Search Results (38)

This paper suggests a theoretical framework to summarise the empirical literature on the relationships between sports and both religious and secular ethics, and it suggests two interrelated theoretical models to empirically evaluate the extent to which religious and secular ethics, as well as sports policies, affect achievements in sports. I identified two national ethics (national pride/efficiency) and two social ethics (social cohesion/ethics) by measuring achievements in terms of alternative indexes based on Olympic medals. I referred to three empirical models and applied three estimation methods (panel Poisson, Data Envelopment, and Stochastic Frontier Analyses). I introduced two sports policies (a quantitative policy aimed at social cohesion and a qualitative policy aimed at national pride), by distinguishing sports in terms of four possibly different ethics to be used for the eight summer and eight winter Olympic Games from 1994 to 2024. I applied income level, health status, and income inequality, to depict alternative social contexts. I used five main religions and three educational levels to depict alternative ethical contexts. I applied country dummies to depict alternative institutional contexts. Empirical results support the absence of Olympic ethics, the potential substitution of sport and secular ethics in providing social cohesion, and the dependence of sports on politics, while alternative social contexts have different impacts on alternative sport achievements. Full article

Culture consists of material and spiritual values and tools that a nation has accumulated in the historical process. In addition to the most basic contexts such as language and religion, contexts such as sporting activities, art, public medicine, and the public calendar are also important environments that reveal their own cultural elements. Among these contexts, religion is very effective in shaping the daily life of the individual and, thus, society through the rules it enjoins. Religion does not dominate only the world of belief of the individual. Through the world of belief, it also directs their relations with the social institutions they are involved in. Sport is one of the most important activities and social institutions that stand out with various functions in daily life, with wrestling being one of the branches of sports that have emerged as a result of the imitation of the struggle of human beings with nature and other creatures with which they share nature. In particular, those involved in the nomadic way of life had to hunt in order not to starve and fight in order to survive. Wrestling, which emerged as a result of these obligations, held an important place among all Turks in the world for a period of time, especially in the transition periods of life, such as birth, marriage, and death. One of the conditions set forth by women as a condition of marriage was that their suitor defeated them in wrestling. Examples of this condition are also observed in literary texts belonging to different periods when Turks were not yet acquainted with Islam and the concepts of halal and haram, which entered their lives together with Islam. According to the provisions of the Holy Qur’an, right/unprohibited thoughts and actions are associated with the words good and halal, while wrong/prohibited thoughts and actions are associated with the words sin and haram. In this study, the social and cultural phases of wrestling as a sports branch among Turks in the historical process will be evaluated on the basis of the history of religions and religious references, in addition to the literary texts belonging to historical periods when Turks were members of different religions, in the context of two events that have been experienced and reported in the news. The study was carried out using the method of document analysis, a method of qualitative research, and the data obtained by this method were evaluated using content analysis. The narratives of Alıp Manaş, Alpamış, Alpamıs, Alıpmenşen, and Bamsı Beyrek, which are evaluated in this context, belong to the periods when the Turks had not been introduced to Islam or had only recently been introduced to it. Alıp Manaş was collated from different Turkic tribes such as the Altais, Alpamış from the Uzbeks, Alpamıs the Kazakhs/Karakalpaks, Alıpmenşen the Bashkirs/Tatars, and Bamsı Beyrek the Oghuz Turks. The narratives of Kirmanshah, Köse Kenan-Dânâ Hanım, Bey Böyrek, Shah Ismail, and Yaralı Mahmut, which are evaluated in the study, belong to the periods when the Turks became Muslim en masse, and are related only among the Oghuz Turks. These narratives are included in the study because they are similar to Alıp Manaş, Alpamış, Alpamıs, Alıpmenşen, and Bamsı Beyrek and they belong to the period when Islam was largely established among the Turkish masses in Anatolia. The effect of the new religion on wrestling, which is a branch of sport, will be revealed through these narratives belonging to different tribes and religious periods. Once more, an event that occurred in recent history, and was the subject of the news, was subjected to document analysis, and content analysis was carried out through the text of the news and evaluated in the context of the study. This study aims to explain the effect of religious rules on sports branches with theological, folkloric, and sociological references based on ancient literary texts belonging to the Turks and two incidents which were experienced. Full article

Social media platforms like X (formerly known as Twitter) are integral to modern communication, enabling the sharing of news, emotions, and ideas. However, they also facilitate the spread of harmful content, and manual moderation of these platforms is impractical. Automated moderation tools, predominantly developed for English, are insufficient for addressing online offensive language in Arabic, a language rich in dialects and informally used on social media. This gap underscores the need for dedicated, dialect-specific resources. This study introduces the Saudi Offensive Dialectal dataset (SOD), consisting of over 24,000 tweets annotated across three levels: offensive or non-offensive, with offensive tweets further categorized as general insults, hate speech, or sarcasm. A deeper analysis of hate speech identifies subtypes related to sports, religion, politics, race, and violence. A comprehensive descriptive analysis of the SOD is also provided to offer deeper insights into its composition. Using machine learning, traditional deep learning, and transformer-based deep learning models, particularly AraBERT, our research achieves a significant F1-Score of 87% in identifying offensive language. This score improves to 91% with data augmentation techniques addressing dataset imbalances. These results, which surpass many existing studies, demonstrate that a specialized dialectal dataset enhances detection efficacy compared to mixed-language datasets. Full article

There is currently a certain pressure from various mnemonic communities, animated by vernacular interests, to canonize new saints within what is regarded as the flawed saints’ cultural-political movement. Among these new, uncanonized saints, whose memory is commemorated unofficially in various cultural-political registers, there is also the football star Diego Armando Maradona, called by his millions of fans “the Hand of God” (La Mano de Dios). The commemorative culture that thrived around Maradona’s persona—materialized in artefacts, shrines, icon-like paintings, prints, graffiti, stencils, and other memorabilia—do not fit the customary narratives of sainthood, nor to the display and content of the recently inaugurated (2023) memorial to the new martyrs of both the 20th and 21st centuries at Saint Bartholomew Basilica in Rome. The article argues that the commemoration of Maradona by his fans in Italy, Argentina, and worldwide is enacted in pop culture formats aimed at addressing different sets of contemporary mnemonic and spiritual needs. The aim is to offer a fresh conceptual engagement with the contemporary cultural-political phenomenon of “flawed saints” commemoration through the lens of contemporary popular culture, taking the culture of commemoration of Diego Maradona as a case study. Full article

This qualitative study aimed to understand men’s social connectedness in later life in Portugal focusing on their perceptions, obstacles, strategies, and impact on well-being. The sample included 104 older Portuguese men over 65 years of age (M_age = 70.76 years). The qualitative data were the direct transcriptions of the answers given by participants to the electronic interview using thematic analysis. Findings revealed six overarching themes encompassing 18 subcategories: definitions of social connectedness (social support, community identity, mental health promotion, use of community structures), difficulties/obstacles in maintaining social connectedness (ageism, lack of initiative, physical limitations, psychological traits, resources), strategies/actions or resources to establish social connections (use of technology, use of community groups, leisure and sport activities, church/religion), negative impact of difficulties in establishing relevant social connections (mental health, physical health, relationships), positive actions from being socially connected (positive prescriptions to promote social connectedness), and concerns from being socially disconnected (health risks). These findings indicate that the lack of social connectedness creates social vulnerability in later life, and social support is needed to ensure safer aging among older men. Full article

Retirement from sport is widely reported as a challenging time of transition in the lives of elite athletes and is one that has been explored from a range of different perspectives both by sport psychologists and socio-cultural scholars of sport. However, of late, a small number of scholars have considered athlete career transition within the context of religion and spirituality, identifying the religious identity and belief of athletes as central to their transition experiences. That said, this work does not go as far as developing a theological understanding of sports retirement. Here, we explore and frame the phenomenon of sports retirement through the theological lens put forward by the neo-Franciscan priest, Richard Rohr in his book Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life. In this paper, we suggest how Rohr’s ideas might help develop an alternative and more nuanced understanding of sports retirement, building on those currently promoted in sport psychology and the sociology of sport the literature. Full article

Several scholars have observed the constructive possibilities in approaching sport as cultural liturgy. In what follows, I turn to hermeneutic resources in Paul Ricoeur and Augustine to elucidate the means of sports’ liturgical appropriation and the capacity of this appropriation to mediate values of ideological and religious significance. Drawing on Ricoeur’s analysis of Aristotelian mimesis, I approach sport as embodied metaphor and so locate metaphor as a central problem in sport hermeneutics. Following Ricoeur, I address this problem primarily by way of the ‘surplus of meaning’ within metaphor and its reference, and the role of Wittgensteinian ‘seeing-as’ in metaphor’s interpretation. Following Augustine, I observe the pivotal roles of desire and tradition within ‘ways of seeing’ and their outworkings in Augustine’s liturgical interpretation of ancient spectacles. Translating these considerations into sport, I argue that sport’s liturgical appropriation similarly proceeds through ‘ways of seeing’ or experiencing the embodied metaphor of sport, and that these ways are deeply informed by particular desires and cultural and ideological traditions. Full article

Research shows that the effects of athletics on virtue development are mixed. Religion provides people with a meaning-making system, community, and practices that can promote the cultivation of virtues and possibly enhance the impact of athletics on virtue development. Yet, little empirical research has assessed moral outcomes when religion and sport interact. The present study examines intrinsic religiosity as a moderator of the effect of athletic involvement on virtue and self-worth outcomes in collegiate student-athletes. Participants (N = 1930) were religious college students in the United States, 22% (n = 415) competing in an intercollegiate varsity sport. Moderated regression analyses revealed, contrary to predictions, that religiosity did not significantly moderate trait courage, trait patience, or goal patience. Consistent with predictions, religiosity significantly moderated goal courage, approval self-worth (i.e., the extent to which people base their worth on approval from others), and moral self-worth (i.e., the extent to which people base their worth on their own virtuousness). Whereas religiosity was associated with higher goal courage for non-athletes, the association was stronger for athletes. Religiosity was not associated with levels of approval self-worth for non-athletes, but the more religious athletes were, the less important other people’s approval was for their sense of self. Whereas religiosity was associated with higher moral self-worth contingency for athletes, the association was stronger for non-athletes. Applications for practitioners and future directions for researchers are discussed. Full article

The sport/faith interface has long been a site of contention for religious youth who routinely experience two significant obstacles to living out their faith amidst the complexities of sporting locales. The first is a general problem that pertains to the character of adolescent spirituality and is typified by a subscription to a compromised, diluted religious belief system known as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism (MTD). The second concerns the way in which the Christian religion functions as a servant to sport and when the reality of the gospel becomes subordinate to the identity, power, and cultural meaning and norms of the institution of sports and is commonly termed ‘sportianity’. This paper maps the contours of a high school retreat for Christian student-athletes—Baylor University’s Faith and Sports Institute (FSI) retreat- that intentionally seeks to address these problems. The paper is theological in that we interpret MTD as a religious belief system and how it structures and orients reality and the lived experiences of Christians in general and religious youth in particular. As contributors to the original design of the retreat, we unpack some of the relevant working cultural and religious presuppositions that have the potential to dominate how Christians think about and practice the integration of faith and sports. In turn, we explain key aspects of the baseline narrative for the design and development of the retreat and tease out how these presuppositions are antithetical to orthodox Christianity. In conclusion, we suggest a number of immediate implications that frame how the FSI retreat has moved forward in relation to the integration of Christian faith and sports. Full article

A deeper understanding of sport cannot remain only in rational discourse that transforms reality into quantified data but must descend into philosophical areas that also accept the multiple figurativeness of symbols. By means of not literal but metaphorical truthfulness, sport can then be examined as a potential space of hierophany, that is, the manifestation of the sacred in the sphere of the profane. The paper argues in favor of the thesis that a more precise description of hierophany can highlight the difference between the presentation and representation of the sacred. While the physical activities that were part of the religious cult of archaic societies can be considered hierophanies in the mode of presentation (making present) of the sacred, no such direct parallel can be drawn for modern sport. Sport can be seen through the lens of implicit religion as a representation (an agency), not a presentation of the sacred. Full article

This research paper is based on the study of the evolution of pilgrimages on the Santiago Way, highlighting the Portuguese Way to Santiago—Central Portuguese Way and Coastal Portuguese Way—which has experienced massive popularity over the years. The primary objective of this work is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the pilgrims’ motivations to undertake the Santiago Way pilgrimage. A mixed methods approach is adopted based on the simultaneous use of quantitative and qualitative data. So, an analysis of secondary data, provided by the Oficina del Peregrino de la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela and by the Municipal Department of Cultural Heritage Management of Porto is combined with a thematic analysis of seven interviews with stakeholders of the Portuguese Way to Santiago. The findings suggest that there is an increase in cultural and sports motivations, although spiritual and religious motivations continue to have a strong presence. The ecumenical character of the Santiago Way is also proved, given the large number of pilgrims of religions other than the Catholic one, who travel these paths—the vast territories that are traversed—until reaching the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela. A new paradigm still needs to be registered, perceptible in the rise of Turigrims, pilgrims who benefit from support services that mitigate the hardships of the way. Full article

If one looks at the United States over the past sixty years, it becomes clear that religious and spiritual practices have proliferated in unexpected places and spaces. They have become thoroughly ensconced in the boardrooms, offices, shop floors, and retail spaces of business establishments. From there, they have seeped into just about every imaginable area of American life, turning schools, parks, shopping malls, sports stadiums, hospitals, gyms, health food restaurants, spas, and the very apps on our computers and cell phones into corporate spaces promising new and enticing forms of spiritual enchantment. The purpose of this essay is to document the way new forms of spirituality have become part of a much longer history of the entanglement of business and religion, a history that began in monasteries, formed the bedrock of the Puritan work ethic, and is now an established aspect of the neoliberal ideal of the privatization and corporatization of all aspects of human life. Full article

Racial analysis of photography in the canon is important when unpacking layers of racial discrimination, Black manhood, and the historical dynamics within social forces that create stereotypical perceptions of African American males. Race, religion, and sport allow scholars to unpack the perceived disposability of Black lives in contemporary society. In an effort to fully understand how sport and religion inform racialized experiences in Black manhood, the current paper seeks to advance theories of visual and racial culture in a particular context. Contextual analysis of a 1964 photograph of Malcolm X and Dr. Harry Edwards synthesizes the visual turn and offers insight into how race, sport, and religion collide to raise minority pride. A contextual analysis accounts for the ways in which visual materials function within broad social ecologies of Black masculinity. Implications are discussed for the role of sport and religion in continuing activism for racial equality. Full article

This study utilized computational techniques for a reliable analysis of discourse. These techniques were adopted to analyze the progress of Saudi social change in terms of women’s empowerment within the Saudi transformation program. The data from open source 2021–2022 Saudi newspaper archives were automatically crawled using cutting-edge computational techniques and structured according to the sections of the Saudi newspapers: front page, economy, international, sports, society, culture and religion. The analysis was based on computing the minimally uneven distribution of the relative frequencies of the occurrence of the central word (the Arabic forms of woman and women) from the years 2021 to 2022. This produced two samples of text data, each of which represented the respective years. Calculating the normalized and adjusted frequencies of the central word from each section in the data from each year was important to avoid unbalanced absolute frequencies in the qualitative analysis stage. In addition, dispersion measures showed that the amount of variance in terms of the lexical dispersion of the central word was not high. The observable facts from the quantitative analysis produced a more accurate observational sample of citations, which we qualitatively analyzed. The results of the latter showed a considerable ascending change in favor of empowering women as a consequence of Saudi Vision 2030. Full article

College sports is a multi-billion-dollar business, and universities are looking for ways to remain competitive, including recruiting and retaining athletes from historically underrepresented groups to predominantly white institutions (PWI), many of which have a documented history of excluding non-white students, including blacks, indigenous peoples, and other people of color (often referred to as BIPOC). This article will examine the legacy of the racist teachings, past controversies, and compromises of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormons) along with persistent struggles to shake off its 130-year-old racist past in efforts for its flagship school, Brigham Young University, to stay competitive in the lucrative Big 12 Athletic Conference. Deeply ingrained in the LDS culture is a politic of religious conservatism. Politics has often been intertwined with organized religion with much influence, and the LDS faith is no different. The cumulation of these interlocking systems generates thoughts, attitudes, and feelings that foster a racial climate at Brigham Young University where black students have reported feeling unsafe and unsupported. While this is a well-documented problem at predominately white institutions (PWIs) across the country, BYU is in many ways unique, given the discriminatory overt policies and practices employed for generations. We contend that the LDS Church’s history of racial marginalization and exclusion of black people made its way into the sports consciousness of the church’s flagship school and is not likely to change anytime soon. Understanding religion in the tradition of Charles Long as an orientation and utilizing Derrick Bell’s notion of racial realism are critical to our analyses. The confluence of politics, religion, race, and sport cannot be easily untangled. Full article