Crisis and Response (Asynchronous Session)
The Magic Body of the Mountain : A Journey Through the Depths of the Surface View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kevin Javier Ruiz Cortés
This paper analyzes, from a transdisciplinary perspective, the conception of the body and its interaction with the environment in Thomas Mann's masterpiece, The Magic Mountain. In the first part, the author examines the relationship of the body with its space. The flatness and the mountain allowed two very different ways of experiencing the body; for this analysis, the concept of geohistory, proposed by Fernand Braudel, is useful. In the second part, the body's performance in the community will be described, specifically in the population of Berghof sanatorium. Here, the figurational sociology of Norbert Elias will be very useful to elucidate the symbolic meaning of the body and its daily rituals. Finally, this research explores the relationship of the subject with his own body, focusing on the bodily experiences lived by Hans Castorp; specifically, three physical experiences are observed: the experience of health and disease, the mystical experience, and the sporting experience. Susan Sontag's metaphors and Marcel Maus's body techniques guide us on this last leg of our journey. Regarding sport, the author lets Thomas Mann express the conception of this triumph of modernity through his characters.
"Thou Wilt not Find a Zealous Brother There": Dover's Cotswold Games and the Intersection of Politics, Media, and Sport in Early Modern England View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mark Brewin
The paper is an historical account of a society in a crisis, but of a much different nature than our current one. England in the early 1600s was buffeted by political and religious debates, and was undergoing profound social, demographic, and economic changes. In the midst of this turmoil, a provincial barrister by the name of Robert Dover, living in the Cotswold hills in the west of the country, began to promote an annual spring celebration of games. Dover's games would eventually become nationally famous, with comparison to the famed "Olympicks" of ancient Greece. The paper argues that Dover's games can be understood as a response to modern pressures, and a method for modeling public behavior and public attitudes appropriate to the new era.
Inclusive Sport at School: An Open Access Programme for Physical Education Teachers during COVID-19 Lockdown View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Dr. Javier Perez
The Inclusive Sport at School (ISS; Pérez-Tejero et al., 2013) is an educational programme developed for Physical Education (PE) classes for school students aged from 6 to 18. It aims to promote inclusive and paralympic sports through an inclusive methodology and to raise awareness regarding the practice opportunities for people with disability in sports (Ocete et al. 2015). This programme includes an online platform (www.deporteinclusivoescuela.com) with restricted access only to Spanish speakers PE teachers –ISS users–, where users can use different resources: cards with specific sport information (for teachers and students), questionnaires, videos and tasks, and also to create their own PE sessions from the tasks (25 per sport modality, 745 in total for 32 sport modalities). COVID-19 lockdown measures leaded to the closure of many schools all around the world. In order to provide PE teachers with a distance learning solution, we decided to massively open this tool for everyone who would like to access. Results show a huge growth in the use of the programme. For example, people who visited the website increased in 113,42% (16.254 –April-June 2020– vs. 7.616 –April-June 2019); 5.903 new users logged in (2.158 the previous year, 173,54% more users); and the ISS programme videos received 15.859 views, an increase of 34% with regard to 2019 (11.825 visits). In conclusion, PE teachers and new users proved that the online version of the ISS programme seems to be a very useful online learning platform to use with their students in a confinement situation.
Debating Football Break During Coronavirus Outbreak: Is Independent Online Journalism Leading a New Phase? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Francesco Meledandri
The 2020 Coronavirus outbreak has undoubtedly reshaped our lives and our routines. What started as a minor concern turned out as a global pandemic that forced the entire world to take strict countermeasures such as complete or partial lockdowns. Among the several industries that have suffered collapsing outcomes, sport is an area for which a complete restart proved to be extremely difficult, since the possible risk of contagion is high. In particular, team sports need strict protocols to be implemented: in this framework, football plays a paramount role as global entertainer, but most of all as an industry that generates an incredible turnover. In this sense, sport journalism is another category that paid the costs of this situation because of the lack of live, on-the-pitch events that trigger the interest of most fans worldwide. Notwithstanding this deadlock, football offers food for thought even in case matches are not played. This is a trend that has been growing for some years, as the narration of football-related stories enhanced the ways through which football can be described and represented. In this framework, storytelling became a new genre to spark a new interest in elite fanbases that are eager to read such contents; at now, non-mainstream sport journalism could still survive any closedowns. This contribution analyses the way through which some Italian online websites specialised in football stories and faced the first lockdown with their narration of football from different perspectives, favouring quality contents and strengthening the relationship with their fans.
Examining the Impact of Gym Closures Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic on Combat Sport Athletes’ Mental Health View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jacob Levy
Changes in exercise behavior and negative emotional states (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress) in combat sport (e.g., martial arts) athletes were examined prior to gym closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and approximately one month following gym closures. A total of 312 combat sport athletes from 33 different countries responded to the study solicitation. Three primary research questions were posed: First, were there differences in general exercise and combat sport specific training rates (i.e., hours of exercise per week) among combat sport athletes before and after gym closures due to the pandemic? Second, were there changes in combat sport participants’ negative emotional states prior to pandemic-related gym closures (i.e., February 2020) and following gym closures (i.e., May 2020)? Finally, hierarchical multiple regressions were conducted to assess relations among changes in combat-sports training rates pre- and post-gym closures and the three negative emotional states assessed--controlling for age, gender, pre-existing conditions, and training level. Results indicated a significant decrease in combat sport training during gym closures, however participation in other exercise activities did not significantly change. Significant mean increases in the three negative emotional states assessed were found following combat gym closures. Regression analyses revealed that number of hours of participants participated in combat sport training added significant incremental variance explained in negative emotional states-above and beyond that accounted for by gender differences, pre-existing conditions, and training level. Practical Implications regarding losses to preferred exercise activities, based on the findings of this study, are discussed.
College Football, the Pandemic, and Racial Capitalism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tracie Canada
In the midst of a pandemic that disproportionately affects U.S. communities of color, administrators have de-densified student populations on campuses, classes have shifted to a online format, and academic departments and professorships are dwindling because of the financial stress. And yet, young men, disproportionately young Black men, risked their health and ran onto college gridirons every Saturday to play a high-contact sport. Why wasn’t the 2020 college football season postponed or even interrupted for the majority of the most competitive conferences in the country? I answer this question by relying on my ethnographic fieldwork experiences with Black college football players during the 2017-18 football season. By noting how football programs deal with injury and mundane violence, my experiences then and my observations now point to one central fact: since this billion-dollar industry is dependent upon the physical labor of thousands of ‘amateur’ athletes, their participation in any playing season is integral to the perpetuation of the system. None of this would be possible without the actual people who play the sport, so their athletic bodies are seen and used as commodities that have the potential to win games and garner revenue. Thus, I argue that an institutionalized form of care is invested in these athletes to guarantee they are just healthy enough to continue to play, produce, and labor on the football field. This particular performance of care, which relies on the fallacy of amateurism, has allowed for the continued exploitation of young Black athletes during this COVID-19 pandemic.
The American Olympics: LA84, Reagan, and the Cold War View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Victoria Harms
By late 1983, the prospects for President Reagan’s reelection looked grim: unemployment stood at ten percent, the budget deficit soared, his anti-Soviet rhetoric had allies and Americans worry about nuclear war. His approval rating hit rock bottom. Nevertheless, a year later, he handily won the election, sweeping forty-nine states. This paper investigates how the XXIII Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles boosted Reagan’s reelection campaign, restored (White) American confidence, and paved the way for the country’s supposed triumph over Communism. The president, prone to referencing sports, especially his role as “the Gipper,” successfully appropriated the torch relay, the Games, even the Soviet boycott. Peter Ueberroth and David Wolper’s LA84 celebrated diversity, volunteerism, and racial harmony, in ways that reinforced the president’s messaging but distorted reality. ABC’s excessive focus on US athletes created the impression of unmatched American greatness. The LA Games ushered in the era of “good feelings” for which Reagan is remembered, pulling a blanket of oblivion over his disastrous fiscal, economic, and social record. The perception of unparalleled US greatness, on display in the Coliseum, soon morphed into the triumph over the “evil empire,” Communism, and the rest of the world. The paper deploys Michael Billig’s concept of “banal nationalism” and relies on documents from the State Department, the CIA, the Reagan Library, US and German newspapers, (auto)biographies, and secondary literature to highlight the manipulative political and social function of sporting mega events, and the LA Games significance for American self-perceptions at the end of the Cold War.
