Ninth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Modern sports are an important aspect to understand the relation between physical culture and nationalism. Norbert Elias explains that the concept of “sport” itself takes particular historical configurations with the passage of time. Elias divides “modern sport” into various differential categories. The complex nature of Elias’s categorization is evident. I will use the one referring to “active leisure sport”, undertaken by people either as individuals or in a group. Between the final decades of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, Brazilian cities experienced a new urban reality, with the prevailing ideals of speed, dynamism, and innovation. My research focus on how this new urban atmosphere favored the flourishing of a taste for sports and physical activities in Brazil. Foucauldian concepts such as “discipline” and the “care of the self” will also pave my way to tell how the use of physical culture became a pivotal strategy in shaping modern Brazilian. The study of a northern city (Recife) contributes to the historiography of national identity and sports in Brazil (primarily focused on the southern cities of Rio and Sao Paulo) by understanding the impact physical culture had on the debates that sought to construct a “Brazilian nation.”