The working class sports club Turun Veikot as a socializing agent A model for the study of political socialization in sports clubs Lauri Keskinen

Transcription

1 Kasvatus & Aika 4 (2) 2010, ABSTRACTS The working class sports club Turun Veikot as a socializing agent A model for the study of political socialization in sports clubs Lauri Keskinen Finnish working class sports clubs were known to be highly political at the beginning of the 20 th century, but the methods with which the sports clubs taught their members about socialism have never been studied in detail. This paper discusses the case of Turun Veikot ( The Lads of Turku ), a working class sports club that was well-known for its leftism. The methods of political socialization in the club between the years are studied, and at the same time a frame of reference for future studies on the same subject is being constructed. As well as historical sources, this study uses the results of modern day studies on the subject of learning in voluntary organisations. This paper came to the conclusion that the single most effective method of socializing was for a member to either participate in the management of the club or to take part in assemblies. However, these were but a fragment of the entire socializing work that took place in a working class sports club. Japanese martial arts as educators towards citizenship viewpoint: martial arts clubs from Eastern Finland Mika Levy The value of sports and physical education has traditionally been significant in Finland. Education towards citizenship has drawn strength influences for example from skiing, shooting and Finnish baseball. In the mid 20 th century Finnish sports culture widened when Japanese martial arts started to land on Finnish soil. As they arrived, these sports brought new original values, etiquettes and methods with them. In this article, education towards citizenship is being viewed through children s training in three Japanese martial arts: aikido, judo and karate. Research material for the article was collected with surveys. Surveys targeted on 14 coaches in 6 clubs which were located in Eastern Finland. Along with the education towards citizenship, the article also concentrates on the socialization of junior trainees. Rules that children are taught to follow in training go alongside with more general norms that society expects young people to learn. To mention same, children are taught how to co-operate, respect others and develop methods of self-control. Children s training in the Japanese martial arts does not only consist of physical exercises. The syllabus also includes Oriental philosophy which diversifies and enriches the meaning of Japanese martial arts in the field of education towards citizenship.

2 ABSTRACTS A Via Dolorosa? The Sport Commission of the Finnish Officers Union in Jarkko Kemppi The Finnish Officers' Club, later the Finnish Officers Union was established in Helsinki on November 24th At the beginning there was no sport activity in the Union. During the years after the war the life-styles of the officers weren't always healthy. In 1948 the Union established the Sport Commission. Its purpose was to develop the officers' activity in various sports. The Commission was supposed to be in deep co-operation with other departments of the Union. The Commission of sport tried to increase officers' activity in sport but its work was not very highly appreciated. There were efforts to finish the Commission already in the 1950's, but it continued its work until the year The Finnish Officers has been actively involved with other organizations of sport, for example the Union of Military Sport. The meanings of physical activity during the life span of Finns Tuomas Zacheus The article concerns the importance of different meanings of physical activity during the life span of Finns. The study material was a retrospective enquiry sent to randomly selected Finns, born between 1923 and ,490 people responded, representing adequately the Finnish population. With factor analysis, 10 physical activity meanings from 55 propositions were created. These meanings were competition, health / welfare, physical toughness, sociality, relaxation, fashionableness, masculinity, mental growth, lonely slogging and economic affordability. Sociality, health and welfare, relaxation and physical toughness have been the most important meanings of physical activity. On the contrary, masculinity, lonely slogging, fashionableness and competition have been the least important. There were 354 people in the study (born between 1923 and 1944) who were old enough to think back the meanings of their physical activity all the way from youth to retirement age. The value of health and relaxation has increased and the value of competition and masculinity has decreased during their life span. Socialization into physical activities in three Finnish villages. A study of changes in the physical cultures of Matovaara, Nakertaja-Hetteenmäki and Sivakkavaara Hannu Itkonen & Anna-Katriina Salmikangas & Mikko Simula 258 This article examines the changes in socialization into physical activity of the inhabitants of two countryside villages and one working-class neighbourhood post WW II. The data consisted of interviews and archive materials which were analysed using historical sociological methods. The historical examination of these villages illustrated the changes in socialization into physical activity. During the first two decades after the war, physical activity was related to everyday work, and to forestry in the countryside villages. Due to the modernization of forestry and the weakening of the productive role of the villages, the population decreased whilst the productional significance of physical activity diminished. In the working class neighbourhood, physical activity was an essential part of the workers associations until the gradual population increase. Conse-

3 Kasvatus & Aika 4 (2) 2010, xx-yy quently, the spirit of the working class community began to dissipate and physical activity lost its role as a part of the workers movement. A skater on his board The Changing Meanings and Landscapes of Sport Päivi Harinen This article focuses on skate boarding as an example of the changing sport culture of young people particularly. The traditional national sports with strict regulations and bordered spaces seem to loose their former attraction, while sports with more free forms of physical expression and non-hierarchical sociality gather young people together especially in the urban space. Skate boarding can be seen as a crystallized example of how young people can join physical exercise and their development as sportsmen with joyful sub-cultural co-existence and non-competition. Streets of cities form a meaningful and open stage for their activities. This free world of urban sports, however, seems to be open for young men in particular, as girls are almost missing from each analysis conducted by researchers of skate boarding. The Ideals of Finnish Female Gymnastics as Reflections of the General Educational Culture of the Time Aino Sarje The first female gymnasts in Finland in the 1880 s set fairly radical aims for the educational work of girls and women. The educational cultures of the next generations of female gymnasts reflected the then prevailing educational objectives and the original goals developed with time to become more and more conservative. In my article I will describe how gymnastic style, the ideal gymnast and the pattern for the teacher were shaped from the 1880's to the 1960's. I will also outline what elements female gymnastics adopted from the educational ideologies of different times: public education, Herbartism, Deweyism and reform pedagogy. There is no earlier research on the subject. Jukolan viesti as an Example of Voluntary Work in Sports Tero Viljanen Jukolan viesti is the world s biggest orienteering relay and was awarded the 2008 Sport Event of the year in Finland. The very first Jukolan viesti was held in 1949 near Helsinki. Jukolan viesti has separate classes for men and women with seven men in each men s team and four women in each women s team. Nowadays there are approximately 1,400 to 1,500 men s teams and 900 to 1,000 women s teams altogether 14,000 runners in the whole competition. The organizing club of Jukolan viesti changes every year, and the competition has been organized in every part of Finland, even in the North in Lapland. The name Jukola comes from the novel Seven brothers by the Finnish national writer Aleksis Kivi. This article examines how Jukolan viesti is organized and how the organization system looks like. The association organizing Jukolan viesti is called Kaukametsäläiset. Kaukametsäläiset was founded in 1948 with its main tasks to organize Jukolan viesti together with orienteering clubs and to respect the memory of Aleksis Kivi. Nowadays, 95 % of the organizing work for Jukolan viesti is done by volunteers of which there are 259

4 ABSTRACTS approximately 1,500 every year. Organizing Jukolan viesti is a five-year project of 100,000 working hours. The main source for the article is an interview with the president of Kaukametsäläiset, Reimo Uljas. Other sources include common literature about voluntary work in sports and different kinds of material related to Jukolan viesti. The conclusion of this work is that Jukolan viesti is a great feat of strength by Finnish sport volunteers; it will hardly have any difficulties in attracting volunteers also in the future. German physical culture from Gutsmuths to the National Socialist An apolitical master or a political servant? Jyrki Kaarttinen The history of physical training and sport is long and varied. Historically, physical training and sport have had many different meanings and definitions, for individuals, society and the state. On the one hand, the emphasis has been on the notion that sport has an ideal, but does not have an ideology, or that it is a play of the soul using the body as an instrument. Its purpose in this sense would be to promote the common good, and the well-being of individuals and nations, while providing at the same time entertainment and leisure activity. On the other hand, physical and sporting activities have been coupled with economic interests, and also used for political purposes. It has been said that sport and politics cannot be separated since sport has always been and has remained a social phenomenon. However, the use of physical training and sport as a political instrument has been a particular feature of totalitarian states, a good example of which is the National Socialist Germany. In this article I shall examine the National Socialist ideology of physical training, and how it was influenced by earlier traditions of German physical culture. It touched my soul - women in Berlin 1936 in quest of youth, beauty and physical and spiritual strength Anne Makkonen How Finnish women s gymnastics and dance stood for and reinforced Finnish nationalism? To what extent they also were servants of National Socialism? These are questions which are still quite unexplored. In my article I discuss complicate relationships between form and ideology in gymnastics and dance. Particular attention is paid to the preparation and performance of Finnish women s gymnastics team in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Spanish and Catalan: The Barcelona Olympics and Representations of National Identities in the Press. Minna Uusivirta 260 This article examines the discourse of Spanish and Catalan identities and their representations in two Spanish newspapers, the leading Barcelona journal La Vanguardia, and a major Madrid paper El País around the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The aim is to show how the journals dealt with the Spanish Olympic athletes and their unforeseen success as well as the ways in which Spanishness and Catalanness were represented and built in the papers. This happened at a time when Spain had only recently recovered from the

5 Kasvatus & Aika 4 (2) 2010, xx-yy centralist associations of nationalism that were held high in Franco's dictatorship. Due to the euforia caused by the sporting and organising success both La Vanguardia and El Pais represented mainly a unifying discourse, which played down the differences between Spain and Catalonia, but also brought out contrary tones despite being nationalism-wise moderate papers. A modern, democratic Spain was depicted in making a clear distinction to the past. "Here are Käld's Angels." Uefa Women's Euro 2009 Through the Finnish Media. Riikka Turtiainen Women's Euro 2009 was played in Finland between August 23 and September 10, In this article I discuss how the tournament was represented in the media. I approach the media spectacle from a follower s point of view. I m interested in online-contents produced by followers. While the media concentrated on emphasizing the conventional way to represent gender and nationality the Internet diversified the image of the sports event. As research material I have used magazines, online newspapers, websites and forums, television broadcasts and stories written by the followers of the WEURO. The tournament was remembered primarily as a positive event. However, the mass media still focused on reporting of the Finnish team and female football players in a trivializing and marginalizing way. The participatory role of the Internet came up in online forums. Women's Euro 2009 became momentous particularly for the community of female football players. 261