Sports and Socialization.
1963; Wiley; Linguagem: Inglês
10.1037/11302-022
Autores Tópico(s)Physical Education and Pedagogy
ResumoIn Scandinavia as well as in other countries of Western culture sports are today the most favoured leisure-time activity of youth. In the course of slightly more than one generation sports have become what may be called the greatest world movement of our time, the development and gradual organization of which can be easily traced historically. History has, however, been unable to offer an adequate explanation for the actual origin sports. The old theory, connected with the name of Gulick (4), according to which sports have been elaborated out of the athletic games of our forefathers, who, in their struggle for existence, had to excersise their fighting capacity up to the point of utmost effectivity, has proved to be biologically as well as sociologically untenable. Deviating from this still fairly prevalent opinion I have endeavoured to show that sports, nowadays as well as in earlier times, are developed as part of a process of socialization. To express it more freely: if sports could suddenly be blotted out from the world and from people's consciousness, they would soon be born again and would perhaps even be recreated in the same forms as now, provided that the process of socialization and its influencing factors remained the same. On undertaking to study the emergence and the development of sports the first step is to determine the criteria of sports. Searching for these it is immediately apparent that, descriptively seen, sports do not in any substantial degree differ from the type of activity displayed in children's games. As the child grows up, playing is gradually replaced by more strenuous sports and athletics. During this development the principal dcange occours more in the attitudes of the individual than in the activity itself. Sports may be play as long as the person who engages in it takes a playing attitude towards them. Bodily exercise and competition are the main elements in sports. The former has its roots in the individual's natural need for exercise, which he strives to satisfy
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