Body Culture as Paradigm The Danish Sociology of Sport

Abstract

Danish sports research has historical roots of its own. More particularly; it involves: a preponderance of the natural science approach based on the importance of Swedish gymnastics, the plurality of sport organisations in Denmark, the "nonsynchronicities" of industrial culture and a weighty "popular", democratic tradition of sports. This led in the seventies and eighties, when the sociology of sports began to develop in Denmark, to the crystallization of a special paradigm: body culture as the frame for a critical study of sports. This happened in contrast to the dominant positivistic tendencies in the Swedish and Norwegian sociology of sport. But the critical engagement, too, is open to an integration into "hybrid research", a characteristic phenomenon of Scandinavian bureaucratic welfare corporatism.