Management of Public Policies for Sports and Leisure in the Região dos Lagos-RJ: An Analysis of the Beach Sports Field from Bourdieusian Theories

Abstract

Through Pierre Bourdieu's theories linked to the social field, it is possible to understand politics, sport and sports management as distinct fields, which are integrated to give rise to a subfield of these areas: public policies for sport and leisure. The objective of this work is to identify the importance of sports management and public policies for sports and leisure to promote the habitus of body practices at the beach, understanding these as the maximum expression of the identity of social agents in this field. Nevertheless, it is necessary to recognize that the corporal practices carried out in the beach regions constitute their own habitus in a specific field: the beach field. This essay is an integral part of an ongoing doctoral project in ​​Exercise and Sport Sciences carried out at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. This is mixed research, whose instruments will be triangulated to identify the public policies of sport and leisure in the Lagos Region, relating them to the beach sports habitus and the community protagonism originating from the local school curriculum. Public policies in the field of sport and leisure are recent and, in the same way, sports management in this field is still quite incipient. The scarcity of financial resources is almost always present in the discourses of sports management as a way of justifying the small or unsustainable public policies aimed at the area. However, many other reasons justify the inefficiency or non-existence of programs focused, above all, on educational sport and/or sport-participation, which may consider the marketing bias of sport in Brazil, corruption in the area and the lack of sports managers in these programs as being some of these reasons. On the other hand, when taking into account the local habitus, policies that consider community protagonism important, qualified managers and efficient programs, there are enough elements in the beach sports field to impact the quality of life, education, leisure and even in high-performance sport, albeit indirectly.