The voluntary sports movement began in Finland in the late 1800s concomitantly with the industrialization of the country. Due to the political, ethnic and emancipatory interests the sports movement has particular configurations still valid at present and embodied in the separate national organizations for workers, Finnish-Swedish people and women. The national survey on sports clubs as social organizations was carried out in 1987. The data were collected by mail from the sample of clubs (n 835). The survey was focused on the prime components of the internal system of sports clubs — ideology, membership, program, resources and administration — but also on the interaction between this internal system and external environment of clubs.
The official value orientation of international sport emphasizes common good causes such as international understanding, peace, friendship, and Olympic solidarity. However, when nations compete in international sport events their operational goals are defined in terms of national interests and materialized in terms of competitive success. This is a basic dilemma and contradiction in international sport, and it is clearly evident in the Olympic movement. While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) operates on the basis of common good causes, the national Olympic committees (NOCs) operate on the basis of national interests. In fact, the NOCs are even reluctant to supervise any rules and resolutions interfering with this national pursuit of success, let alone recognize the common good values in international sport. In this paper it is hypothesized that international sport is vulnerable to a legitimation crisis because it is premised on values that are incompatible with the values and policies that guide involvement at the national level. This hypothesis is based on the results of a semantic differential pilot study through which the basic ideological concepts of international sport are compared with the operational concepts underlying national sport systems. It is concluded that since we know very little about the meanings people assign to international sport, it is difficult to make statements about the consequences of international events.
In this essay the author, one of the founders of ICSS, explores the heterogeneous substance of the sociology of sport as has been well reflected in this International Review since its very beginning. The roots of the heterogenity are traced into the three basic constituents of the sociology of sport: sociology as a mother science, sport culture in societies and societies themselves with their different political-cultural patterns. The mainstream of research tends to conform with the mainstream of practical sport, while various critical schools, which may be expected to gain strength in the near future, often challenge the conventional belief- system and late development of mainstream sport with emerging political, commercial and other external interests.
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