Abstracts Vol. 2 (No.2 / 2004)

Jerzy Kosiewicz
Tourism and sacrum

The author points out – using as an example the views of Mariusz Zaruski, Polish mariner and mountaineer from the turn of the nineteenth century – that reflexive and philosophizing wanderers, roaming around various outdoor tracks, perceive nature in its threefold connections with sacrum, namely in its religious, para-religious and non-religious relations with it. They come to such a viewpoint by axiologization, which consists in ascribing various values to cognized nature. The above-mentioned values originate from spontaneous and thought-out actions from the areas of aestheticization and sacralization, including the properties of pantheism, panentheism, theopanthism, transcendentality and transcendence, hylozoism and animism of panpsychic and panorganic character.

The presented view of tourism-related issues, which were implicitly and explicitly touched on by Zaruski, may give the impression that his humanist reflections on nature – and especially regarding mountains and the sea – are, although non-professional, relatively sophisticated and modern. However, the reality is quite different. Zaruski refers to the simplest assumptions that are characteristic of the Hellenistic philosophy of nature, for instance Pythagorean harmony and the Heraclitean view of the world, as well as the hylozoism or animism of the Ionic philosophers of nature. From the contemporary point of view, Zaruski’s philosophy obviously stems from superficial empirical cognition – perceptions and observations of nature – from the simplest explanations of inductive and intuitive character.

Uwe Schimank
The autonomy of modern sport: dangerous and endangered

From the point of view of sociological theories of societal differentiation, modern sport is one of about a dozen differentiated subsystems of modern society. This analytical perspective raises the question of the systemic autonomy of modern sport. This question shall be dealt with by distinguishing further the two differentiated second-order subsystems of sport: top athletics and leisure sport. Whereas for top athletics a dangerous autonomy – in the final analysis, dangerous to itself – may be diagnosed, leisure sport is characterized by an endangered autonomy. Interestingly, coping with these two very different problems of sub-systemic autonomy relies on a mutually legitimating double interchange among top athletics and leisure sports. Thus, both sub-systems of modern sport cannot exist without and separated from each other.

Katie Liston
Established-outsider relations between males and females in male-associated sports in Ireland

This paper introduces readers to the field of male-associated sports in the Republic of Ireland with specific reference to power relations between the sexes. It situates a present-day social phenomenon, i.e. Irish females’ increasing involvement in traditional male-associated sports such as Gaelic football, rugby and soccer, within the context of social processes in which more or less independent groups have become more interdependent. Qualitative data from twelve in-depth interviews with high performance female athletes are situated within a sociological analysis of the emergence and development of these sports for women. These are used to support the argument that the relatively slight shift in the balance of power in favour of females has led to feelings of emancipation amongst females and resistance amongst males, though this resistance is gradually becoming weaker. Elias’ theory of “established-outsider” relations is used to suggest that females who participate in these sports can be described as an ‘outsider’ group, one that has lacked the organizational resources and networks of mutual assistance needed to shift significantly the uneven balance of power between the sexes. Moreover, typical of outsiders in their relations with the ‘established’, dominant stereotypical views of females remain embedded in the personality structures of ‘outsiders’.

Konstantinos Koukouris
Premature athletic disengagement of elite Greek gymnasts

The methodologies used in the earlier phase of quantitative research carried out on the disengagement from sport (Mihovilovic, 1968; Sands, 1978; Brown, 1983; Greendorfer, 1983; Kleiber & Greendorfer, 1983; Greendorfer & Blinde, 1985) were found to have weaknesses. In this present study it is argued that disengagement from sport can best be examined from a phenomenological perspective. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 elite gymnasts. Gymnastics was chosen since it is a unique sport in that disengagement takes place at a very young age. For the analysis of interviews, the cognitive mapping method (Jones, 1985) was used. The disengagement process is multi-dimensional. There is not a single factor responsible for dropping out. Coaches are, in fact, all too frequently responsible for elite gymnasts giving up their sport.

Former athletes also critized heavily:

a) the administrators of the clubs,

b) the administrators of the Federation, and

c) the judges.

Ending a career in the sport might be the outcome of severe physical and mental exhaustion of gymnasts resulting from heavy training at an early age. There are many gymnasts who terminated their careers after injuries that forced them to stay away from training at a crucial age. Athletic failure in gymnastics does not appear to be an important factor for the disengagement process. Disengagement from gymnastics is a source of serious social, psychological and medical adjustment problems for former gymnasts. After the end of a competitive career, there is a drastic reduction in social contact between coaches and former gymnasts. The behaviour of administrators towards the gymnasts is negative after the end of a career in the sport. Sports management in Greece is characterized by lack of structure and policy. All former gymnasts interviewed agree that an improvement in the organizational structure of gymnastics in Greece is required. According to gymnasts, the transition out of sport could be facilitated in a number of ways and suggestions are made in this paper. The enforcement of child labour laws in the domain of gymnastics is essential today..

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