Sport and the Sociology of the Body

Abstract

Our body is always a "social" fact. It is an expression of existing social conditions, which determine how we perceive and control our physical selves, how we use our body as an expressive medium, how we handle our body and control it, how we make use of our bodies, and how we view our body. When we speak of our body as a social fact, we mean the following four elements: a) the "techniques of the body", or in other words, the way motion (e.g., walking, running, jumping, swimming) is traditionally realized in a society; b) "expressive body movement" such as posture, gesture, facial expressions and so on, which serve as symbolic forms of self-expression and of (non-verbal) communication; hence, as "body language"; c) "body ethos" or the attitude towards one's own body, which match person al and social identity; d) controls of drive and need. Every society recognizes, and also usually differentiates on a class and gen der-specific basis, a norm for each of these dimensions of the body which firmly establishes body techniques, expressive body movement, body ethos, and physical self-control. Such norms apply to all bodily movements and to the control of drives and needs; hence also to sports. What is "possible" and "not possible" in sports, what is acceptable in bodily exertion, body control, posture, which presentation of the body is acceptable for men and women, for old and young, for members of the lower or the upper class, is defined by just such social norms and rules, that determine the body as a social fact. These relationships should be examined in detail, if we wish to judge the significance of body sociology for the sociology of sports. For this, it is necessary: 1) to make clear the anthropological prerequisites of a sociology of the body, 2) to describe the already mentioned individual components of the body as a social fact to classify its socio-cultural, class and gender-specific differentiations and, 3) to treat the specific dependence-relationship of the body as a social fact upon social development.