Suchergebnisse

The mechanism of role adoption is a constituent of identity reinforcement or social recognition in sport. It enables actors to realize and confirm their identities. This can occur because sport is a culturally specific and clearly visible activity. As sport takes place unequivocally within the context of society's significant symbols, it can have an impact on the actor's self-perception, self-esteem, and self-worth. In other words, sport has a vital social dimension since it ideally combines self-recognition with social recognition. Role analysis and symbolic interactionism are reviewed for their potential to inform these dimensions of sport's place in modern societies.

The aim of this paper is to describe the communicative situation of sports in media as a pseudosocial relationship which the recipients have towards the athletes. It will be shown that this surrogate communication functions on the basis of the identification and symbolic effect of those values and norms systems which prevail equally, both in sport and society. It will also prove that sport is outstandingly appropriate for symbolic transfer, as its culture- specific action pattern (in the context of social value structures) shows itself particularly clearly and definitely. Reducing complexities to the level of "outdoing others" in the set framework of the rules of various sports, facilitates communication through the media with the public and makes sport a central source of "life motivation" and social gratification. In addition, media sports serve as an institution of release for the recipients.

Illustrating the development, relationships, situation and problems of the sociology of sport in Austria, a chronology is provided of the varied history of the subject from the first steps of Karl Gaulhofer during the 1920s and 1930s to the anthropological foundation and empirical work of the emerging field of sociology of sport 50 years later. In the 1980s there has been a considerable increase in publications on this topic, and we are witnessing the beginning of a "heterogenising phase" of Austrian sociology of sport.

In this article we analyze some connections between the ecological and the economic aspects of tourism by investigating ecological awareness among different groups. The article will outline reactions of tourists, residents of ski resorts and the Austrian and Belgian population to the ecological problems arising in winter tourism resorts. It is concluded that the Austrian winter tourism sector will have to take ecological considerations into account so that the economic situation can also be improved.