European Cultures in Sport

James Riordan, Arnd Kruger

Description

Sport occupies a key position in the cultural profile of a nation. This study forms a comparative guide to sport across Europe, in terms of its relative political and social status, its development, and the ways in which it has contributed to national achievement. Covering sport in ten major European states, each native contributor to the study presents: • a brief historical background: major sports successes, Olympic positions, sporting traditions, • organisation of sport: its structure and financing, • elite sport: how talent is spotted, nurtured and remunerated, sports academies, national qualification schemes, • the role of science and medicine in sport,

Sujets

• Mathematical
• Earth Sciences
• Sciences et techniques
• Earth science
• Geography
• Computational
• General officer
• Physics
• History of Europe
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Science
• Physique
• Physical attractiveness

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841508801
• Langue: English

Extrait

European Cultures of Sport
Examining the Nations and Regions
Edited by
James Riordan Arnd Kr ger
First Published in Great Britain in Paperback in 2003 by
Intellect Books , PO Box 862, Bristol BS99 1DE, UK
First Published in USA in 2003 by
Intellect Books, ISBS, 5824 N.E. Hassalo St, Portland, Oregon 97213-3644, USA
Copyright 2003 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission. Consulting Editor: Robin Beecroft Copy Editor: Holly Spradling
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Electronic ISBN 1-84150-880-2 / ISBN 1-84150-014-3
The cover photograph shows Allegory to Sports - 1896 (Olympic Museum, Lausanne) by Charles de Coubertin, father of the founder of the modern Olympic Games.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe, Eastbourne
Contents
Introduction
James Riordan and Arnd Kr ger
England and Wales
Marc Keech
Scotland
Ian Thomson
Denmark
Else Trangbaek
Germany
Arnd Kr ger
The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
James Riordan and Hart Cantelon
France
Thierry Terret
Spain
Teresa Gonzalez Aja and Patrick Stumm
Italy
Angela Teja and Marco Impiglia
Contributors
Arnd Kr ger is Head of the Department of Sports Science at Georg-August University, Gottingen, Germany. Born in the German Democratic Republic of a runner-wrestler father, he emigrated as a boy to West Germany where he became 11-time German champion at 800 and 1500m, reaching the Olympic semi-finals in 1968. Author of many seminal works, Professor Kruger is the founding President of the Committee on European Sports History (CESH).
James Riordan studied at Birmingham, London and Moscow universities before becoming Professor of Russian Studies in Britain. Until recently he was Head of the Department of Linguistic and International Studies at the University of Surrey. He is currently Honorary Professor in Sports Studies at Stirling University. Much of his research has been on communist sport; he lived and worked for five years in Moscow, playing football for Moscow Spartak.
Marc Keech is Senior Lecturer in Sport and Leisure Studies at the Chelsea School, University of Brighton, England. His research publications range from sport and diplomacy in apartheid South Africa, leisure culture, and sport and social exclusion. His football career was curtailed by injury; he now dreams of seeing England win the World Cup instead of watching re-runs of 1966.
Ian Thomson has lectured and worked in Scottish sport for most of his life - at Jordanhill College, Dunfermline College and Stirling University where he was the first Director of Physical Recreation. He has also been county advisor for community education in Midlothian and advisor to the Scottish Sports Council. A former soccer and squash player, he is now to be found mostly on St Andrews Golf Course.
Else Trangbaek is Associate Professor at the Institute of Exercise and Sports Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Her main scholarly writing is on the history of gymnastics, physical education and women. One-time Danish gymnastics champion (six-time all-round national champion), she took part in the Nordic, European and World championships, as well as the 1968 Olympic Games.
Hart Cantelon is Associate Professor in Sociology and Physical and Health Education at Queen s University, Kingston, Canada. He pioneered the study of Soviet ice hockey, spending time in Moscow during the 1970s. He has written extensively on ice hockey, the Olympics and working class culture. Professor Cantelon holds high-level coaching certificates in ice hockey and Canadian football.
Thierry Terret was a school PE teacher for seven years before becoming Professor of Sports Studies at the University of Lyon in 1992. He now lectures in sports history and manages an interdisciplinary research centre on Sport and Integration . He is currently President of the International Society for the History of PE and Sport and former President of the French Association for Sports Sciences. He spends his free time playing village rugby, feeding his three cats, goat (Mister B) and Josephine the Frog.
Teresa Gonzalez Aja is Professor of Sports History at the Instituto Nacional de Educacion Fisica , Technical University of Madrid. With a PhD in Sport and Art, she has written widely on Spanish sports history. She is currently President of the Committee on European Sports History and a member of the Spanish Olympic Academy. Her active sporting pursuits are golf and the Spanish folk game of Mus.
Patrick Stumm obtained his PhD at Georg-August University, Gottingen, before embarking on research into sporting trends in Germany, Italy and Spain. He has studied in Mannheim, Gottingen and Padua (Italy), and spent a few years in Madrid and Rome on sports research. A former German professional sprinter (100m) and long jumper, he now devotes much of his leisure time to inline skating and fitness sport.
Angela Teja is Professor of Sports History at the University of Cassino, Rome. She is a founding member and current General Secretary of CESH, and has written widely on Italian sports history, particular the military and women during the fascist period. A top-level runner at Rome s Federal Athletics Centre, she now mainly confines her energies to modern rhythmic gymnastics.
Marco Impiglia , one-time lecturer in Sports History at the University of Cassino, Rome, is now a freelance journalist writing on sports history for major Italian sports periodicals. His particular area of expertise is football to which he has dedicated virtually all his physical and mental energy over the last decade.
Introduction
James Riordan and Arnd Kr ger
Modern sport and gymnastics had their origins in Europe during the last two centuries. Organised competitive sports, like football, rugby and athletics, emerged in the nineteenth century as the private domain of the new social class born of industrialisation and urbanisation. They were a social innovation, confined to class and national boundaries; in the main they excluded manual workers, women and certain ethnic minorities (e.g. Jews and Gypsies). Essentially, these sports were a private initiative, in no way associated with the state or politics, let alone foreign policy.
Not so gymnastics. The various schools of physical exercises - associated with Jahn in Germany, Nachtegall in Denmark, Ling in Sweden, Lesgaft in Russia - developed as pedagogical, political and military instruments for building a national identity. And that involved everybody: man and woman, squire and peasant, factory owner and worker. To learn to put one s body at the service of the nation emanated from a policy of acculturation of the common people in the same way as learning one s national language.
In much of Europe, sport and gymnastics contended for influence, with enthusiasts for one refusing to recognise or engage in the other. At the turn of century, particularly after the 1914-18 World War, however, competitive sports started to prevail. This was encouraged by the new international contests, especially the modern Olympic Games (brainchild of the French aristocrat Baron Pierre de Coubertin) inaugurated at Athens in 1896. Sport and sporting spectacle rapidly spread throughout Europe and, from Europe, to the rest of the world.
As international competition grew, states began to perceive the potential political benefits to be gained from sporting victory. With the coming to power of totalitarian regimes (Soviet Communism from 1917, Italian Fascism from 1922, German Nazism from 1933, Spanish Fascism from 1936, East European State Socialism from 1945) private clubs and associations in these countries gave way to state direction of sport, elevating sport to a high priority on the political agenda.
The growing internationalisation and politicisation of sport inevitably raised broader issues, like religion, social class, gender and race. Sometimes this caused a split in the movement, with various groups playing among themselves - like socialist and communist workers who formed their own sports associations and Olympics.
In the second half of the twentieth century, a mounting tension developed between amateur-elitist sport for wealthy, privileged males and commercial spectator sport for the mainly middle classes, as well as worker and female sport, with commercial sport prevailing. After the Second World War, sport became further politicised with the Cold War rivalry between capitalist and communist states, utilising sports victories as evidence of political superiority. At the same time, erstwhile underprivileged groups - blacks, women, disabled, the gay community - were struggling for recognition and sometimes integration.
All these developments are apparent, in varying degrees, in every European nation. Yet each country also possesses its own specifics, and each sees the concepts of sport and gymnastics differently. Thus, French sport still bears the imprint of the French Revolution of 1789, the educational philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the noble aspirations of Coubertin; Germany s recent history includes Jahn s gymnastics (for national regeneration after Napoleonic occupation), the Nazi-controlled sports system, the division of Germany into capitalist West and communist East, and subsequent reunification; Russia, at the back end of Europe, with a dozen foreign states on its borders in tsarist and Soviet times, has always had a close relationship between sport, the state and the military; Italy likewise: half its medal winners at the 1994 Summer Olympics of Atlanta were in the armed forces.
In those parts of Europe that experienced authoritarian regimes, state-centralised sport pursued certain utilitarian functions on behalf of the ruling party, above all to promot