United Europe - united sport?! Analyzing civil societal sport organizations of three European countries. Vortrag auf der 8. jährlichen Konferenz der European Association for the Sociology of Sport (EASS) vom 18. bis 22.05.2011 in Umeå, Schweden.

Konjer, Mara

Research article in edited proceedings (conference)

Abstract

Today’s politicians often speak of a European society and a European civil society. The wish of a united Europe for them has nearly come true. Sport organizations like clubs and associations on a local, national and international level are one part of this civil societal infrastructure and civil societal organizations in general are awarded to be important creators of societal relations. The European model of sport - created by the European Commission – has shown the similarities and the typical characteristics of all European sport organizations, like autonomy regarding state and commercial accommodations, a pyramidal construction with the clubs at the basement and the international associations at the top and the possibility of promotion and relegation. In modern societies welfare performances, among them in a broader sense also sport, are produced by four systems in a welfare mix: by the state (public sector), by commercial providers (for-profit), by self-administration and by the third sector (nonprofit). This paper tends to analyze the national civil societal (or third sector-) sport systems of three exemplary European countries (Italy, England and Finland) regarding the organization of sport in general (macro level), the understanding of sport clubs (meso level) and the individual rates of participation and voluntarism in sports of the population (micro level). The aims of these analyses are on the one hand to get an impression of how the European model of sport is implemented in European countries and on the other hand to discover similarities and dissimilarities between the sport systems. Another goal is to draw conclusions from the achievements regarding the existence of a strong or a weak national civil society, to explain these facts and to give an outlook about future tendencies.

Details zur Publikation

Release year: 2011
Language in which the publication is written: English