Sport en sportsociologie

Samenvatting

Sport and Sport Sociology. The article gives an overview of the development of the sociology of sport, with special attention for the period of the existence of the AST. It first shows how the resurrection of the Olympic Games at the end of the 19th century, with its accompanying ideology, influenced the interest of historians and philosophers in the study of sport. Sociologists of sport became seriously involved in the study of sports during the Cold War. Sport performances of athletes came to symbolize the vitality and power of the nations they represented. The social significance of sport increased, and this attracted the attention of, among others, sociologists. Stimulating general sport participation became one goal within the welfare policies of many national governments. With the general diffusion of TV, sport became more visible and sport performances and sport stars became more then ever symbols of national vitality and national self-esteem. The main themes of the sociology of sport were closely related with the social forces that brought sport under the attention of sociologists. One large theme became soccer hooliganism, and from the 1990s onward this widened into the general study of soccer in national societies. Another theme was participation in sport. In the Netherlands this is the most studied theme. The government ordered research into groups that lagged behind the rest of the population in their sport participation. A third large theme became the study of the relations between sports, media, and their publics. Communication scientists and cultural studies scholars annexed this field. The commercialization of sports that resulted from media attention made it into a study object for sport economists who defined their field as the sports business or industry. The organizational basis for the sociology of sport dates from the middle of the 1960s. Then, an international organization for the sociological study of sport was founded and it started to publish a journal for the sociology of sport. From the 1970s onwards it became an established subject in many universities around the world. In the Netherlands the founding of the W.J.H. Mulier Institute in 2002 gave the sociology of sport a firm institutional base. Not long after its founding, the Mulier Institute managed to introduce professorships in sport economics (Groningen, 2004) and sport development (Utrecht, 2004), and in 2004 the Free University (Amsterdam) appointed a professor in sport history. 62 References. Adapted from the source document.