Sports and modernity in Argentina: conceptual problems and approach proposal

Abstract

In the field of sports history, its conceptualization as a symbol of the social transformations that oppose the "traditional" to the “modern” way of life is typical. Such identification between sport and "modernity" is commonplace both in the studies focused on its European (and particularly British) context of origin as in those spaces in which its planetary diffusion led to its incorporation, serving as an indicator of its incorporation to the "modern" capitalist world.

In our view the term modernity results problematic for these purposes, as much because of the laxity with which it has been used as due to its particular broadness, encompassing complex and contradictory processes and hiding the tension existing between its different planes, resolving them in deceitfully simple image. Therefore, the objective of our work will be to point out the difficulties presented by the category modernity to account for the connection between the development of sports activities and the process of transformations experienced by Argentine -and generally Latin American- societies in the period between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.