Sports play a giant role in contemporary society worldwide. But few of us pause to think about the larger questions of money, politics, race, sex, culture, and commercialization that surround sports everywhere. This course draws on the tools of anthropology, sociology, history, and other disciplines to give you new perspectives on the games we watch and play. It's the new and improved version of Professor Orin Starn's original "Sports and Society" for Coursera, which drew more than 40,000 students. We will focus on both popular sports like soccer (or “football,” as anyone outside America calls it), basketball, and baseball, and also lesser-known ones like mountain-climbing and fishing. You will never watch or think about sports in the same way again.
Outdoor Sports, Part 2
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來自 Duke University 的課程
Sports and Society
303 個評分
從本節課中
Outdoor Sports, Extreme Sports, and the Search for Adventure
與講師見面
Orin StarnProfessor
Cultural Anthropology
[MUSIC]
We talked in the first part of the lecture about how outdoor sports are never
a complete escape into nature.
Because pure nature doesn't really exist anymore in the age of the anthropecene.
A second issue that I want to raise in relationship to outdoor sports is what
could be called the sportification of outdoor activities.
And what you see over the course of the last hundred hundred and 50 years.
Is that outdoor activities that didn't begin as sports
have gradually been turned into sports.
In other words, they've taken on dimensions of competition with prize money
and a contest to see who will emerge as the winner and the loser.
All of these classic attributes of sports.
And to take one example of the sportification of nature activities
one can think about kayaking.
So kayaks are invented by peoples in the Arctic,
Inuit people, and others for hunting, and to get around.
And they exists for thousands of years in these high Arctic areas of our planet.
But in the 1800's,
Westerners start to take an interest in kayaks and build their own kayaks.
There's a film called Nanook of the North that's made in the early 19th century.
A documentary about Inuit showing them in their kayaks that
helps to spread the popularity of kayaking and the idea of kayaking.
So kayaking begins with the Inuit, begins with the Arctic peoples,
is taken up by Westerners and then in 1936 of all dates.
At the Berlin Olympics, kayaking is turned into an Olympic sport.
It's sportified, in the sense that this activity, which were really linked to
livelihood, to hunting particularly early on is now turned into an athletic
competition and the first kayaking events are held in 1936.
It's been held every four years, in the Olympics, ever since.
Some have said the reason that Hitler and the Germans were into making kayaking
an official Olympic sport was cause the Germans were really good at it.
In fact they apparently won most of the gold medals in kayaking
in those first Olympics.
So, you see this dynamic of sportification of kayaking, being turned into
a sport which it continues to be with institutions that regulate competitions,
and regular competitions, and prizes, and all the rest.
And at the same time though kayaking also
persists as just a leisure activity you do for fun with your kids or your partner, or
whatever you go out on the weekend on the lake.
So with outdoor activities you very often have this sportification.
But then at the same time the activity persisting in a more leisure,
non sportified way.
One could take the example also of fishing.
Back in the 1800's when Issac Walton was writing the complete angler and
fishing is this thing that English country gentleman.
And people in many different parts of the world are doing,
there's not an idea that fishing is a competition, much less a sport.
A secret life fisherman always want to catch more fish than their fishing buddy,
but that's all you'll, you don't talk about that directly.
It's not supposed to be a competition.
But by the mid 20th century, fishing is also sportified, and
in particular what you see in the United States over the last 20 or
30 years is the development of the professional bass fishing circuit.
So now you have these guys there mostly guys all though there is
a female division.
Who dress up in these Nascar like car racing uniforms with
logos and dark glasses and they often use these speed boats to get around the lakes.
Then the speed boats are also,
plastered with logos in the great corporate nascar tradition.
And these people go out and they fish to see who can catch the most and
the biggest usually large mouth bass.
In a day or over a couple of days competition.
And it's televised and there's prize money and all the rest.
At the same time though, just as with kayaking,
you see this sportification of bass fishing.
But then fishing and bass fishing are also just a recreational activity where again,
the family and whoever that you do where it's not about prize money and leagues.
Outdoor activities sportification, but
they also exist as simple recreational things.
A final that could be talked about out in terms of the social cultural political
issues around outdoor sports is that the commodification of outdoor sports.
Think back to the late 1800's,
early 1900's and a famous favorite figure of mine.
John Muir.
He's a Scottish immigrant who loves nature and falls in love with Yosemite and
the west and goes on to found the Sierra Club and
become one of the first great environmentalists in this country.
Now John Muir, when he went out Hiking would take a little bit of water,
maybe a little bag of corn meal or whatever something that he could cook up.
And his walking stick and a blanket.
That was pretty much it.
Now, 100, 150 years later, going hiking in the outdoors, doing this
outdoor activity seems to us very often to demand getting all the right gear.
We've gotta go to REI, or to the big box sporting goods place,
and to buy the right backpack, and get the right backpacking stove.
And the right sleeping bag, and the right sleeping bag pad.
And all the other gizmos and gears, and the special flashlight,
and the right shoes.
So we have now this paradox of wanting to get away from it all,
to do this outdoor activity, but to be able to get away from it all, thinking
that we need to buy all this stuff, and to spend a lot of time shopping.
And wherever the mall is where they sell this stuff, or ordering it online.
So you have then this phenomenon, the commodification of outdoor activities,
that's gone along with the development of big brands like North Face and
Patagonia, that sell to people.
For doing outdoor activities.
Outdoor sports has become a big business in America.
And the fact that outdoor activities has been commoditized has
lead to certain kinds of counter reactions, contrarian feelings.
And so for example, I have a friend who every couple of years will
go out into the wilderness for a week.
But his idea is forget REI and all the money,
I wanna do this in a way without spending this money, and buying all these brands.
So he'll just go out there with a pocket knife, a fishing line,
a hook, and a blanket and try to survive for a week.
And he always comes back pretty bruised and battered and
I'm not sure if he's always had a great time.
Although he always says that he has.
But the point is that this commodification of outdoor activities sometimes
leads in some cases to these contrary reactions of people wanting to go out.
And experiment with what roughing it on their own without all of the assists
that you get from all this great camping and other gear will give you.
So just to sum up this lecture, what I've talked about is the way that
outdoor sports develops in the 1800's as a response to and
out of the context of industrialism.
And then also some of the issues that go into and surround outdoor sports.
And I don't mean to suggest that outdoor sports are something that we should
give up or look down upon because they're compromised.
And sportify, and commodify, I have a great time going fishing, and backpacking,
and doing all of these other things.
But I think as with any dimension of sports and sporting experience,
it is interesting and worthwhile to try to think through the different
issues that attach to this whole phenomenon of outdoor sports.
[MUSIC]
