Sports, Integration and Representation: Estonia’s Experiences

Autor: Aet Kiisla, Andrey Makarychev
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure. 5:187-206
ISSN: 2520-8691
2520-8683
DOI: 10.1007/s41978-021-00092-5
Popis: In this article we analytically relate to each other the concepts of integration, responsibilization and representation. The first one is relatively well established in the extant academic literature, though some social and cultural realms—such as sports—still remain understudied as playgrounds for integrative endeavors. The second concept refers to one of the pillars of liberal governance—the idea of individual responsibility for life-shaping strategies in people’s everyday routine, including health, leisure and physical activities. The third concept in this triad plays a particularly important role when it comes to international sport competitions and tournaments, since all the involved groups—athletes, coaches, volunteers and fans—in one way or another not only assemble and aggregate their particular identities in a teamwork, but also represent their country to a global audience by publicly exposing their support and emotional affection, loyalty and belonging. Key questions to be explored in this article are: how does social integration function in Estonian sports, and how instrumental are practices of responsibilization and representation for promoting the domestic integration process involving the two communities—the Estonian national majority and the Russophone minority? Our analysis led us to conclude that the process of integration in sports can be viewed from two perspectives—through the lens of representation (when it comes to collective identities-in-the-making) and responsibilization (when it comes to anatomo-political practices of adjusting individual ethnic and linguistic identities to the participation in sportive performances).
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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