The Meanings of Sport: Fun, Health, Beauty or Community?

Abstract

It is well known that sport and physical activity is important for medical health and subjective well-being and thereby functions as a kind of social good. How sport also operates as a social good in light of the meaning athletes attach to their activity is a much less analysed topic. Accordingly, this essay sets out with a theoretical analysis of which meanings people most commonly attach to their sport activity, and seven reasons are identified. Next, the essay interprets these reasons as part of a larger social setting including social background (age, gender, class) and characteristics of the sport activity (team sport versus individual sport, competitive level) itself. The empirical analyses, based on Norwegian data, give a rather complicated picture of how sport carries meaning to different group of people, but three findings stand out. First, social background is more important than aspects of the activity itself. Yet, for five out of seven ‘meanings of sport’, aspects of the sport itself also have significant implications for how the activity is experienced. Finally, the explanatory factors produce a rather complicated picture of how sport matters to people; gender and age are especially important, but also type of sport and competitive level have significant effects.

Notes

 [1] Lüschen et al., ‘The Sociocultural Context of Sport and Health’; Thrane, ‘Fysisk aktivitet, helse og subjektivt velvære’.

 [2] As an example, about 70 per cent of the Norwegian population exercises at least once a week according to Statistics Norway, see http://www.ssb.no/emner/07/02/50/fritid/.

 [3] Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity , Beck, Risk Society ; for sport, see Elias & Dunning, Quest for Excitement ; Rittner, ‘Sport in der Erlebnisgesellschaft’; Bette, Systemtheorie und Sport ; Dunning, Sport Matters , Sassatelli, ‘Interaction Order and Beyond’.

 [4] Cox et al., ‘Overview of Sport Psychology’.

 [5] Searle, Intentionality .

 [6] The intrinsic, relational or dialectic quality of the relation between ‘motivation’ and ‘action’ has been a common theme in sociology, and reminiscent examples of such approaches are found in Mills, ‘Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive’; Blumer, Symbolic Interactionism ; Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences ; and Emirbayer, ‘Manifesto for a Relational Sociology’.

 [7] Mandell, Sport. A Cultural History ; Olstad, Norsk idretts historie; Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism ; Heinemann, Einführung in die Soziologie des Sports .

 [8] Sport psychology makes a parallel distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. For more on this, see Vallerand and Fortier, ‘Measures of Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation in Sport and Physical Activity’.

 [9] Huizinga, Homo Ludens , 3.

[10] Caillois, Man, Play, and Games ; Guttmann, From Ritual to Record ; Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism, Morgan, Leftist Theories of Sport.

[11] Suits, ‘The Elements of Sport’, 12.

[12] Morgan and Meier, Philosophic Inquiry in Sport ; Inglis and Hughson, ‘The Beautiful Game and the Proto-Aesthetics of the Everyday’.

[13] Taylor, ‘Invoking Civil Society’; Featherstone et al ., The Body; Lash and Urry, Economies of Signs & Space ; Hetherington, Expressions of Identity ; Gibbins and Reimer, The Politics of Postmodernity ; Schuessler, A Logic of Expressive Choice .

[14] Rittner, ‘Sport in der Erlebnisgesellschaft’; Breivik, ‘Sport in High Modernity’; Bette, Systemtheorie und Sport; Heino, ‘What Is So Punk About Snowboarding?’

[15] Featherstone et al., The Body; Blake, The Body Language ; Bette, Systemtheorie und Sport; Sassatelli, ‘Interaction Order and Beyond’ and ‘Body Politics’.

[16] Cachay and Thiel, Soziologie des Sports.

[17] Stichweh, ‘Sport – Ausdifferenzierung, Funktion, Code‘ and ’Sport und Moderne’; Tangen, Samfunnets idrett .

[18] Morgan and Meier, Philosophic Inquiry in Sport; Heinemann, Einführung in die Soziologie des Sports, 34–5.

[19] Walzer, ‘The Civil Society Argument’; Taylor, ‘Invoking Civil Society’; Warren, Democracy and Association .

[20] See Wolfenden, Sport & the Community; Roche, ‘Sport and Community’; Morgan, Leftist Theories of Sport; St.meld, ‘Idrettslivet i endring’, 14.

[21] Dunning, Sport Matters; McKay et al., Masculinities, Gender Relations, and Sport .

[22] Abraham, ‘“Geschlecht” als Strukturdimension sozialer Ungleichheit’; Theberge, ‘Gender and Sport‘; Weinberg et al., ‘Motivation for Youth Participation in Sport and Physical Activity’.

[23] Tomlinson, ‘Lifestyle and Social Class’.

[24] Wright, Classes ; Goldthorpe, On Sociology .

[25] Grusky and Weeden, ‘Decomposition Without Death’.

[26] Eder, The New Politics of Class ; Lash and Urry, Economies of Signs & Space.

[27] Pakulski and Waters, The Death of Class .

[28] Veblen, Den arbeidsfrie klasse .

[29] Morgan, Leftist Theories of Sport; Cachay and Hartmann-Tews, Sport und soziale Ungeichkeit; Gruneau, Class, Sports and Social Development ; Sugden and Tomlinson, ‘Theorizing Sport, Social Class and Status’.

[30] Bourdieu, ‘Sport and Social Class’, 819.

[31] Sugden and Tomlinson, ‘Theorizing Sport, Social Class and Status’.

[32] Loland, ed., Toppidrettens pris .

[33] Hargreaves, Sport, Power and Culture ; Olstad, Norsk idretts historie; Heinemann, Einführung in die Soziologie des Sports.

[34] Skirstad, ‘Norwegian Sport at the Crossroad’; Enjolras and Seippel, Norske idrettslag 2000 .

[35] In a Norwegian context, two out of three in the adult population exercise at least once a month and 28 per cent of the population is a member of a voluntary sport organization. For an overview of participation in physical activity and sport in a Norwegian context, see Dølvik et al., Kluss i vekslinga ; Breivik and Vaagbø, Utviklingen i fysisk aktivitet i den norske befolkning 1985–1997; Vaage, ‘Kultur- og fritidsaktiviteter’ and www.ssb.no.

[36] Seippel, ‘Volunteers and Professionals in Norwegian Sport Organizations’.

[37] Goksøyr, ‘The Popular Sounding Board’.

[38] Goksøyr, ‘Norway and the World Cup’; Maguire, Global Sport ; Miller et al., Globalization and Sport .

[39] Goksøyr. ed., Kropp, kultur og tippekamp .

[40] The sample of individual members is based on lists of members from a random sample of Norwegian voluntary sport organizations (which in turn is taken from the register held by the ‘Norwegian Olympic Committee and Sport Federation’ [NOC]). From a population of about 7,000 clubs, 549 clubs were randomly selected. 294 clubs responded to the questionnaire, which gives a response rate of 54 per cent. The size of the clubs in the total population is known, and comparing our sample with the population indicates that the quality of the data on this organizational level is quite good. For more on this, see Enjolras and Seippel, Norske idrettslag 2000.

[41] This number reflects two factors that are partly caused by the lack of quality of the lists of members provided by the sport organizations. First, lots of questionnaires where returned by the postal service (1,149) and many respondents communicated that they were not, and in some cases had never been, members of a sport club. Together we estimated that misdirected questionnaires amounted to about 2,000 respondents. Next, we did not know the age of most of our sample, so we estimate that 1,725 respondents who were in the wrong age group (below 13) received the questionnaire. This leaves us with 1,660 answers from a sample of 5,654 ‘valid members’, which, in turn, gives a response rate of 29.4 per cent.

Three complicating factors contributed to this result. First, because the research project was to cover a wide spectrum of age groups of which the factual age of the respondents was not known beforehand, various versions of the questionnaire were sent to each one, and the respondents were asked to choose the correct one for their age-group. Next, because of public restrictions, several age groups needed permission from their parents (a signature) whereas some just had to inform their parents of their participation. Third, the questionnaire was sizeable (20 pages at most).

[42] The questionnaire contains a list of statements where the respondents are asked whether they consider each statement as ‘very appropriate’, ‘rather appropriate’, ‘rather inappropriate’, ‘very inappropriate’ and ‘don't know’ for their sport activity within the club. The ‘don't know’ category is used as a middle category making each variable into a five-point scale. The dimensions of meaning then consist of one, two or three variables merged into an additive index. Below is a list of the statements used for each dimension of meaning and Cronbachs alpha as a measure for the reliability of the indices.

Joy: ‘I think doing sport is fun.’

Physical health: ‘I want a healthy body’, ‘I want to keep fit’. Cronbachs alpha: 0.74.

Mental recreation: ‘I feel that I get a mental surplus from my exercise’, ‘I feel that I get a physical surplus from exercising’. Cronbachs alpha: 0.76.

Social factors: ‘I meet my friends in the sport club’, ‘I appreciate the social community of the sport club’, ‘Sport is important for my social network’. Cronbachs alpha: 0.79.

Competition and achievements: ‘I like to compete’, ‘I like excitements and challenges’, ‘I like to win’. Cronbachs alpha: 0.78.

Expressivism: ‘I feel that I am able to express important aspects of myself through the activity in the sport club.’

Appearance and body: ‘I want to take care of my appearance’, ‘I consider my weight important’, ‘I take part to get a nice and attractive body’. Cronbachs alpha: 0.71.

[43] I have chosen this approach because the social class variable does not function very well in multivariate analyses because of the large proportion of youngsters in our sample and the lack of appropriate data on their parents.

[44] The analysis is based on the part of the sample aged 18 years or above (N = 1222). Class is measured rather traditionally, without possibilities for more fine-grained analyses.

[45] * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01.

[46] Respondent were asked to list their sport activities. If active in more than one sport, sport activities were listed according to how often they participated. The respondents are then classified according to whether this ‘most active’ sport is a team-sport or an individual sport.

For competitive level, respondents were asked ‘At which competitive level do you see yourself in your sport? Consider your level compared to other athletes at your age.’ The answers were: 1. ‘Exercising level, without any competition’, 2. ‘Exercising level with some competition’, 3. ‘Low competitive level’, 4. ‘Medium competitive level’, 5. ‘High competitive level, nationally’, 6. ‘High competitive level, internationally’.

[47] See Dunning, Sport Matters.

[48] This is probably due to the fact that competition is, regardless of level, an intrinsic feature of most team sports (football, handball et cetera), whereas many individual sports could be performed without focusing upon competition.

[49] See Ulseth, ‘Prestasjon eller rekreasjon?‘