Michaël Attali

The Regional Press as an Instrument for Sports Acculturation: A Case Study of Les Alpes Sportives in the Inter-war Years

In France, the inter-war years were a time when the sports movement was truly in need of structure and the media wanted to play a part in the process. At that time, sports practice was fairly limited and making it an integral part of French daily life was an essential goal. With this in mind, the French media took part in the popularisation of sports practice where the rationale seemed more concerned with its emergence rather than its development. Regional case studies can be helpful in pinpointing how social perspectives were viewed by the media, provided that they focus on the territories that reflected the national frame of mind. This allows for plausible generalisation. The Rhône-Alps region, more precisely the Grenoble valley, was typical in this respect. An in-depth study of a regional weekly sports newspaper, ‘Les Alpes Sportives’ (8 November 1919 – 5 May 1928), demonstrates how editorial leverage was used to convince readers to turn to sport and recognise its cultural worth.

The 2006 Asian Games: self-affirmation and soft power

This article is based on a study of the 2006 Asian Games held in Qatar. It was one of the first major international sporting events ever organised by Qatar that has since become a key location for such occasions. The purpose of this study was to explain the function of mega-events. They are associated with the event organisers to bring out the unique identity of a nation and to gain credibility with the international community through the use of an emotional dynamic. Analysis proposes to illustrate how this event affected Qatar internationally as part of soft power as well as the structuring role it played locally. The Asian Games were not to be perceived as an isolated sports event on the contrary, it was an integral part of a global strategy. Qatar needed to gain political recognition and to demonstrate its ability to organise other more prestigious sporting events. Moreover, this mega-event served a local purpose. It was essential in the process of identity affirmation. As a metaphor of society, sport had to symbolise excellence with regard to the values promoted. It was an opportunity to associate the modern aspect of sports with the traditional values of a political system and the Muslim faith. Previously, where sport was typically ingrained in the values that defined western society, Qatari leaders believed that social values could purify sports to become a method of socialisation. If mega-events were a means to increase Qatar’s influence in international relations, they also served as a cultural instrument that would impose a model for society and further increase the country’s influence.

A View of the 1948 London Olympics from across the Channel: An Analysis of the French Press

During the Labour Partys preparation for the 1948 London Olympic Games, which were held from 29 July to 16 August and were, although only three years after the Yalta Agreement of 11 February 1945, an attempt to point the United Kingdom resolutely into the future, the French press did not hesitate to criticize the resourcefulness and relaxed attitude of the British. Frances ambivalent perception was, moreover, further magnified by the absence of Germany, Japan and the USSR, which reopened the question of politics in sport and its use for propaganda purposes, 12 years after the nationalist excesses of the Berlin Games. Analysis of coverage concerning the ‘Reconciliation Games’ in the main French papers highlights the contrasted effect of the London Olympics and illustrates the predominant weight of political ideologies in the construction of national identities. Finally, it underlines the recurrent difficulties encountered in bringing together the French and the British who were, immediately after the Second World War, divided between the necessity to commemorate and be hopeful for a pacified Europe.

The experience of defeat: Applying Goffman to examine a football tournament for socially excluded homeless individuals:

The use of football programs as a vehicle for social change has increased exponentially in recent decades. This article utilizes Goffman’s sociology as a framework to approach the Homeless World Cup (HWC). Firstly, we examine how the participants interviewed refer to their journeys and how, throughout the HWC’s preparation, they were able to positively reconfigure their self-presentation. Secondly, we consider the frame of repeated defeats for participants whose expectations of success within this tournament were not fulfilled, reinforcing previously held feelings of stigma. Thirdly, the symbolic distance between winning and losing teams is discussed. Finally, we propose some reflections about the tournament’s format in order to remove, or at least reduce, negative experiences.

Innovation in alpine sports and leisure activities: Issues, processes and dynamics

Innovation has become a popular word to emphasize a modernism or, simply, the ability of individuals, social groups or enterprises to adapt to change. This process, also often connected with contemporaneity, affects every sector. Nonetheless, when it comes to gaining support for innovation, sectors with great economic potential receive the most attention even though innovation most often plays out on the fringes (Alter, 2013). This specific aspect is essential in order to understand the importance of innovation analysis. In fact, innovation begins with risk-taking aimed at inventing new ways of thinking or doing in terms of existing models. At first, it is important to acknowledge the process: change is often anecdotic (De Certeau, 1990) at best, limited to a few individuals and scorned at times in view of the fractures that it can create. The process of going from invention to innovation lies in the ability to promote the novelty to give it social purpose and accessibility to the wider public. Therefore, initially, innovations of any kind would be little known before some become a part of our lives to the point of making a real difference. Innovation is, in fact, stimulated by a desire for distinction (economic, social, technological, cultural, etc.). Innovating implies being different while affirming this through the act or the machine. Because it dwells in each and every social domain and participates in changes to individuals’ lifestyles or habits, innovation cannot be understood exclusively through sectors where advantages are measurable (computer science, health, etc.). Other forms of often inherent innovations should be investigated, as much as electronic applications are (Facebook, etc.), if they have a major impact on the existence of individuals or the community and contribute to structuring what people do with their time. The call for discussion of innovations in the field of alpine leisure activities is based on the belief that the latter provide an ideal opportunity for change. It would be impossible to understand the multiform reality that affects tools (materials, etc.), practices, social factors or spaces. In fact, as with other social practices, alpine sports and leisure activities are characterized by a strong innovative dynamic which presents a form of instability that should be understood better in order to grasp its development, expansion and impact. For this very reason, we have chosen to organize this special issue around social and cultural innovations. In no way does this exclude technical or technological innovation. Rather, it is based on changes in the way in which individuals relate to each other and their environment. Social and cultural innovations have one thing in common: they meet unfulfilled expectations while presenting a better understanding of reality. Social uses of

Football: A History of Semantic and Cultural Borrowing [1]

Sport is a practice, yet it is also a language conveying the representations of those who structure it and those who employ it. The contribution of numerous English lexical units to the lexicon of other languages in touch with United Kingdom participates in the diffusion of sport and its level of penetration in geographical spaces. France does not escape this phenomenon and its language borrows from its Anglo-Saxon neighbour. Anglicisms have been described in opprobrious terms for a long time by critics who consider them the sign of Frances dependence on the British Empire. Through the analysis of five types of anglicisms (intact, truncated, gallicized, signified and signifier anglicism) and about 60 lexical units, we will identify the privileged forms of borrowings, their origins and the meaning to be attributed to them and thus show the role of sport in general and football in particular in linguistic and cultural diffusion.

Strengthening Minds and Bodies Within the French School System. Physical Education for Boys and Girls Between 1936 and 1950

Physical education has been compulsory in France since 1880. Between 1936 and 1950, expansion intensified and extensive changes were made to course content. This article assesses the ramifications of these choices through an in-depth study of four variables that defined its instruction. Even if priority was given to generalisation and equal access to knowledge, research revealed an upsurge in the fight against real or presumed student vulnerability. At the time, a strong consensus emerged with the commitment to fight frailty. This was all the more the case for young girls as they belonged to a specific group with respect to their physical make-up. The school system stressed the relevance of instruction adapted to girls even if emphasis was placed on the cultural aspect of sport content. The pedagogical programmes put into effect for youths based on these guidelines confirmed this trend. This situation raised concerns as to the role of the school system in the development of social stereotypes through a discipline that would become the focus of the French education system.

Sporting memory and its heritagisation: The example of Roland-Garros

This study aims to help establish a history of selecting and forgetting in the field of sport by examining the frameworks and representations which structure collective relationships with the past. Extending the field of memory to the sporting sphere directly implies highlighting a plurality of heritage notions and values together with as many issues of institutional legitimacy. In this respect, examining the memory-based strategy advocated by the French Tennis Federation at Roland-Garros shows the wish to build a common national heritage, in reaction to the many representations of sporting modernity. Through reappropriation of history, memory thus takes on the role of legitimising the various forms of modernity, by inscribing them into the continuity of sport through time. It also, however, raises the question of its own construction and instrumentalisation.

Éducation des corps et disciplinarisation: le processus d’intégration des sports dans l’éducation scolaire française (1918–années 1990)

Abstract While sport was recognised as having educational virtues as early as the late nineteenth century in England, the situation in France was quite different. Considered to be both futile and dangerous, this social practice only featured anecdotally in manuals and official instructions directing physical education at school until 1967. The relationship with sport raises deep questions concerning the body’s place in education. More precisely, it emphasises bodily expectations, as well as the usefulness of examining them. The sporting body itself was not without significance. How, then, should resistance to the integration of sport be apprehended? Over and beyond political contexts, what were the reasons contributing to this tardy acknowledgement? In order to answer these questions, this study explores an avenue as yet unexplored. It undertakes to compare the discourse and knowledge production of sports advocates with the prominent features of the disciplinary power that tends to characterise all institutions. The corpus supporting the analysis includes publications dealing with sport (37 books and 160 articles) with a view to understanding the ideological and societal frames of the activity, together with education treaties and professional teaching reviews to comprehend relationships with sport as the latter’s importance continued to grow throughout the twentieth century. This contribution shows how the integration of sport as a unique medium for teaching physical education in the French education system depended on the degree of its conceptualisation and implied inevitable bodily control. For while sport may be associated with freedom and emancipation, making it educational meant controlling it and practising it moderately. Indeed, sport differs as a teaching element from the rest and is polarised by the values it conveys: excellence, performance, surpassing oneself and hierarchisation, which require dealing with it methodologically. Method was only truly established when work focusing on sport gave it a complete and unquestionable disciplinary foundation. During the first phase extending from the end of the First World War to the reconstruction, those in favour of education through sport developed their knowledge of sports techniques. In so doing, they highlighted the potentially normed, efficient, profitable and organised character of the sporting gesture. Moreover they advocated model-based pedagogy, according to which it was easy to compare instructors to true behaviour technicians. The body as a machine remained significant, although it was movement that was encouraged. In spite of the progress made, sport failed to make its way into schools, except during the Vichy period (1940–1944) to better control the masses. During the 1950s and 1960s, those promoting the teaching of sports-based physical education continued their research into sports techniques while, at the same time, widening their scope of investigation. Sports exercises became the nodal point of their reflection and resulting publications offered series of tasks that were described with great precision, and concurrently repetitive, graded in difficulty and organised over the long term. They presented an alternative model of bodily education. The latter’s sycophants engaged in work concerning, more particularly, assessment of the sporting body and offered tools for hierarchising performances. A number of experts focused on the notion of tactics, and the result of their reflection made it possible to link sport to a method for rationally organising individuals’ strength under a central command. Their innovations endowed sport with a sufficiently solid foundation for its integration, and it became the sole medium for teaching physical education at school as from 1967. However, the question of rational distribution of pupils and bodily control based on defined criteria was not addressed, and long-term organisation of learning was lacking. These were the two issues theoreticians undertook to address in the 1970s and 1980s. With a view to meeting the requirements of a supervisory body, they created levels within each sport, organised learning according to clear and detailed objectives and worked on drawing up criteria-based assessment. Over a period lasting less than 20 years, they provided the missing elements for defining a true disciplinary method. Effective acknowledgement of sport as a rich and pertinent medium for physical education at school was fully achieved with the publication of physical education and sport programmes in the mid-1990s.

Outdoor physical education in French schools during the twentieth century

ABSTRACT During the twentieth century, outdoor physical education (OPE) gradually integrated with the French education system. Culturally speaking, OPE had to overcome several hurdles because it promoted values such as freedom, initiative and responsibility that were deemed incompatible with the existing educational model. Beyond being a pedagogical tool, the health and welfare implications justified the existence of OPE within the school system, thus changing the meaning of those values. The question of human relations with nature truly facilitated the incorporation of OPE into French educational programmes even if the scope of its development is rather limited today. Some might regret the predominance of a kind of physical activity that conveyed values and was proven to be especially productive in terms of issues related to education, security and respect for the environment. Nevertheless, OPE physical activities found their rightful place within the school system because of the sports facet of the activities.