Sport and Intracultural Social Change: A Longitudinal Analysis

Abstract

Economic and social changes in advanced countries have affected the development and growth of sports federations for the past fifty years. This paper focuses on the ways in which changes in the development of organi zed sport reflect politico-structural changes in society and what factors are linked with them. Finland is regarded as a good area of research because of the differentiation in sports movements after the civil war in 1919 and the enormous growth in the support of sports federations after the Second World War. The main targets are the Finnish Central Sports Federation and the Workers' Sports Federation. Social cleavages between the work ing and bourgeois classes. between ethnic groups (Finnish and the Swed ish speaking population), as well as different socio-economic factors have affected their development and growth both quantitatively and qualitatively. Changes in support for the Central Federation are not in fluencedby situational structural factors and changes to the same extent as development possibilities in the Workers' Federation are. Support for the Central Federation is more dependent on general social-political condi tions, whereas support for the Workers' Federation with its closer leftist and labour movement links is more closely and directly connected with factors affecting the position of workers in society or their internal organi zations. In spite of many levelling factors, the connections are reflected in the development conditions of the two organizations even during the period after the Second World War. However, there are differences in the explanation of support during the pre-war and post-war periods.