The survival of the fittest: intensification, totalization and homogenization in Swedish competitive sport

Abstract

The prestige words of the Swedish sport movement have with a long tradition been ‘sport for all’. The extensive funding from the Swedish government to organized sport through the Swedish Sports Confederation originates from that same ideal, but with the results presented in this text we argue that the inherent logic in competitive sport hampers the pronounced ambition to offer sport for all regardless of age, sex, social class, cultural origin and level of ambition. The results were based on an analysis of both elite and broad sports activities and show how the processes of Sportification, Intensification, Totalization and Homogenization combine in creating a standardized array of clubs, where the space for different ideas about activities, principles for organization and ideals for success shrinks along with the norms being set by the most successful clubs regarding competition and expansion. The main conclusion is that the ‘sport for all’-logic predominant in Swedish competitive sport since the beginning of the twentieth century has in recent decades been challenged by a competition- and expansion-logic which seems more rewarding in terms of ability to attract resources.