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Achievement and rule were maybe the most important, but are not the only elements in the creation of Itpractice in modern body culture. Equipments and facilities made the innovation visible, too. New invented instruments were and are permanently a starting point to create new sports "from "machine gymnastics" in the nineteenth century over roller skating, cycling and motor sport to surfing, mountain biking, hang gliding, inline skating, snow board and bungee jump. And we cannot think modern sport without the "sportscape" of highly specialized fields and halls for the monocultures of fencedoff activities.
Also in this respect, however, sportization went around pull and tug.
On a more abstract level, as a superstructure above the It of sectorial spaces, we find the "function". The "function" of sport and games was invented in order to understand movement culture and to canalize it towards certain societal goals. Sports science ascribes to sport certain physiological functions of health, educational functions of personal development, psychological functions like stress reduction, social functions of integration and reduction of violence as well as political functions of state conservation. Concerning dance, one has recognized "pattern maintenance", "socialization", "tension management", "adaption to societal goals" and "integration" as central, useful functions. Architectural functionalism created the classical "functions" of residence, work, trade, leisure and traffic in order to justify strategies of urban parcellation.
Functionalism reached a new level in the system theory of Luhmanntype. System theory exalts the sector divisions of administrative practice to some higher type of theoretical, ?functional"logic, taking the banal parcellation as expression of economical, juridical, educational, political, religious, scientific etc. functions, which are said to be based on binary codes of global significance. In this model, sport derives from medical and educational functions, which are determined by the codes of ill/healthy respectively educated/uneducated; but since the takeoff of modernity, sport has developed towards an autonomous own functionality, following the sportive code of winorloose.
As accidental and artificial as all these series of assumed functions may look, the different approaches have in common a strategy of reification, linked to a program of sociopolitical stabilization. "Function" is derived from mathematical terminology and receives from there its "scientific" and "objective" undertones. Function is imagined as a quasithing or factor, an "It" of higher quality. The meaning of "function" oscillates somewhere between essence (Wesen), intention, purpose, aim, value, instrumental meaning, cause, reason and driving force (Triebkraft). As it is typical for a myth, the ambiguity of the notion is hidden away, and the misty term appears as a convincing expression of objective truth. What the Wesen or essence of a thing is, may be a mystery, but its ?function"seems us to be clear. Function is, as Norbert Elias expressed it, a hidden notion of causality (ein versteckter Ursachenbegriff).
The reified "It" of the "function" is furthermore characterized by a conservative undertone. Implicite, the notion postulates some ideal, normally hegemonic societal goals as "functional" and rejects oppositional values as "dysfunctional". Existing relations of power are, by naming them "function", withdrawn from conflict, naturalized and justified, while subversive dimensions systematically are neglected. ?Function"is not what is installed by power, what can be disputed and changed on the base of alternative needs "function is function. It is true, the discourse of a "revolutionary function" is not quite unknown and has been tried now and then, though it proceeds as reifying as the conservative model "but it seems not to be accidental that the functionalist reification predominantly goes hand in hand with stabilizing attitudes towards existing power structures.
We are, thus, warned to use the term of ?function"for the analysis of play and game. Which "function" has mouth pull"Does pull and tug contribute to health, personal development, stress reduction, social integration and pattern maintenance or tension management"Also the utilitarian functions of "training for work", "preparation for chase" or "exercise for war", which the older ethnologyanthropology has assumed for socalled "primitive" games, are difficult to apply to mouth pull "as to many other games, ball games for instance. That is why the earlier functionalism has by the notion of "fertility cult" opened the door towards highly speculative imaginations. And indeed, the finger in the sleek, moist and warm mouth may lead to psychoanalytical interpretations...
Functionalism is not only an academic luxury, but political. Western strategies of "sport development aid" for the Third World use functionalist assumptions against the native sports of the NonWestern countries: While Western sport is said to serve the development of personality, social and political integration (nation building), identification, health, equality of chances and satisfaction of basic needs, native games like finger pull are ?folkloristic marginal activities"without any "functional" value (Digel 1989, 165).
The ?function"may, indeed, help to exclude unwanted activity from practice and reflection. It does not help to understand movement culture. |
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