Fifteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Sports performance is the collective product of place. Using Durkheim’s concept of social facts, we argue that individuals’ dispositions, attitudes, and thoughts on engaging in sports are marked by invisible social forces encompassing them at a given time and place. We further make use of Alexander’s notion that the power of a culture, its efficiency and continuity, manifests itself in being acted upon and performed. To make our argument empirically applicable, we conducted a case study of internationally successful Iranian men’s wrestlers. The study reveals how the success of Iranian wrestling is rooted in cultural foundations, social organizations, multiple cooperative networks, and a set of social relations that are collectively arranged and coordinated to create a strong sports tradition for delivering world-class wrestlers. It is within a given social, cultural, and organizational context that culture is performed through a series of collective performances and agency. Such successful cultural performances further reinforce the meaning of specific cultural practices, which link the past to the present and give rise to the cultural continuity of the given cultural practices for others to follow and sustain, resulting in a tradition of collective sport achievement.