Kinesiology, Vol. 31 No. 2, 1999.
Preliminary communication
Sport as a form of social involvement - the case of tennis
Davorin Trstenjak
; Tennis Club "Spin", Zagreb, Croatia
Zoran Žugić
; Faculty of Physical Education University of Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
Tennis is a game which has become increasingly popular in the last twenty years. It comprises various elements which are present in all other physical activities, from ludic to competitive ones, and it is realized at various levels, from the level of ‘pure play’, over the intermediate concept level which is called a game, to the institutional level, that is the level of professional sport. The authors have tried to answer the following questions: What makes tennis a popular and suitable form of social involvement? What characteristics, contents, motives on the one hand, and what game structure on the other, make tennis attractive for a large number of people who remain devoted to it for a long time? To answer these questions in this paper the authors have observed tennis as a mode of social involvement at different analytical levels: 1) a sociocultural-anthropological analysis offers a survey of contents, modalities and characteristics which contribute to the mode of a game as pure play, and those which contribute to the mode of a game with ceratin skills and rules; 2) a socio-psychological analysis pointing to the relationship between the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as the prime movers for participation in tennis; 3) a socio-organizational (an institutional) analysis showing how tennis is organized within an actual social community; 4) a kinesiological analysis enables an insight into the requirements needed for and complexity of before the acquisition of motor skills in tennis.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
256846
URI
Publication date:
29.4.1999.
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