2021 Volume 29 Issue 1 Pages 55-69
Raising the awareness that people with intellectual disabilities can actively participate in sports, even if they have problems with decision-making or communicating their will, remains a challenge for sports promotion in Japan. This study seeks solutions from the standpoint of social constructivism and aims to define a theory for elucidating the “physical experiences” of people with intellectual disabilities whose decision-making involves others. That is, we explore a theory based on conventional “body theory,” pursue theoretical limitations, and discuss new possibilities.
We first raise the issue of how the “physical experiences” of people with intellectual disabilities in sports become invisible to society from the perspective of social political constructivism. Phenomenological body theory assumes that the mind-body dichotomy is the heart of the theory of experience in disability studies and sport sociology; however, there are theoretical limitations to understanding the experiences of people with intellectual disabilities. Instead, we focus on a “physics theory” that overcomes such theoretical limitations, use hints from the “undetermined existence” of the human [Gehlen, 1993, 2008] that lies behind that theory, and discuss new possibilities from the standpoint of social political constructivism. Finally, as a complement to physics theory, we focus on the “intercorporeal chain” [Osawa, 1996] in comparative sociology, noting the new potential theoretical frameworks necessary for discussing “physical experiences” that include others through sports.
