The focus of this article will be sport predicated on contests between nation-states, or what we will call inter-national sport, at the elite level. While much literature on the politics of sport has focused on the proper role of the nation-state in regards to specific sport issues, few have questioned whether elite sport ought to involve nationalism as part of its competition. Most who have defended such sport argue that the benefits of (...) class='Hi'>nationalism and the national identity outweigh any potential unintended harm. In this article, we question these conclusions by arguing that both lusory and ethical considerations undermine elite sport’s emphasis on inter-national contests. We will be trying to argue that these artifacts no longer should play a primary role in determining eligibility or serving as the basis for determining competitive sides. We will make this argument by focusing on the ethical dilemmas posed specifically by inter-national competition including international discord and reduced quality of competition. We also argue that promoting national differences does not serve a useful lusory role in elite sport. However, we will concede that Morgan’s respect for the narratives associated with sport indicate that national identity may continue playing a limited role in elite sporting contests. So while we make an exception for a soft national cultural narrative, we conclude that such arguments taken together indicate that national identities ought to have a much diminished role, if any at all, in elite sport. (shrink)

This article critically details how the work of Slavoj Žižek theoretically elaborates on the links between nationalism and sport. Notably, it highlights how key terms, drawn from Žižek’s work on fantasy, ideology and the Real (itself grounded in the work of Jacques Lacan), can be used to explore the relationship between sport, nationalism and enjoyment (jouissance). In outlining this approach, specific attention is given to Žižek’s account of the ‘national Thing’. Accordingly, by considering the various ways (...) in which sport organizes, materializes and structures our enjoyment, the emotive significance of sport during national sporting occasions is both introduced and applied. Moreover, it is argued that such an approach offers a unique and valuable insight into the relationship between sport and nationalism, as well as an array of social and political antagonisms. (shrink)

The book Philosophy of Sport: International Perspectives represents the work of some of the leading moral and philosophical academics in the popular practice of sport. All contributors are scholars and researchers in the area of the Philosophy of Sport, a growing area of serious study within universities and colleges across the world. The contributors are also active members of the International Association for the Philosophy of Sport a worldwide organisation dedicated to the development of the philosophy (...) of sport as a serious and influential area of academic study. The book adds to the growing literature, which focuses on rigorously examining the global significance that sport plays in the fabric of twenty-first century life. Articles within the book provide a diverse set of ideas related to sport from more familiar issue related to the ethics of performance enhancing substances and fair play, to issue of nationalism, and the way sport can contribute to human well-being. (shrink)

RICHARD MILLS, THE POLITICS OF FOOTBALL IN YUGOSLAVIA: SPORT, NATIONALISM AND THE STATE, I. B. TAURIS, LONDON, 2018.Balša Delibašić.

Among the many themes in which the Irish modernist novelist, James Joyce, was intellectually and emotionally engaged, the issue of British imperialism and Irish nationalism was paramount. While Joyce despised the English colonial occupation of his country, he was equally dismissive of a mythical Irish nationalism, particularly in the way it was endorsed by the Gaelic Athletic Association. While Joyce is not renowned as a writer of sport; nevertheless, sporting pursuits can be found throughout his novels. Joyce’s (...) nuanced understanding of how English culture has permanently altered Irish social subjectivities (and vice versa) can be found in sharp relief in his novels, particularly Ulysses and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. This article takes sport as a theme in Joyce’s work through which to explore fractured national identities through a framework inspired by the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. Their post-Marxist work enables an examination of sport and nationality that goes beyond the existing orthodox Gramscian theory that has proven so productive in the understanding of sport in Cultural Studies. The article will commence with a brief review of existing studies of Joyce with respect to sport and national debates. After summarising the broad Gramscian approaches to understanding sport and nationalism, some of the key concepts in Laclau and Mouffe’s political philosophy are then outlined. The article will apply those concepts to the way Joyce depicts sport, especially cricket and hockey, to deconstruct the binaries in the debate between British colonialism and Irish nationalism. (shrink)

The present study is an interrogation of theories of culture and nation in the context of spectacular sports. It proposes a view of nationalism as discourses that articulate and produce nations through narrative acts. A wide array of concepts and tools are drawn from the work of Pierre Bourdieu and contrasted with methods and notions from discursive and semiotic analysis to interrogate a national-sports nexus in which sports are vehicles to embody nations, their matrices of thought and perception, and (...) their dominant order of masculinity and heteronormativity in the national subject, so that this order appears natural and commonsensical. Particular attention is given to the case of South Africa’s participation in the 1998 World Cup, and the way the epic genre was employed to frame the event and produce a particular kind of national body. -/- Spectacular sports events provide nations with opportunities to disseminate narratives that regulate desire and conjure a particular kind of national fantasy – what Bourdieu referred to as illusio – in subjects. This work makes a distinction between an epic body of nationalism, a body enmeshed in "the natural and authentic," and an excessive body. However, mediations of sports are never merely reflections of social events but themselves participate in producing these events as meaningful and anchor them as national. Furthermore, an actively interpreting subject is required for the production of meaning, and in this regard the thesis offers a critique of Bourdieu’s limited view on what it entails for a recipient of nationalist discourse to be active. The questions addressed by this study is twofold: how and what kind of national order of the body and desire is manufactured through spectacular sports events, and how are mediations of such events made meaningful in subjects? -/- The open-ended character of signification means that beneath the level of nationalist anchorage of spectacular sports events other articulations are possible. Drawing on Bourdieu’s view of sports as forms of silent dressage, the thesis suggests that there is a potential excess of meaning that enables such events to become potential sites of subjective truth: as viewers realise the fantasmatic character of such mediations they may come to question the notion that spectacular sports are something more than just a game. (shrink)

This book probes the cultural forces and legacies at play in three events in sports history, exploring how racial, national, sporting, and personal identities overlap and conflict. The author taps into a deep well of Western philosophy and literature to read the resonances in these three moments.

This article is a study of three major metaphors organizing nationalistic discourse about Cyprus in two online forums for Turkish university students. The analysis suggests that discussants symbolically warranted their constructions of the future of Cyprus and Turkish Cypriots with metaphors of blood and heroism that emphasized their personal and collective memory of sacrifice. Sports metaphors were used predominantly to convey a sense of the strategic importance of Cyprus. In addition, discussants employed gender and sexual metaphors to structure the tension (...) between nationalist feelings associated with motherland Turkey as a pure, virgin female, and the geopolitical demands of the nation-state, portrayed as a father faced with uneasy choices. (shrink)

Accessible and comprehensive guide to the philosophy of sport, providing students with an overview of the main issues, ideas and literature. The book offers a wide-ranging and engaging exploration of key concepts, topics and questions. Students are given the opportunity to consider significant debates in the philosophy of sport and each chapter contains short insightful interviews with eminent scholars in order to give a broader understanding of the history and development of the subject. The main themes covered within (...) this text include: the nature of sport and its relation to play and games; sport and the body; aesthetics and the aesthetic value of sport; a consideration of fair play, rules and the ethos of sport; the nature of competition; the application and effect of technology on sport; and introductions to contemporary ethical issues such as doping, violence, disability, nationalism, elitism and sexual equality, as well as a broader reflection on the connection between sport and moral development. Pedagogical features include: suggestions for further reading and additional resources, a glossary of philosophical terms, and helpful summaries of the focal material. (shrink)

In Egypt, from the early twentieth century until the 1950s, the gesture of baring the body became politicized. This article looks at how women activists and artists mobilized denuding in their repertoire of actions and rhetorical strategies, for nationalist or feminist purposes. It offers a chrono-thematic overview of the issues related to female corporality, brought centre stage by Egyptian women writers and painters. Looking first at the early period, up to the 1920s, the study reflects on the presence of the (...) female body in the street : visible, mobilized and revealed for the “wellbeing of humanity”. It then considers the 1920s and 1930s, when baring the body in sports and on the beach was seen as useful for the “good” of the nation. Finally, it analyzes the relationship between nudity as “beautiful” and Egyptian society from the mid-1930s to the 1950s. in the arts, fashion and beauty contests. (shrink)

Each Olympic Games will provide new material for research in the field of sports philosophy and social philosophy. This article raises the problem of understanding sports as a participant in social development on the example of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The author analyzes the phenomenon of combining the philosophy of social sports, represented by the modern Olympic movement, and traditional Chinese philosophy. The main conclusion is that sport, as a social force, is reborn in the modern era (...) due to the combination of Eastern and Western cultures and civilizations. This gives rise to new social cognition. The leadership of the countries hosting the Olympic Games gain experience and the opportunity to demonstrate their own political and economic strength and deep mental foundations. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, taking place in a completely new societal environment (COVID-19 pandemic, world power realignment) is used as a case study for analysis. Using this example, the article shows the social significance of the Olympic Games and emphasizes that the social value of sports and the Olympic movement is reflected in the "spirit of fair competition" and the "spirit of peace", "human intelligence". This is a relatively new direction in the development of research in the field of physical education and social philosophy, and the special contribution of this study is to study one of the promising trends in the development of sports, that is, the modern Olympic movement, integrated with the national culture of different countries. (shrink)

The spectacular success of the Singapore table tennis team has rankled many, including Singaporeans. They take issue with the entire team having been recruited from China and specially naturalised to contribute towards Singapore?s sporting achievements. Is there good reason to oppose Singapore?s approach, which is increasingly common internationally? Would that opposition imply an indefensible form of self-reliance, whereby a country should reject all external assistance? This paper presents a reason to object to Singapore?s approach without promoting repugnant self-reliance. It builds (...) on existing critiques, which are largely based on how foreigners are naturalised, to argue against the underlying motivation for doing so. Three possible rebuttals are considered and rejected because they trade on conceptual confusions. Although the essay focuses on the national pursuit of sporting excellence, the fundamental issue extends beyond: similar concerns apply to other meaningful fields of endeavour that members of a community can engage in. (shrink)

Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these intersections are explored through British media coverage of the Canadian‐born, British tennis player, Greg (...) Rusedski. This coverage is examined through the lens of ‘performativity,’ as articulated by Judith Butler. Through a critical application of Butler's ideas, the ways in which the media seek to recognise and normalise certain identities, while problematising and excluding others, can be more fully appreciated. Thus, it was within newspaper framings of Rusedski that hegemonic notions of White Englishness could be performed, maintained, and embedded. (shrink)

De Coubertin developed the sport philosophy of Olympism and the Olympic Games as a response to social and political crisis to promote peace, fair play, and the development of Christian masculinity. The purpose of this paper is to examine how crisis discourse functions as an important shaper of contemporary understandings of Olympism and how conflicting discourses have mobilized crisis discourse to produce competing 'truths' in which to rationalize and understand the Olympic Games. In drawing from Foucault's work and de (...) Certeau's text, Heterologies: Discourse on the other, I argue that 'crisis' as the rationalization for Olympism and the Olympic Games has proven an unsuccessful venture for de Coubertin; as the Olympic Games have produced conservative outcomes based on a neoliberal agenda focused on elitism, professionalism, nationalism, and commercialism. This historical case raises important questions about the role of Olympism and its power to act as a catalyst for change. (shrink)

This essay investigates whether the term national signification may serve better than the more common national identity to describe how sports people variously enrol and reference the nation to position themselves and their practice. Taking the social theory of Pierre Bourdieu as a ground for analysis, this essay investigates four cases involving elite athletes from Norway to situate them within the field of sports culture and the larger fields of power and class relations. For Bourdieu actors’ ‘practical sense’ mediated between (...) their subjective striving for autonomy and the objective weight of structured class relations. This essay shows how these athletes’ struggle for relative autonomy is differently expressed by the way they enlist the nation to position themselves within the field of power. An athlete’s positions within the larger, structured fields circumscribe their articulatory space, and realising this state of affairs can aid our understanding of how these elite practitioners differently enlist the national sign in their specific quest for cultural autonomy. The analysis shows athletes that are better placed in economic terms can afford to take greater risks when it comes to the national signifier. Conversely, a relative smaller access to economic gain appears to correlate with an increase in the importance granted to the national signifier. Thus, the nation becomes a sign that can be actively enlisted in an ongoing struggle for relative autonomy from the field of class relations, rather than an attribute that is passively endorsed by them. What this suggests is that a term such as national identity is less descriptive for the actual work of these elite players; instead, we propose that an active national signification more aptly describe how these cultural actors enlist a highly coveted sign to achieve their specific aim. (shrink)

In the Olympic Art Competitions (1912–1948) Pierre de Coubertin expresses his conception of both sport and art as instruments of moral renewal. In this paper, this conception is criticised for failing to appreciate art and sport as necessary manifestations of modernism. The Art Competitions were informed by a traditionalist aesthetic, and thus played a highly conservative role within Olympism. A modernist art about sport, in contrast, would have been a source of critical reflection, potentially protecting the Olympic (...) movement from corrupting exploitation by commercial and nationalistic interests. The conclusion defends the need for Cultural Olympiads, as a source of such critical reflection, that are at once modernist in conception and yet, unlike their current expression, are centrally about sport. (shrink)

Bodily movement has a deeper meaning than modern sport science might recognize. It can have religious undertones, and in modern societies, it is sometimes related to the building of national identity. In the study, two cases of bodily practice are compared. Norwegian ski has a relation to friluftsliv (outdoor activities) and is highly significant for modern Norwegian identity. Indian yoga is related to the traditional ayurveda medicine and to Hindu spirituality, and obtained an important place in the process of (...) anti-colonial nationalism. The aim is to demonstrate how Norwegian skiing and Indian yoga as national body and movement cultures in different ways, show a complex connection between ‘ancient roots’ and modern transformations of cultural identity. Gliding on skis, sitting, and breathing in yoga make up the basis on which people have built identities of their collective ‘we’. (shrink)

This article explores the rhetorics of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair in the aftermath of 11th September. It takes their differing versions of masculinity as a starting-point. The speeches refer extensively to `ways of life', a concept also worth recovering theoretically. Anti-terrorism is a defence of ways of living which are without moral ambiguity and are in absolute opposition to terrorist `evil'. Bush constructs a hegemony at home as a basis for unilateral global interventions. His Americanism draws on familiar (...) themes (`freedom', patriotism, religion), but also invokes compassion, pugnacity and sporting masculinities, drawn especially from the game of baseball. Blair's more `intellectual' version aims at the construction of an international `community' or coalition with Britain in a pivotal role. The contexts, strengths, vulnerabilities, and political and ethical limits of anti-terrorism are explored in detail, including some correspondence with Al-Qa'ida's fundamentalism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Knowledge: Reflections Across the DisciplinesAdriano P. PalmaRethinking Knowledge: Reflections Across the Disciplines, edited by Robert F. Goodman and Walter R. Fisher; 246 pp. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995, $59.50 cloth, $19.95 paper.The more disciplines talk about their methods, the less they do. Observe the scarcity of methodological problems for dentistry. This book collects papers, originally delivered as talks at a conference organized around a (...) loosely defined notion of epistemology in the social sciences, by economists, philosophers, ethnographers, and psychologists, either reflecting upon larger issues raised by their work or trying to explain why it is relevant in the first place.The papers belong to two gaggles of views. The first gaggle (including the economist Donald McCloskey, the philosopher Charles Taylor, George Marcus, and Michael Arbib) does something quite productive. They weigh the influence of certain rhetorical modes of thinking on their disciplines. In the second gaggle are those, including the literary critic Barbara Herrnstein Smith and Jane Flax, who offer no view of anything much, but engage in the peculiarly Anglo-Saxon sport of pseudo-philosophy. They babble about the “West” and indulge a tendency to sheer narcissism.On to the good parts. An important recent advance is the demise of the pretense of neutrality and purity of interest among social scientists. In her essay, for instance, Marcus traces how ethnographers have progressively relinquished narratives of the exotic intended to reinforce a smug superiority of white civilizations. There is a danger: no one would be too interested in reading dozens of dissertations on the subject of graduate students in anthropology departments. Nonetheless, it is a real gain to mark the limits of an excessive reliance on the rhetoric of the “white men’s burden” and all that. Similarly, McCloskey is good at pointing out that economics is not obvious at all, and that rhetorical devices, then, have helped to shape its present form. Taylor gives a quick though not trivial history of the birth in relatively recent times of a discourse of the self, distinguishing between reflexive consciousness and the discourse of the self. Arbib shows how recherché data about brain lesions can shed light on our cognitive structure.Now to the confusingly confused parts. There is the usual dogmatic nonsense backed by no evidence. I offer one example: “... the meanings or the existence of reason, science, knowledge, etc.,... have been subjected to increasingly corrosive attacks,” Flax says in his essay. “The challenge to Western political-economic hegemony by Japan and other countries, the rise of nationalist and anticolonialist movements in the Third World, women’s movements everywhere, and antiracist struggles have disrupted the order of things” (p. 151). What worries me is the lack of thinking: can an instance be shown in which, say, the antiapartheid movement in South Africa made an impact and changed or kicked out of existence the concept of knowledge?Herrnstein Smith is guilty of a more interesting form of bad reasoning. On [End Page 406] the one hand, we are told that all “value judgments” are relative, radically contingent, and blah blah. On the other, we are also told that this is not the same as relativism. The sloppiness is evident: it is a trivial point that lots of value judgments are relative to something else. That a dollar bill is worth a dollar is contingent upon the existence of federal reserve, a mint, and an immense set of background conditions, given all of which it is a dollar bill and not a simple piece of paper. If the contingency of judgments comes to nothing more, one is left to wonder why we need entire departments in top universities to discover it. The more insidious part is the claim that relativity is self-exemplified in discourse and that indeed all there is to assertions is the desire to satisfy one’s chosen audience (p. 36). If this is so, is there any interest in professors talking to other professors about the methodological problems of their disciplines?Adriano P. PalmaNational Chung Cheng University, TaiwanCopyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

The essay presents a set of interlinked claims about posture in modern culture. Over the past two centuries it has come to define a wide range of assumptions in the West from what makes human beings human (from Lamarck to Darwin and beyond) to the efficacy of the body in warfare (from Dutch drill manuals in the 17th century to German military medical studies of soldiers in the 19th century). Dance and sport both are forms of posture training in (...) terms of their own claims. Posture separates ‘primitive’ from ‘advanced’ peoples and the ‘ill’ from the ‘healthy.’ Indeed an entire medical sub-specialty developed in which gymnastics defined and recuperated the body. But all of these claims were also part of a Western attempt to use posture (and the means of altering it) as the litmus test for the healthy modern body of the perfect citizen. Focusing on the centrality of posture in two oddly linked moments of modern thought—modern Zionist thought and Nationalism in early 20th century China—in terms of bodily reform, we show how “posture” brings all of the earlier debates together to reform the body. (shrink)

In this work I offer a panorama of the diverse areas where the philosophical reflection has been developed during these last years: the conceptual, ethical and aesthetic questions. The conceptual problems of the sport have turned around: 1) game and sport; 2) the paper of the rules and the values in the sportive normative system; 3) the competitive character and playful of the sport. The more debated ethical questions have been: 1) sport and gender; 2) (...) class='Hi'>sport and nationalism; 3) sport and violence. (shrink)

À l'heure où le débat sur la fin de vie resurgit, Bernard Sportès nous ouvre de nouveaux horizons, dépasse les arguments simplistes et nous aide à comprendre tabous et angoisses. Son analyse, ancrée dans son expérience des fins de vie, nous rappelle que cet accompagnement ultime doit bien rester un soin. Sa vision humaniste se refuse à ces morts administrées selon des critères médicaux prédéfinis, auxquelles il oppose une mort accompagnée, assistée jusqu'aux derniers instants. Cette proposition, nouvelle dans ce vieux (...) débat, prend acte de l'évolution de nos mœurs et place le respect de la volonté au-dessus de toute autre considération. Prééminence d'une volonté trop souvent confondue avec de simples opinions. Émerge ainsi la possibilité qu'une aide à mourir s'inscrive dans la poursuite d'une prise en charge. Le législateur devra l'organiser dans la confiance en la maturité des soignants et des patients, s'éloigner du réglementaire, encourager une pensée collective et supervisée. Nos fins de vies réclament une République fraternelle qui n'abandonne personne, une médecine d'équipe qui résiste au modèle industriel où on l'entraine. Bernard Sportès nous livre finalement un message simple : nous ne mourrons pas mieux tant que nous n'aurons pas bâti cette médecine de la personne qu'il décrit et propose."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Volume 18, Issue 2, May 2024, Page 123-125.

Question: Where, when and under what circumstances did the two of you get to know each other?Fischer: It was in the early seventies, in Frankfurt, after the dissolution of the gauche proletarienne and while there were still leftist groups in Germany. It must have been 1972. Question: Was that a private visit?Glucksmann: We had private discussions. We also participated in rallies and demonstrations.Question: That was in the late phase of the student movement.Fischer: We kept in contact through my old room-mate, (...) Daniel Cohn-Bendit. He was our link to France, so to speak.Question: And was this the link between the French and the German Left that existed then? (shrink)

Volume 24, Issue 11, November 2024, Page 24-26.

FIFA President Sepp Blatter’s recent attempt to resurrect the 6 + 5 quota for club football which limits the number of home-grown players to six is a protectionist measure at odds with global trends in free trade and freedom of movement. We remain unconvinced that his goals—to arrest the decline in the competitive quality and balance of international football, ensure greater investment in developing native talent and safeguarding national identity—are a problem or served well by such a regulation. We show (...) that the impact of foreign players on national teams is mixed and restrictions are as likely to undermine the quality of national teams as much as they will improve them. Our moral case will show he is wrong to assert that elite club football’s prime agenda ought to be a nationalist one. We conclude that the primary threat to the integrity, competitive balance and cultural significance of football is not labour migration but misplaced financial imperatives that have an overriding impact on shaping footba.. (shrink)

The aim of the article is the analysis of the principle of fair play which co-creates an axiological basis of contemporary sport as well as its basic moral category. The constituents of fair play are, first of all, responsibility and justice. Both values are central values, connected with each other, and also closely connected with other values inscribed in fair play, e.g. respect, solidarity, care or honesty. The conducted analysis shows that the rules of fair play connected with formal (...) responsibility and justice, i.e. following the rules and caring for the integrity of sport, are constituent for both sport and esports, whereas the rules of fair play connected with acting responsibly, i.e. respect and avoiding victory at all costs, are hard to realise in esports. It results from the fact that contact between the players is digitally mediated. Hence, apart from gestures and verbal communication, display of respect towards a player during a game is impeded, as is still more a spontaneous reaction to his or her being hurt. Also, avoiding winning at all costs is impeded in esports, as activities directed at obtaining victory are built into the content of the game and therefore should be carried out in accordance with the regulations, from the technical and tactical side and according to the possessed skills. However, it is possible to stop the game when the connection with the other player is suddenly interrupted. From a fair-play perspective also the content of some games employed in esports is questionable, as it assumes contesting moral rules, which in turn is at variance with the realisation of integrative, educational and formative functions of esports in society. (shrink)

Ernest Gellner's final book, first published in 1998, is a synoptic interpretation of the thought of Wittgenstein and Malinowski.

Kristeva points to Montesquieu's esprit général--his notion of the social body as a guaranteed hierarchy of private rights--in this humanistic plea for tolerance and commonality.

This paper argues that for the purposes of any sort of serious discussion about immoral conduct in sport very little is illuminated by claiming that the conduct in question is cheating. In fact, describing some behavior as cheating is typically little more than expressing strong, but thoroughly vague and imprecise, moral disapproval or condemnation of another person or institution about a wide and ill-defined range of improper advantage-seeking behavior. Such expressions of disapproval fail to distinguish cheating from many other (...) types of immoral conduct. The discussion shows that we should set the concept aside and assess the moral disapproval implied by claims of cheating by reference to the moral and other principles that underlie the practice of sport. This allows us to consider carefully the complexity of the issues that are raised when allegations of cheating are made and not be distracted by the emotionally loaded, conversation-stopping tendency of the concept. This means that some types of disputes in sport will be messy and demand more effort to resolve, but the payoff will be better informed and more thoughtful discussions and greater awareness of the moral complexity of sport and of its principled underpinnings. (shrink)

This paper side-steps the question of whether ‘the’ concept of sport exists, or can be usefully analysed. Instead, I try to explain the much more modest aim of exhibition-analysis, which is to seek a description of an actually existing example of some concept of sport internal to a normative position. My example is that of Olympic-sport. I try to set out its logically necessary conditions, which of course are conditioned by its context within a theory that emphasises (...) the values of formal competition, citius-altius-fortius, and excellence in contest, as well as rule-based procedural values related to fairness, justice and equality. In so doing, I readily accept that other kinds of sport can be similarly analysed, and I do not press the value claims of Olympic-sport. Instead, I try to show how Olympic-sport, properly construed, can accommodate the concerns of my critics with regard to sport’s play and game-like characteristics. (shrink)

Un ensemble de renouvellements paradigmatiques profonds ont marqué le champ académique depuis une vingtaine d'années. Comment les Sciences du sport ont-elles fait face à ces innovations épistémologiques? Les ont-elles prises en compte ou négligées? Suivant quelles modalités? Peut-on distinguer des appropriations qui seraient, suivant les cas, rhétoriques, métaphoriques, abusives, fécondes voire créatives? La mise en oeuvre des programmes innovants par les STAPS enrichit-elle en retour les espaces académiques qui les avaient originellement produits? Comment les traditions théoriques réagissent-elles à l'introduction (...) des points de vue novateurs? Suivant quelles voies se réalise la cohabitation entre traditions et innovations? Epistémologues et chercheurs, au moyen d'études de cas et de mises en perspectives transversales, croisent leurs regards pour éclairer ces problématiques complémentaires. Celles-ci permettent enfin d'interroger l'identité, épistémique et sociale, du champ STAPS. (shrink)

ABSTRACT ‘Summer Davos’ meeting in China organised by the World Economic Forum is an annual event that brings together leading voices from the East and West in business, society, and politics. The economic-political challenges and geopolitical upheavals that intercepted temporarily and transnationally in the close-up to the 2016 Summer Davos meeting rendered this discursive event a site of particular political/ideological contestation. This study intends to make sense of the unobtrusive, pro- home-nation nationalist ideology manifested in the interpreted texts by Chinese (...) conference interpreters who bridge language gaps in situ in the meeting. These textual manifestations of nationalism are examined by interrogating how specific discursive strategies are deployed in connection with thematic contents about China, the interpreters’ home-nation, in relation to other countries. Fundamentally, Chinese interpreters’ nationalism finds its way into their linguistic means that realise their specific strategies of self-censoring, neutralising self-negativity, aggrandising self-positivity and accentuating the negative-other representation in relation to topics on national sovereignty, territorial integrity, diplomatic relations and economic/political positions, all of which are crucial to the interests of a nation. (shrink)

In this article, we tackle the epistemological and ethical issues related to the use of race concepts in the genomics of sport performance and sport-related concussion (SRC). In the first part of the article, we show how the concept of race is ubiquitous in scientific literature, besides the fact that ‘race’ as other analogous population descriptors like ‘ancestry’ and ‘continent’ carry ancestral genetic heterogeneity and therefore they cannot be used to infer any kind of genetic or physiological property. (...) Then, we investigate the question of whether genomics research focusing on racial categories and race-specific genes of sport performance and of risk of health outcomes due to repetitive head impacts (RHI) is justified from an epistemological point of view, arguing that it is not; we show that the evidence supporting the existence of genetic variants determining an elite athlete status or a predisposition to health outcomes after SRC is scarce, and the use of racial categories (e.g. African or Black, Caucasian or White, Asian, etc.) as proxies for genetic variants associated with an elite athlete status/a predisposition to health outcomes after SRC is ill-conceived. In the second part of the article, we analyze the main ethical issues concerning the reification of race concepts in sport genomics, also considering the more general issue of the ethical and social impact of the use of a genetic framework in the explanation of individual differences in sport performance and SRC. (shrink)

ABSTRACT All of the major German Idealists perceived a gap between ideals and social reality. Kant sought to bridge this gap through an institutional design that forced self-interest to track the public good. Fichte embraced cultural nationalism, according to which, to overcome the gap between ideals and reality, a nation must revive and strengthen its original culture. Hegel’s solution, in contrast, rests on the idea of ethical habituation. For Hegel, the institutions of a well-designed social order encourage the habits (...) and virtues needed for the successful reproduction of that order. The article reflects on the implications of these contrasts for the prospects of liberal democracy. (shrink)

Combining sociological evidence with the analytical tools of philosophy, Ethics, Money and Sport articulates and explores the main concerns about the way money has changed our experience of sports. Clearly written and illustrated by examples from major sports around the world, Ethics, Money and Sport enables students, researchers and policymakers - as well as anyone with an interest in the future of sport - to engage with this crucial debate.