Kai Reinhart, “Wir wollten einfach unser Ding machen”. DDR-Sportler zwischen Fremdbestimmung und Selbstverwirklichung

Kai Reinhart. “Wir wollten einfach unser Ding machen”. DDR-Sportler zwischen Fremdbestimmung und Selbstverwirklichung. Frankfurt: Campus, 2010.

[“We wanted to just do our thing.” GDR athletes between heteronomy and self-fulfillment]

 

“Ready for work and for defence” was the motto of East Germany’s socialist sport system. In his study on sport in the GDR, Kai Reinhart demonstrates how sport could be used as a powerful instrument to discipline and regulate the people, using the theories of the French Philosopher Michel Foucault. In addition to examining the official East German state sport system, Reinhart also studies the informal sports of rock climbing and skateboarding. In these scenes the dream of freedom and individuality was pursued with craftiness, creativity, persistency and courage. These sports became an agent of self-fulfillment. Many of the interviewed athletes said, “We just wanted to do our own thing” – an attitude that made them pioneers of the “Wende” in 1989.

 

 

In der DDR lautete das Motto des Sports »Bereit zur Arbeit und zur Verteidigung der Heimat«. Kai Reinhart zeigt in seiner Studie, wie der Sport im Sozialismus zu einem machtvollen Instrument der Disziplinierung und der Regulierung im Sinne Michel Foucaults gemacht werden sollte. Über den staatlichen Sport hinaus erforscht Reinhart am Beispiel des Bergsteigens und des Skateboardens aber vor allem informelle Sportszenen in der DDR. In diesen wurde mit Schlitzohrigkeit, Kreativität, Hartnäckigkeit und Mut der Traum von Freiheit und Individualität verfolgt. Der Sport wurde zu einem Mittel der Selbstverwirklichung. »Wir wollten einfach unser Ding machen«, sagten viele der interviewten Sportler – eine Haltung, die sie zu Pionieren der Wende machte.

2011 ISHPES Congress

The 2011 ISHPES Congress will take place in Frankfurt, Germany from August 8-12, 2011.  The Congress will be organized by Gertrud Pfister and Annette Hofmann together with the Deutsche Turner-Bund.

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Gertrud Pfister, ed., Gymnastics, a Transatlantic Movement: From Europe to America

Gertrud Pfister, ed. Gymnastics, a Transatlantic Movement: From Europe to America. London: Routledge, 2010.

This book explores, analyses, and explains divergent ideologies and practices of gymnastics in selected European nations. It reconstructs the ex- and import processes from Europe to America and determines the processes, interrelationships and transformations of these “transatlantic movements” in their new home country. The book offers a more complete understanding of the role of gymnastics and expressive movements in cultural and ideological transmission over time and identifies the impact of these concepts on American physical education, sports systems and sports cultures.

The main focus of the book lies in the two decades before and after World War I. This concentration on a specific historical epoch allows us to identify parallel, but also different developments of the various forms of gymnastics and of the transfer and implementation processes.

The volume covers the transfer and impact of German Turnen, Czech Sokol and the Delsarte system in North America. In addition, it traces the influences of French gymnastics in South America and describes the tours of the world-renowned Danish gymnastic reformer Nils Bukh in both Americas. A focus will be the “import” of gymnastics, but also on the adaption processes of these different concepts and their integration into the American culture.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

Table of Contents
1. Prologue: Gymnastics – Divergent European Principles and Practices and American Transformative Reactions and Responses Gertrud Pfister

2. The Role of German Turners in American Physical Education Gertrud Pfister

3. The German Turners and the Taming of Radicalism in Chicago Gerald Gems

4. From Jahn to Lincoln: Transformation of Turner Symbols in a New Cultural Setting Annette Hofmann

5. Our Brothers Across the Ocean: The Czech Sokol in America to 1914 Claire E. Nolte

6. French Gymnastics in Brazil: Dissemination, Diffusion and Relocalization Thierry Terret and Leomar Tesche

7. Globalization Before Globalization: Niels Bukh and the American Connection Hans Bonde

8. American Delsartism: Precursor of an American Dance Art Nancy Lee Chalfa Ruyter

9. Transatlantic Traffic in Expressive Movement: From Delsarte and Dalcroze to Margaret H’Doubler and Rudolf Laban Patricia Vertinsky

10. Body Regimes: Swedish Gymnastics in the United States Jan Lindroth

11. Epilogue: Gymnastics from Europe to America Gertrud Pfister

Author Biography
Gertrud Pfister is professor at the Department of Exercise and Sport Sciences, University of Copenhagen. She serves as a member of the scientific boards in the European College of Sport Sciences (ECSS), WSI (Women’s Sport International) and International Association of Physical Education and Sport of Girls and Women (IAPESGW). She is also a member of the editorial boards of fifteen scientific journals and she served in several committees which evaluated sport faculties. She has won four awards for her scholarly work, among others, the Award of the International Society for Sport History and the Howell and Howell Distinguished Lecturer Award of NASSH. She has published more than 20 books and more than 200 scholarly articles. She is co-author of Understanding American Sport (2009). She is active in various sports and has served in sport clubs and federations.

6th Meeting of the Transnational Working Group for the Study of Gender and Sport

The 6th Meeting of the Transnational Working Group for the Study of Gender and Sport will be held at the University of Bath (UK) on the 26-27 November 2010. The purpose of the group is to further the study of the cultural/social, political, and educational significance of the participation of females in sport, physical culture, and physical activities as well as to the study of gender as it relates to these activities from transnational and interdisciplinary perspectives.

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Cécile Ottogalli-Mazzacavallo and Jean Saint-Martin, Women and Men in Mountain Sports: Beyond the Differences

Cécile Ottogalli-Mazzacavallo and Jean Saint-Martin. Women and Men in Mountain Sports: Beyond the Differences. Grenoble: MSH des Alpes, 2009.

Following the works on Sport and Gender introduced in France by the Centre for Research and Innovation in Sport (CRIS-University Lyon1-France), this book will focus on the role of mountain sports in the construction of sexual identities. Mountain sports are analyzed by different scientific fields (History, Sociology, Anthropology, Management, Economy, Psychology and Educational Sciences) and at various levels going from the processes involved in sport until the practices themselves.

This book is the proceedings of the International Congress which was organized in Lyon in May 2008. Here, 30 articles highlight the gendered conditions of the birth and development of the mountain sports. It would like to complete the current knowledge on the construction of masculinities and femininities and on the hierarchical relationships between them.

What was and what is the specificity of mountain sports according to gender? How can gender influenced spaces, times, practices and mountain sport institutions?

This book analyzes nine thematic topics:
–Sexual Imagination and mountain
–Sports Organizations, Gender and mountain
–“New practices”, Gender and mountain
–Sports Event, Gender and mountain
–Professionalization, Gender and mountain
–Actors, actresses and mountain
–Sexuality and mountain
–Techniques, technology, Gender and mountain

Gigliola Gori, Sport and Gender Matters in Western Countries: Old Borders and New Challenges

Gigliola Gori, ed. Sport and Gender Matters in Western Countries: Old Borders and New Challenges. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2008.

Sport historians present their evidence of, and arguments about the past in different ways, but this collection of diverse and interesting approaches to the role of gender in sport history is proof of the discipline’s richness and creativity. These welcome shifts in approaches to gender provide a compelling reason to bring together this interesting collection of studies around the history and sociology of women in sport, physical education, dance, games. Together they convey the complexity of gender as a topic of study both thematically and geographically while each chapter introduces a perspective which asks different questions, challenges traditional thinking and throws new light upon women’s abilities to play, lead, jump, manage and boldly go where men have told them not to tread. We can see how important it is to continue to focus upon the complexities and contradictions that still face women and girls as a result of their gender and culture. More subtly, the studies in this transnational and diverse collection provide cogent examples of ‘doing gender’ in sport and physical education that offer the potential to decode gender arrangements, debate them, and provide inspiration for critical and tactical engagement with the lived messiness of contemporary life.

 

Copenhagen Summer School 2010

International Summer School for Young Researchers

Sport and physical activities – ideologies, practices and realities
Historical, Sociological, Psychological and Pedagogical Approaches

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2010 ISHPES Seminar Call for Papers

The next ISHPES Seminar is scheduled to take place June 3-6, 2010.  The central topic of this year’s Seminar is Sport and the State: A Controversial Relationship“. 

We would like to remind you that the next ISHPES Seminar is scheduled to take place June 3-6, 2010.  The central topic of this year’s Seminar is “Sport and the State: A Controversial Relationship”.

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