Abstract

When the fields are crossed

Paper to the Nordic Sociological Association conference in Turku, August 2006

Tomas Peterson
School of Education

Malmö University

SE-205 06 Malmö

Sweden

tomas.peterson@lut.mah.se

The two main arenas of organised sport in Sweden are sport clubs, in the form of voluntary organisations, and the school subject Physical Education and Health. Thus sport is constructed within two different social fields, in Bourdieus sense. These are relatively autonomous fields, with their own ideals and consecration instances, their own values and positions fought for, and its own appropriate dispositions. The basic aim of school sport is to enable each individual take the responsibility for his or her body in a lifetime perspective, whereas club sport is based on competition and strives towards selection, ranking and elitism.

In 2003, the Swedish government made a “hand-shake” (Handslaget) with the The Swedish Sports Confederation, offering one billion Swedish crowns over a period of four years to local sport clubs in order to create project that will engage more children in organised sport. On of the themes for creating projects is by way of sport clubs collaborating with schools, so that within the schoolday time pupils will be exposed to club sport – either through club instructors coming to the school or the pupils coming to the club facilities. But what happens when an activity constructed on one social field, and according to the specific conditions of that field, is simply lifted over to another social field? In this paper I discuss a number of consequences emanated from such a process, with examples from fourteen projects undertaken in the city of Malmö during 2005-2006.