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Sport - Identity - Socialization

Sport serves and has served as a medium for the formation of identity and its experience for the individual, but also for the collective. Individual sport permits and enables the experience of the individual's own limits, and thus to first deal with the individual's own identity, which is emphasised in competition. Sport in groups, as is well known, forms a collective identity which can attain a new dimension in its turn through competition with other groups. What concrete role has sport played in forming identity within the framework of pedagogy or within different age groups? Have special pedagogical models or systems been developed, which take sport into consideration as a medium of creating identity? Can relationships between certain social groups and certain sports be established? What is the significance of the spectators and the fan phenomenon in various epochs? Is a common identity perhaps also created through the spectators' identification with the active athlete? What role do daily rituals play here (e.g. the so-called 'wave' or fans' painting their faces with team colours)?

Key-note speaker: John Horne