of the ‘natural Black athlete’. There has been less scholarly attention to how audiences actively interpret such racialized stereotypes, especially beyond the Anglosphere. From a cultural studies perspective, which considers texts to derive their meaning in the dynamic co-construction between content and audience, this lacuna is striking. This presentation aims to add to this gap by relaying the findings of an audience study that explored the discourses surrounding race/ethnicity that audiences of Polish televised football (re)produce or challenge in their ‘everyday football talk’ when giving meaning to football players from various racial/ethnic backgrounds. The findings show that the interviewees habitually spoke through ‘common sense’ racial/ethnic stereotypes in their everyday football talk, in particular (re)construction notions of the ‘natural Black athlete’. Discourses that interviewees drew on also highlight the complex and sometimes contradicting ways Whiteness was given meaning. The presentation will highlight how ‘everyday football talk’ in Poland can be considered a site in which race/ethnicity is given meaning, often along the lines of existing stereotypes. However, occasionally, interviewees also brought forward critical readings of football media content which challenged such stereotypes. This shows how ‘everyday football talk’ can be considered a site in which hegemonic but also complexly layered discourses are drawn on when giving meaning to supposed racial/ethnic categories and hierarchies.
Sport and sports media are powerful ideological forces in the construction of national identities. For decades, women’s sports coverage was virtually non-existent, with enduring marginalisation and discrimination. Despite recent increases, women’s sports media still lags men’s sport, with pandemic challenges that potentially undermine gains.
This paper examines women’s sports media coverage as gendered social relations, using a case study of Australian cricket. Evidence about Australian women’s sports media, including 2021/22 men and women’s cricket broadcast data, is examined in the historical context of sport’s construction of national identity. The paper uses an interdisciplinary framework based on ideology theory, political economy of media and feminist approaches (feminist political economy of communications and feminist media studies).
An analysis of Australian women’s cricket history examines the constructions of national identity, reflecting on the dominant position of a white, male Anglo hegemony in Australian colonial and post-colonial ideological frames.
Highlighting sport’s ideological resonance and deployment as part of hegemonic processes of nation forming this paper examines the power of sport to frame identities of gender and nation, highlighting the challenges and potential of women’s sport to present different constructions of the idea of the nation.
Noting the importance of sociology of sport and interdisciplinary research, the paper argues that examination of the historical role of [male] sport in the formation of identity is critical to understanding issues of gender, nation and sport, and in confronting gender inequality in sports and sports media.
Chair: Tamas Doczi
Room: A3M04, Building A Level 3
In Norwegian sport there are political and ideological tensions between a deeply held belief in ‘sport for all’ as a fundamental basis for all sporting activity and an emphasis on elite sport that aims to achieve great results in a wide variety of sports. Immediately, it seems like a struggle to achieve this dual task, still, dealing with this balance between fostering democracy and fostering competition appear as a strength of the Scandinavian sports model (Peterson (2008). The field of elite sport in Norway, in addition, comprises two important dichotomies: first, an ascetic view of elite-level sport versus a more playful attitude, and second, a standardized elite-level system versus a more pluralistic one. How can we understand these dimensions in the Norwegian sport field, sport for all versus emphasis in elite sport, and in the latter, between an ascetic, standardized approach, and a more playful and pluralistic approach? In this paper we use these dimensions, or paradoxes one may add, as a stepping stone for a theoretical discussion. We apply Bourdieu’s ‘feel for the game’ analogy, highlighting the difference between the feel for the game in itself and the feel for the game for itself. Further, we introduce morality (cf. Lamont, Bennet, Skarpenes) as an important feature to be included in studies of social fields, herein the field of elite sports. The combination of these two theoretical approaches will shed light on the dimensions of the Norwegian sport field, , and consequently as important theoretical tools to study sport in general.
Racism is unmistakable present in club-organized junior football and is also identified in other sports and age categories. This has not gone unnoticed by policymakers. They try to ban racism with different initiatives and punishments. These concern overt racism and direct racial language that is universally seen as problematic. However, racism under the guise of fun, humor and positive stereotypes remains largely untouched. This racism is often seen as innocent or even as a social binding agent, although scholars emphasize the power of this racism to maintain power relations. In addition, considered harmless racism is widespread in various social contexts and social institutions.
We wonder whether measures in the junior football setting that only target overt racism are capable of offering solace. This study draws on findings from large-scale mixed-method research and includes both quantitative field observations (32 matches) and qualitative interviews (n = 15), carried out in Belgium. Additionally, interviews with sport policymakers are conducted. The aim is to critically examine if considered harmless racism exists in junior football and whether or not it is overlooked. Secondly, we outline through Butler’s performativity how individuals perceive this type of racism and how it may preserve racism and racial inferiority. We argue that answers to these questions might come a long way in explaining why racism persists despite the measures. In identifying where anti-racism policies may fall short, we hope to contribute to the development of effective anti-racism measures in junior football. Data analysis has yet to take place.
Chair: Hélène Joncheray
Room: N14, Building C Level 3
Objectives: Even before the Corona pandemic, more and more sports clubs reported declining membership, episodic engagement and difficulties in recruiting and retaining volunteers. Given the complex constraints on sports club and social activities during the Corona pandemic, the question arises as to how this exceptional social situation affected membership retention in clubs and the importance of social capital. This paper addresses a research gap by estimating membership commitment in the aftermath of the Corona pandemic, focusing on the relevance of different social capital indicators.
Methods: The empirical analyses are based on a representative population survey conducted in late 2020/early 2021.
Findings: Membership retention of the sports club members remains quite high. Social capital indicators that are narrowly related to the sports club explain little in predicting member retention. In addition to perceived norms of reciprocity in the club, helpfulness and ingroup trust increase retention, while sociability orientation and outgroup trust decrease the likelihood of still being a member of the club after the pandemic. When all predictors are included, the model goodness of fit increases to almost 26%.
Discussion and Conclusion: Solidarity orientations were already relevant predictors of member retention in other surveys. The Corona pandemic does not seem to have changed this. During the pandemic, however, the bridging potential of sports clubs seems to have suffered. The extent to which negative effects of a high social bonding capital are indicated here must be examined in further trend analyses. Preliminary conclusions but also limitations of the study are presented at the end.
Although numbers of European youth who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) have decreased in recent years, a considerable group of about 9 million young people remains in this situation of potential disengagement. In this context, sport has been regarded as a suitable tool to develop these NEET’s level of employability. This belief originates from (a) the centrality of soft skills within the concept of employability and (b) claims regarding sports’ ability to develop soft skills among participants. Despite these beliefs, there is limited information on how and when sport for employability (SfE) initiatives can be a promising vehicle in developing people’s employability. The purpose of the present study was, therefore, to gain more insight into this process and develop a programme theory that clarifies key programme mechanisms through which sport may enhance employability. To this end, in-depth interviews were conducted with 24 (ex)-participants of six different SfE programmes (which are considered as good practices), complemented with document analysis and field visits. During these interviews, participants were asked about the elements of the programme they believe to have led to soft skill development. Particular attention was paid to (a) the social climate and trust-based social relationships and (b) what aspects of the programme were most useful for their development and why. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and build on a recent study that constructed a generalisable programme theory for SfE programmes for NEETs. The findings will be presented during the presentation at the EASS conference.
Chair: Ramon Spaaij
Room: N15, Building C Level 3
Coaching is a human activity that delivers accumulated knowledge and skills of particular sports. This paper explores the processes in which elite migrant coaches transfer their knowledge and practices after their international relocation to different socio-cultural settings. Special attention is given to the international mobility of South Korean elite coaches who were originally used to ‘productive but oppressive’ styles of coaching in their home country and later moved to more liberalised sporting environments of the West, in order to examine the potentially double-edged nature of elite coach migration: knowledge exchange (e.g., Williams, 2007) or risk transmission (e.g., Chang et al., 2017). Drawing mainly from in-depth interviews with five South Korean elite coaches who have worked or are working for national teams of four Western countries (the UK, the US, France and Ireland), the analysis reveals cases where the effective but abusive Korean coaching approaches were encouraged or constrained by the hosting National Sport Governing Bodies (NGBs) in the receiving countries. The findings suggest that the extent to which migrant coaching practices were accepted within the local contexts was dependent on the interests of NGBs – the organisational priority and desire to dominate in the global sporting arms race. The paper concludes by providing implications for future sociological inquiries not only into coach migration as a contested arena where different values are conflicted and negotiated, but also into abuse in elite sport at organisational levels.
Objectives
Despite increasing research, the influence of the female menstrual cycle (MC) on sporting performance is still largely a mystery. The only certainty is that the MC can have an effect of individual magnitude (McNulty et al., 2020). This increases the importance of clear communication strategies between coach and athlete. The aim of the present study is to investigate communication on MC in the training context.
Methods
We developed an online questionnaire addressed to female sports club members (n = 1,220). To serve as dependent variables we included questions on the coach's thematization of MC and the athlete's willingness to communicate about. We included questions about the type of sport, the coach’s sex, the extent of training, the training group’s sex and the performance level as control variables. Inferential statistical methods were used.
Findings
We found the likelihood of communication about MC to be depended on the coach’s sex, the level of performance and the type of sport. Overall, only 13% of respondents reported a rather open communication on the topic. At the same time, the willingness to communicate with the coach is disproportionately higher (84%).
Discussion and conclusion
Given the role of the MC on performance and the athletes’ willingness communicate about it, the results of our study show a large gap between desire and reality, even in 2022. We conclude that there needs to be more research on the impact of MC on female performance and the results of these studies need to find their way into the content of coach education and training.
Issues related to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are increasingly becoming strategic priorities for sport organisations across the world. More specifically, in recent years sport organisations have begun to adopt policies and initiatives that aim to increase the ethnic diversity of their sports and tackle inequities in access, experiences and outcomes among ethnically minoritised groups. Evidence suggests that while some progress has been made– particularly in terms of sport participation – in other non-playing roles such as sport coaching and governance, change has been harder to identify.
This presentation seeks to examine some of the reasons behind what might be considered the ‘policy failure’ of EDI in sport. Sport coaching offers an intriguing case for this task because of the persistent lack of ethnic diversity across the profession (both at elite and grassroots levels) and because it is the subject of one of the most high-profile EDI initiatives - the NFL’s Rooney Rule – that has informed broader EDI approaches both within and outside sport.
Drawing on evidence including data recently collected on football coaching positions across Europe, and with the aid of the growing body of critical sociological work investigating racialised inequities in sport coaching more broadly, we propose several structural, cultural and institutional reasons for the EDI ‘policy failure’ in sport The paper concludes by offering a number of recommendations for the design of future EDI initiatives that may prove more fruitful in addressing inequities and enabling positive representational and inclusionary outcomes in the area of sport coaching.
Communication between the coach and player is not only a simple transmission process of messages (Lau, 2020), but has a great impact on the development of the athlete (Cranmer, 2021). Thus, it is necessary to find a ‘common’ adequate language to create acceptance and avoid misinformation between coach and player (Borggrefe et al., 2016).
For motivation as an activating orientation (Rheinberg, 2004), the two motivational systems “implicit” and “explicit” are often mentioned in motivational psychology (Brandstätter, 2013). Achievement motive (Murr et al., 2018; Gröpel, 2016) power motive (Langens et al., 2005) and the affiliate motive (Krug/Kuhl, 2006) are described as the “big three” motives (McClelland). The aim of the study was to find out which motives a trainer addresses when communicate with the respective players.
In an U16-youth-academy soccer-team, individual implicit motives were measured through an AI-supported picture-story-exercise test (Spitzer & Dörr, 2020). In addition we recorded and transcribed the trainer-player-communication during training-sessions. In this way, a total of 5,056 communication processes were AI-analyzed related to the “big-three“ motives.
Results show that the most used motive by the trainer is the “power motive”. But we also can point out, that in 1 out of 3 cases the transferred motives by the trainer communication did not fit to the implicit motives of players.
Thus, results imply that there is a need for an adapted language for the coaches. And it could be helpful to put these empirical results on a broader base to validate if these topics could complement the trainer qualification.
Chair: Louise Mansfield
Room: H2C14, Building H Level 2
In the past two decades, NGO’s and community-based organizations have emerged in Mexico delivering programs where sports are used as tools to achieve objectives that go beyond the realm of recreation. Following the methods proposed by Svensson and Woods (2017), I conducted a systematic analysis where I identified 33 organizations involved in the operation of grassroots Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) practices in Mexico. Additionally, I conducted a thematic analysis on documents created by the Mexican government to legislate over sports and physical culture. The purpose of this presentation is to argue that the practices defined by the Mexican government as social sport are like those described in the literature as part of the global movement SDP, and at the same time, they fit the description presented by the organizations identified in the systematic analysis mentioned before. The coexistence of these notions to define similar practices suggests that in Mexico there is a contested field where interested actors are negotiating in different arenas the boundaries and specificities of such field.
Description of the phenomenon
Sport-for-Development (SfD) literature primarily views power as either a dominating 'power over' force (Forde and Frisby, 2015; Nicholls et al., 2011; Hayhurst, 2009; Darnell, 2010; Mwaanga and Banda, 2014; Hayhurst, 2014; Saavedra, 2019; Banda and Holmes, 2017) or as an empowering 'power to' force to gain individual benefit (Hartmann and Kwauk, 2011; Adams et al., 2017). However, as many scholars argue, power is a fluid, ever changing – hybrid force.
Aim
The aim of this theoretical paper is to reflect on how ‘power’ has been conceptualised to date within the field of SfD as well as to stimulate a new discussion about a novel theoretical approach presented which considers a more holistic view of power.
Justification
Adopting a holistic view of power provides the potential to understand the manifestations of power by examining both dominant social structures and practices, alongside opportunities for agency. This theoretical paper presents the utility of a novel theoretical framework by connecting two existing theories of power: Lukes’ (2005) radical three-dimensional view and Coleman's social capital theory (Coleman, 1988, 1989, 1990) which together enable the exploration of power as both a productive (enabling) as well as repressive (constraining) force which is expressed through the constant action and interaction between actors.
Implications
This paper establishes a foundation upon which future SfD scholars and practitioners might theorise and critically reflect on issues of power, as well as deliberately articulate such manifestations in both research and practice.
SFD is already a well-known concept but its wording has been very diverse. Expressions and abbreviations as SFD (sport for development), SDP (sport for development and peace), SAD (sport and development) or SiD (sport in development) have been used already interchangeably. Until now, there has not been much academic information discussing SDP coming from Latin America. It is not clear why this has been happening. The academic research shows that Latin American SDP represents only 3% of the academic literature. The presented research held under the IOC grant scheme focuses on the situation in the context of Latin America and the SDP field. The main research questions relate to what activities are subsumed within the SDP label and how are these activities named and perceived in Latin American countries. The research included several selected SDP organisations from Colombia, Uruguay and Brazil. Through interviews and focus groups (organised online due to COVID restrictions), the interviewees were asked to form their ideas about the SDP context in their home countries. They were asked what activities they pursue and how they are named and perceived. The preliminary results show that SDP-related initiatives in Latin America include several specifics concerning the nature of concerned projects and concepts they use when describing the activities connected to sport for development.
Objective:
Nature-based sports have been shown to promote environmental consciousness and positively impact climate identity among participants. Yet, there is limited research on the impact of participation in nature-based sports events on participants’ ecological attitudes. The purpose of this study is to examine how ecological initiatives at nature-based sports events impact participants’ attitudes and environmental consciousness.
Methods:
An online questionnaire focusing on attitudes towards green initiatives in sports events, connectedness to nature, and participants' climate identity and environmental awareness was conducted with participants (N=233) attending the nature-based running event Ecotrail Oslo 2021.
Findings:
Climate identity significantly influenced participants’ attitudes towards green initiatives positively, and so did time spent participating in nature-based sports. 65% of the participating runners reported a strong belief in the ability of green sports events to influence people’s knowledge and awareness of climate action. Green initiatives most noticed by participants were action to reduce the amount of plastic waste (31,3%) and the event organizers’ choice not to hand out goodie bags (20,9%).
Discussion and conclusion:
While climate identity significantly impacted attitudes toward green initiatives, most participants scored high on the climate identity measure, implying that participants at green events like Ecotrail Oslo already have high degrees of environmental consciousness. In other words, the potential of green sports events to influence participants' ecological attitudes seems to be limited at best.
Chair: Noora Ronkainen
Room: C9A03, Building C Level 9
While increasing attention within studies of sports and physical activity is directed towards social groups that are described as vulnerable in one sense or the other, less attention has been given to the sports and health care professionals (and volunteers) who work with such groups. This paper aims to contribute to fill this research gap in examining a task unit of health professionals’ ways of approaching and working with the vulnerability of their target group. Using Michael Lipsky’s theoretical perspectives on ‘street-level bureaucrats’, the paper will explore the ways in which health professionals negotiate the cross-pressure between meeting political expectations for their work and dealing with the specific needs of the groups and individuals with whom they work. Drawing on ethnographic field work and interviews with 12 health care professionals employed in a municipal institution that initiates active recreation and health promotion programmes, the paper identifies a great deal of dilemmas in working with vulnerable groups and individuals. This leads to a discussion of aspects of programmes that promote sports, leisure time physical activity, and health care that are often left unnoticed. Further, we conclude that in future research and in sports and health programmes as well, vulnerability may not be presupposed but examined and challenged.
Objectives: Prior to Covid-19, we highlighted the growth of franchises and companies offering enrichment activities for the early years (0-5 years) market. However, the pandemic saw unprecedented restrictions placed on all aspects of life. As a result, the once everyday family routines suddenly changed and regular leisure activities were cancelled. We sought to explore how physical activity was managed by parents of pre-school children and how this changed during the pandemic.
Methods: A UK national online survey was disseminated and completed by 925 parents. Sixteen follow-up semi-structured interviews were undertaken with parents who had left contact details on the survey.
Findings and Discussion: Generally, the pandemic resulted in a reduction in physical activity in early years children. Many parents sought to utilise informal play and online physical activity. However, families often experienced challenges keeping their pre-school children active such as home working, access to technology, the weather, access to indoor and outdoor space, as well as the lack of structure, routine, social engagement and specialist spaces previously provided by franchises and companies.
Conclusion: Due to the nature of the pandemic and the age range of the young children, it was the parents who ultimately made decisions about physical activity and our results have provided a unique insight into those decisions. Whilst routines changed during the various 'lockdowns', the vast majority of parents in our study were keen for their pre-schooler to return to their pre-lockdown activities in order for their young child(ren) to be physically active in an environment with other young children.
Objectives
This study focuses on active participation in physical activity and sports after the introduction of the COVID-19 lockdown. An overview is given of how and to what extent adults experienced the imposed measures and their impacts. Since all organized and subsidized sports activities and facilities were shut down during the lockdown, one could consider the lockdown as a semi-experimental design.
Methods
In order to investigate how adults with regard to their participation in physical activity and sports coped with the measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, an online standardized questionnaire was conducted. A total of 13,515 adults answered the questionnaire. Data were weighted to a representative sample by sex, age, educational level, and children living at home. Descriptive statistics as well as regression analyses are carried out.
Findings and discussion
The results indicate that the educational level does not seem to majorly impact the frequency of practicing physical activity and sports. However, the former sporting behaviour of the higher educated is more likely to be affected, probably they suffer more from the closure of subsidized sports activities and facilities. The findings also show that higher educated people are more flexible in adapting their sporting behaviour.
Conclusion
As differences occur in how adults cope with the measures during the lockdown, it may be expected that, on the longer run, COVID-19 will become an (additional) driver of social inequality. As such, policymakers should be aware of this potential impact and consider it in their policy plans.
Key words: sports participation, COVID-19, social inequality
Objectives
The focus of this study is on how sports participants have been impacted by COVID-19, and its related measures, and this on different moments in the pandemic. More particularly, we aim to investigate how sports participants’ behaviour and motivations have changed (i) on different phases during the COVID-19 pandemic and this for (ii) both adults and their children.
Methods
Data have been gathered through a number of questionnaires that have been carried out at different phases during the pandemic. In the first month after the initial lockdown (March 2020), two large-scale online surveys have been carried out (see also Constandt et al., 2020; Helsen et al., 2021; Thibaut et al., 2021). While also other data are available from a number of questionnaires, the focus of the current study will be on a comparison of the former studies with the study that is carried out at the moment, during the so-called fourth wave (i.e. Omicron).
Findings & discussion
For the first wave it was found that, opposite to expectations, sports participation behaviour had increased. Nevertheless, sports participants indicated to miss their previous sports participation behaviour and were restricted by a number of factors (see also Scheerder et al., 2022). In the long run, the latter can be expected to also have impacted their sports behaviour. The current study will investigate whether this hypothesis is supported by the figures of the most recent wave.
Chair: Maikel Waardenburg
Room: D4A19, Building D Level 4
The anti-doping fight is immersed in a process of international harmonization led by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) whose task is to create the regulations that must be applied by stakeholders (States, IF, and other members of the sport movement). Anti-doping regulations are renewed through consultation processes, presented as “democratic”, aiming to collect their contributions. This communication questions the extent to which the process is democratic. To this end, we study the process from the first decisions of the “drafting team” (a small group of "experts") to the final approval by stakeholders. More than 2000 comments made in the articles of the World Anti-Doping Code have been analyzed and semi-structured interviews have been conducted with anti-doping professionals from WADA from six different countries. The analysis borrows from sociology and law to study the process in its institutional dimension. Results show that constrained between a paradigm of efficiency and a quest for legitimacy, the consultation process is an “instrument” (Lascoumes & Le Galès, 2004) that satisfies the “deliberative imperative” (Blondiaux & Sintomer, 2009) that WADA have to respect while maintaining strong control over the content of the text. WADA’s choice of prioritizing the consultation process is linked to its nature: it allows the concrete participation to a maximum of stakeholders, but at the same time, narrows the impact of their participation to the minimum publicly acceptable. The drafting team decides what articles will be modified, what contributions will be considered when writing the final version and negotiate with “key” stakeholders.
Research shows a burgeoning literature on how effective implementation of sports partnerships between civil society sports associations and municipalities serve to address health and welfare issues. Often due to limited project periods and differences between partners, studies identify various challenges and possibilities regarding these partnerships. However, there is still seen a shortfall of empirical and political research concerning the examination of prolonged health and welfare-oriented relationships between municipalities and sports associations. Aiming to inform future political initiatives on the sustainability of these partnerships, this study performs a process-sociological analysis of a Danish multiple case study. Taking our point of departure in Norbert Elias’ theory on figurations, webs of interdependence, and power dynamics, we analyse empirical material from five Danish municipalities and their long-term, formalized relationships with five sports associations. These relationships are studied because of their ongoing work with implementation and organisation of health and welfare related sports activities for adult and older populations within civil society sports associations. Using document analysis of contracts, local policies and strategies, and expert interviews with professionals from municipalities, voluntary instructors, and board chairmen from the five sports associations, our objective is to demonstrate the application of Norbert Elias’ theory in a relational context of civil society sports associations and municipalities. This may lead sports sociological researchers to explore new ways to perform civil society sports studies. For practitioners internationally, this approach may direct new understandings of their political work when partnering up with local sports associations in similar health and welfare-oriented partnerships world-wide.
Objectives
Trust is considered a success factor for cooperation in (sport) organisations and constitutes an essential feature of (good) governance. Creating adequate trust conditions, thus, seems to be a challenge for the management. The study aims at exploring preconditions, processes and mechanisms of trust formation and promotion within boards of sport governing bodies.
Methods
Addressing these objectives requires a qualitative approach to the specific research context. Data collection is based on semi-structured interviews with volunteer board members of regional sport governing bodies from a German federal state, all having a multi-year tenure on the board. The data is analysed by qualitative content analysis.
Findings
Whilst data collection is ongoing, preliminary results indicate that board work is mainly based on informal arrangements for which personal trust is crucial. Here, trust is mainly based on shared successes of long-term working together and fostered by benevolent, respectful interaction.
Discussion
Trust-related board leadership and culture depend very much on the president who can turn the board members’ trust in his or her personality into trust in the appropriateness of the decision alternatives he or she supports. Trustworthiness, however, is also assessed in the advance of joint board work by means of electoral procedures for the board positions.
Conclusion
With trust being based on personal characteristics and emotional affinity, very resilient bonds between board members emerge, fostered by the temporal stability of board memberships. However, while board decision-making mainly relies on a diffuse set of personal criteria beyond any control, problems of governance and organisational development may occur.
Objectives:
Almost all Dutch municipalities have a Local Sport Agreement (LSA). The LSA can be regarded as a form of ‘collaborative governance’. The main principle is that constructive collaboration between the local administration, voluntary sport clubs and other public and/or private organisations leads to outcomes that could not otherwise be accomplished. The aim of this study was to trace opportunities and constrains for collaborative governance that could explain differences between municipalities.
Methods:
Using the Integrative Framework for Collaborative Governance (Emerson, Nabatchi & Balogh, 2011), we conducted a study on local collaboration and implementation of the LSA. The Framework includes: system context, external drivers, collaborative dynamics, actions and impacts. With a focus on the system context, we diffused a questionnaire under 157 Dutch municipalities and carried out six local case studies.
Findings and conclusion:
We identified five important components of the local setting: policy frameworks, resource conditions, networks, and drivers (leadership and consequential incentives). These components affected the ‘collaboration dynamics’ and implementation of the LSA. For example: when ambitions of the LSA aligned the local sports policy, the implementation was furthered. The collaborating partners could build on existing experience and knowledge and make use of available resources and networks. When these resources and networks were absent, it took quite some time to build the structures and recourses for co-operation and implementation. In those cases the LSA was an important incentive to reconsider the local conditions and sport policy and for strengthening networks. This shows that collaborative governance is not only affected by, but also affects the system context.
Chair: Tzu-Hsuan Chen
Room: VBN3, Building HZM Basement
Child protection has risen rapidly at the Swedish sport policy agenda. However, despite the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN, 1989) making progress, one group of children seem to have been forgotten by the safeguarding initiatives in sport as well as by sport researchers, namely young referees. The overall aim of this research project was to gain in-dept knowledge of young referees’ experiences and conditions when engaged as referees in Swedish sport clubs. The specific aim was to examine the existence, experiences, and effects of emotionally abusive behaviour towards 15–18-year-old female and male referees working as match officials in team sports. Data were gathered through semi-structured interviews with 13 young referees officiating football and floorball games. The study draws on the sociology of childhood to highlight children’s views and experiences. The results shows that young referees are exposed to emotional abusive behaviour to an extent that has the potential to be harmful. Emotional abuse is expressed in forms of verbal and non-verbal criticism, aggressive behavior, and gendered prejudices expressed towards female referees. This results in anxiety, stress, fear, and decreased self-confidence which makes the young referees uncomfortable and unmotivated to continue officiate. It is concluded that the emotional abuse is almost exclusively expressed in the context of male teams. It is discussed how sport-governing bodies can develop initiative to deliver support, protection, and education of young referees to fulfil the principles of child protection articulated in the UNCRC.
Expenses rise in youth sports, and the socio-economic gap in youth sport participation widens. However, few empirical studies illuminate why the costs of sports participation rise. We aim to fill this research gap by studying how parents navigate and contribute to cost-driving processes in youth sports – a topic that has yet to be systematically studied. The concept of involved parenting (Forsberg, 2009; Stefansen et al., 2018) combined with a systems approach to youth sports (Dorch et al., 2020) is key to our analysis. Departing from the scholarship on class and parenthood in youth sports (Andersen & Bakken, 2019; Eriksen & Stefansen, 2021; Gottzén & Kremer-Sadlik, 2012) we treat parents investment practices in sport as reflecting and negotiating classed ‘moral rationalities’ in parenting (Duncan, 2005; Duncan & Irwin, 2004). Through 21 in-depth interviews with parents of youth cross country skiers in Norway, we explore two research questions: (1) What types of costs do youth cross-country skiing entail? And (2) how do parents legitimize/frame their extensive investments within a cultural context (youth cross country skiing) increasingly critiqued of spiraling financial costs in Norwegian youth sport? We found that the parents invested heavily in equipment and travels. They legitimized their spending through a moral imperative: state of the art equipment is a prerequisite for fun organized sport experiences, and investment in the sport is also a key investment in family life. In conclusion, we suggest an elite-sport logic combined with the findings above are central to rising costs in youth cross-country skiing.
Breakdance has gained increasing popularity throughout the Western world in recent decades. As subcultural movements involving physical culture and bodily practices among contemporary youth reach a certain threshold of prevalence, it is no surprise that the IOC strive for the inclusion of such acitivities at the Olympic agenda. Breakdance makes it Olympic debut at the Paris Games in 2024.
We take this as a potential sign of "sportification" of Lifestyle sport. Sportification refers to the emergence of new sporting practices which gradually forms organizations that have the power to define the rules of sport-like recreations (Elias, 1971). More specifically, we would suggest that the term may refer to some of the distinguishing charachteristics of modern sports identified by Guttmann (1978), including the rationalization, bureaucratization and quantification of sporting practices and governing bodies.
Our research question is: How does the sportification of breakdance influence negotiations of the symbolic meaning of breakdance in sport policy documents and among athletes and administrative representatives? Our aim is to analyze this question by digging into relevant documentary sources, as well as to conduct in-depth interviews with athletes and leaders of sporting bodies.
Conceptually, our point of departure is two-fold: First, we assess the 'negotiations' between the established federations (e.g. the IOC) and breakdance in the light of insights from the Cultural Studies tradition. This is to identify dominant, negotiated or oppositional responses from breakdance towards the established governing bodies within sport. Second, we make use of the concepts of boundaries and boundary work, from Michele Lamont, to analyze processes of negotiations within breakdance.
Many lifestyle sports are undergoing a process of institutionalisation and sportification. A growing body of research in the institutionalisation of lifestyle sport is developing. This is especially the case for parkour where researchers have begun analyzing how parkour has been developed in different national contexts. By drawing on institutional theory and various empirical data collected through ethnographical field studies this article offers a contextualised qualitative analysis about how the national, socio-cultural context and the sport governance system have coloured the institutionalisation of parkour in Denmark. The institutionalisation has been driven by the practitioners’ interest in getting access to sport facilities and therefore a need to accommodate to the sport governance system. But also, at the same time, by the existing associations who are facing challenges to attract young people and therefore integrating parkour into their schedules. Even though the institutionalisation creates tensions, it also illuminates how parkour has been integrated into the existing gymnastic organisations without being turned into an achievement sport, but as a sport-for-all.
Chair: Maikel Waardenburg; Ramon Spaaij
Room: N5, Building HZM 1st Floor
Chair: Astrid Schubring
Room: 7E02, Building HZM Ground Floor
In the societal discourse surrounding depression as a widespread disease, there are frequent reports about depressed elite athletes. Further, the scientific debate on depression in athletes is also gaining momentum. However, research on the subject has been dominated by sports psychiatrists and sports psychologists. By contrast, sociological perspectives that observe the phenomenon as a social reality are still underrepresented.
Drawing on sociological systems theory, various perspectives on the social construction of depression in elite athletes can be explored.
First, depression is seen as a form that is increasingly applied in elite sport, and which functions to observe quite different phenomena of suffering as the same mental illness. Second, depression is apparent as a communication topic that unfolds independently of the athlete’s psychic reality, and takes on different meanings in different social contexts. Third, depression is understood as a semantics that assumes social causes for the suffering. In sum, these perspectives reveal paradoxes, uncertainties, blind spots and reflection deficits in the current societal as well as scientific discourse on depression in elite athletes.
The fate of athletes who are labelled as depressed or self-attribute as such is a result of not only their mental condition but also the way in which this condition is socially observed and constructed. By analysing communication and its manifold influences on the lives of affected athletes, sociology can thus contribute significantly to the research on depression in elite athletes, and provide knowledge that is highly relevant for those disciplines dealing with the suffering in practice.
Objectives
The main goal of the project was describing sport careers of Polish professional Mixed Martial Arts athletes and analyze the culture of risk they act within.
Methods
88 MMA athletes were surveyed. In-depth interviews were carried out with 15 athletes from the surveyed group. Mean age of respondents was 27,5 years. Over half of athletes completed graduate studies. All investigated athletes had competed in at least 3 professional fights (with maximum of 40 fights). Most of the investigated athletes had been practicing combat sports prior to their MMA involvements. 80% of survey respondents declared successful careers in sport disciplines practices before MMA.
Findings
Investigated athletes commonly reported high level of organizational, financial and health risk related to their professional MMA careers. It meant precariat style work with low salaries, unstable work contracts and social security. This culture of risk was accepted by the athletes, socialized to the roles of masculine “warriors”. The athlete reported health problems related mainly to overuse injuries and frequent experience of pain. Low quality of health care and team doctoring practices were reported. Investigated athletes they had to manage and cover costs of their medical treatment, rehabilitation and sport-specific diet by themselves.
Discussion and conclusion
Media drive commercial character of MMA and low state control over professional MMA in Poland distinguish this discipline from other more traditional disciplines and increase risks to the athletes. MMA popularity makes athletes prone to accept high level of multidimensional risk of practicing this sport discipline.
Providing an appropriate environment for successful athlete development is a highly complex endeavor for elite sports systems. Given the lack of suitable organizational development approaches in this regard, we have designed what we call the “PRIO-Intervention.” It is an athlete-focused organizational development instrument for elite sports networks that follows a participatory approach. Drawing on the identified practical challenges vis-à-vis athlete development (Hear phase), the central goal of this approach is to collaboratively create appropriate solutions for the identified challenges (Create phase). Consecutively, the proposed solutions are transferred to the sports network structures (Deliver phase). All of these interconnected phases are planned, implemented, and evaluated by a multi-stakeholder coordination team.
This presentation aims to elaborate the theoretical and conceptual background of the participatory PRIO-Intervention program, which is currently being implemented in the German elite sports network in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region.
To start with, we conceptualize athlete development as a complex management task that needs to be approached with rather complex solutions and an ability to adapt to societal changes. Thereafter, we reflect on the potential of participatory approaches to identify and define practical solutions that address common challenges. Finally, we consider structural preconditions for the sustainable transfer of jointly developed solutions.
The PRIO-intervention is meant to give to the elite athletes the voice and power to actively engage in developing solutions that improve their personal sports environment. Furthermore, by evaluating the implementation process, new insights can be gained on the opportunities and limitations of participation-based interventions in elite sports.
Elite sporting culture in South Korea has often been likened to ‘Silmi-do’ in the country, a remote island where a military special force was trained to invade Pyongyang in the 1960s, owing to the nature of the system, including its coercive training, cultural isolation and neglect of athletes’ human rights. A sociological edition of this line of public discourse can be sought from Goffman’s total institution (1961) given the degrees of batch living and time-tabled control over athletes’ daily routines. However, this 20th century view of strong institutional control and passive agency seems too outdated to capture the ways in which contemporary athletes engage with the elite sport regime. Informed by Scott’s (2010) contrast between ‘total’ and ‘reinventive’ institutions, this paper aims to offer a (re-)conceptualisation of South Korea’s elite sport development system. Utilising data from interviews with South Korean high-performance athletes, the paper examines the relative balance between institutional coercion and voluntaristic agency manifested within the South Korean elite sporting culture. The findings show that individual athletes are not forced or ‘culturally doped’ to enter the system; they willingly join the regime in pursuit of success in their own ways and make the most of the elite development programmes inherited from the previous military regimes for the benefit of themselves, akin to the members of ‘reinventive institutions’ in which individuals make use of the totalising power of institution to construct an elevated social self and status.
Chair: Brent McDonald
Room: N15, Building C Level 3
This presentation critically explores elite athletes’ accounts on the anti-doping system and how ideas of purity and danger shape their experiences and practices within it. Theoretically, we draw from Mary Douglas’ influential ideas on purity and danger. These ideas encompass the idea that separating dirtiness from cleanliness provides a way to systematically create and maintain symbolic, societal and cultural order.
Data from 13 qualitative interviews with elite athletes in three different sports dispersed over five geographical continents was analysed using a reflexive thematic analysis. The analysis shows a strict conviction of the importance to distinguish the pure from the impure, in our study played out as practices and experiences of assurance, intimidation and shaming. The danger of breaching the sharp line between purity and danger had to be handled by the individual athletes through taking precise measures to avoid ‘pollution’. The elite athletes’ bodies become the places where boundaries can be built, and sharp limits arise. A conclusion is that the athletes have much to gain from becoming ‘guardians of purity’. We caution, however, that such positioning implicates symbolic values on cleanliness that may simultaneously infer others’ dirtiness.
The increase in the practice and social importance of running in recent years in most European countries has attracted the attention of social scientists in sport. Most of the existing social research has focused on identifying the profiles of runners, the reasons for running and the benefits it provides. Less frequent have been studies that try to explain its meanings and how it is closely related to other processes of social life. The aim of this paper is to explore the cultural meanings that coalesce and shape the social universe of running from the perspective of its practitioners. The study is based on five focus groups and sixteen semi-structured interviews conducted in the city of Valencia, Spain, with different types of runners. The results point to the existence of four antinomies or bipolar descriptors of the social meaning of running: group vs. solitary, sacrificial vs. enjoyable, healthy vs. harmful and committed vs. flexible. These antinomies present opposing meanings of running which, however, do not necessarily imply exclusionary options but, rather, constitute criteria for making legitimate choices with which to order the multiple possibilities that exist for each individual. The conclusions point out what this type of analysis of running can contribute to the analysis of institutional change, as well as to the understanding of the processes and logics that cross the field of leisure, physical activity and sport today.
The active pursuit of professional qualifications is emphasized as an essential part of the successful transition for post-sport time of elite athletes. In Germany, there is the opportunity for athletes to take place in the so-called “Sportfördergruppe”, which is an elite sport promoting institution by the Ministry of Defense to support athletes in their dual careers. Therefore, the question arises which educational opportunities do sports soldiers make, and which factors determine their decisions? Educational decisions are framed by human capital theory. This core concept is expanded by the influence of time-consuming efforts of athletes as well as the resources accumulated during the sport career.
A retrospective longitudinal study as cohort design was conducted to collect time-related event data of the respective careers (competitive sport, vocational training, occupation) of sport soldiers. The total sample contains n = 712 (former) sport soldiers, divided into 414 ath-letes, who are still active in the army, and 298 who are dropped-out in the last 10 years. A logit regression is carried out, which allows to investigate the effects of several factors.
Findings indicate that (former) sports soldiers make different educational decisions depending on their cohort affiliation, the age of entry into the army (Sportfördergruppe), duration of sports promotion and their educational origin. The estimated full logit model provides a good model fit (Nagelkerke: 0.44).
The findings contribute to the influencing factors regarding dual carrier decisions of sport sol-diers, and thus, offers recommendations to sports promoting institution Ministry of Defense.
Chair: Lone Friis Thing
Room: N16, Building C Level 3
Description of the phenomenon to be studied: Within the extant research, a cerebrovascular accident or stroke has often been portrayed as a highly biomedical phenomenon, with UK clinical guidelines focusing primarily on the medicalisation of patients and their recovery. Older adults are at a greater physiological risk of stroke, yet there are limited recommendations specifically for people in later life. This lacuna is especially pertinent in the context of physical activity and exercise, despite an evidence base that demonstrates how older adults benefit greatly from individualised and person-centred approaches to being active.
Aims/objectives: This presentation provides a detailed examination of the current understandings surrounding conceptualisations of ageing, physical activity, and exercise after stroke, from a sociological perspective. It also reviews previous theoretical bases for such work and indicates how a figurational sociological analysis can provide a novel theoretical perspective to explore exercise during stroke rehabilitation for older adults.
Justifications: Figurational sociology has frequently been applied in the context of sport, particularly related to Elias’ ‘Civilizing Process’, and holds promise for an insightful understanding of how the interdependent relationships between professionals (e.g., physiotherapists, exercise professionals) and stroke survivors can powerfully shape opportunities for, and experiences of, physical activity after stroke.
Implications: Recent research demonstrates the need to enhance understanding of the context of community physical activity and exercise for stroke survivors. It is timely, therefore, to investigate how a figurational sociological approach can be used to shape provision and delivery of community rehabilitation for interdependent older adults to engage in exercise after stroke.
Aging populations in the Developed World are met with increasing expectations to assume responsibility for staving off the potential deficits of an aging body (Urban 2017). Integral to the neoliberal project of maintaining good health in a postmodern ‘risk society’ are the presumed benefits of regular physical activity for elderly citizens (Katz 2000). Public health authorities and individual subjects alike are looking to the vast array of digital devices, such as smart watches and apps, to assist them in monitoring their physical activity levels and tracking a range of health parameters, reflecting a broader trend to integrate technology in healthcare (Rich & Miah 2017). Whilst there’s an increasing literature on the habits of self-tracking, and not least, the interface between users’ self-identities and digital technologies (Lupton 2020), there’s been little research to date on the aging population (Katz & Marshall 2018).
In this paper we’ll share insights from an ongoing project that asks: ‘what discourses are informing aging adults who engage in self-monitoring practices and how do they navigate the discourses of the body, aging, technology, physical activity and health?’ In particular, the presentation will critically examine a sample of Norwegian public health and physical activity policy documents to interrogate how aging bodies and digital technologies are constructed therein, acknowledging Foucault’s (1972) claim that discourses are not merely lingual signs but practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Accordingly, we’ll reflect upon how the values and ideas evident in the policies can do things to people.
The function of organizational structures in nursing homes is to guarantee that the vulnerable residents are cared for and protected in an efficient manner. Programs to promote physical activity, however, are rarely explicitly anchored in the organizational structures of nursing homes. The overall goal of the current paper is to analyze whether a participatory organizational consulting approach can lead to the sustainable implementation of PA promoting structures in nursing homes.
This study is part of the BaSAlt project, a participatory research project in nursing homes (BMG, 2019-2022; Thiel et al., 2021). To foster the implementation of activity-enhancing structures, fourteen “future workshops” in seven nursing homes were conducted. In order to analyze activity-related organizational and behavioral change, 823 hours of participant observation took place. The resulting documents and ethnographic fieldnotes were systematically evaluated, using Kim's OADI-SMM Model (Kim, 1993) to illustrate different single and double loop learning processes at the individual and organizational levels.
In the future workshops, participants developed 28 activity promoting measures. A sustainable implementation of the measures requires learning processes on different levels. The probably most relevant change refers to the “mental models” of the nursing homes. In order to guarantee that PA promoting activities (e.g. baking, bowling, gymnastics, housekeeping activities) are actually implemented on a permanent basis, nursing homes have to see themselves as activating instead of purely caring facilities.
Participatory approaches can initiate organizational learning processes towards physical activity promotion. To guarantee sustainability, these learning processes have to start at the basic organizational self-conception.
Chair: Eivind Skille
Room: B9N22, Building B Level 9
Mountains have long been dominated by men and hypermasculine practices. Women have worked hard to find a legitimate space in them. This presentation is drawn from a qualitative study which explored the experiences of 10 women, based in Scotland, who have dedicated part of their lives to mountains. It adds to existing insights on women who have made inroads into mountaineering. Conceptualising mountaineering as a social field structured by masculine domination, the research sought to understand the conditions which have enabled the women to successfully embody a disposition to mountaineering over time and interrogated how the women’s practices might represent a challenge to the continuing dominance of men and hypermasculine narratives that prevail in this field. Supported by quotes from the women's accounts of their experiences, the presentation will show that a number of structural changes in wider society and in mountaineering have enabled women to claim a mountaineering identity but that the field continues to be inflected by narratives of exclusion.
In 1994, the International Working Group on Women and Sport (IWG) organized the first international conference on women and sports. IWG also published the Brighton Declaration, vitally important for the advocacy for women in sport. In 2017, Taiwan released the White Paper on Women’s Participating in Sport, the first sports policy document focusing specifically on women and sports, also inspired by the Brighton Declaration. The present research paper aims to analyze the development of sports policy in Taiwan with regards to women’s involvement. The research materials collected for analysis were official policies, reports, and projects. The findings revealed that the promotion of women’s sports was realized in three ways in Taiwan. Firstly, the government and the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee, NOC in Taiwan, signed international declarations between 1999 and 2020. Secondly, the first policy focusing on women and sports was published. Finally, the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee has organized international conferences on women and sports every two years since 2011. The results of the study also underline that in Taiwan, the development of women’s sports policies is behind the global trends. Moreover, the force for driving the development of women’s situation in sports comes from the Gender Equality Committee of Executive Yuan. It can still be concluded that the awareness for promoting women’s involvement in sports is gradually increasing in Taiwan; however, this consciousness is not directly influenced by international sports organizations but domestic female activists who call for women’s rights in society, including their rights in connection with sports.
As Korean culture embraces and encourages males to produce and reinforce their masculinity from daily activities to professional occupations, males entering “female-zones” can be viewed as unnatural. However, there has recently been an increase in the participation of males as practitioners and instructors in female-oriented exercises such as yoga, Pilates and pole dance. Therefore, this study explores the experiences of male instructors whom engage in exercises that have been socially recognized as female-appropriate. In-depth interviews were conducted in collecting data with eight Korean male instructors in their 30’s, all of whom were teaching female-oriented exercises. When they first began participating in the exercises as practitioners, the male participants faced several barriers such as neglect from studio owners to take classes and distrust from other female practitioners about their intentions of participation. They were questioned about their motives to learn the exercises as well as their sexuality by other female participants. As the male participants became seriously involved in the exercises, they formed their own concepts about the exercises, as being “not only equip for women”. They began harmonizing themselves with other female practitioners during classes during their early participation phase. When they became instructors, they gradually reinforced their “hidden masculinity” by believing that these female-deemed exercises can be offered to women, yet considers them to be physical difficult even for men. Furthermore, male participants were hoping to break the barriers and expand participation of female-centered exercises to a wider population.
Women football has become the arena of emancipation processes - many recognized female footballers have come out, becoming the icons of equality campaigns. However, there is still a lack of research on the situation of non-heteronormative female soccer players and existing research have been conducted in Western countries (Scobie 2020). The aim of this paper is to fill this gap as it is dedicated to an analysis of non-heteronormative female soccer players from one of Central Eastern European countries.
The presentation draws data from an empirical project on female football players in Poland. It uses a variety of data collected through an online survey, an analysis of sports magazines and in-depth interviews conducted with both female football players and coaches and other stakeholders.
This paper proves that for many non-heteronormative female players their football team is a shelter where they feel safe with their sexual orientation. The respondents mention that this is due to the openness of other women, a sense of unity, and the fact that female football players spend a lot of time in their own company what facilities companionship. Simultaneously, our data show that respondents concern their team as a shelter as the external environment is still hostile and unfriendly to non-heteronormative orientations. Not all respondents gain acceptance of their sexual orientation in their relatives and the football environment. In its conclusions, the paper put some questions on the situation of non-heteronormative Polish football soccer players in the nearest future.
Chair: Remco Hoekman
Room: C9A03, Building C Level 9
With society gets more heterogenous, negative attitudes towards children that are considered different resulting in discrimination and accompanying conflicts is everyday life for many children–and that applies for sport, too (Wagner et al., 2018). Thus, dealing with diversity and mutual social acceptance is crucial in sport education of children that this study aims to analyse. With these results, evidence-based implications can be derived to strengthen teachers’ and trainers’ competencies dealing sucessfully with heteregenous sport groups.
Applying the framework of Koster et al. (2012) theory-guided data was gathered by a standardised questionnaire with 117 students of inclusive sport classes (5 to 7th grade, diverse in particular with respect to a disability and migration background). The questionnaire was composed of proofed instruments according to the theoretical framework at the individual level of the students (e.g., perspective taking, conflicts, social interactions) and at the teaching and class level (e.g., class climate, lesson design, attitudes).
SEM model analysis revealed that tolerance and acceptance of diversity is present when students have a positive attitude towards diversity, show an constructive approach to diversity, and thereby develop positive social contacts and mutual interactions between their class mates with no persisting social conflicts within the class existing.
For effective teacher training, specific attention should be paid to create a diversity-friendly class climate for the students (e.g. cooperation, support, community) and to enhance positive attitudes of the students towards diversity (e.g., equity beliefs, comfort, value) as these are the strongest predictors for social acceptance between the students.
It is a widespread political assumption that membership in local sports clubs can enhance migrants’ accumulation of social capital and promote social inclusion. In line with this assumption, Norwegian sports clubs have, since the late 1990s, been assigned a central role in promoting the integration of migrants into Norwegian society. When evaluating the integrative potential of sports clubs, a general distinction is often made between ethnic mixed clubs and ethnic minority clubs, with the expectation that the former holds the potential to produce social capital. However, it has been argued that politicians and sport governing bodies overemphasize the value of social capital and its ability to resolve social segregation. Instead, researchers have suggested that the social potential of sport lies in the individual’s opportunity to construct their identity and find their position in relation to others through the processes of in-and-exclusion.
Aims: In this study, I aim to explore how unaccompanied minor refugees (UMR) experience accumulating social capital through participating in ethnic mixed clubs and spontaneous sports activities. Furthermore, I will examine how involvement in sport can influence UMRs’ identity construction.
Justifications: Within the existing literature on sport, refugees, and forced migration, there is a lack of voice given to UMRs to discuss their own experiences and views on the role of sport in social capital accumulation and identity construction. This study aims to contribute to this research gap.
Implications: The study aims to inform sports policy and enhance the understanding of sport as an arena of integration for UMR.
Objectives: Throughout the past decades, various studies have empirically focused on social stratification patterns among volunteers in sport clubs. The social composition of boards in sport federations has received less, yet at least some attention. With reference to this state of research, our study (a) empirically analyses board diversity within the German Football Federation by (b) theoretically drawing on the concept of Belonging (Yuval-Davis, 2011).
Methods: Our data set includes information about approximately 400 individuals that were members of the board and the committees defined in the statutes of the German Football Federation in the past two legislative periods.
Findings: Our analysis inter alia shows a misrepresentation of women and immigrants among the board- and committee members, which holds especially true for very representative positions (e.g., for the chairs of the respective committees). This pattern has remained rather stable throughout the two legislation periods.
Discussion: The results will be compared to prior empirical findings. Furthermore, the discussion concentrates on the claim that the composition of boards and committees can be seen as a form of boundary-drawing which is, in turn, closely linked to the ‘politics of Belonging’ as described by Nira Yuval-Davis (and others).
Conclusion: The study leads us to conclude that alternative theoretical approaches can help to add a layer of understanding to the phenomenon of representation in sport organizations, and that the concept of Belonging is particularly suited for multiple analyses within the field of sport sociology.
With society gets more heterogenous, negative attitudes towards children that are considered different resulting in discrimination and accompanying conflicts is everyday life for many children–and that applies for sport, too (Wagner et al., 2018). Thus, dealing with diversity and mutual social acceptance is crucial in sport education of children that this study aims to analyse. With these results, evidence-based implications can be derived to strengthen teachers’ and trainers’ competencies dealing sucessfully with heteregenous sport groups.
Applying the framework of Koster et al. (2012) theory-guided data was gathered by a standardised questionnaire with 117 students of inclusive sport classes (5 to 7th grade, diverse in particular with respect to a disability and migration background). The questionnaire was composed of proofed instruments according to the theoretical framework at the individual level of the students (e.g., perspective taking, conflicts, social interactions) and at the teaching and class level (e.g., class climate, lesson design, attitudes).
SEM model analysis revealed that tolerance and acceptance of diversity is present when students have a positive attitude towards diversity, show an constructive approach to diversity, and thereby develop positive social contacts and mutual interactions between their class mates with no persisting social conflicts within the class existing.
For effective teacher training, specific attention should be paid to create a diversity-friendly class climate for the students (e.g. cooperation, support, community) and to enhance positive attitudes of the students towards diversity (e.g., equity beliefs, comfort, value) as these are the strongest predictors for social acceptance between the students.
Chair: Jeroen Scheerder
Room: D4A19, Building D Level 4
Over the past two decades, players with a migration background have rapidly risen to the top of the Finnish football. Although in the Finnish society debate around migration has commonly focused on problems and challenges, within the context of the football the tone has been very different. Migrant players have been regularly depicted as the great hope of Finnish Football. Building on concepts of racialization (Murji & Solomos 2005; Ansari 2004) and white gaze (Ahmed 2007; Dyer 1997) this presentation takes a critical look at the dimensions and consequences underlying this discourse of hope. The results of a content analysis of nearly two hundred media texts highlight a tension between a praise speech, which emphasizes the exceptional football skills of the players with a migration background, and a critical speech, which refers to their alleged attitude problems and difficulties of adjusting to the Finnish way of playing. As a result, the way the media frames the migrant players tends to leave them with two possible roles: a potential superstar or a potential troublemaker. Based on these findings, this presentation raises a broader question of whether excellence has become an entry requirement for the inclusion of migrants not only on the football field but also in society in general.
Significant flashpoints such as the racist abuse English football players were subject to during Euro 2020 and the culture wars that have ignited over Colin Kapernick’s taking of the knee protest against systemic racism in America, have brought increased attention to the topic of online hate in sport. However, this is not a recent phenomenon. It has been a growing concern for a variety of stakeholders in sport who have been subject to or impacted by racist, sexist, misogynistic, sectarian, homophobic and transphobic hate speech via social media platforms. Furthermore, hate speech has been a consistent problem in sport, particularly football, long before online spaces became such a key aspect of the discourse. Social media has just illuminated the scale and depth of the overall problem. Accordingly, sporting governing bodies, anti-hate organisations and policy makers have been left playing catch-up with a problem that continues to increase in scope and complexity. In this paper we share a scoping review of the complete history (which begins in 2005) of literature that has been written on this subject. Specifically, we document how online hate in this space has evolved as social media technology has transformed, the dominant theoretical and methodological frameworks that have emerged, the perpetrators, targets and subtypes of hate that contextualise the research undertaken. We identify gaps within the review and potential questions, contexts and methods that should receive attention in future research.
Keywords: Media, Foreign Athletes, Olympics
Abstract
The rise in the number of Olympic athletes who have switched nationalities has sparked further academic debate in sports sociology over the concepts of nationalism and belongings. Although foreign Olympic athletes have long been represented in Turkey’s national teams, it has been argued that nationality switching in Turkish sports is an obstacle for the development of "native-born" athletes. This study aimed to understand how the media portrays foreign Olympic athletes competing in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics in terms of belonging and nationalism. The theoretical framework of the research is Nira Yuval-Davis's (2006, 2009) approach based on the separation of "belonging" and "politics of belonging". The data was gathered from a) four national newspapers with mass circulation (Hürriyet, Sözcü, Fotomaç, Fanatik) during the Games b) archival news/columns dating back to the year the athletes started to represent the Turkey and, c) ordinary people’s comments on Turkey’s most popular internet forum, “Ekşi Sözlük”. As a result of thematic and content analysis, the themes of "Boundaries: Collective belongings" and "Our Children: National pride belongings" were produced. Findings show that in 417 articles on Olympics, foreign athletes took less (12%) than native-born. In the media discourse, the new citizenships of these athletes are constantly tested by the success in their performances. Images of the athletes holding Turkish flags and giving nationalist statements are emphasized, and their patriotism is intended to be demonstrated in this way. As a result, the boundaries of “our children” and “outsiders” are constantly redefined according to athletes' discourses and achievements.
Chair: Geoffrey Kohe
Room: A3M04, Building A Level 3
Advocacy in sport is staged as a strong commitment to protect the most vulnerable. Because of their noble objectives in favor of athletes, advocates leave little room for criticism. However, this communication aims at showing that proclaiming oneself as a spokesperson can also be a way of dispossessing groups of their voice and appropriating power. The spokesperson can indeed rely on a community to gain credibility and establish himself as a legitimate actor within the sporting field.
This research analyzes the discourses of Global Athlete. This organization was founded in 2019 after the Russian doping scandal and claims to be committed to “lead positive change across the world of sport” and to empower athletes. The research analyzes Global Athlete’s strategy to become the athletes’ advocate. The theoretical approach is based on an analysis of language as a resource of power by crossing P. Bourdieu's approaches of field and capital and Alexander's cultural sociology which is interested in the performative dimensions of language. We use a content analysis of Global Athlete communication (website, Twitter, Instagram, observation during conferences and symposium) and observe its reception in the media and on social networks. Our research hypothesis is that this advocacy is an instrumentalization of athletes' voices that serves (1) a legitimization strategy, (2) a quest for power within the sports field, (3) and the wider geopolitical dimensions at play in sport.
This paper addresses the issue of mobilities in football, dwelling specifically on African footballers’ migration to Portugal. In the last twenty years, foreign players in Portugal at the highest levels have always outnumbered national players. In fact, Portugal is a country of football migrations, both inflows and outflows. Given the structural characteristics of Portuguese football, namely the competitive dimension and the financial capacity of the clubs, foreign players who immigrate to Portugal are generally characterized by less professional experience, and many of them see Portuguese football as a form of privileged access to other European markets and championships. Taking a relational approach, this paper discusses African football players’ mobility, setting the theme in the distinction between trafficking in football and trafficking through football. Based on qualitative data collected within the scope of a European project on the integration of African players in Europe, this paper raises the issue of power networks that are established in the country of origin and in the host country; the recruitment structures of these players; the motivations to migrate; and finally, the ways of coping with failed projects due to the impossibility of succeeding in the highly competitive world of football.
Objectives
The main objective of the CASES project was to collect evidence on interpersonal violence against children in European sport. The focus of the presentation will be on sexual violence experiences inside sport compared to outside sport.
Method
The CASES-study is based on an online questionnaire for young adults (aged 18 to 30) that enquires about their experiences in and outside sport prior to age 18. Sexual violence was differentiated into contact-sexual violence (CSV) and non-contact sexual violence (NCSV). The survey included a total of 10,302 respondents from six countries (AT, BE, DE, ES, RO, UK).
Findings
35% of respondents reported having had at least one experience of NCSV and 20% reported CSV inside sport, whereas participants reported higher prevalence rates outside of the sport context (52% for NCSV, 41% for CSV). The prevalence of sexual violence inside sport is significantly higher for boys than girls (NCSV: male 38% vs. female 32%, x² (1, n=3539) = 38.10, p <.001; CSV: 26% of males vs. 14% of females, x² (1, n=2042) = 251.35, p <.001). Outside sport, females reported significantly higher rates for NCSV, while there are no gender differences for CSV (NCSV: male 46% vs. female 58%, x² (1, n=5322) = 144.36, p <.001; CSV: male 41% vs. female 41%, x² (1, n=4189) = .20, p=654).
Discussion
The results confirm the ongoing need to prevent sexual violence against children, inside and outside sport. The higher prevalence rates for boys in sport are to be reflected with regard to the social construction of heteronormativity and masculinity in sport.
Public authorities constantly face the challenge of preserving their independence from third party interests. This challenge can be particularly difficult when it comes to regulating sport, as sports organizations not only enjoy great independence, but also have a remarkable ability to influence governments; the fight against doping accounts for this influence. Following a campaign by governments for greater control over sports institutions, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), made up of members of the Olympic Movement and governments, was conceived in 1999 as a public-private organization that would lead the fight against doping. Since then, WADA has renewed anti-doping regulations and modified the configuration of the anti-doping system. Governments have lost their decision power within WADA; nowadays, their main responsibility is to comply with WADA’s decisions. Precisely, our communication aims to study the series of actions that have led to this change. To do this, we will rely on theoretical models developed for the study of power relations and on the data collected in the framework of an extensive collective study carried out in eight countries. The analysis shows how WADA has taken advantage of the relatively weak commitment of governments in the matter to approve a more interventionist policy, having previously negotiated with some key institutions (the European Union, for example). This study can help understand the bases on which this asymmetric power relationship is based and help governments to try to rebalance it.
Chair: Tony Don-Jhy Hwang
Room: N14, Building C Level 3
Objectives: The goal of this paper is to outline the complexity of sports betting social practice. Main research question is: "How to bet on sport?"
Methods: The paper is based on 30 in-depth interviews with regular sports bettors. The research was conducted in 2019-2020.
Theoretical background: The paper use Practice Theory as a theoretical frame, especially works of Schatzki, Reckwitz, Shove & Pantzar & Watson, and Nicolini. Key categories are “general understanding” and “practical understanding”. They are useful to explore the background of the decision-making process.
Findings: The research shows that betting on sport is complex and multidimensional activity. They are usually seen as a social problem. Showing them as a social practice helps us to follow their internal dynamics. According to the interviews, the sports betting process consists of two main phases. “Planning” is the phase of initial recognition of the bookmaker's offer and selection of events. “Making” is the moment of analysing selected events and betting money on them.
Discussion: In the process of "doing" bets, bettors use a variety of resources. These can be divided into four groups: (1) Basic principles – broader life assumptions based on attitudes towards risk or a sense of control; (2) General understanding - using common knowledge of the sport; (3) Analytical strategies - using specific methods of betting analysis (e.g. sports statistics); and (4) Hacks& tricks - specific personal tactics to increase betting chances (e.g. magic practices).
Conclusions: The paper underlines that the practice of sports betting is a "deep story". Individual betting pattern is not only a result of bettor's sport knowledge but also many other resources.
In European sport systems, volunteers are critical for the survival of community sport club, including grassroots football clubs. However, volunteer numbers are declining and their recruitment and retention are identified as main challenges across countries.
Few studies have examined outcomes of volunteering, focusing on positive outcomes. Negative outcomes are under-researched and employed volunteering measures neglected the different roles.
The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) developing quantitative measures for task and social frustration of sport volunteers, extending the qualitative study of Sheptak and Menaker (2016) and (2) identifying which voluntary roles yield higher frustration levels of sport volunteers in grassroots football.
Data were collected using an online survey (from November 2020 until June 2021) that targeted adult volunteers and club members in football in seven European countries (n=17,729). The empirical analysis contains a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to examine reliability and validity of the two frustration scales. Further, linear regressions were conducted to analyze the determinants of social and task frustration.
The results of the CFA reveal that the two scales for task and social frustration assessed reliability and validity. The regression results reveal that administrative and operational roles yield task frustration, while sport roles score low on task frustration. Only operational roles significantly increase social frustration. The results show the necessity for detailed analysis as volunteer outcomes seem to vary by volunteering role, including negative outcomes such as task and social frustration.
Community sport clubs can use these findings for the recruitment and retention of volunteers in sports.
Description of phenomenon. The paper will discuss the phenomenon of the popularity of leisure running, with origins in the USA in the Seventies. Now "The State of Running 2019" report cites 70,000 running events to be held worldwide, with 107.9 million participants, while the European population of amateur runners was estimated at 45-55 million people couple of years ago.
Aims/Objectives. The paper will examine the problem of the social significance and outcomes of the popularity of leisure running boom as a relatively durable phenomenon of nowadays global scope.
Justification. The most popular issues in the field of investigations of leisure running seems to be: socio-demographic profiles of amateur runners, runners’ motivation, as well as specific aspects and elements of runners’ training or the cultural and social origins of the running boom. However, it is difficult to come across analyses of the actual social impact of the running boom. In general, this phenomenon is "justified" on the basis of the expected large-scale health, psychological and possibly economic benefits.
Implication. The use of the term "social footprint" to describe the social impact of the phenomenon of interest, is proposed. I would like to summarize and theoretize in the paper my last decade studies and empirical researches dedicated to the running boom. Basing on the empirical data, the analysis will be carried out at four levels of sociological analysis: global, macro-social, mezzo-social and micro-social, considering two vectors: maintenance and social change, and using the distinction between developed and modernizing countries.
Chair: Rodrigo Soto-Iagos
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
This paper concerns the interface amongst sport, diplomacy and geopolitics at the recent Olympic Games in East Asia, namely PyeongChang 2018, Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022. With reference to international relations theories such as realism, liberalism and institutionalism, this study attempts to conceptualise a global sport-mega event as a political space where various types of inter-state communication, connection and contention occur. In this respect, this investigation focuses on North and South Korean relations, Korea-Japan rivalries, US-China tensions being represented through the three Olympics in East Asia. Taiwan questions at these competitions will also be considered. Furthermore, it assesses the capacity of the IOC as an institution whose goals include the facilitation of international peace and harmony through sport. The East Asian trio initially promised a partnership concerning the organisation of the sport mega-event in the region. Yet, when the curtain was raised, the three sporting occasions turned out to be a place for geopolitical struggles and diplomatic rows. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic made foreign relations surrounding the Olympics more fragile and volatile. Consequently, the spirit of the partnership between the Asian hosts nearly dissipated in the stadium and the symptom of a clash rapidly emerged inside the Olympic venues at the last stage of the East Asian Olympic era. While the IOC and event organisers promulgate the liberalist assumption that sport can promote peace and cooperation between nations, the actual delivery of the Games seemingly demonstrates the realist worldview which stresses preservation and maximisation of national interests as the first principle of statecraft including this Olympic diplomacy.
Baseball was brought from the United States to Japan and then from Japan to Taiwan, a modern sport introduced by the colonists and developed into a professional sport by 1990. However, this global/American sport was operated under a franchise management model which involves a touring arrangement and a home and away system running in parallel. Teams are given corporate names instead of city names. Primarily the management of the operation involves a business operator's mode of thinking towards the baseball business. The geopolitical, American-depended economic, historical and social contexts of Taiwan and the interactions among the owners, fans and politicians make the professional baseball's franchise management model glocolized. Moreover it was deeply involved with the national identity-making and assisted by the government in sport policies.
Little is known about how organizational members, in this case PE teachers, respond to the particularities of certain institutional pressures. Such knowledge is needed to unfold the discussion on how external expectations are managed by PE teachers who in turn makes internal adaptions that creates organizational principles. Insights as such may ultimately help shed new light on the origin of unintended consequences arising from policy transformation. This study can offer important insight into how both current and future policies are modulated based on contemporary societal discourses. This study aims to explore how PE teachers respond to institutional pressures embedded in policy implementation. To achieve this aim, the following research question has been constructed: What types of responses to multiple institutional logics can be interpreted in PE teachers’ narratives about policy implementation? An institutional logics approach is utilized to analyze the data consisting of 16 semistructured interviews, The results show that PE teachers respond in four ways: a) compliance; b) defiance; c) compartmentalization; and d) combination. The paper sheds light on nuances surrounding individual responses to competing institutional pressures and highlights the situations in which PE teachers experience that they need to handle such pressures and negotiation processes surrounding such situations.
Chair: Anand Rampersad
Room: VBN3, Building HZM Basement
United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in Sweden has been ratified (1989), included in sports policy (2009) and become an official Swedish law (2020). Sweden is one of the world’s most sporting nations in relation to its geography and population and children’s rights should be protected in sports in order to be a safe field of education and socialization for the children. However, several examples of abuse, lack of participation, normalizing injuries and generally events characterized by lack of rights-based perspective have been reported in Swedish and international research. The purpose of this paper was to shed light on those different kinds of violations of children’s rights in sports. More specifically, this conceptual paper highlighted an uncertainty about how children’s rights are viewed by people in sports as well as the fact that a violation of children’s rights is often open to interpretation because of the existence of several “grey areas”. Furthermore, this paper pointed out that when researchers try to explain why coaches violate children’s rights, they focus on the “winning at all costs” culture, the culture of silence and the player-coach relationship. This leaves out other important reasons such as: 1) sociocultural pressures that coaches undergo, 2) coaches’ education and 3) the nature of UNCRC. This paper ends with the author arguing for the reasons of why it is important to investigate those three factors and shaping research questions that will be used for the author’s PhD thesis.
Objectives: Youth sports around the world are affected by the Covid -19 pandemic. In order to explore the "drop out" in youth sports after forced "retirement", our research question was: how has the past period of several temporary closures affected youth sports in Slovenia? Methods: an online survey, "Youth sports in the grip of COVID -19 epidemic measures," conducted from November 18 to December 10, 2021, targeted coaches of 12- and 20-year-old years sport selection in track and field, alpine and Nordic skiing, gymnastics, basketball, football, swimming, and handball. Descriptive statistics were obtained for all variables. Findings: 204 coaches from Slovenia (male= 80.2%, age 41.74 years, SD ± 10.8, coaching experience 13.4 years, SD± 9.83) participated in the study. Most of the teams or athletes were boys. The results show a negative trend (11.4% "dropouts" and 10.5% "newcomers") during the study period. More than half of the coaches (54%) indicated that the main reason for dropping out was lost interest in the sport. Discussion: Even though some coaches offered online training during the study period, detailed analysis showed that we lost between 1,200 and 800 young athletes from 505 selections, including 42 talented young athletes. Conclusion: While the negative effects of lockdown sports are known in the short term, we are not yet clear about the long-term effects. If the negative trend in youth sports participation continues, the potential pool of talented elite athletes will be lost, and the “dropouts” will grow into a less active and less healthy generation.
Children and young people form a significant part of sport, but to what extent are they part of decision-making and can influence their sporting practice? On what – if any – matters do they have a voice? This study takes its starting point in the so-called participatory agenda which emanates from article 12 in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) stating that every child has the right to express their views in matters affecting them and that the voice of the child should be considered.
The aim of the study presented was to analyse what sporting issues young Swedish athletes feel that they have the power to influence, such as season goals, training frequency, training content, team positions, tactics, and team rules.
A total of 426 athletes aged 15-17 participated by answering a web survey consisting of 40 questions, including four open-ended questions. They were involved in gymnastics (57), football (116), floorball (120) and ice hockey (133). About 25 percent were part of an academy team or a selected competition group.
An important result is that young people's possibility to influence is ambiguous; it is both large and small at the same time. Their voices are hardly heard but they still feel involved to some extent, especially athletes who ranked themselves as being among the best in their group experienced that they had the power to influence the sporting practice.
The opportunities to participate in physical activity and sports can vary greatly across the different youth education institutions in Denmark, with upper-secondary school students (ages 15-20) generally having the most options while also possessing the best health and well-being.
Previously, employment of student-oriented, democratic workshops showed a feasible approach to health promotion in Danish upper-secondary schools. This study explores the wider application and feasibility in three different youth education settings: preparatory youth education, vocational education and a social and health care training programme. Working within a participatory research paradigm, the project has a focus on student and teacher inclusion, participation and contribution through the adapted democratically focused, innovative workshop design (see Frydendal Nielsen, 2015). Qualitative data (focus groups, interviews, observations and field notes) was collected from four case schools, with one of the schools being an upper secondary school similar to that of the previous research.
Focusing on enabling and constraining factors, the study is inspired by an Eliasian theoretical framework with the intention of analysing the power relations, established/outsider relations and interdependencies within and between the different school-figurations, supplemented by Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of communities in the liquid modern times.
Early findings show important enabling and constraining circumstances when implementing the approach in different school contexts; especially how teachers and central resource-persons are pivotal in the non-upper secondary settings, and the importance of workshop plasticity when applied in the vocational schools.
Building HZM
Chair: Louis Moustakas
Room: N5, Building HZM 1st Floor
Chair: Jannika John
Room: 7E02, Building HZM Ground Floor
Studies on talent identification “the process of recognizing current participants with the potential to become elite players” (Williams & Reilly, 2000, p.658), has predominately focused upon on coaches identification practice (e.g., Cushion & Jones, 2006) or on finding out what qualities that can predict talent (e.g., Vaeyens et al., 2008), and especially with a focus on boys. To date, research undertaken in the field has also neglected elite football player’s perspectives on ways of seeing and defining talent. Thus, in this paper the aim is to explore female and male elite football players' perception of what to look for when selecting a talented 14-year-old football player. The material in this study is based on interviews with football players (12 women and 13 men) that at the age of 15 were selected to a district squad and made it all the way to elite football in adulthood. The results show that the dominant view among the women is that attitude and curiosity, the willingness to learn and get better would be decisive in their identification process. However, although a majority of the men also emphasize those factors, the dominant view among men when selecting a talented 14-year old football player is game understanding i.e., how to perceive and understand the game and how to move and act in relation to “what’s going on” on the pitch. In conclusion, the question can be asked whether the gender differences shown in the study reflect the different conditions that surround women's and men's football.
During the past two years the COVID-19 measures have had a major impact on the circumstances under which talented athletes could train and compete. This research focuses on the experiences of Dutch talented athletes during the COVID-19 crisis.
This study has a mixed-methods design. Athletes who have been designated as ‘talented’ by the Dutch Sports Association (NOC*NSF), were surveyed mid-2021. In this online questionnaire, athletes were asked about if and how COVID-19 has impacted their career. To understand the extent to which the athlete's environment plays a role in the experienced effect as a result of the COVID-19 measures, additional semi-structured interviews with talented athletes are currently held.
Results of the quantitative data (n=1320) show that 29% have experienced only a (very) negative effect of the COVID-19 measures on the development of their sporting careers. About half of the athletes have experienced both positive and negative effects. Negative effects were most often caused by the lack of competition, which often resulted in a lack of motivation. Examples of positive effects are more time for rest, school or study. The negative effects were more frequently present in athletes who practice indoors compared to outdoors. Results of the qualitative data will be presented at the EASS/ISSA congress.
Despite almost one in three athletes experienced only negative effects, there are also talents who have experienced positive effects. It is unclear what the long-term consequences are, but it is important to continue to pay attention to this group of young athletes.
Studies on talent identification “the process of recognizing current participants with the potential to become elite players” (Williams & Reilly, 2000, p.658), has predominately focused upon on coaches identification practice (e.g., Cushion & Jones, 2006) or on finding out what qualities that can predict talent (e.g., Vaeyens et al., 2008), and especially with a focus on boys. To date, research undertaken in the field has also neglected elite football player’s perspectives on ways of seeing and defining talent. Thus, in this paper the aim is to explore female and male elite football players' perception of what to look for when selecting a talented 14-year-old football player. The material in this study is based on interviews with football players (12 women and 13 men) that at the age of 15 were selected to a district squad and made it all the way to elite football in adulthood. The results show that the dominant view among the women is that attitude and curiosity, the willingness to learn and get better would be decisive in their identification process. However, although a majority of the men also emphasize those factors, the dominant view among men when selecting a talented 14-year old football player is game understanding i.e., how to perceive and understand the game and how to move and act in relation to “what’s going on” on the pitch. In conclusion, the question can be asked whether the gender differences shown in the study reflect the different conditions that surround women's and men's football.
Chair: Hannes Gropper
Room: A3M04, Building A Level 3
In survey research, people regularly respond to questions addressing their sporting activities. However, the meaning of the term ‘sport’ is anything but clear in its colloquial, but also in its scientific use. The paper thus explores if a common understanding of what ‘sport’ is exists in the population and if not, how much the people’s understanding of sport differ from each other. A factorial survey design based on vignettes is used to assess which forms and types of physical activity are classified as sport by respondents. The factorial design was integrated into a representative online survey carried out in Germany in October 2021. With this factorial design it is possible to find out which characteristics an activity must have in order to be regarded by people as a sporting activity. The results show that the respondents do not have a homogeneous understanding of sport: Some sections of the population hold a rather broad and inclusive understanding of sport, while some take a more narrow and exclusive view. Controversy arises particularly around the classification of light, non-competitive and informally practiced physical activities such as yoga, darts, dancing, leisurely cycling or gardening that are not consistently understood as either part of ‘sport’ or not. These findings help assessing the validity of questions related to sports activity in surveys and whether said questions carry different connotations and meanings for different individuals or groups. Based on the results, the paper will discuss implications for improving the quality of respective survey questions.
For several decades, social science and humanities researchers have pointed to a linguistic turn (Rorty, 1967), and the interest in the social and cultural role of language coincided with the rise of post-structuralism. One prominent approach to the qualitative analysis of language and semiotics within a post-structuralism tradition is discourse analysis. Discourse analysis merges theory and methods (Philips & Jørgensen, 2002), and encompasses a variety of disciplines and heterogeneous intellectual traditions such as social linguistics, sociology, political science, communication studies, critical theory, and ethnomethodology (Wodak, 2006). Despite drawing a particular attention to language and semiotics, speaking about discourse analysis in singular makes little sense - as if there is one method primarily coined by one theoretical origin (Glynos et al. 2009). However, to the best of our knowledge, we still miss a comprehensive overview that covers how multiple and cross-disciplinary sub-fields adopt discourse analysis to sport contexts. Therefore, the main purpose is to conduct a scoping review of the use of discourse analysis in humanities and social science research within the field of sport in its broadest sense (i.e., sport, exercise, movement cultures, physical education, management, and leisure). This presentation aims to outline and discuss the implications of the methodological choices existing in and dominating the field through responding to three research questions: 1) Which theoretical traditions within a discourse analytical framework are chosen and preferred? 2) Which empirical foundations underpin the studies? 3) Which sub-disciplines within the field of sport have adopted discourse analysis and which have abstained from it?
This paper takes up the challenge posed by the organising committee to explore the potential contributions of sport sociology to inter-disciplinary research. It is widely argued that to understand complex social processes and real-world challenges, new research strategies are required that rethink how science and society relate to each other, and how relevant knowledge is understood and produced across disciplines. Collaborations between various scientific/social-scientific disciplines and societal actors have been increasingly advocated, in areas from health to the environment, and termed inter-disciplinary or trans-disciplinary research.
In this paper I; a) explore the concepts of inter and transdisciplinary research; b) illustrate the current ascendancy of transdisciplinarity, marked by the growth of publications, a widening array of contexts including in physical activity, health and the environment, with increased interest across academic, public and private sectors. I argue however, that these terms are frequently misunderstood and misapplied, and that conceptual clarity is required, including in sports related research. Drawing on research on sport, human and more-than-human wellbeing in the Settler Colonial context of Aotearoa New Zealand, I consider some of the possibilities, and challenges of these approaches. In doing so my paper contributes to debates about the potential of Inter and trans disciplinary research in sport, physical activity and health research.
Background to the phenomenon: The sociocultural phenomena that are of interest to sociologists of sport are complex, but they do not manifest at random. However, to say that such events have clear ‘causes’ is similarly unsatisfying given our commitments to ontological and epistemological assumptions that often depart from the natural sciences and our commitment to social theories that emphasise the fluidity of social processes.
Justification: Because causation is a necessary and fundamental feature of the world with consequences for both the natural and social sciences it would be remiss not to unpack it further with a view to understand what it means for our field. Indeed, while debates about causation are resurfacing in the natural sciences, discussions about causation in the social sciences are largely absent.
Aim: In this theoretical paper, I aim to offer an introductory examination of causation as it relates to the social causes that produce phenomena relevant to sport, such as inequalities in participation, cultural norms and institutional powers. I attempt to illuminate how causation has been implicitly considered within the sociology of sport literature by highlighting whether, for example, causal powers have been located as residing in the dispositions of human individuals or social structures.
Implications: Such theoretical development has implications for how sociologists of sport conduct their work, including whether there is a need to pay greater attention to how causation is thought about in future.
Chair: Ulrike Burrmann
Room: N15, Building C Level 3
The aim of this essay is to examine the discourses of leisure football and parenting and discover the ideal parenting and its implications in class through the practice and consumption of children’s leisure football in the age of globalization in Taiwan.
By adopting textual analysis as a method, it is found that children’s leisure football in Taiwan has been through a “leisurizing” process starting from the 1990s to the 2020s. Although football is still marginal as a spectator sport, except for the quadrennial FIFA World Cup, playing football has gained its popularity during the period. During the time, the field of practice of the game has moved from nursery schools to football clubs. The narratives of children’s leisure football have been getting more diversified and science oriented. Since the 2000s, along with the national policy and the growth of consumerism, physical fitness of children has become an important part of Taiwan’s child rearing practice. Expert knowledge, sport science and medical discourses are integrated into a scientific and progressive way of parenting via football in Taiwan. Playing football in clubs, wearing replica kits of internationally renowned clubs, coached by English-speaking coaches are taken as parenting with global visions. Furthermore, playing football is believed a good way to learn teamwork and help parents managing the problems derived from the excessive use of 3C products of their children. To conclude, without deep-rooted tradition and history, football is adopted for a more instrumental purpose. It has become a leisure activity and educational tool for the urban, middle-class Taiwanese parents.
Surfing and climbing are shaped by their “entangled histories” - and thus by imperialism, colonialism, capitalist commodification, the relationship to nature and limited resources. Therefore, the contribution is devoted to a power analysis of sports. Based on sports sociological, post-/colonial, and visual turn approaches in political science, the contribution explores the question of post-/colonial continuities in practices and narratives of surfing and climbing. The comparison is based on their staging as modern (risk) sports whereby their colonial histories and post-/colonial continuities are thus faded out. I argue that this staging is only possible through the delimitation of an imagined other and thus through processes of othering. The frame of discovery and conquest, as a post-/colonial continuity, plays a central role in this process. The frame is closely connected with a white hegemonic masculinity, especially with the trope of a feminized and sexualized nature to be conquered. Methodologically, the analysis is based on mixed-methods and, thereby, integrating qualitative content analysis based on secondary evaluations of colonial documents and a visually refined image analysis. With respect to the material, surfing and climbing magazines served as data. In line with this, the contribution of my work grasping post-/colonial continuities is twofold: Firstly, I will unfold and explain the dominant practices and power positions, since these are usually not questioned and thus become invisible. Secondly, the analysis serves to “alienate normality” and, against this backdrop, contributes to further advance this transdisciplinary field of decolonial research in the field of sports studies.
This paper focuses on how outdoor activities for children and youth at Sàmi/indigenous festivals in North Norway might contribute to the development of a holistic intersectional cultural understanding and decolonization processes. Through indigenous paradigm and methodology (Koukkanen, 2000; Smith, 2010), we highlight how Sami/indigenous holistic ethnic identities are expressed through various activities offered to children and youth for example at the Mánáidfestivála (children's festival) at the Riddu Riđđu festival. The festival activities are described to increase the knowledge about institutional importance of indigenous peoples' festivals both for Sàpmi and for the majority communities in large. Sàmi and other indigenous festivals have been crucial in the revitalization of indigenous cultures, and here the various activities for children and young people are of great importance. Methods used are a long-term fieldwork in the period 2009-2019, including data from documents, field conversations, observation notes, and 42 in-depth interviews from various Sami/indigenous festivals. The indigenous festivals, i.e. Riddu Riđđu proves to be an important arena for highlighting and revitalizing Sàmi and indigenous cultures (Viken, 2013), and solidarity is expressed holistic and through partnership (Skogvang 2020) where aspects such as gender, age, ethnicity and nationality are intertwined.
Key words: Sami and indigenous festivals, decolonialization, children’s activities, outdoor life, indigenous paradigm
Chair: Dominic Malcolm
Room: B9N22, Building B Level 9
This paper examines the Taiwanese female experiences of participation in extreme sports, contributing to research on gender culture in extreme sports as well as the constraints faced by women. In recent years extreme sports have attracted many people who like to challenge themselves. However, compared with traditional sports categories, there has been little research focusing on female aspects in extreme sports. Through the method of in-depth interview, this article delves into the experiences of 9 top Taiwanese female extreme sports athletes from 4 different domains, including mountaineering, climbing, ultra-marathon, and freediving.
Classified by the structure of Leisure Constraints from Crawford and Godbey, results show that: 1. Intrapersonal constraints: Instead of being confined by gender stereotypes, these female athletes all possess a high degree of self-confidence and a firm belief in engaging in extreme sports with the ability of risk management. 2. Interpersonal constraints: The interviewees have indeed confronted the problems of lacking female partners in the beginning. Yet, the situation has improved. Moreover, they emphasize extreme sport is a self-independent sport more about self-talk. 3. Structural constraints: The structural changes in gender roles have led to an increase in the number of female participants in extreme sports. With the help of technology, gender no longer plays a significant factor as usual. However, the way in which the media portrays different genders is still problematic. These findings suggest that even though female still confronts a certain degree of constraints in extreme sport, the overall trend is positive.
Gender equality is a cornerstone of liberal democracy and a frequent subject to research in the social sciences. While research shows progress in many Western societies over the past decades, it shows notable segregation by gender in several life domains. A prominent example of continuing segregation by gender is sports participation. Already in the 1980’s, Messner argued that sports participation in males preserves and reinforces beliefs of a “natural superiority” over females. Furthermore, it also provides a separated cultural sphere that retreats from the growing gender equality in society which could cultivate misogynous gender ideologies.
Despite an extensive scholarly and public discourse on the link between sports participation and gender ideologies, empirical research remains surprisingly scarce. The proposed research aims at identifying the effects of sports participation on gender ideologies in males. The research draws on cross-national survey data from the World Value Survey and the European Values Study of the years 2006 to 2018 including males from 78 countries, offering the advantage that the male respondents studied are socialized in different societies that differ in terms of gender equality, religiosity, or economic development. Furthermore, both data sets provide comprehensive measurements on gender ideologies.
Multilevel models that have been calculated using random intercepts and robust standard errors based on these observations show that sports participation in males indeed slightly fosters gender ideologies in males. Further analyses will investigate whether the degree of gender equality in a society moderates the relationship between sports participation and gender ideologies.
Sport leadership and governance is widely recognized as being gender-imbalanced and gender-inequitable. With the emergence of eSports, new organisations have been established both internationally and in the Nordic countries. Unlike most sporting contexts, eSports performance does not depend on physical abilities. This has led practitioners to argue that eSports have the potential to become gender-inclusive sporting spaces. Yet, the marginalisation, discrimination and harassment of women is a well-known and well-explored issue in eSports research.
Objective: To explore the extent to which Norwegian eSports organisations are sites of reproduction of gender power relations that privilege men in leadership positions.
Methods: 11 semi-structured interviews with male and female leaders in Norwegian eSports organisations.
Findings: Norwegian eSports organisations are gender-imbalanced across all levels and positions. Gendered practices, cultures and structures exist at both the organisational and sector-wide levels. This has resulted in women leaders adopting coping and resistance strategies. Some of our findings mirror well-established findings in the sport management literature, whilst other findings are unique to the culture and developing organisational structure of the eSports sector.
Discussion: We draw upon Acker’s theory of inequality regimes to guide our discussion on the practices, processes, actions and meanings that maintain gender inequalities within eSports organisations.
Conclusion: Norwegian eSports is a developing and fragmented sector formed of young, under-resourced organisations. The emerging nature of the sector simultaneously influences the reproduction of male-dominance and the potential for gender equity in its leadership. The extent to which the sector will realise this potential remains to be seen.
Chair: Annika Frahsa
Room: N16, Building C Level 3
Long-term unemployment and homelessness lead to serious physical, psychological and social stress. Empirical studies draw attention to a downward spiral that often begins with the loss of employment, intensifies with the transition into long-term unemployment and homelessness, and makes reintegration into social structures such as employment increasingly difficult. Sport and exercise in groups improves physical and mental health and is considered a suitable socially integrative medium. However, people affected by long-term unemployment and/or homelessness show significantly reduced activity levels and barriers such as costs and social stigma further hinder access to organized sport, so that affected people usually cannot benefit from the advantages and potentials of sport. The current state of research on sports and physical activity programs with long-term unemployed and homeless people suggests that participation in sports and physical activity programs can bring about social (re)integration potentials in addition to positive changes on a physical, psychological, and social level. Initial studies show that participation in sports and physical activity programs can have a positive impact on the generation of gainful employment, housing, and education. The causal relationships here are very complex and require a holistic view of physical, psychological, and social influences that can be elicited by participation in sport. In order to exploit the promising potentials of sport and exercise in groups as a targeted measure for social integration among long-term unemployed and homeless people, the research field needs to be reviewed and investigated from multiple perspectives.
The purpose of the paper is to analyze immigrants' sports participation in Denmark. Inspired by ethnicity theory, marginality theory and assimilation theory we analyze the significance of different factors – ethnic background, socioeconomic position, and access to sports opportunities - for participation in different types of sport and under different forms of organization. The data basis for the analysis is a large survey from 2020 of movement habits in Denmark, answered by 163,133 adults of which 8 pct. has an immigrant background. The questionnaire included questions about participation in almost 100 different sports and movement activities regarding the frequency of participation, the organization of the activity, motives etc. The respondent's answer to the questionnaire is linked to information from Statistic Denmark about the individual's immigrant background, and socio-economic position, etc., as well as data for the relative number of sports facilities, sports clubs etc. in the municipality where the individual respondent lives. The multilevel logistic regression analyzes show that both the ethnic background and the socio-economic position are of great importance for both the proportion who practice sports and how sports are practiced (types of sports and organizational forms) while the opportunities for doing sports (eg access to facilities) are less important. Based on the analysis, we discuss whether the Danish policy pursued to promote immigrants' participation in sports – focusing on assimilation to dominant sports and organizational forms (sports clubs) in Denmark and the establishment of sports facilities in residential areas with many immigrants - has been a mistake.
Within Western resettlement countries, sport has gained increased traction among policy makers, practitioners, and academics as a tool to meet Western neo-liberal policy goals through fostering integration, health and wellbeing, and social inclusion among young people from refugee backgrounds. Yet, considering the complex challenges that these young people experience during their displacement and resettlement journeys, sport and leisure may be a site of further social exclusion, re-traumatization, and agency denial, which may restrict or deny their capabilities with potentially damaging wellbeing and integration consequences.
This paper draws from a three-year long Participatory Action Research study with a refugee charity, BelongHere* in London, England to explore empirically how a Capabilities Approach may be employed to understand key processes in co-designing and delivering sport-based programs to enhance the wellbeing of young people from refugee backgrounds. Eleven interviews with community stakeholders, 16 month-long participant observation, alongside digital diaries and photo voice interviews with 7 young co-researchers were used to collect data. Thematic analysis illustrated that the co-design and delivery of sport and leisure programs at BelongHere impacted upon wellbeing through supporting, restricting, and denying three core capabilities of (1) affiliation to programme staff and peers (2) control over the environment, and (3) bodily integrity. The findings are significant in ensuring community sport and leisure provides opportunities for young people from refugee backgrounds to engage in positive and meaningful wellbeing experiences and enables them and those supporting them to identify, know, and challenge harmful practices that restrict and negate their capabilities.
Equality, diversity and inclusion have been discussed in the sports context for many years, in practice as well as in research. In Sweden, increased inclusion is an explicit ambition in policies of the sports movement. However, there are no specific directives on how inclusion and inclusion work should be interpreted and implemented. Rooted in a theoretical framework inspired by Foucault, the present study intends to contribute to that discussion by exploring the meaning-making around inclusion and exclusion as both a discursive and social practice in a sport context.
The empirical basis for this study is four focus group interviews, carried out with participants from four different martial arts sport clubs in Sweden. The interviews circled around a) the norms in the sport clubs, b) the design of the concrete activities; the logics behind the sport practice and conditions for participation, and c) the work with inclusion, involving thoughts on existing policies and active measures. The data analysis was carried through utilising a thematic analysis procedure, based on the theoretical framework.
The preliminary findings highlight both obstacles and opportunities for inclusion. Furthermore, the respondents’ comprehension of inclusion and exclusion indicates there is a negotiation on how social practices are understood in relation to inclusion and exclusion. The discussion addresses that different social categorisations and inclusion aspects seem competing, demonstrating notions on superiority and subordination in the inclusion work.
Chair: Siegfried Nagel
Room: D4A19, Building D Level 4
This research examines alternative sports programs in Taiwan in the current age of platformization. In particular, it employs a platform-based perspective and focuses on alternative sports programs paying attention to global professional sports. Historically, in Taiwan, only the international sports channel or TV station with broadcaster rights produced sports television programs (such as variety shows and highlights). However, the advent of the multi-platform has seen the emergence of various forms of alternative sports programming, especially YouTube channels. As this programming is produced outside of the context of traditional broadcasters, the production and content are novel and form alternative ways of the sports broadcast ecology, especially the fact that hosts can freely obtain information on global sports. Some programs are influential, for example, Tainan Josh’s YouTube channel, famous for its professional analyses of MLB , or the ABN YouTube channel, which focuses on stories about NBA players. These channels have their own production capabilities and attempt to connect the global media sports landscape . Against this backdrop, this study asks the following questions: What kind of sports culture is constructed by these alternative sports programs? What are the cultural implications for the contemporary global sports media scene? The study seeks to understand these questions by analyzing the texts and related materials of the programs. Furthermore, by integrating the structure, and textual discussion relating to alternative sports programs, the study will examine their position in the media scene as well as their positioning and relationship between local sports and the local and global sports and media scenes in today’s platform/multi-platform media environment.
This study conducts a publication and citation analysis of the European Journal for Sport and Society. It seeks to identify the characteristics of published articles and the drivers of citations. All articles published in the journal between 2004 and 2020 were entered in a database (N=362). The number of citations was obtained from Google scholar at the beginning of January 2022. The analysis is limited to publications with (possible) citations (i.e., research articles, editorials with title; n=264). The results reveal that the following topics were mainly published: Sport participation (45.5%), sport organisations (22.3%), integration (12.1%), social and cultural aspects (12.1%), talent development and coaching (12.1%), sport policy (10.6%), sport development (9.5%), gender (9.1%), sport events and fans (8.7%), and media (8.7%). An average of 2.07 authors are on each publication, with the share of women authors amounting to 27.7%. Authors come from 1.52 different affiliations that are located in 1.24 countries. On average, publications have been cited 18.03 times in total and 3.19 times per year. The results of regression analyses show that the number of citations is significantly and positively affected by the years of publication and the number of pages. Publications published at the beginning of an issue have gathered more citations. Several topics were cited significantly less: Sport events/fans, tourism, talent development/coaching, health, and education system. The higher the share of women authors and the number of involved affiliations, the higher the number of citations. These findings have implications for authors and editors of this journal.
Many content analyses have shown how journalists draw on racial stereotypes or myths when commenting on live sports such as football or basketball, providing evidence for the important role of sports media in the construction of knowledge about race/ethnicity. For example, one of the most common findings suggests that “Black” athletes are more often associated with physical characteristics, in contrast to their “White” counterparts, who are more likely to be associated with psychological characteristics such as leadership or team play. However, less is known about how audiences deal with these messages. Do they accept them uncritically or do they challenge the biased football commentary they hear on television? From a Cultural Studies perspective, and in order to answer this question, we conducted 14 focus groups with Spanish youth in the summer of 2021. They were asked to reflect on issues such as racial/ethnic diversity on the pitch, the composition of the national team and their perceptions of sports media. We analysed the content of these focus groups using a bottom-up approach, as informed by Grounded Theory, that is, allowing the data to “emerge” from the text itself. Preliminary analysis of the interviews shows how Spanish youth draw on a mixture of discourses, both reinforcing and challenging hegemonic media discourses. Results will be discussed in light of the wider Spanish context and discourses regarding race and ethnicity.
This paper presents analyses from an ongoing project that asks the following research questions: “what discourses are informing aging adults who engage in self-monitoring practices, and how do they navigate the discourses of the body, aging, technology, physical activity and health?”
As Western countries experience a “greying of the population”, tele-health is widely promoted as a means of reducing the pressure on public health services by offering aging groups medical care through digital solutions (Kruse et al., 2017; Robbins et al., 2018). Smart watches for monitoring physical activity have become extremely popular in this respect. However, scant attention has been paid to how the elderly interact with commercial devices for health monitoring (Urban, 2017). Consequently, one central aim of this project is to explore whether, and how, such practices contribute in shaping the identities of aging subjects.
The data have been generated by in-depth interviews (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009) with a sample of female and male Norwegians over the age of 60. The textual material has been interpreted through the lens of discourse analysis (Foucault, 2010 [1972]; Markula & Pringle, 2006), drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as new materialism and sociological perspectives on aging and health (Gilleard & Higgs, 2014; Lupton, 2020). Preliminary findings suggest there are multiple ways of interpreting and relating to the data accumulated by wearable devices. Emerging themes are the entanglements of fleshy bodies and data flows, management of the risks that aging bodies are exposed to, and the negotiations between humans and their data.
Chair: Fabien Ohl
Room: VBN3, Building HZM Basement
In the framework of the Belgian Red Courts Programme of the Belgian Football Association, a programme theory/ theory of change for a football-based radicalisation prevention programme for young people aged 16-25 will be developed. This programme theory was developed on the basis of an extensive literature review, which first looked at the relevant theories of radicalisation and dangerous push and pull factors. The second part of the literature review is a summary of different prevention approaches and their classification. The search was not specifically for sport-based approaches, but for general, theory-based and evaluated prevention programmes. In the course of this, it became apparent that there is a lack of theory-based approaches in the field of prevention of radicalisation. One of the few is Daniel Koehler's (2017) "Theory of re- pluralization" as radicalisation prevention or deradicalisation. Koehler's theory provided the basis of the programme theory for the football-based radicalisation prevention programme in the last section of the review.
In the last chapter of the review, the programme theory is presented in detail and the mechanisms through which a change in beliefs and behaviour is to be achieved are shown.
The literature review also describes in detail the context and goes into detail about framework conditions and assumptions that are a necessary precondition for the successful implementation of a football-based radicalisation prevention programme. Finally, references are also made to qualifications and necessary competences of the staff working in the programme.
In the further course of the project, the programme will be monitored and the effectiveness of the programme theory will be evaluated.
The scholarship intersected by sport, social change, and sport-based entrepreneurship has grown a large body of literature and has called for critically investigating the win-win sport intervention programme with a broader social context in response to the need for targeted groups and structural changes. This article aims to build a contextualised understanding of a baseball social enterprise that initiates a baseball intervention programme to tackle the social issues faced by at-risk youth and East Taiwan. This article adopts a case study approach to collect data from this anonymous social enterprise to examine how this social enterprise implements the baseball intervention programme for at-risk youth, how this programme responses to a broader social context in East Taiwan, and what difficulties in this programme can be identified? To tackle these research questions, the participant observation method has guided the author to volunteer in this intervention programme in 2016 and several return visits after 2016. Also, the semi-structured interview methods led the author to conduct six semi-structured interviews with the director, coach, staff, and other volunteers in 2018. Using the field note and interview data, author identified the key stakeholders and analysed their interactions and tensions in this case and its social meaning toward East Taiwan. Findings indicate the proposed win-win model was challenged by baseball nationalism, elite sport system, local politics, and conventional thinking about sport, thus causing a dilemma to happen. The conclusion addresses these dynamics and meanings of failure for future sport-based social enterprises implementing intervention programmes in East Taiwan.
Key Words: Baseball, Social Enterprise, East Taiwan, At-risk Youth
The scientific goal of the research was to get to explore and describe the fate of sports clubs in the period of the political transformation in Poland after 1989. The main research questions concerned the processes of institutional change taking place in sports clubs. During the study, the research perspective of a multiple exploratory case study was used. The following research methods were used: desk research, in-depth interview (IDI), analysis of press articles from a daily newspaper from 1989-2004 and analysis of archival data. The theoretical framework based on the concept of deinstitutionalization of the organization by Christine Oliver (1992) and the field theory of Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam (2012) were used to analyse the collected empirical material.
During the research, two types of institutional change processes were distinguished: the reinstitutionalisation process and the deinstitutionalization process. The factors influencing these processes and the choice of strategies of social actors who managed sports clubs were also specified. There was also a discussion with theoretical concepts, supplementing them with missing elements that better describe the factors and institutional change of sports organizations.
Moreover, it was found that the above-mentioned models of change processes can be applied to research on contemporary sports clubs. Especially in situations of economic crises, ownership changes or the transition from an amateur organization to a professional one.
The indicated processes also strongly strengthened the current sports system in Poland - largely excluding multi-section clubs from functioning in the field of sport.
The main conclusion of the study concerns the further exploration of change processes in sports clubs in post-socialist countries in order to understand their current status.
Decades of research has consistently found the same list of barriers that restrict underrepresented and marginalised groups from accessing various levels of sport and physical activity. Despite knowledge of these barriers, rates of participation have remained relatively unequal in a context where those responsible for organising these sports (volunteers and administrators) actually believe in equality, and are often actively engaged with trying to make their sport spaces more inclusive. This paper discusses the process of utilising sociological thinking and methods with people working in community sport to assist them in achieving the social change and inclusion that they seek. In particular we explain the design, successes, short comings, and potential, of taking the lessons from the sociology classroom to the community in a project titled Change Makers. Key elements of the Change Makers' design explicitly address both the taken for granted commonsense that exists within sport and the issues of volunteer burnout, resistance and the specific and diverse differences between each sport club context. We hope that the Change Makers model can provide direction and innovation in locally based sport for social change environments and realise the potential for public sociology to transform community sport.
Chair: Parissa Safai
Room: N14, Building C Level 3
The paper presents the socializing role of dance as an artistic and sports discipline in children’s life. As children grow and mature, they need to experience an ongoing process of social interactions, which enables them to develop the skills they need to participate in human society. The influence of activity or movement on the process of socialization of an individual and a group plays a significant role in the social development of a human. Dance as a form of sports contributes not only to the physical well-being of children but also helps them in improving their social skills. By investigating the elements of social interactions of children’s participation in dance classes through bodily movements and gestures, the relationship between the self and the world can be understood. The aim of this paper is to examine how dance lessons can help children improve their social and communication skills, learn how to work as a team, develop a sense of trust and communication, and help in co-creating the surrounding environment. This paper uses the theory of symbolic interactionism to help understand the meanings that the dancers create through their art form. By reviewing the literature, the paper shows how the bodily movements, actions, and expressions of dancers facilitate understanding, interacting and interpreting the meanings formed as a result of their own experiences based on social interactions as dancers within a given space and time.
This paper will be debating the numerous perspectives in the sociology of sport in the European context to critically reflect upon different editorial essays writing about the topic over time (Donnelly 2004; Malcolm 2018). The paper will be focusing on several issues related to the debate. First we analyse what Malcolm (2018) name the apparent “threats and opportunities” facing sociology of sport and this theme will be connected to publication strategies and politics related to this field. Secondly, we will go into depth with hegemony of the Anglophone reviewer tendency as Evans and Thiel (2019) name it in an editorial. These two issues are interrelated but also written and talked about separately. The main purpose of the paper is to establish a critical space for debate about how important inclusiveness is in a scientific research area, but also to highlight the importance of contextualising scientific work. We fear a loss of acceptance of cultural aspects and issues related to national issues if language and cultural norms are overruled by management strategies in metricisation of academic publication (Evans and Thiel 2019). The paper will bring cases taken from research related to sociology of sport from two countries – Norway and Denmark.
Objectives
Sen’s capability approach has recently received increasing attention in health promotion. However, there is little guidance on how to use the approach in actual project work. This study used the experience from four physical activity projects to develop a framework and guidelines for the effective application of the approach.
Methods
We first developed a theoretical model and then analyzed data from four empirical studies that used the capability approach. Findings were amended based on feedback from project researchers. On this basis, guidelines were drafted for using the capability approach in future physical activity research projects. The guidelines were finalized using external expert input and a consensus workshop among the involved project researchers.
Findings
The resulting theoretical model of the “capability cycle” could effectively be used to analyze capability mechanisms in the pilot projects. Interpretations of the capability approach varied between projects due to the use of different, discipline-specific theoretical constructs (e.g. capacity building, health literacy). Further, projects implemented and evaluated the capability approach in different ways. Nonetheless, project researchers agreed on a joint set of guidelines, which comprised recommendations regarding the project planning, implementation, and especially evaluation.
Discussion
Our findings provide practical guidance on conceptualizing, implementing, and evaluating future research projects that focus on improving capabilities for physical activity. Additional research is warranted to add experience from other projects.
Conclusion
The guidelines developed in this study may be a good initial point of departure for research groups interested in using the capability approach to improve the effectiveness and impact of projects to promote physical activity.
For more than thirty years, capitalism has been presented as the only realistic political and economic framework around which society (let alone elite European football) can be organised. Drawing upon the cultural analysis offered by the late Mark Fisher, this paper seeks to diagnose and explore the effects that ‘capitalist realism’, as critically interrogated by Fisher, has had upon the governance, regulation, and consumption of European football in late modernity. This paper is timely in that the European game, like wider society, has been forced to negotiate simultaneously the exigencies of Brexit, Covid-19, and a prolonged period of economic crisis. Amid these conjoined crises, European football has also been subject to a power struggle between twelve of the continent’s leading clubs and the governing body, UEFA, around a proposed Super League and Champions League reforms. Occluding any notion of social democratic reform, the response to these political and economic crises has been the demand for more capitalism rather than less. Europe’s elite continues to prioritise the economic goals of growth and expansion over the principles of redistribution and solidarity. Yet the upward redistribution of this wealth has created ever-widening levels of inequality across Europe’s domestic leagues, the continent as a whole and indeed, the global game more widely. Looking beyond Fisher’s ‘capitalist realism’, this paper seeks to imagine those post-capitalist alternatives that could be used to plot and navigate a new post-crisis trajectory for football; a new course upon which a more democratic, more equitable, and sustainable sport might emerge.
Chair: Emma Pullen
Room: C9A03, Building C Level 9
Despite the known health benefits of sport, parenthood can negatively affect sport participation. Recent studies showed that becoming a parent is related to decreased physical activity. Changes in sport behavior of young parents has been explained by gender or with the rational resource perspective of limited time and energy. We go beyond these current explanation by examining sport socialization during the formative years. Consequently, the research question reads: can change in sport behavior after becoming a parent be explained by gender, limited resources and socialization with sports?
This question will be answered with unique representative Dutch survey data of young parents (n=687), containing detailed information about sport socialization and sport careers, in addition to working hours, babysitter availability and physical discomfort after childbirth.
Logistic regression analyses confirmed that women and people without a babysitter stop sport participation more often after becoming a parent. In addition, the chances to drop out of sport decreases considerably when people sported around age 15, and when they see parents sport around age 11. Interestingly, sport participation around age 11 does not affect the chance to drop out of sport after becoming a parent.
Our results show that, besides the more often examined mechanism of gender and rational resource perspective, sport socialization seems to have an enormous impact on sport behavior when people become a parent. Including sport socialization seems necessary to better understand and prevent sport dropout during major life transitions, like becoming a parent. Setting an example as parent should not be underestimated.
There is an extensive literature that have examined motivation for physical activity. The ‘Physical Activity and Leisure Motivation Scale’ (PALMS) has been frequently used for survey studies on this topic. Most of the studies that utilize the PALMS framework examine motivation for physical activity broadly or within one or a few types of physical activity. However, motivation is likely to vary according to the activity type that one engages in as well as the social background of an individual. Thus, there is a need for studies that examine what role activity type and social background play for adults’ motivation for physical activity. It is the purpose of this study to examine how motivation varies between thirteen different activities, including, e.g., running, walking, fitness, dance, ballgames, while at the same time differentiating motivational differences according to social background. Motivation will be categorized according to the dimensions included in the PALMS framework. To meet this end, regression analyses have been conducted. The data basis for this analysis is a large survey of the Danes’ movement habits, which was conducted in the autumn of 2020. The questionnaire was answered by more than 163,000 adult Danes (15 years and older). The preliminary analysis has demonstrated that even though some forms of motivation are prominent in most activity types and irrespective of social background, their importance vary significantly according to both activity type and social background. Thus, both activity type and social background seem to play an important role for adults’ motives for physical activity.
Sport is considered important to mitigate problems due to COVID-19 measures and thus contribute to a resilient society. Because of poverty, caring responsibilities, social isolation and/or health issues, caused or reinforced by the COVID-19 measures, (too) high thresholds can be experienced for sports participation. Our aim is to study changes in sports behavior of the population in COVID times to determine whether social inequality in sport is increasing or decreasing.
In this study we analyse changes in sport club membership by utilizing membership data of the National Sport Federation in the Netherlands (NOC*NSF). Membership data of individuals within Dutch sport federations in 2019 (pre-COVID) and 2020 is used including a total of 5.3 million members. The dataset provides amongst others insight in the number of memberships per individual and the area they live (six digit postal code - PC6). Based on PC6 information neighbourhood characteristics were added to individual data. Consequently, we analysed the development in membership inequality by area code.
First analyses on the membership data show different degrees of drop-out and changes in membership by area code and age groups. Additional analyses will focus on the divide by socioeconomic neighbourhood characteristic to add to the current body of knowledge in sport participation research. Based on the outcome of these analyses we will reflect on inequality patterns and discuss them in light of the sport promotion policies. Subsequently, we deduce policy implications and present avenues for further research.
Chair: Michal Lenartowicz
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Description of the phenomenon to be studied
As a definitional basis, policy can be conceived of as ‘a set of interrelated decisions taken by a political actor or group of actors concerning the selection of goals and the means of achieving them within a specified situation’ (Jenkins, 1978, p?). Policy, in terms of goals and means, is thus represented in particular policy documents but also in other ways such as in the allocation of funding or specification of regulations. It is such ‘policy content’ that is the focus of this paper and, specifically, research approaches by which it may be analysed.
Aims/Objectives
The paper seeks to differentiate different disciplinary and conceptual approaches to the analysis of sport policy content. In doing so, it will consider the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches in respect of their potential to: (i) interrogate the goals and means of sport policies, (ii) provide analytic or normative bases for sport policy research and (iii) enable historical or cross-context comparison of sport policies.
Justifications and Implications
The potential value of adopting different disciplinary approaches will be identified through reviewing prominent existing approaches to analysing sport policies, including the “Sport Policy factors Leading to International Sport Success” (SPLISS) framework and sociological discourse analysis. The paper will then move to consider how utilising concepts from policy design and political philosophy fields could enhance future research analysing the content of sport policies.
Background:
To improve population levels of physical activity (PA), a multifaceted response, including government action, is essential. The purpose of this study was to develop the ‘Physical Activity Environment Policy Index’ (PA-EPI) monitoring framework which allows for the assessment of government policies and actions.
Methods:
An iterative process was undertaken. This involved a review of policy documents, a policy audit of four European countries, systematic reviews of scientific literature, an online consultation with academic experts (N=101; 20 countries) and policymakers (N=40; 4 countries), and consensus workshops.
Findings:
The PA-EPI is conceptualised as a two-component framework. The two components comprise eight ‘policy’ and seven ‘infrastructure support’ domains. The policy domains are education, transport, urban design, healthcare, public education, sport-for-all, workplaces and community. The infrastructure support domains are leadership, governance, monitoring and intelligence, funding and resources, platforms for interaction, workforce development, and health-in-all-policies. Across all domains, the PA-EPI includes forty-five ‘good practice statements’ (GPS).
Discussion:
The PA-EPI is the first attempt at using knowledge co-production at the science–policy interface to create a policy index to assess the healthiness of the PA environment. From a social science perspective, it is grounded in evidence pertaining to the importance of specific settings for population-level physical activity behaviour. Its design reflects theories pertaining to the policy cycle and on policy instruments.
Conclusion:
Once pre-tested and piloted in several countries of various sizes and income levels, the PA-EPI GPS will evolve into benchmarks established by governments at the forefront of creating and implementing policies to address inactivity.
The UK government invests significant financial resources into the high-performance sports system. For over twenty years, this investment has underpinned a policy that has sought to achieve sporting success on the international stage. Despite this investment, little is known about the development, implementation, evolvement, and unintended consequences of high-performance sports policy in the UK.
Initial data collected from an ongoing series of interviews with nine senior members of staff from four National Governing Bodies [NGBs] reveals a far more complex and challenging policy environment. Themes of continuous change, the importance of personal relationships, knowing how to play ‘the policy game’, the fragility of NGB influence and the impact on individual well-being are consistent patterns evident in the data.
Drawing upon the theory of process sociology it is argued that policy development and implementation in high-performance sport is fundamentally relational. The relationships between interdependent individuals are constantly in a state of flux and success is influenced by insider/outsider status, power dynamics and game playing. Resulting pressures and tensions in the high-performance sports policy making environment are such that individuals openly question their on-going involvement as they become concerned for their well-being.
Consequently, studies of high-performance sport policy need to shift away from analyses solely built on organisational relationships and towards approaches that focus more explicitly on people and their connections. The presentation illustrates the applicability of process sociology to inform this area of inquiry.
Room: N5, Building HZM 1st Floor
Chair: Dominic Malcolm; Tzu-Hsuan Chen
Room: N5, Building HZM 1st Floor
Chair: Szilvia Perényi
Room: N15, Building C Level 3
The Boys and Girls Club of Ottawa (BGCO) and la Société des Jeux de l’Acadie (SJA) are two Canadian organizations working to help children and youth become active participants in society. The BGCO provides programming for children and youth in need while the SJA organizes the Jeux de l’Acadie to strengthen the Acadian Francophone minority throughout the Canadian Atlantic Provinces. While they have distinctive missions, participant profiles and operate in different geographical locations, a key similarity is that BGCO and JA sports activities are run by former participants that continue their involvement as employees or volunteers to “give back” to their communities. Drawing on interviews with twenty-nine (29) young adult leaders and with seven (7) adult managers we explore these former participants’ impetuses for “giving back” using two theoretical categories, reciprocation and responsibility. Findings suggest that interview participants referenced reciprocation when describing their motivation as paying for what they received as participants and responsibility when they discussed feeling accountable towards future generations and/or for the survival of the BGCO or the SJA. The analysis was complicated when interviewees drew on both discourses to explain their experiences. Whether described as reciprocity or responsibility, interview participants’ commitment to and description of their acts of “giving back” matter because they suggest that organizations, such as the BGCO and the SJA, may be offering employees and volunteers a space in which to reflect on their actions and their place within their communities.
Introduction
The Swedish school sport system, where talented athletes are given the possibility to simultaneously invest in their education and sport during upper-secondary school is an important part of the Swedish elite sports model. Implemented in the 70’s for a few especially talented athletes, the system grew rapidly during the 90’s and 00’s and attracted as most 11% of all Swedish pupils. However, participation was uneven in relation to type of sport and different background factors. In response to the system becoming too large and a lack of quality at some schools, the system was in 2011 revised to focus only on elite sports. The objective of this presentation is to analyse what the new system has meant for who the pupils who participate are.
Methods
The study draws on official information on the Swedish school sports system and questionnaires answered by 7848 school sports pupils.
Findings
Through the revision the supply of school sports was limited but has now increased and again attracts many pupils. Participation is still uneven with more boys, pupils with Swedish background, and those exercising team sports. As a result, athletes from all sports and backgrounds are not given the same conditions to take part of the Swedish elite sports model.
Discussion and Conclusions
School sports in Sweden is mainly attracting some groups of pupils, with certain backgrounds that matches the supply that is offered. If a wider range of pupils should be able to take part of the system, it must evolve and change.
Chair: Ansgar Thiel
Room: 7E02, Building HZM Ground Floor
Career development in sport is a well-established research field. Scholars have investigated entry and exit processes, different career phases and critical transitions in athletes. Further, social scientists have conceptualised athletic careers as social phenomena, situated in times and contexts. This understanding has drawn attention to the role sport systems and policies, gender, and ethnicity, and more recently athlete learning, and embodiment play in shaping athletes’ pathways in and through sport. While this research has over the last decades resulted in a comprehensive body of knowledge on able-body athletes, career research in para-sport athletes is still ‘a field in the making’.
To gain a comprehensive overview of the emerging research, the aim of this paper is to summarize current social science research on career development in Paralympic sport. More specifically, we will focus on specifics of Paralympic careers and the micro and macro conditions of their development. To reach this aim, a search string combining Paralympic and career development key words will be established. A sport science specific and two general data bases will be searched for peer-reviewed articles published between 2001-2021. Articles selected for their relevance will be analysed considering the research aim.
The knowledge generated from this review can provide stakeholders in sport with a deeper understanding of the distinctness of Paralympic careers and inform the design of target-group specific support programmes and policies. Scholars can gain insight in the existing lines of inquiry and identify needs for future research in the field of Paralympic sports.
Objectives
This paper calls for sport scientists to re-engage with traditional sociological notions when studying career transitions.
Methods
Utilising data drawn from four interviews with, and extensive diary reflections of, a now former English male professional footballer, this case study approach offers a lens through which to capture something personally experienced, felt and morally evaluated by this player, reflecting who he wish to be, his hopes, fears and frustrations.
Findings and Discussion
The interviews and diary reflections presented will focus on the meanings the player imputed to his experiences, and those he witnessed of other players, in the context of passages of subjective vulnerability, and importantly highlight what changes these kinds of experiences brought about in terms of his orientation towards his work.
Conclusions
Recent post-positivistic psychological studies of career stages and transitions have come to be disengaged from traditional sociological notions of career. The central and problematic effects of which have been twofold: to misdirect attention away from the way athletes experience (subjective) transformations of self; and, in so doing, to construct models of athletes’ working lives that disregard the important interplay between career patterns, the dynamics of personal identity, and the image of ‘self’. Objective studies have attempted to grasp the demands placed on athletes through fateful transitional moments and researchers in this field have articulated how career models can be utilized to assist athletes with career issues in and outside sporting contexts. I argue that to date (post) career advice is dangerously premised on misunderstandings of athletes’ orientations to the production of performances.
Objectives
Elite athletes commonly participate in competitions despite experiencing pain or being injured (Mayer & Thiel, 2018) – a behavior described as ‘playing hurt’. Research suggests that this behavior is not specific to elite athletes, but can also be observed in other high achievement contexts such as music (Park et al., 2007) or performing arts (Anderson & Hanrahan, 2008). Overall, the phenomenon of performing hurt is multidimensional and complex with particularly psychosocial factors believed to play a major role.
With this systematic review, we intend to assess and synthesize qualitative and quantitative research with athlete, musician, and performing artist populations on the phenomenon of performing hurt. The central goal of our review is to identify domain-general and domain-specific psychosocial factors that have an impact on performing hurt.
Methods
The systematic review is informed by the PRISMA guideline. The included studies are appraised with the Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool.
Findings
We expect that approximately twenty-five studies will meet the inclusion criteria. We hypothesize that psychosocial factors that impact performing hurt behavior can be observed at a cultural, situational, and personal level.
Discussion
The specific influence of each psychosocial factor in this regard likely depends on the interconnection between the three levels in a specific situation.
Conclusion
Our findings are of interest to researchers and practitioners since they can help understand high-performers’ risk-taking and individually support those at risk for unhealthy behaviors.
Chair: Siegrfried Nagel
Room: B9N22, Building B Level 9
Sports video games (SVGs) represent the part of the eSports industry that currently makes the most significant contribution to the redefinition of the boundaries of sports and physical activity. The International Olympic Committee intends to include SVGs in future Olympic events (IOC, 2019) and because SVGs imitate traditional sports, SVGs are the esports game genre that is most often included in traditional sport organizations. However, esports is also met with resistance from sports stakeholders (Parry, 2019; Tjønndal & Skauge, 2020). For instance, a significant gender imbalance across the esports industry constitutes a major point of concern (Darvin et al., 2021). In fact, women only make up about 2 percent of all SVG players (Yee, 2017).
While researchers have critically explored gender-related challenges within esports environments, few studies have focused on the SVG genre specifically (Mirabito & Kucek, 2019). This article aims to examine gender differences in player motivation, fandom, and spectatorship among SVG fans through a quantitative survey distributed on online gaming forums. The survey consisted of 54 items measuring 10 motives previously used in similar studies (see Qian et al., 2019; Rogers et al., 2020). A final sample (N=444) of 350 male and 94 female participants is included in this study.
The items were then measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale (1= strongly disagree to 7= strongly agree). Additionally, sociodemographic background variables were included in the survey. We then use descriptive statistics and regression analysis to examine gender differences and gender-related challenges in SVG-based esports.
Objectives: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an effective approach in the field of sport related health promotion to reach socially disadvantaged groups. The study examines the effects of a German CBPR-project, called BIG (=Movement as investment in health). Since 2005, BIG aims to empower women in difficult life situations to increase their control over determinants of their health and reduce social inequalities through physical activity promotion. BIG has been implemented in several municipalities in Germany. This study explores (a) whether participation could change women’s empowerment on an individual, organizational and community level; (b) how an increased empowerment may affect other areas of the women’s life.
Methods: We used 53 semi-structured qualitative interviews with participating women, trainers, project coordinators, stakeholders from five BIG communities. Interviews were conducted between 2007 and 2011 and analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results: Interviews showed that BIG contributes especially to the individual empowerment of the participating women in various ways, including increased self-efficacy, promotion of social networks, development of competences and motivation to change the physical activity behavior. Women who got involved in project planning further strengthened their organizational empowerment. All dimensions of empowerment influenced the women's family life, quality of life and their professional lives.
Conclusion: This study revealed some novel findings that help to understand the effects of a complex empowerment-based approach by promoting physical activity among women in difficult life situations. Future research should focus on the long-term effects of empowerment-based CBPR-programs and their transferability to other sites.
Abstract: The prevalence of gender equity and equality issues in football refereeing is well-known. The ongoing implementation of VAR impacts the refereeing role. However, it is unclear how the implementation of VAR affects gender equity in refereeing, especially women football referees’ opportunities and career possibilities.
Objective: To (1) summarize and map the existing research literature in the field of refereeing, gender and VAR in football and (2) identify and analyse knowledge gaps in the field and (3) propose recommendations for practice and future research.
Methods: Scoping review using three databases: SportsDiscus, Scopus and ISI Web of Knowledge. The search strings consisted of 3 combinations of key and mesh terms - 1: “football referee gender”, 2: “football referee VAR”, 3: “football referee technology gender”
Findings: Research on referees, gender and VAR focuses on two themes: 1) female referees’ individual experiences of the refereeing role in a male dominated profession, and 2) quantitative mapping of the difference in hit rate (correct decisions), time spent making decisions and number of decisions made, before and after VAR.
Discussion: These studies are exclusively done in male football, showing the need for studies focusing on female referees and women’s football. There is shortage in studies on how organizations work with gender equity when implementing technologies (e.g. VAR).
Conclusion: At the ISSA conference I will elaborate the detailed findings and show the need for research focusing on the gendering of the football refereeing role and the implementation of VAR, and how this affects female referees’ career possibilities.
Chair: Sun-Yong Kwon
Room: A3M04, Building A Level 3
This paper explores the contribution of conceptual and methodological approaches in the sociology of sport for informing interdisciplinary research on sport policy for public health. Using examples from a range of community sport/physical activity projects designed, delivered and evaluated over the past decade in the UK, I critically examine the logic of reciprocity in interdisciplinary work, identifying and discussing the ways that diverse theoretical and conceptual ideas about knowledge production construct complex dynamics of power in interdisciplinary research on sport for public health. The presentation scrutinises the contested spaces of interdisciplinarity and critically assesses processes and outcomes of reflexivity, negotiation and compromise in achieving interdisciplinary outcomes in sport policy for public health.
The effect of Covid-19 has led to numerous changes in young people’s social and daily habits, including those related to sport and physical activity, which can affect their health.
Our research, carried out by sociological, psychological and medical researchers, aimed to analyze some indirect effects of the pandemic on university student cohorts, seeking to understand if and how the limitations imposed by the pandemic constraints have affected several everyday habits and health behaviours. Our theoretical frame was the sociological theories of the lifestyles as a set of socio-cultural models and practices of social action in everyday life.
The study was conducted in Central Italy (Marche region - 9,400 sq km, 1,500,000 inhabitants). Applying a questionnaire to a sample of 500 young university students, we measured the time spent in the company of others, time dedicated to sports and physical activity, and time spent in front of a screen. 290 young people filled in the questionnaire. In the statistical analysis we found relationships between the variables identified, in particular sport/physical activity and screen time were indirectly correlated, while sport/physical activity and social activities were directly correlated. These correlations showed changes with respect to the lifestyles ‘normally’ configured in the pre-pandemic time.
Our study highlights the need to acknowledge the impact that the pandemic, due to the closure of sports facilities and university campuses, has had on the young student population, whose healthy habits have been negatively affected by restrictions in social as well as sport and recreational activities.
COVID-19 public health measures have been instituted since March 2020 in Trinidad and Tobago. These measures were implemented to curb the transmission of various variants of COVID-19 by minimizing social interaction to essential public activities such as visiting supermarkets, pharmacies and medical facilities. Initially, the measures restricted all forms of public physical activity including running, walking, biking, swimming, participating in team sports and attending gyms. Some of these restrictions have gradually been rescinded however with certain mandatory caveats such as only vaccinated persons-athletes, coaches, administrators etc. allowed to engage in team sports at approved sporting facilities as determined by the Ministry of Sport and Community Development. The effects of these measures need to be investigated as engagement in sport and physical activity is seen as an important part of developing the physical, mental and social wellbeing of students. This quantitative study aims to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 public health measures on the physical activity and wellbeing of tertiary students attending the University of the West Indies. An online survey of 150 undergraduate students was conducted to determine the level of physical activity before and during the COVID-19 measures. The findings will provide university sport administrators with important data on the level of physical activity of students as well as inform policies for promoting and managing physical activity in the ‘new normal’ of living with COVID-19. Measures can include workshops in collaboration with the university’s guild of students to promote participation in physical activity and raise awareness of campus sporting and recreational activities and facilities.
Key Words: Physical Activity; Public Health Measures, Tertiary Students, COVID-19
People with Type 2 diabetes (T2D) are generally encouraged to be physically active and are often invited to participate in rehabilitation programmes promoting exercise. However, these programmes seldom result in lasting changes in exercise behaviour, which has led municipal rehabilitation providers to work increasingly with civil society organisations, such as sports clubs, in hopes of providing structure and social support that keep people engaged after their rehabilitation programmes conclude. Such collaborations seem logical from the vantage point of the municipal health care system that is tasked with preventing diseases and promoting health. However, although the programmes potentially impact the lives of many, we know little about the lifeworld perspectives of the people involved. Thus, the aim of this paper is to explore the reasons of rehabilitation employees, sports club volunteers, and people with T2D for partaking in collaborative public-civil rehabilitation programmes. The presentation will be based on observations and focus group interviews with these parties, conducted as part of a multiple-case study of public-civil rehabilitation programmes in the Municipality of Aalborg, Denmark. Preliminary findings suggest that there are considerable discrepancies in how municipal employees and sports club volunteers view the collaborations. Furthermore, people with T2D have their own reasons for participating in rehabilitation programmes and sports, related to both disease, health, and enjoyment among other things. Drawing from the works of Jürgen Habermas, we discuss how to handle the discrepancies between system and lifeworld perspectives and argue for an increased focus on communication and deliberation of reasons in public-civil rehabilitation.
Chair: Jacco van Sterkenburg
Room: D4A19, Building D Level 4
[Introduction]: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all areas of society, including sports. The closure of sports facilities and social distancing measures posed major challenges, especially to grassroots sports clubs, which generally thrive on joint sports activities and social contact between their members. [Objectives]: This study examines how club officials perceived and experienced these challenges, the value they assigned to digital media to overcome the obstacles posed by the pandemic, and how clubs attempted to maintain vital ties with their members. [Methods]: In-depth interviews with 32 board members of German grassroots sports clubs were conducted in spring 2020. [Findings]: Results show that, despite major concerns, a constructive approach to dealing with the crisis prevailed in the clubs. According to interviewees, digitization was experienced primarily in the form of using video conferencing software such as Zoom or messengers such as WhatsApp groups. The use of these media facilitated the organization of board meetings and even helped to maintain social club life as well as sporting activities, at least to a small extent. [Implications]: While the sustainable potential of digital media for grassroots sports clubs is becoming apparent, there are also indications that digital media are no substitute for on-site meetings. Further, not all club members have benefited from digitization. Due to a lack of media skills or personal concerns towards digital media, especially older people have often been excluded from communication. [Discussion]: Thought must be given to how to include and reach these groups in the future, especially if some media are to continue to be used after the pandemic phase.
The recent paper by Cooky and al. (2021) about the situation of women athletes’ media representation in the United States for more than 25 years illustrate the poor quantitative television coverage of women in sports. Toni Bruce (2016) also states that if the new rules of women sport media representations allow them to be beautiful and powerful, they are still depicted as model of the white and heterosexual models.
In this communication, I will expose the results of a study conducted in Canada about the quantitative representation of women in sport media and how they are depicted in them. We can’t just infer that USA results are the same in Canada; Canada is a bilingual country with two separate media system, the francophone and the anglophone. Also, gender is not a constant; the power relationship that it implies, and the way people perform gender vary in time, space, and geographical area (Scott, 1986).
The study was conducted between August 1st 2019 and November 30th 2019. Ten different media were analyzed: five anglophone, four francophone and one bilingual. Four of them were television station, four were daily papers and two were web media. Comparatively to USA results, women team sport almost doesn’t exist in Canadian’s media coverage. The only women who are depicted are the one who are overtly successful in an individual sport. Results also show a dual coverage: media point the barriers experienced by women athletes but, at the same time, they tend to reproduce the same barriers and bias in their coverage of them.
In the digital society sports communities highlight the multi-life dimensions of our existence with
high numbers of fitness and wellness followers and the use of personal devices such as
smartwatches for self-tracking and weareable devices for fitness, quantified-self, gamification and
dromology constitute the core business of digital sports capitalism. Showcasing is the new unifying
paradigm of the attitudes experienced, it is interesting to identify the forms of reflexivity and selfsatisfaction
expressed by sports-users and producers of which fitness and wellness are the ideal
tools. The purpose of the research is to explore the individualistic/narcissistic scenario through
digital communities and to verify any links between fitness and wellness practices with narcissistic
and self-complacency forms that may be indicators of body window dressing (selfie, image sharing,
intimacy/estimation practices, posts) and narcissism. Do new media in pandemic times amplify
narcissistic cultural values revolving around the body, health and aesthetic beauty as tools of
identification? From the ground of research (Glaser & Strauss 1967) and the case identified (Yin
2013) will take place 30 in-depth interviews through we want to investigate if there are forms of
self-satisfaction in the digital fitness and wellness community and if it evolves one or more forms of
reflexivity within communities through the paradigm of window dressing: exhibitions on web-
Social of sports bodies.
Chair: Tina Nobis
Room: N14, Building C Level 3
Objectives
Over the last 20 years, European policies and programmes have increasingly focused on promoting social cohesion. Often presented as a multi-dimensional concept, social cohesion is considered the ‘glue’ that holds societies together and is seen as essential to address common challenges.
In sport, extensive literature and programmes focus on social cohesion. However, the term remains muddled and contested, and it is not always clear how programmes conceptualise or support social cohesion. For this presentation, I explore how three European sport programmes conceptualise and foster social cohesion and discuss opportunities and limitations associated with their approaches.
Methods
Findings are generated from 20 interviews and four focus group discussions with implementers and stakeholders involved with three different European sport for social cohesion programmes. Thematic analysis is used to organise and code the data.
Findings
Tolerance, social relations and mutual help are seen as essential components of social cohesion. To promote this, programmes use sport to foster occasions for groups to mix and for individuals to develop life skills. However, they do not challenge structural factors inhibiting social cohesion. Instead, beneficiaries are expected to independently translate new relationships or skills into greater social cohesion in their communities.
Discussion/conclusion
Programmes place the onus for improvement on beneficiaries, many of whom come from so-called 'marginalised' groups. This places the responsibility for greater social cohesion on already supposedly vulnerable groups and ignores the privileged groups or institutions that could further contribute to greater social cohesion.
This paper reflects on community-based participatory action research that aims to enhance transformative social inclusion of migrants and refugees in sports clubs. Drawing on theoretical foundations of critical pedagogy, social justice education and learning communities, we critically reflect on an innovative programme of research led by Victoria University’s Sport and Social Change Living Lab in which local stakeholder coalitions of club volunteers (so-called ‘change makers’), mentors and sociologists work together to co-design, implement and evaluate inclusion projects in culturally diverse communities in Melbourne, Australia. We use artefacts from workshops, interviews and field notes to examine the development of a learning community of more than 60 change makers from a range of sports and community groups who have been trained, mentored and supported to: (1) critically analyse their organisational climates; (2) design and implement innovative projects that address structural and cultural barriers to participation; and (3) enhance the representation of migrants in positions of leadership and administration. We reflect on the lessons learned and implications of the Change Makers methodology for research practice aimed at promoting equitable access, experiences and representations of migrants in community-based sport. The insights provided in this paper indicate ways in which sociologists of sport can help to amplify meaningful and impactful public sociology, and, more specifically, how they might serve as co-creators of, and actors in, micro-level social change.
The present paper is an attempt to understand the Akharas spaces of Delhi, India. Although wrestling has become the topic of wide-ranging discussions and deliberations, Akharas, where wrestling is taught, practiced, and disseminated, are often overlooked and missing in the discussion. Meanwhile, Indian wrestling which is a mixture of the age-old Indian tradition of Mallayudha and Kushti which was brought to India by the Mughals from the West is undergoing substantial changes due to various factors, but the resultant changes in Akharas are understudied in academia. This is where the present paper is located. It locates Akharas at the intersections of contemporary city life, olympification of wrestling, and associated spatio-political structures. By using the multi-sited ethnography conducted in the various Akharas and with the help of available literature, it discusses the various contradictions and challenges which are prominent and can be read in the Akharas spaces.
It conceptualises Akharas as the spaces of competing modernities, where the traditional sport of Kushti, is wrestling for its identity with the emerging forms such as western wrestling which are often state-sponsored and controlled. It shows that while the state is investing in Akharas in the name of encouraging the traditional sport of wrestling, this also is changing the inherent nature of these Akharas. This paper studies the various aspects of Akharas such as patronship, membership, their location both spatially and socially in the city to argue that under these changes there are new corporeographies in making which is redefining the way Akharas are imagined and situated in the contemporary city life of Delhi.
Chair: Enrico Michelini
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Objective and method: This paper analyses the correlation between the World Power Index (WPI) and the state performance at the Pan American Games from the edition of Mexico City 1975 to Lima 2019. The starting point is that International Relations theory can offer a proper explanation of the variability of the state behaviour in sport considering that sport is one of the means to realise the foreign policy of states. In the agent-structure debate, considering that the state performance at sports competitions is shaped by the national power (systemic imperative), we manage the hypothesis that the evolution of the WPI can help us to understand the variability of the medal count at this major sporting event. The WPI covers 28 of the 42 countries that have participated at the Pan American Games since 1975 (97.55% of the total medals), distinguishing seven categories of countries among three geopolitical areas: centre, semiperiphery and periphery.
Findings and discussion: Even when the results show that there is a positive and strong correlation, this does not mean that the Latin American power structure transform all states into automatons in terms of the medal outcomes. Cases of outperforming (Cuba and Jamaica) or underperforming (Costa Rica) will rely on the state agency, namely, the variability of sports policies and the national extractive capacity.
In conclusion, in the agent-structure debate applied to sport, the international power structure shapes and constrains the results that countris can achieve in sporting events. However, there are exceptional cases where the state agency can break the structural conditioning.
Globally, ‘integrity’ has emerged as a critical concept for sport, with scholars, government agencies and NGOs proposing the establishment of ‘integrity systems’, comprising measures such as new policy units, ombudsmen and mediation services. The purpose of this study is to assess the coherence of this reform agenda, to determine its core features and gauge whether it constitutes a new governing paradigm and departure from ‘professionalisation’. Drawing on case material from Australia and New Zealand, we trace the sport integrity agenda and its adoption into each country’s government policies and programmes. The emerging agenda focuses on diverse risks at the periphery of ‘old’ professionalised management, while demanding a sector-wide response and universal adherence. Coordination and regulation are emphasised (at national, state/regional and local levels), supported by central government policy frameworks and grievance detection regimes. While the integrity agenda has distinctive elements of a reform movement, preliminary evidence suggests it may become integrated under the existing logics of performance, audits and risk management.
Preceding research findings show a height of outdoor sports and the consequent need to train qualified instructors. Even so, the training system for professionals in the sector is still being ordered and structured, and previous work have highlighted existing diversity in the regulation of outdoor activities in Spain.
This article aims: 1) to compare the regulations in the professional certifications of climbing, mountaineering and winter sports; 2) to analyse the differences in regulation in the Spain of the autonomous communities; and 3) to evince if current certifications align or not with the labour needs of instructors.
Content analysis of state regulations and current regulatory development of each autonomous communities was done. To measure adjustment between curriculum and work needs, quantitative methodology was used with two surveys designed ad hoc, one for instructors and another for employers.
In general, heterogeneity is observed in the regulation of curriculum between the different communities and also in comparison with the state regulation in aspects as important as the professional capacities, the exercise of the professional activity, the subjects, the time distribution, the total teaching hours and the proportion of theoretical and practical hours.
A homogenization between autonomous communities of the regulation of professional certifications in climbing, mountaineering and winter sports may be necessary, with the aim of ensuring a convergent line for the professional practice of these modalities throughout the state territory.
This paper offers to reconceptualize the gender dynamics of international sport governance in order to better understand the underrepresentation of women in leadership. It considers how the actions of international sports federations are shaped by the broader field of sports governance within which they are nested. We investigate the case of the International Cycling Union (UCI), which is an interesting case because of how it straddles two spaces of elite sports participation: the Olympic Movement, where gender inequality has become a priority cause including in relation to leadership; and professional road cycling, as exemplified by the Tour de France, which constitutes its own universe of actors and remains highly gender unequal and relatively uninterested in change. The actions the organisation takes in relation to gender equality are always contingent upon the current state of play within these fields of governance, which are shaped in turn by masculinity and male dominance. In this communication, we investigate how this complex web of organisational relationships and uneven commitments impacts the gender equality actions of the UCI and particularly the progression of women within international cycling leadership. We rely on 21 semi-structured interviews with key individuals of the UCI and the analysis of diverse textual materials (media, policies, meeting minutes). Building on Connell’s (1987) concept of gender regimes, and Fligstein and McAdam’s (2015) theory of strategic fields, we show that gender and sports scholars interested in explaining women’s under-representation in leadership positions have much to gain from taking a gendered field approach.
Chair: Carlos Garcia Marti
Room: N16, Building C Level 3
Sport organizations’ purpose is to organize sport activities. Yet, at the same time, there are also a wide specter of expectations towards sport organizations when it comes to non-sportive issues. On the one hand sport organizations are supposed to contribute to social issues as integration, social equality, sustainable development and health. On the other hand, they are challenged to take more political stands: to encourage climate action or to fight corruption in (global) sports. One question which is discussed is the extent to which sports achieve some of these social and political aims. Another question, so far much less studied, is how people expect sports to contribute to such issues. People’s expectations are important because sports depend on legitimacy to access resources: members, volunteers, public funding and commercial sponsors. The question is, however, what give sport organizations their legitimacy: what do people expect from sports, besides sport (performance or participation)? We first show how a representative sample (N ≈ 1200) of the Norwegian population consider sport organizations social and political responsibility when it comes to health, racism, the environment, disabled people, gender equality, integration of immigrants, doping, local communities, economic and social equality and discrimination based on sexual orientation. Next, we ask how these views depend upon social background, political orientations and affiliation to sports. Finally, we discuss how people’s expectations towards sport organizations matter for these organizations policy strategies.
In recent years, the World Health Organization has declared that physical inactivity is a global problem and all the States associated to the United Nations system have create public policies to solve this issue. In this context, schools have been the key organizational focus to promote physical activity in children and youth population. The aim of this paper is to analyze physical activity policies from a socioecological theoretical model. The results show that emotions, social relationships, gender, economic inequalities, and theoretical foundations are the most important dimensions to considerer when policies will develop. The discussions suggest that these dimensions need to be promote because the biomedical model is the hegemonic discourse and the principal foundation in policies. To conclude, this study could be an argument to all countries who want to construct a real change physical activity of their population.
Objectives
During the past decade, ‘sport integrity’ has become a catchword of significant currency. Nonetheless, unethical conduct is not a new phenomenon neither internationally nor in Sweden. In fact, Swedish sport itself states that moral breaches have not increased. This raises a fundamental question of why Swedish sport has adopted integrity instruments? The objective of this investigation is to unveil the lines of argumentation that surrounded the adoption of these instruments to inform discussions about their consequences.
Methods
We focus on the emergence of three instruments: ombudsman- and whistle-blower functions, and ethical code of conduct, and draw on data from documents advancing lines of argumentation concerning instrument adoption and design such as minutes from, and motions submitted to the Swedish Sports Confederation general assemblies, preparatory work, and consultation responses.
Findings
The analysis shows that neither laws nor authorities provided impetus for the adoption of integrity instruments. Rather, references are made to international trends towards ‘good governance,’ with the adoption of instruments as key to preserving the credibility of sport. Furthermore, ethics instruments are positioned as a timely tool in Swedish sport’s strategic reorientation, particularly with regards to the goal of making compliance to sport’s basic values a strategic foundation.
Discussion
We discuss the significance of the ‘politicking’ surrounding instrument emergence and design and the ways in which these processes may foreshadow shifts in overall governance paradigms and their inherent allocation of blame, mandate, and accountability.
Conclusion
At the time of the conference, we will provide conclusions regarding the potentially unintended consequences of sport integrity instruments.
Chair: Marcel Reinold
Room: VBN3, Building HZM Basement
The goal of this research is to examine the relationship of “Against Modern Football” (AMF) clubs towards success and progress in lower league football, focusing on two clubs in Germany and Croatia.
Research on HFC Falke is based on 27 months of ethnographic fieldwork using thick participation (123 field diary entries, 10 interviews). Research on NK Varteks is based on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork (53 field diary entries, 25 interviews). Both clubs were founded upon the basic values of the AMF movement. Meanwhile, victory and success are imperatives in sport (Coakley 2009), which tests the basic values of the AMF movement and the ultras subculture.
Falke implemented and negotiated moral guidelines to resolve this dilemma. They note the ability of all members to participate in this discussion as a crucial difference between them and other professional and amateur teams. While resistance to commercialisation was key in the German context, in Croatia, aside from general opposition to commercialisation, the key factors were resistance to corruption and crime in football; success and promotion, in addition to economic barriers, necessitate forms of cooperation with institutions that are unacceptable to the club’s founders.
At Falke, creating a new emotional home is the primary concern. The moral guidelines are intended to protect this home, but they can be adapted if they match the emotional requirements of the majority. Similarly, but in a different context, Varteks fights to resolve contradictions between the desire to win and the basic values upon which the club was founded.
Aguante, football and resilience
The "aguante" is a word used by Argentines to highlight mental strength; tolerance and resistance to disgust; ability to repress or contain negative reactions; patience and conformism to withstand adversity or to control suffering in the face of loss. During the last decades this word has been closely linked to the soccer lexicon, and particularly to the language of the “barras brava”. The mass media have erroneously spread the idea that "aguante" is a male thing. It has been replicated by the “barras” themselves, politicians, managers, journalists and the general public. This somehow turned "aguante" into a justifier for violence inside soccer stadiums.
In this work we try to analyze and demonstrate that "aguante" is a resilient behavior; either a variety within the field of resilience or a new category within it. We understand that resilience must be considered as a social process by which certain social actors use strategies that are equally social, individual, but also group or collective, in a social and relational context.
We take the definition of "sport-related violence" (Kevin Young) as theoretical framework; and methodologically, we use the combination of comparative and historical research
We believe that the confirmation of this hypothesis, its use as public policy and its massive dissemination; could help reduce violence in football. That is to say, the generation of a virtuous circle that is born in academic research, becomes a public policy and helps to develop the total or partial solution of a social problem that seems to have no solution.
The paper aims to explore process of becoming nationalist in Polish football supporters environment, namely the biographical paths that have shaped one’s orientation on nationalist-oriented activism. To this end, it uses Thomas and Znaniecki’s classic methodology which allows to study ‘process of becoming’ using autobiographical data. The analysis draws on 25 individual interviews with the nationalist activists from football supporters environment. It identifies three processes of becoming nationalist activist which are described as processes typical for keepers, awakened and followers.
Keepers were raised in family with strong memory of experience of war, where they internalized nationalist-martyrological attitude. This attitude had been nurtured until appearance of certain organizational circumstances which created the opportunity to act on behalf of this memory. Awakened adopted passive form of nationalist-martyrological attitude due to the influence of values presented in their families or in school. It transformed into the active form due to later impact of other supporters. In case of the followers national-martyrological attitude was established when they were already members of supporters groups and where they were mobilized to nationalist activism by other members of this community.
The results show that national-martyrological attitude is the foundation for activism of each of distinguished paths. These findings match with the results from international research showing that nationalist sentiments are more salient in countries when memory of wars is still present. Moreover, in cases of keepers and awakened, national-martyrological attitude was shaped during early socialization period. This seems important finding for studies focused on biographical paths to nationalist movements which have not considered impact of such attitudes.
Chair: Simona Safarikovà
Room: C9A03, Building C Level 9
Several studies have investigated coaches’ and other sports staff’s role concerning attitudes and understanding of performance-enhancing substances, including doping, in elite athletes’ lives. Most of these studies use a quantitative approach. Few studies have done this from a qualitative perspective, and none focussing exclusively on youth athletes. Youth athletes are particularly interesting as they are developing an athletic identity and are vulnerable to pressure and persuasion from influential individuals and institutions. This paper has two main aims. Firstly, to identify individuals and institutions that impact young athletes’ experiences, opinions and knowledge concerning performance-enhancing substances. Secondly, understand how the athletes interpret and construct meaning based on this impact. The present study draws on interviews with youth athletes from specialised sports schools in Norway. Our findings show that several people and institutions are significant, including coaches, the school, other athletes, and Antidoping Norway. The athletes spend most of their time with fellow athletes and describe strong ties between them. However, the relationship between athletes from one sport towards athletes from other sports takes a different form. It bears the mark of a need to distinguish themselves, which has consequences for their beliefs regarding the others’ attitudes to and use of performance-enhancing substances. Also, our analysis finds the school to have a strong influence on athletes’ knowledge and opinions. Furthermore, athletes constantly balance other people’s influence with their own independence, as they view independence and responsibility for their own performance as essential for their chances of success as elite athletes.
The existence and promotion of youth sport has often been based on various assumptions about its value and role in society. A dominant societal discourse assumes that sport participation contributes to the development of young people, because sport participation is fun and healthy and therefore an essential part of life. According to many, participation in sports and physical activity helps young people to grow in a context in which they are able to learn important positive values. However, scholars argue that it’s important to avoid naive and unrealistic generalizations about the capacity of youth sport. Rather than seeing youth sport as an entity or an all-encompassing phenomenon, I explore its fragmentation in both policy and practice and criticize common ways of researching it. I use six different research studies to illustrate and argue why youth sport as a research and policy area should be seen as a complex assemblage that involves youth as participants and adults as leaders and as researchers. In this presentation I explore how current research and policy making about youth sport work to maintain and support existing power relations and structures of power. I argue for the need for critical theoretically informed explanations of how sports and sport participation can be organized for the purpose of the wellbeing of young people.
Building HZM
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Moderator: Davide Sterchele
Room: N5, Building HZM 1st Floor
Meeting Point: 15.30, Pigeon House on Neckarinsel (close to Eberhardsbrücke)
Ending: about 17.00
On this city tour, we will show you the most beautiful and famous sights and places that Tübingen has to offer.
You will see:
– The Hölderlin Tower, located directly at the Neckar river and named after writer/poet Friedrich Hölderlin
who lived there in the 19th century. Nowadays, the tower is used as a museum about his life.
– The Castle Hohentübingen, which is located in the historic old town and is a mixture of a medieval
castle, a modern castle, and a fortress. Today the castle is part of the University of Tübingen and features
exhibitions about old cultures, archaeology, and other collections.
As it is located on a hill, the castle also offers a great view over the city and the Neckar/Ammer valley.
– The Stiftskirche/Abbey Church, which was built between 1470 and 1490 and is located in the city center of
Tübingen. It is also part of the popular city panorama.
– The Neckar, which as a tributary of the Rhine contributes to the cityscape of Tübingen.
Directly located at the Neckar Bridge is the ~1km long Neckar Island. The plane trees of the island were
planted around 1828 and form the oldest still existing avenue of this tree species in Germany.
These are, of course, only a few of the highlights that we will show you.
Thereby, you will also learn about the history and the character of the university town.
Meeting Point: 15.30, Main station (Tübingen), in front of AOK building (written in big green letters), Europastraße 4, 72072 Tübingen
Ending: The bus returns at Tübingen main station at about 18.00.
About three kilometers from Tübingen, a small village called Bebenhausen, which is also home to a monastery and a palace, can be found.
By the end of the monarchy in 1918, King William II and his wife Charlotte – the last royal couple in Württemberg – used the monastery as a hunting lodge and residence. Since 1975, the castle complex is a State Heritage and offers a museum.
Meeting Point: 16.00, Mooring - Freistil Brewery: Wöhrdstraße 25, 72072 Tübingen
Ending: about 17.15
Riding in a punt is probably more associated with Venice but punting is equally traditional in Tübingen. Originally used by fishermen, the punts are now part of the student culture in Tübingen with an annual punting race in summer.
During the year, the punts can be rented by tourists to discover the Neckar river and the Neckar island.
Join us on a cruise on the Neckar and see Tübingen from a different perspective.
Start: 16.00 at Freistil Restaurant, Wöhrdstraße 25, 72072 Tübingen, https://freistil.beer/freistil-taproom/
Ending: about 18.00
The venue for the Congress Dinner is located close to Tübingen’s city center and within walking distance to most hotels.
From the IBIS hotel, delegates simply have to cross the street and walk 1 min to the Freistil Restaurant and Beer Garden.
Venue: Freistil Restaurant, Wöhrdstraße 25, 72072 Tübingen, https://freistil.beer/freistil-taproom/
Date: Thursday, June 9.
Time: 19:30 (7:30 PM).
The venue for the Congress Dinner is located close to Tübingen’s city center and within walking distance to most hotels.
From the IBIS hotel, delegates simply have to cross the street and walk 1 min to the Freistil Restaurant and Beer Garden.
Fee: included in the registration fee
Chair: Klaus Seiberth
Room: A3M04, Building A Level 3
The imperative to empower communities through sport-related volunteering often forms a key part of Olympic and Sport-Mega-Event (SME) campaigns. Beyond event delivery, sport-related volunteering may also be operationalised to aid a variety of civil society agendas including shifting attitudes towards social responsibility, fostering community identity and purpose, and enhancing citizens’ engagement with wider global and development issues. Nonetheless, notwithstanding the ability for an Olympic or SMES to catalyse sport sector activity, the success and sustainability of sport within a post-Olympic/SME city is contingent upon many factors. In addition to favourable geo-political and economic conditions, this includes sport receiving appropriate political recognition and resourcing, appropriate institutional and governance frameworks, robust stakeholder networks and organisational partnerships, effective leadership and collective agency. Accordingly, in this paper we examine these issues within the context of Athens, Greece; a post-Olympic (2004) metropolis in which legacies of sport and volunteering have existed uneasily within a landscape of economic and political turbulence, global and regional tension and public mistrust. Drawing on volunteerism debates, stakeholder theories and sport development frameworks, we employed a qualitative, mixed-method, research design comprising semi-structured interviews and surveys with 19 key civil society professionals and Athens 2004 volunteer programme stakeholders. We contend that continued contextual uncertainty has encouraged innovative sector development in Athens and, concomitantly, inspired individual agents of change and provided space for organisational protagonists. Ultimately, we call for continued appraisal of post-Olympic landscapes and critical interrogation of where and how new collaborative cross-sector opportunities may be generated and sustainable capacity crafted.
Indoor fitness training is one of the largest and most widespread movement activities in Denmark with more than 57% of the adult population in Denmark participating in indoor and/or outdoor fitness activities.
Research shows that participation in sport and physical activities depends on a combination of the opportunities to be active and the individuals socioeconomic background and motives for doing sports and being physically active. Research also shows that men travel further than women to be physically active. The same applies to people in rural areas, people living in areas with high socio-economic status and car owners. We want to investigate whether this also applies to indoor fitness training and how important the services, functions and location of the fitness facilities play in this context. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to analyze and identify which criteria and characteristics that determine adults’ choice of indoor fitness facilities in Denmark.
The data basis for the analysis is 1,588 fitness practitioners’ answers in a map-based questionnaire about their training habits and fitness facilities (20 percent of those invited). Data at the individual level will be linked with prior survey data and with spatial census data for the level of urbanization, socioeconomic status, household income, facility density etc.
Based on the results we will present; we will discuss which criteria and characteristics matter most in Danish adults’ choice of fitness facilities - including how much the distance between home, workplace and facility means in relation to price, services offered and other characteristics.
Presented by Jens Hoyer-Kruse:
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the significance of the municipally created framework for sports for adults' sports participation in Denmark. Danish sports policy is primarily about running sports facilities, supporting sports clubs, and making green areas attractive for physical activity - for which the municipalities are primarily responsible. Research shows that sports participation is due to a combination of 1) the opportunities and action alternatives to be active and 2) the individuals socioeconomic background and related motives and interests in practicing sports and being physically active. The data basis for the analysis is 163,133 citizens' answers to a questionnaire about their movement habits (40 per cent of those invited). Data at the individual level is linked with data at the municipal level for the number of sports facilities, the number of sports clubs, the financial support for sports etc. A multilevel logistic regression analysis – which includes both structural variables at the municipality level and variables of the individual level of the respondents age, gender, education, socio-economic position etc. – show that adults sports habits are primarily due to the citizens individual characteristics (gender, age, education and socio-economic and social / health situation, etc.), while the objective opportunities for practicing sports, eg access to sports facilities, are of little importance. Based on this, we discuss whether sports policy has too much focus on establishing sports facilities, and instead should focus on motivating the groups that are least active in sports.
Physical activity (PA) behaviours have seen significant changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, and concern about social disparities has grown. Limitations concerning public indoor sports facilities have notably structured leisure-time PA. This study focuses on the reduced use of indoor facilities (RI), investigating the effects among adults of different social groups.
The data (n=738) is from three surveys in 2020–2021 and represents 18–79-year-old residents of two Finnish suburbs characterised by low socioeconomic status. Statistical methods including regression analyses were used to examine: (1) factors explaining RI, (2) factors explaining changes in the total amount of PA among those with RI, and (3) associations between RI and changes in the use of other environments.
RI was typical among the respondents and related to a decrease in PA amount. Female gender, higher education and higher weekly PA level explained a higher risk for RI. Among those with RI, changes in PA amount were associated with female gender and minority language. RI was associated with an increased use of the home environment, outdoor sport facilities, unbuilt nature, and streets.
The results lack evidence of a polarising effect of RI on the PA of residents of different socioeconomic status in the two Finnish suburbs. However, gender differences are noteworthy. All types of PA environments available appeared important as compensatory places.
Pandemic-related restrictions have had a negative effect on PA levels, but equal access to versatile PA environments may prevent intensification of social disparities.
Chair: Ansgar Thiel
Room: N14, Building C Level 3
Photovoice has been used in diverse age groups, populations, and settings to allow partici-pants to express their perspectives through photography. Nursing homes represent a particu-larly interesting setting for photovoice because they are partly characterized by elements of what Goffman (1964) has labelled “total institutions”. The aim of this presentation is to analyze the applicability of photovoice to document options and barriers for physical activity promotion in such an institution.
Methodologically based in a multi-sited focused ethnography (Knoblauch, 2005) and a Pho-tovoice study with n=24 participants within the larger BaSAlt project (2019–2022, grant no. ZMVI1-2519FSB114), on PA promotion and counselling in nursing homes, we present oppor-tunities and challenges as well as provide guidelines, with regard to: (1) overcoming fear and building trust between researchers and participants, (2) ethical considerations, (3) ad-dressing technical alienation, (4) deciding about what is relevant from participants’ point of view, (5) invisibility of significant others, (6) making Photovoice research a priority in organi-sational routine, (7) contextualizing the situations depicted on photographs, and (8) COVID19-related challenges for photovoice research in this setting.
We close by discussing that appropriate adaptations need to be taken to allow participants anonymity and safety, so that photovoice can reveal not only activity-promoting and activity-impeding factors, that might not have come into view in other research methods, but also differences in stakeholders' perspectives on physical activity.
Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums. Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Anchor.
Knoblauch, H. (2005). Focused Ethnography. FQS, 6(3), Art. 44, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0503440.
Objectives
In 2016, our multi-year ethnography began in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The impetus for the study was the opening of Rogers Place, a publicly-funded, $613.7 million CAD ice hockey arena and entertainment complex. The arena was the foundation for a wider civic-corporate gentrification project in Edmonton’s urban core that was rebranded ‘Ice District’ by the Katz Group, owner of the National Hockey League (NHL) Edmonton Oilers franchise, and numerous properties surrounding Rogers Place.
The study’s overarching goal was to amplify the lives and experiences of city-centre residents—people sleeping rough, precariously housed, or houseless—against a backdrop of gentrification and urban displacement. At the beginning of the 2016-2017 NHL season, city-centre residents reported mistreatment, displacement, and violence during Rogers Place events.
Methods
Thereafter, our research team started conducting ‘arena walks’ around Rogers Place during Oilers home games to observe dynamics and interactions between city-centre residents, fans, security, and police.
Findings
At the beginning of our arena walks—due to the disruptions caused by gentrification and exacerbated by Oilers games on an already stigmatized community—we determined that we could not simply be witnesses to the traumas of dispossession and displacement. Instead, we needed to engage in the provision of care.
Discussion
This paper discusses research conducted through preventative and reactive forms of care, including 1) connection, 2) support, 3) emergency aid, and 4) crisis intervention.
Conclusion
It concludes by offering a template of guidelines for future ethnographies of care.
Boxing or the "sweet science" of bruising has over the years grasped the attention of many sociologists and ethnographers. While significant attention has been given to material, spatial and visual aspects of this social world, its sound dimension has remained widely overlooked and neglected.
In my analysis I draw on multi-sited ethnography carried out in various boxing gyms in 4 Central and Eastern European countries (Czechia, Slovakia, Serbia, and Bulgaria) consisting of an ongoing, until today more than a year-long participant observation.
Stepping into the boxing gym means entering (literally and symbolically) a myth, a story, a narrative. Together these myths craft the boxing identity and determine what boxing identities can be crafted. They are passed orally through the textual and verbal narratives of local and global boxing heroes, visual representations, but also through sounds and music. In my contribution I will look at how these soundscapes reflect, reproduce or question boxer’s individual and collective - notably gender, class and ethnic - identities as well as how they mirror the broader societal context in which the pugilistic events take place.
This contribution thus argues for a more multisensory and embodied qualitative research. Such an approach would allow addressing the calls to analytically consider both embodied form and disembodied logic of socio-cultural practices (Stoller, 1997).
References:
Stoller, P. (1997). Sensuous Scholarship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Objectives
Community participation is a key principle in health promotion, but measuring the extent, type and quality of citizens’ engagement in research projects is often difficult. Therefore, this study aims to provide a systematic overview of existing measurement instruments, their scope and dimensions.
Methods
The review follows the PRISMA guidelines. Twelve scientific databases were searched from inception to June 2021 to identify English or German scientific journal articles. Search terms represented assessment, measurement, concept of participation, engagement, involvement, and terms related to action research, community-based research, and collaboration science.
Findings
Our search resulted in 20,682 hits across all databases. After removing duplicates, 12,267 articles were independently screened by two researchers on title/abstract. Overall, 26 articles were included for full-text screening. At present, two independent researchers are extracting data on the development of instruments and their psychometric properties. Included articles will be further assessed regarding their origin quality and development appraisal, and their measurement properties based on COSMIN checklist.
Discussion
Preliminary results suggest that the articles included in the full-text analysis present a broad variety of instruments to assess participation. Most tools are based on different principles for community-based participatory research, and aim to predict the success of community-academic partnerships for health promotion.
Conclusion
Our review on standardized tools for measuring participation offers a resource to assist the evaluation of community-academic partnerships and to gain a comprehensive understanding on how community members engage in health promotion research.
Chair: Bente Ovedie Skogvang
Room: N15, Building C Level 3
In sport settings, players develop the ability to cooperate with teammates, develop self-control, display courage, and learn virtues such as fairness, team loyalty, persistence, and teamwork (Weis & Bredemeier, 1990; Shields & Bredemeier, 1995). However, anti-social behaviors, or what can be considered ‘unfair behaviors’, are also existent in the sport world, which harm the learning curve of, and relational dynamics between, players on a pitch (Lemyre, Roberts & Ommundsen, 2002). Different researchers have highlighted the need for more scholarly attention on the topic of fair play during games, and new methods, to be able to fully grasp what causes unfair behaviors during sports matches (Sezen, 2003; Gutiérrez & Ruiz, 2009; Sezen-Balçikanli, 2014).
Based on data collected through a newly developed real-time digital observation tool, this research analyses 201.873 individual match behaviors in 1488 Dutch amateur matches to understand the antecedents for fair play behavior during amateur sport matches. The data shows that more than 90% of the match behaviors can be regarded as fair play behaviors. In 43 percent of the matches, however, excessive forms of unfair behavior, like hitting, spitting, or punching, occur. Excessive unfair behaviors do not immediately turn a whole match into an unfriendly encounter. Only in 4 percent of the matches, excessive forms of match behavior were dominant during the entire game. Most often a game turns into an unfair dynamic if the referee intervenes too rigidly, the coaches of the home team do not show sportsmanship and/or the match seems to end into a draw.
In the social acceleration of modernity, the super woman ideology involves professional, familial, and leisurely obligations producing time pressure among women throughout life. Not being able to meet the obligations, such as leisure-based physical activity, generates emotional consequences which require management. Inspired by the microsociological perspective of Arlie Hochschild (1983; 1997) the present study explores emotional consequences and emotion management related to being physically active or inactive throughout life. The study comprised 25 in-depth semi-structured individual interviews with Danish women (57-71 years) who have been either physically active (N=13) or physically inactive (N=12) during the last 20 years. Results suggest that the physically active women experience exercise as a meaningful activity that helps them manage the emotional consequences of their rushed everyday lives. For example, by creating a liberating space, by involving calming natural spaces, or by enabling a space for unintentional embodied cognition. Notably, women did not express health benefits as a principal motivation for participation. Conversely, the physically inactive women understood exercise as something that should be done because of the health benefits. Due to familial and professional obligations, however, they did not participate in exercise regularly, leading to feelings of shame. Being physically inactive became an emotional burden that had to be managed to create an appropriate publicly facial and bodily display. When health benefits functions as a stigmatizing social obligation among physically inactive women and not as reasons for life-long exercising, it seems highly relevant to discuss the purpose of the health-promoting focus on physical activity.
Chair: Florian Kiuppis
Room: N16, Building C Level 3
With the UN-CRPD, access to inclusive sport for people with intellectual disabilities improved, but yet those people still remain a marginalized group facing exclusion in sport (Steiger et al., 2021). Despite intensified research, empirical evidence on the effectiveness of inclusive settings and its promoting factors is still lacking. Thus, this study aims to contribute by analysing the social participation of children with intellectual disabilities in mainstream school and club sports and the factors influencing it. This knowledge is crucial for developing inclusive sport with strong social participation of people with intellectual disabilities.
Applying the framework of Koster et al. (2012), a sample of 1861 students of 109 schools (3nd to 6th grade) in Switzerland conducted a standardised questionnaire composed of established instruments. For the 132 children with different intellectual disablities, that are part of the sample, adapted interviews were spefically developed.
Multi-level analysis reveal that the childrens’ level of social participation depends on their experienced social contacts and interactions, established relation- und friendships, and received social acceptance and perception. In terms of effectiveness, overall, the level of participation is constantly lower than those of their non-disabled peers – nevertheless, cases with high levels were observed, too. These dimensions are influenced by factors at a structural level (e.g., design of lessons, trainers’ and teachers’ competencies, group climate, schools’ and clubs’ conditions) as well as by factors at the individual level (e.g., e.g., childrens’ and trainers’ attitudes and competencies).
The specific understanding of factors correlating with the dimensions of social participation supports practitioners to develop inclusive sport settings more effectively.
Objectives
The upcoming Palgrave Handbook of Disability Sport in Europe (Van Lindert, Scheerder & Brittain (Eds.), 2022) explores the various ways disability sport is delivered throughout Europe. Main outcomes of this cross-national comparison of disability sport policies, infrastructure and participation levels across 19 countries are presented.
Methods
The country specific chapters are rooted in a theoretical framework. The main focus lies on (i) the disability sport structure at the national, regional and local level (Hallman & Petry, 2013), (ii) the steering mechanisms (legislative and policy framework), and (iii) the support framework for disability sport agencies (Scheerder, Willem & Claes, 2017). Sport participation data on pwd are included per country, supplemented by results of a secondary analysis on pan-European data on sport participation by pwd.
Findings
Preliminary results from the cross-national comparison show that in most countries, sport participation by pwd has evolved from segregated sport settings (only for pwd) towards mainstream sport settings (alongside persons without disabilities). This transition is fostered by human rights and inclusion policies. The manner and degree to which disability and mainstream sport systems become intertwined differs across the countries involved. Influencing factors, e.g. welfare system, culture and (ableist) attitudes, will be discussed.
Discussion/Conclusion
Striving for the inclusion of pwd in sport does not ensure systematic monitoring of disability sport indicators in the respective countries. The case studies exposed data gaps, especially in regard to sport participation. This book is the first collection and comparison of disability sport data across Europe and provides a better understanding of the evolution of disability sport governance, structure and policy.
In Sweden, as in many other European countries, there is a stated ambition to enforce equal conditions for sports participation, regardless of (dis)ability. Despite an awareness of current challenges and purposeful work at the sport organizational level, it is difficult to bring about a change in practice. The reasons for this inertia can be many, for example lack of knowledge and experience of adapting sports for parasport athletes and about inaccessible sports facilities. Another explanation is inability or unwillingness to challenge and change traditional notions and value systems about what “real” sport is and should be about and who counts as an athlete. In a current Swedish sport context, a major change is taking place towards increased inclusion of parasport athletes into National Sports Organisations (NSO). With respect to this change and from a Critical Disability Theory (CDT) perspective, this study investigates the understanding of inclusion and exclusion among key stakeholders in five Swedish NSO. The methodology in this study includes an intersectional perspective regarding social inclusion. Preliminary results indicate that the interviewees' focus is on individuals with various disabilities as the problem, rather than on how power- relations and the physical and social environment can be changed to promote increased diversity in sports. The CDT-perspective, brings attention to the entire organisation’s norms and power structures. This implies a transition from "they" and them" to a general review of the sport environment's norms and its consequences for present and future athletes, coaches and stakeholders.
In a cultural moment characterised by heightened mediated marketability via a social media 'self', Para athletes are increasingly using platforms such as Instagram and TikTok to (self-)represent and promote their sporting identities and public image. In doing so, a number of Para athletes have engaged audiences in disability counter-narratives that actively resist dominant stereotypes around disability. This is particularly the case at the intersection of athleticism, gender, and sexuality where Para athletes are reclaiming and performing gendered and sexualised identities in new and diverse ways. Whilst there exists a burgeoning field of research on Paralympic media, to date there have been very few studies focusing on Para athletes’ online self-representation. In this presentation, we contribute to this area of inquiry through an intersectional visual media analysis of the top 30 most popular British Para athlete Instagram pages. We pay attention to the ways in which discourses of heteronormativity, gender and race intersect with disability in the promotion of athletes' online self through the lens of (feminist/queer) 'crip theory’ (Puar, 2017), microcelebrity studies (Marwick, 2015), and Banet-Weiser’s (2015) gendered ‘economies of visibility’. We interrogate the extent to which heteronormative scripts centred on racial privilege, heteronormativity, kinship normativity and consumption (‘branding’) capabilities operate to shape emerging discourses around Paralympic sport, mediated disability and new (online) disabled normativities. Importantly, we discuss what this means for the role Para athletes’ self-representation can and does play in shaping disability representation in relation to the subversive and emancipatory potential of such imagery on wider cultural disability discourses and representational politics.
Chair: Sine Agergaard
Room: B9N22, Building B Level 9
Abstract
That children and youth can take part in - and enjoy – organized sport is a widely shared goal and priority in contemporary societies. The extent to which young people experience exclusion and harm in sport, is thus an essential question. In this paper, we address the exposure to sexual harassment and bullying among Norwegian teenagers involved in grassroot sport. The analyzed data comes from the cross-sectional, representative survey Young in Oslo 2021 (N = 19,235, response rate = 53 %, age 13-19), that contains information about various aspects of young people's life. Those of the participants who were active in sports at the time of the survey (n = 6,472) were asked about exposure to sexual harassment and bullying in sports during the past year. In this paper we examine 1) the prevalence of exposure to sexual harassment and bullying among young people who train in sports teams, 2) differences in vulnerability between young people in individual sports and team sports, 3) who the athletes report as the perpetrator, and 4) how gender and socio-economic status are associated with exposure to sexual harassment and bullying in sport.
This study focused on female sport fans who participate women’s sport events, and to understand the experiences of female sport fans and their formation of identities. The participants were 20 female sport fans. The results revealed in three themes. Firstly, female fans engaged in women’s sports was influenced by the experience of participating in team sports, media exposure and friends and peers; secondly, the different patterns of fan behaviors presented was related to the connection of personal experience, social network and other aspects of life, and the identity as female fans were demonstrated though engaged in sport events and tournament regularly, tried to make connections and have interaction with female athletes and other female fans; lastly, the female fans did not have to confront the challenge and doubts from masculine world which is dominated by men while the female fans is in a same-sex environment; however, it was shown that female fans reveals the stigma of feminine fans and the attitude to distinguish the feminine fan who is not familiar with sports from other senior fans. Meanwhile, there were few female fans indicated the diverse patterns of female fans through personal experience sharing, and also embraced the different traits of being a female fan.
Chair: Jochen Mayer
Room: D4A19, Building D Level 4
For many decades, the relationship between sport and media was characterised by the main sports communication studies as “symbiotic” (McChesney, 1989) or “win-win situation” (Birkner and Nölleke, 2016). But the “digital (media) revolution” (Bradshow and Minogue, 2019; Pedersen, 2014) changed the conditions significantly. The development of new media and the opportunity to create own content and control more effectively the communication reinforced the position of sports organisations and simultaneously weakened the role of media. Sherwood, Nicholson and Marjoribanks (2016) constate that the relationship is “irrevocably altered”. Grimmer (2017) summarised that the traditional media lost access to their previous contacts and the information exclusivity. The situation became worse during the pandemic of COVID-19. This study deals with the situation in the Czech Republic and focuses on the journalistic work during the matches of the soccer league. The paper describes the restrictions applied after the re-start of the competition; for example, the clubs stopped the direct communication between the sports reporters and their players in the mixed zones. They replaced the interviews conducted by journalists with short spots created and distributed by their platforms. The research presents the opinions of sports journalists from in-depth interviews (Creswell, 2014); the sample includes the representatives of printed newspapers, online media, radio stations and national press agency. The respondents pointed out that sometimes they could not ask their questions; they become more dependent on the club, which led to some ethical aspects too; the new conditions also change the motivation to cover the games in the field.
Objectives: This presentation focuses on the meanings given to race and ethnicity (and its intersections with gender) within sports media, with particular attention for the production process in televised football. Televised football is an interesting and highly relevant platform to explore meanings given to race and ethnicity given its combination of whiteness (and male-ness) in its production process and display of racial/ethnic diversity of football players on the pitch.
Methods: The study reflects findings from participant observations and in-depth interviews at different major English television stations in 2019. The stations provided us with access to the work floor, the journalists, and a variety of meetings. We were also able to travel with some journalists to matches. This was done within the framework of a European-wide study on diversity and inclusion in televised football (2018-2023) funded by the Dutch Research Council.
Findings: Preliminary analysis indicates that journalists and media professionals are quite open in discussing racial/ethnic diversity within their organization and also initiate initiatives to make the work force more diverse. At the same time, while recruitment and diversity on the work floor gets attention, some other aspects tend to get overlooked such as self-reflection on everyday practices and racial bias in commentary practices.
Discussion/Conclusion: Drawing on insights from sport media studies and cultural studies, I will discuss findings within the wider media sports and societal context. The study will contribute to new insights into the role of sports media in reproducing discourses surrounding race and ethnicity.
On March 17th of 2020, France went into two months of total lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a consequence, all sports competitions and events were frozen or cancelled, which deprived French newspaper L’Equipe of its main source of news. Nonetheless, its editorial board decided to keep working. But absent any sporting event, what could the only French sports daily inform about in these unprecedented times? To answer this question, we will focus on the sixty front pages L’Equipe issued between March 13th and May 11th, when France came out of its first lockdown. We will pay particular attention to the headlines, photographs and to the way these items are displayed on the front pages. In that purpose, our analysis will be based on the concept of « reader-writer contract » (Veron, 1985), which can be defined as « the staging, on the semiotic scene of a press organ, of two entities, an emittor and a receptor, who are bound together by a specific relationship taking place in a specific space comparable to a universe of common references interpreted simultaneously by the emittor and the receptor » (Granier, 2011).
Considering that « every media builds its own discourse according to the representation it has of its own audience » (Tétu, 2004), the « reader-writer contract » between L’Equipe and its readers became null and void in the critical context of a pandemic. The newspaper thus had to issue a new contract, piecing together past knowledge – the readers’ alleged expectations – and necessary adaptations to an uncharted territory – the total absence of sporting events.
Chair: Jannika John
Room: C9A03, Building C Level 9
Objectives: Recent technological innovations have resulted in machine learning methodologies being tested to improve injury prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of sports-related concussion (SRC). The aim of this study is to (1) map existing research on the use of machine learning in the management of SRC and (2) ascertain where there are knowledge gaps and identify recommendations for future research.
Methods: Scoping review of three databases: SportsDiscus, PubMed, and Scopus, using search and mesh terms related to “machine learning”, “artificial intelligence” AND “concussion” or “head injury” or “mild traumatic brain injury” AND “sports” or “athletes”.
Findings: 24 studies were identified and analysed. Our review shows that current research literature primarily; (a) focus on predicting and preventing SRC (n= 10), diagnosing and classifying SRC (n= 11), while few explore treatment and rehabilitation of SRC (n= 3), (b) employ machine learning algorithms to analyse athlete injury data derived from male team sport athletes in North America.
Discussion: The research field on the use of machine learning in the management of SRC is novel and the potential is still unclear. Based on our review we recommend future studies to; (a) use more diverse datasets and samples, (b) explore the potential of deep learning, and (c) include social scientific perspectives on the implementation of novel technological tools created through machine learning approaches.
Conclusion: Studies using more diverse athlete data for analysis through machine learning algorithms have the potential to fill important knowledge gaps and improve athletes’ welfare by reducing the risk of sustaining SRC, as well as providing better diagnosis and treatment.
There has been a rising technological trend in recent years when people engage in body-based practices such as running and brisk walking in outdoor spaces, and workout sessions in fitness centres. Increasingly, the integration of new self-tracking technologies in physical activities has become a global trend. At the same time, the concept of self-care and identity, campaigns on health consciousness and well-being have become profoundly popular. Users of self-tracking technologies can monitor and measure physical health metrics such as steps taken, calories burned, heart rate, sleep patterns, menstrual trends, skin temperature and stress levels. However, critical issues regarding new user experiences in environments where societal expectations set boundaries on the moving bodies remain understudied. This study applies an ethnographic lens to provide insights into the adoption of smartwatches in new cultural spaces where self-tracking technologies are less incorporated into corporeal practices. Twenty-five semi-structured interviews, focused groups discussions, and participant observations with users of fitness centres and athletic tracks in Ghana were conducted to explore people’s experiences and engagements with self-tracking technologies. The study draws on postdigital, postphenomenology and actor-network theory as the main theoretical perspectives in establishing the connection between the adoption of self-tracking technologies and the shaping of a new corporeal identity. The findings of the study suggest that the adoption of self-tracking technology can intrude and disrupt seemingly fundamental cultural fragments in society and produce unintended dangers.
The use of digital devices is widespread among children already at a young age. Screen media use has been associated with children’s well-being, for example regarding physical activity. The use of screen media often is associated with negative aspects, such as sedentary lifestyle, attention deficit and social problems. Parental co-participation has a major impact on children’s health consequences.
Objectives. The aim of this study was to address the gap in the research by investigating daily parental co-participation in children’s digital media use and physical play, using the family ecological model theoretical framework.
Method. The participants in this nationally representative cross-sectional study were 2512 Finnish parents with two- to six-year-old children. Parents completed a questionnaire. Sociodemographic correlates of co-participation and of the awareness of guidelines regarding co-participation and correlation between co-participation in digital media use and physical play were analysed.
Findings. Parental co-participation in physical play and digital media use correlated positively. Lower parental age, male parental gender, Finnish and Swedish languages, a fewer number of children, and a male child gender were associated with more co-participation in one or both activities, and parental female gender and low family income were associated with more awareness.
Discussion and Conclusion.The awareness of guidelines was not associated with co-participation in digital media use. There were sociodemographic differences in parental co-participation. From a health counselling perspective, parents may benefit from national recommendations on digital media use and physical activity, but adherence to guidelines depends on the family context.
Objective:
Technological innovations in technology and scientific training regimes are central mechanisms behind improvements in elite sports performance. Middle- and long-distance running represents one of many global sports with a tremendous development in winning performances in international championships in the last decade. This study aims to examine the impact of scientific training regimes and technological innovation on performance enhancement in middle- and long-distance running.
Methods:
The study is based on data from Norwegian middle- and long-distance running and consists of both quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative analyzes of participation rates in running events and Norwegian records between 2000 and 2020, supplemented by qualitative interviews with stakeholders in Norwegian running organizations.
Results
The qualitative interviews provided insights into the impact of technological innovations on performance and participation, highlighting the impact of scientific training regimes inspired by Tokyo 2020 Olympic Gold Medalist Jakob Ingebrigtsen, as well as carbon fiber soled running shoes as important contributions to overall performance enhancement in Norwegian middle- and long-distance running. The quantitative analyses revealed that participation rates in the national championships had a 52% increase from the early 2000s to 2020.
Discussion:
Combining quantitative and qualitative data in our analysis, we discuss how science and technological innovation impacts performance and participation in running. From our data, two technological innovations with a prominent impact on performance enhancement in running are carbon fiber soled running shoes and novel intensity measures in training regimes.
Conclusion:
Scientific training regimes and technological innovation have impacted Norwegian elite runners’ performances in middle- and long-distance running. Some of these runners hold Olympic and World Records, suggesting transferability of our results to other sports contexts.
Chair: Anna Vilanova
Room: H2C14, Building H Level 2
Currently, there is a large awareness on ensuring research-based teaching at university level. In the practical courses of undergraduate physical education (PE) programmes many teachers are not researchers but are employed because they are experts from the field of practice, and the course material may be considered more experience-based than research-based. This raises discussions concerning the ”academization” of sports and balancing theory and practice in PE. It also relates to the issue of connection between university education and its real-world application. Through my PhD project I aim to contribute to these discussions using gymnastics as a case. Gymnastics has historically played a large role in the development of PE in Denmark, but it is not a mandatory activity in high school PE, and each university decides if and how they include it in their PE programme. The aim of the project is to explore what processes and figurations influence how gymnastics is taught in the PE programmes at Danish universities, and how this connects to the practical reality of the students’ future work life – especially as high school teachers. In this paper, research design and preliminary findings are presented. The topic is examined from a combined sociological and pedagogical perspective. With theoretical inspiration from Norbert Elias, the gymnastics courses at the four Danish universities that offer PE programmes are studied in terms of their interdependencies with the Danish gymnastics culture and the practice of high school PE teachers. Qualitative research methods including interviews, document analysis, and observations are employed.
So far, the Polish education system was analyzed in relation to possible gender inequalities but never specifically in relation to PE lessons and the work of PE teachers. Given the fact that PE plays a significant role in perceiving gender by pupils and remains an insufficiently examined area, we believe that the research gap in this field should be bridged.
Therefore, the aim of the study was to analyze the prevailing gender-related discourses in the PE teaching practice.
Individual in-depth interviews with 17 PE teachers working in public primary school were conducted. Additional research materials consisted of the participant observation of PE lessons (60 teaching hours in total) conducted by two female teachers and two male teachers.
The research findings indicate that the interviewed PE teachers do not consider lessons as an important space for creating beliefs about gender. They do not recognize reproducing traditional assumptions about gender and physical activity during lessons. Moreover, gender equality has never been a part of curriculum for future PE teachers in Poland and for the majority of respondents gender equality is not a significant part of the education process. This situation may result from the declining status of the teacher profession in Poland and recent political developments in the country. Conservative politics of the governing party regarding gender equality issues in education and ignoring the protest of teachers is causing distancing the teachers from any issues seen as political.
Chair: Michael Mutz
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
Studying Bodybuilding and Fitness as a sport discipline involves an individual and actual approach (Bunsell, 2012), as most practitioners of these disciplines prefer personal contact and rely on the trust of their coaches and immediate community. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, most of the coaches and their athletes had limited personal engagement in terms of training and many coaches and athletes had to rely on online platforms. As physique and fitness sports involve total connection between coach and athlete, it is important to see the different dynamics of an athlete being self-coached, coached by their immediate partners, or hiring a professional coach. The relationships on the manner of coaching is worthy of interest as there are only few studies that focus on bodybuilding and fitness. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relations of different types of coaching especially on online platforms and how the relationship of the athlete and coach were affected by shifting to online connection. Through qualitative methods such as interviews and field observations, the paper will discuss three different perspectives of coaching: self-coached, coached by their immediate partners, or another professional coach and how the similarities and differences of these relationships matter. We aspire from this study to add to the body of knowledge in terms of sport coaching experiences in physique and fitness disciplines and assess the kinds of dynamics between athletes and coaches, and how this can be connected in propagating better practices for coaching and coach education.
The increasing digitalization of society offers a wealth of opportunities for adolescents. But to comprehend the many enabling aspects, it’s important also to recognize the constraining aspects of technology. Sociologically, there is a generation divide between youth as digital natives and older generations as digital immigrants. In recent years, the use of digital technology in relation to training and exercise among young people has developed rapidly, and we are still challenged in terms of understanding their digital training culture. This paper discusses how young people understand the role of social media related to the construction of body image connected to online training culture. The empirical material consists of 28 individual interviews with 14 students (age 13-15) in 2 Danish secondary schools. We draw on Lupton’s conceptualization of the digitized body, self-tracking and presentation of the self on social media. The adolescents of this study all use social media, but they take a quite critical position when it comes to displaying the body online in relation to exercise and training. As such they understand themselves as far more reflected and critical in their use of digital technologies than the older generations give them credit for. The paper contributes to a further understanding of how young people navigate and position themselves on social media when it comes to displaying the sporting body online and how this is part of their body image construction. Hopefully, this can decrease the divide between young people as digital natives and the digital immigrants of older generations.
With its horizonal pursuit of longer distances stretching to and beyond one hundred miles, ultra-running is the contemporary neoliberal sport par excellence. Participation in races of this length requires a meticulously trained body and the willingness to endure physical and mental degradation. Over hours, runners excavate the energetic resources of their athletic frames, mirroring neoliberalism’s own precarious pursuit of ‘renewal in the face of adversity’ (Kiely 2018). Furthermore, the very construction of the ultra-running body is governed by a neoliberal discourse of ‘healthification’ (Lisle 2016), a process of streamlined diet and training that necessitates a significant physical, emotional and time investment. Such focus on one’s own performance shapes the neoliberal body of ultra-running; a body that is the product of individualist, optimising behaviours that indulge ‘techniques of the self’ (Lisle 2016) to succeed. I argue that this approach to embodied experience is espoused in landmark ultra-running memoirs by Jurek (Eat and Run), Roll (Finding Ultra) and Jornet (Run or Die) as a method of self-improvement. These athlete-authors assert that the cultivation of a robust, pain enduring body is essential to unlocking the transient, self-actualising state associated with distance running. Yet, the genre ignores the fact that such radical self-help methods encourage the colonisation of ‘non-work’ (Bridel 2013) periods with excessive running. It transposes neoliberal optimisation culture upon leisure time. Additionally, the memoirs glean over the fact that whilst the ultra-running body is demonstrably strong and athletic, the practice simultaneously hollows out and weakens the body, heightening risk to injury, fatigue and physical longevity.
This presentation explores how the embodied knowledge and lived experience of sports’ addicts contributes to a greater understanding of sport addiction, a concept that has been debated since its first appearance in scientific literature in the 1970s. More precisely, we want to grasp: 1) the process of self-identification and self-justification of an addictive relationship to sport; 2) how sport addicts make sense of their relationship to sport and the body; and 3) the impact of this addictive practice on social relationships. Adopting a framework inspired by carnal sociology and a phenomenologically oriented lens, our methodology consists of 17 running interviews with persons who defines themselves as sport-addicts. Our results have highlighted the existence of the major role played by the relationship to the body for this specific addiction. Sometimes associated with the terminology of junkie, but also of machine and performance, the body is the first concern of sports addiction. However, we consider sports addiction as hypernormative, because unlike other addictions (especially those involving substances), sports addicts function very well socially and hold valued jobs. Addiction to sports therefore seems to be a functional addiction, even a socially valued one, which probably prevents it from being codified as a pathology within the DSM.
Chair: Fiona Dowling
Room: 7E02, Building HZM Ground Floor
Objectives
While there are numerous efforts to monitor policies that promote health-enhancing behaviours such as physical activity, the monitoring methods used by international organizations and academic institutions differ substantially. This study aims to describe the review methods currently in use and discuss potential benefits and pitfalls of these methods.
Methods
A systematic search was conducted in five scientific databases, using variations of the terms “physical activity”, “policy” and “monitoring”. Two reviewers independently screened 7,604 and included 121 studies for full text analysis. During full text analysis, information on the methods applied for policy monitoring was extracted.
Findings
Studies monitoring policies for physical activity promotion at national, regional and local level were identified, as well as studies with a specific focus on the school and childcare setting. A majority of the studies utilized an established tool for policy monitoring, e.g. the EU/WHO Physical Activity Monitoring Framework. Based on the level of government involvement, studies could be broadly classified into research-driven, government-driven or co-production approaches.
Discussion
Each of the approaches in use to monitor policies for physical activity promotion has certain strengths and weaknesses. A careful reflection on the different approaches is needed, as it has implications for data quality, capacity building, and potential policy impact. A question of particular importance is whether (and if so, to what extent) governments should be involved in policy monitoring.
Conclusion
Raising awareness for the importance of choosing appropriate policy monitoring methods will enable decision-makers and researchers make informed choices for future monitoring efforts.
Accessibility of PA environments is a factor that essentially affects the PA behavior of the population and the knowledge addressing it is an important resource for sport planning. There is a lot of relevant information available, but it is produced from delineated perspectives and across disciplines. Based on a literature review conducted in the YLLI project, it was found that studies regarding accessibility of PA environments are lacking an overarching conceptual framework which allows constructing of a general picture of the dimensions of accessibility, especially social accessibility. The objective of this paper is to form a framework for interdisciplinary research co-operation.
Spatial-temporal dimensions of accessibility are necessary potentials, but they don’t guarantee participation and it has been suggested that certain social factors in some contexts have greater impact. Social processes, meaning interaction in community, can create obstacles to PA through mechanisms that are not related directly to places or services. Negative attitudes of the community or family, cultural definitions of who can do what and where, restrictions to go to certain places due to other people present, stigmatization etc. may occur.
We create a description of the current application of accessibility dimensions in sports management and research, and further seek to conceptualize the importance of the often-neglected meaning of social aspects between potentials and motivation for the realization of PA. The starting point for literature based conceptual development are the basic ideas of social constructionism, i.e., to emphasize meaning of face-to-face interactions as the basis of the human activities.
Policy learning from other international contexts is an important strategy during the sport policy making process for the government of Taiwan, and recent research has examined the potential corollaries between Taiwan and Scotland with regards to sports policy. Although the status of Taiwan and Scotland is not the same, interesting comparisons can be made given their shared status as contested ‘nations’ that are often in the shadow of their closest neighbours with whom there is an uneasy political relationship – respectively, China and England. As a consequence, sport is regarded in both countries as an important vehicle for establishing and promoting a distinctive identity, albeit with contrasting political and policy considerations.
Drawing upon documentary material content analysis and semi-structured interviews from both the Taiwanese and Scottish contexts, this paper will critically examine the similarities and contrasts with regards to the political considerations which shape and constrain the nature of sport policy in each context. This analysis will focus on the role of central government, local government, sport policy organisations, and sporting National Governing Bodies in both Taiwan and Scotland, with particular emphasis on the positioning of sport within the broader policy, political, ideological and constitutional considerations for policymakers in each context.
Qbjectives
Election programs are a good predictor for coalition agreements and the actions of politicians (Merz & Riegel 2013). Only a limited number of studies adress sport related content in election programs (Schmidt 1979, Chaney 2015) and no studies analyse the content of election programs in relation to coalition agreements. This paper will close this gap.
Methods
The sport related content of the election programs of political parties for the German national election 2021 is compared with the sport related content of the coalition agreement using a mixed method design.
Findings
The results show that the sport related content of the coalition agreement is closer to the content of the programs of governing parties than to that of other parties.
Discussion
The outcome of national elections are relevant for the sports policy of a national state. In regard of this it seems to be an appropriate way for sport governing bodies to influence the content of election programs to reach their goals.
Conclusion
The sport related content of the election programs of political parties are a good predictor for the coalition agreement between the later governing parties. To influence political programs seems to be a good way for influencing political outcome.
References
Chaney, P. (2015). Electoral discourse and the party politicization of sport in multi-level systems. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 7 (2), 159-180.
Merz, N. & Riegel, S. (2013). Die Programmatik der Parteien. In O. Niedermayer (Hrsg.), Handbuch Parteienforschung (S. 211-238). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Schmidt, K. (1979). Sportprogramme der politischen Parteien. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Fachschriften Verlag Braun.
Chair: Hannes Gropper
Room; VBN3, Building HZM Basement
Existing studies define sport fans as those whom enthusiastically watch sports and are strongly attached to a specific sport team or athlete. Although the number of female sport spectators has recently been on the rise in South Korea, there has been a lack of research focusing on female sport fans and their perspectives on defining sport fans. Thus, this study explores the experiences of Korean female sport fans and how they articulate the definitions of being a sport fan. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with 13 female volleyball fans in their 20’s. In the initial stage of becoming a volleyball fan, participants’ experiences in playing and learning volleyball motivated them to become fans, while other participants were influenced through media exposure such as television entertainment shows featuring volleyball players. Athletic performances and achievements influenced participants to maintain their identity of being a fan. Interestingly, participants identify sport fans as people who either watch volleyball games through media platforms or live games. Also, participants point out that spending money on team merchandise or having an abundance of knowledge of the sport does not correlate to being a committed fan. Thus, participants unconsciously “lowered the bar” and expanded the definition of sport fans by including those who pleasantly watch and enjoy the sport.
The paper examines online antisemitic discourse in Dutch football and by doing so addresses an omission in the current body of work on online football-related hate. While online racism and combating online racism in the context of football is increasingly researched (Cleland, 2014; Kilvington & Price, 2019; Farrington et al., 2019), online football-related antisemitism remains largely overlooked. In this paper expressions of rivalry and hate speech in relation to antisemitic discourse(s) in Dutch football are analysed. Expressing hate and (online) hate speech is often part of acting rites and rituals between rivalling football fan groups (Khosla et all., 2019). When playing the Amsterdam based alleged ‘Jewish club’ Ajax, some fans of opposing teams make hissing noises, and chant songs such as ‘Hamas! Hamas! All Jews to the gas!’(Gans, 2013). This kind of football-related antisemitic behaviour is reproduced in stadiums, bars, cafe’s but also online. This study examines online football-related antisemitic discourse by analysing Tweets between 2010 and 2021. Tweets were scraped using the Twitter API and a selection of the Tweets was analysed more in depth using narrative digital discourse analysis. The research shows that antisemitic chants and slurs find their way towards the online domain, sometimes explicit and other times implicit. It is argued that these Tweets, while seemingly targeted towards the football other contribute to an exclusionary discourse in which being a ‘Jew’ is not wanted and contribute to the normalisation of reproduction of antisemitism in the Netherlands.
On 18 April 2021, a press release signed by twelve leading European clubs announced an agreement to establish a new mid-week competition; the ‘European Super League (ESL)’. It would be governed by these clubs and financed by the American bank, JP Morgan. It aimed to provide greater economic growth via a long-term commitment to uncapped solidarity payments, which would grow in line with league revenues and be higher than those generated by existing UEFA competitions. The announcement was immediately condemned by UEFA, the English Premier League, and politicians across the political divide, and sparked a new wave of supporter protests and collective action. With support of the Football Supporters Association (FSA) and Football Supporters Europe (FSE), transnational fan groups rejected the ESL, arguing it threated not only the last vestiges of financial solidarity that remained within the elite game, but commonly accepted principles such as competition based on sporting merit, and qualification to European competitions. In this paper, we offer a preliminary analysis of empirical data collected from key fan activists networked across the six English clubs involved, and both the FSA and FSE. As activist life-stories, these interviews were coded across three interdependent themes: the ‘moral’ shock of the ESL rupture, the coordination of networks, and unpacking perceptions of victory and success. From this, we map some important sociological questions on the impact of momentous events as ruptures in English and European football, and the stabilising of changes within the regulation and governance of the game, and supporter engagement.
Keynote: Cassie Phoenix
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor
It is well established within the sociology of sport and related fields that the body and embodiment is essential to understanding engagement in, and experiences of, sport and
physical activity. The body is, after all, a constitutive part of human experience (Merlau-Ponty, 1945); not something that we have, but rather something that we are, or are becoming. In this way, the body is a continual and incessant materializing of possibilities” (Butler, 1997, p.404). It subsequently calls for analytical attentiveness to embodied,
contextualised interactions accomplished in lived spaces.
In this presentation, I will draw on our past and current research into everyday life and the body, to reflect on the possibilities, problems, and practice of researching embodiment.
Delving deeper into case studies examining the lived experiences of menopause, chronic illness, and weather in relation to movement contexts, I show how knowledge of these phenomena have undoubtedly benefitted from multi/interdisciplinary ways of knowing, yet often in ways that have failed to make bodies a meaningful presence. I will move on to discuss some of the strategies we have used to address this and will present examples of creative arts-based resources developed in this process. I will finish by reflecting on how the doing of embodiment research within multi/interdisciplinary settings can itself also be experienced as an ‘incessant materialising of possibilities’, and what has
felt to be essential when navigating that.
Room: N6, Building HZM 1st Floor