2011 Volume 19 Issue 1 Pages 39-40
The purpose of this paper is to review Eliasian sport studies in Japan and to consider how these studies could benefit Japanese sport studies. Since the 1980s, Japanese sport sociologists and others have been trying to establish a new theoretical framework in order to deal with the growing diversity and complexity of sport in Japan. Elias has long been regarded as an important figure in the field of sport sociology, but most people have tended to focus on his “civilizing process”, “selfcontrol” and “violence” rather than on his sociological theory. His “civilizing process” concept which derived from his sociological methodology was an attempt to make a sociological break from the traditional dichotomy of structure-agency and epistemology. I would like to show how his theoretical framework for sport in the globalization process can be beneficial, taking into account Elias’s “sportization” and “open personality” from a theoretical point of view.