The European Championship, “The Summer’s Fairytale… Part Two”. Europe’s second such event within as many years fills a void we never knew existed and brings about a cultivation of the soul. For a few days, the contrived solidarity of the Nation, lodging horror and disbelief in the absurd speeches from rightists to reactionists or in the corrupted discussions of newspapers and television studios, serves as an uplifting assurance for people from all walks of life, education and income levels and backgrounds.



Mr. Alkemeyer, will Austria ever be the same after Euro 2008?

Of course, after a while. The great game of football brings with it great emotions, which appeals to the team spirit of the various social groups and embodies mutual support. The question is whether this surge of emotions will have a lasting effect. That’s what I’m not sure of; in Germany, the people’s laid-back team spirit disappeared relatively quickly.

Is nationalism in sport inherent or simply a tactic to ensure high ticket sales?

Nationalism exists in World Championships, European Championships, the Ski World Cup, and so on. You can even say it constitutes the other side of modern society, which features a high and steadily increasing level of segmentation. The fans strive for that temporary bond, to that end sport is a break from the complexity of today’s reality.

Why sport especially?

Sport is a very accessible system of communication and representation. In it, people from various backgrounds move as if participants in a clearly defined, at times egalitarian-functioning domain. It has a simple structure, is tangible due to its physicality and through its graphic quality can be easily interpreted. Sport is a projection screen for aspirations and utopias which remain unfulfilled in other areas of society.

Would you say that sport today helps people or simply distracts them?

For those who believe in it, sport can structure normal, everyday life and with that have a stabilising effect. Furthermore, as a cultural bond, sport cushions the consequences of the functional differences of today’s society.

Alkemeyer describes the “Zerbrechen der Einheit der Gesellschaft” (Collapse of Oneness of Society) in the lecture “Verkörperungen – Aufführungen von Identität im Sport” (Embodiment - Representation of Identity in Sport), which he held in 2007 at the University of Vienna. This collapse recurs in individuals, says Alkemeyer. The more the members of the community drift apart, the more a recurring, representative collectivisation is wished, in which the group as quasi Will and Representation are reunited. In the stadium, by executing their enthusiasm, the extremes of the masses are fused, the Nation is a result of the execution of their festivities. Alkemeyer borrows a term from linguistics to describe this procedure: the performative Nation. It occurs in the execution of its festivities. Although real, it is at the same time transient.

One criticism, coming not only from the so-called civilised ones, is that sport simplifies the world and our lives.

A football game is in reality a straightforward, clearly defined affair in a world of increasingly complex events. Indeed, it creates its own complexity but this has clear spatiotemporal parameters. Moreover, the entire interaction in the stadium is more than evident. In this respect, football represents an island of assurance and present experiences, to which one can retreat again and again and which one willingly defends against oncoming attack. Sport is also, therefore, a dormant domain in an accelerating and future-compatible world of work and commerce.

However, sport itself speeds up society; there is not one discipline in which athletes become slower.

Sport essentially brings to mind modern ideas of progress and of seemingly limitless outdoing. Football and the 100m run is, however, also becoming that fast: events remain linked to the body; one’s performance must be generated by one’s own body, the speed of sport remains so-to-speak “human” - apart from disciplines such as motor sports where speed is not directly related to the human body.

How is the almost hysterical reaction to doping explained, for instance, in Nordic Skiing or cycling? Doping is not even a stranger to football; according to reports from 2007, Juventus Turin had quite some experience in this area. As it is well acknowledged that the aim of a sportsperson is to strive to be ever better, in other words, stronger, quicker and more skilful, is it not a logical step for them to turn to chemical substances for help?

Chemical additives are also being used elsewhere. Yet, one must consider the demands of the sport. It wants namely that area of life, in which it exclusively depends on the strength of the body: everybody should rank by virtue of their personal performance - without the aid of foreign substances. In this respect, sport should demonstrate an ideal of modern society in relation to performance and competitiveness. However, this very ideal is being destroyed by doping, which is perceived as cheating. The disappointment that surrounds it perhaps accounts for the somewhat lively debates. The criminalisation of the perpetrator and aide is also a strategy to preserve the image of sports as an island of honest performance and a fair system. The bridgehead of purity must be maintained at all times!

An approval of doping would thus destroy the core value of sport?

An approval would place sport on a level with the competitive environment in the world of work, the borders of everyday life would be ripped down and the distinctiveness of the games would waste away. There would be no point, or at least, less of one to associate sport with aspirations and hopes of recovery, for which there is no longer room in everyday life.



In his lecture, “Aufrecht und biegsam - eine politische Geschichte des Körperkults” (Upright and Flexible - a Political History of Body Manipulation) Alkemeyer states that the body, even before the emergence of sports, served as a medium of self-portrayal of social groups, backgrounds and classes. One thinks only about the upright walk of the bourgeois, extending his posture even further with his top hat and the cane, a status symbol distinguishing him from those burdened with a load and a stoop as a result. His head, proudly held high, the glance at the surroundings epitomising the emancipation of the oppression of everyday life and the fight for survival.

The sociologist of culture, Zoran Terzic, in turn points out that even a magazine such as German’s “Der Spiegel”, a bastion of enlightenment, links the physical representation of Muslims to the colour black - an ideological presentation in which ink fulfils the “demagogic” function. Sport as residual of triumph is, according to Terzic’s analysis, the “Gegenwelt” (counterworld) to other public domains in which victors’ gestures are suppressed. Triumphs are declared untrue, just as in death.
The appropriate “bodily” portrayal for such would be the ever smiling Play Mobil figures, fighting with a menacing countenance and killing in a playful manner.

If we take into consideration the philosophy of Karl Marx, that “workers have no fatherland” that would no longer even apply to the unemployed, as long as they are standing in the contrived Stadium of the Nation at least; in the crowd, virtually basking in their glory.

Power ultimately strives, according to Elias Canetti, for the annihilation of all. In this respect, the crowd in the stadium is also a symbolical annihilation of all present, or the opposite, an assurance of all present through itself. The Nation as an identity of historical significance, as Alkemeyer writes, is not only represented by language, culture, religion (also a form of historically significant identity), buildings, memorials or coins, but also by celebrations, processions and rituals. Furthermore, by reality as experienced by the body.

What is so special about sports if the body has always served as a medium of self-portrayal?

In today’s world, sport is a privileged area of self-moulding. Precisely in a society ruled by mass media, the pressure on the individual to give off a good impression is tremendous. Those who do not feel like presenting themselves have, to a certain extent, no social existence, are not represented in society. The body has become the protruding stage of the person, an identification of their assumed inner attributes and virtues. The private sphere of invisibility increasingly disappears. Nowadays, everything tends to be out in the open. The camera phone is omnipresent and makes sure nothing goes unnoticed.
Bodily gestures, meaning the mass of messages individual and acquired, its socially conditioned and its personal display still differs from class to class and from background to background. Even with the layer of consumer uniformity with which mass media and mass production covers society by means of images and styling products respectively.

The constant opportunity of self-representation is admittedly sold as unprecedented freedom. Pure nonsense?

The antithesis of freedom and constraint is supposedly no longer supported by adequate proof. The practices and discourse of self-presentation completely partake in liberal discourse of self-government, however, this does not stand in opposition to foreign-government. In turn, Michel Foucault believes the more “power” the body controls, the more it defends itself and demands freedom against this power. Modern power is flexible in its reaction to this struggle. It says, undress and bear all but only if you are beautiful, thin and fit. That is to say, there is always intertwined involvement between outside-discipline and self-discipline. The constraint of self-discipline escalates the proportion of how lifestyle and body are subjected to public control. Only by scantily-clad bodies can the lifestyle of the individual be essentially demonstrated. Nakedness is becoming one of the displayed gestures in public.



In his final speech, Alkemeyer goes on to mention physicalness, as a constituent element of public and Nation, to have incorporated in sociological research, amongst others, the results of scientific training analysis to develop an argument, resulting in javelin throwers “on the basis of national training and practice characteristic pattern of movement, meaning a recurring recognisable national manoeuvre”. Not only in acquiring such physically conditioned skills such as writing, speaking or singing but also in culturally conveyed sport techniques, the mechanism of origin and consolidation can be traced.

The essence is that the participants in the stadium of a transient genesis of the Nation sense themselves and each other. Alkemeyer writes, “the physical experience takes over the act of witnessing, the imaginary achieves physicality, an emotional impact and vitality; the postulated solidarity becomes a temporary reality”.

If sport contributes to self-styling or is an expression of such, it would raise the question of why it exists in such close partnership with the soft drinks and fast food industry, which according to scientifically assured knowledge from UNESCO (among many others) substantially contributes to adiposis in children.

Actual health does not play a role in spectator sports. It is simply about pictures and images: vitality, youth, energy. These images should be transferred onto certain products. With some products, this seems to work very well. In this way, directly determined attributes of the American way of life have been represented since the end of the Second World War and especially in Germany by collective notions of innovation, awakening, youth and dynamics.
It was not by chance that continental sports idols were associated with these virtues. After the Second World War, Max Schmeling was thus licensee and advertiser for Coca Cola and the soft drink stood for a new, refreshing Germany. Sport and its outstanding athletes promise credibility. The sportsperson represents productivity, dynamics, vitality with his body; he does not only promise performance but produces it - different from that of an actor - by means of his body in the literal sense...

Is sport the new pop culture?

Spectator sports is an area of popular culture. The whole pop-sport-culture-complex is an essential field of the representation of social leading qualities such as performance, competition, fitness, individuality and also team spirit. In this case, these leading qualities are literally personified and emotionally charged. In sport and in other areas of popular culture (as in the numerous reality television casting-programmes) society celebrates utopian visions of itself, which in other areas are less tangible. Not least, must come the idea of a body, which allows discipline, shape and improvement.


Thomas Alkemeyer: German Philology, Sport Sciences, Philosophy and Paedagogy in Berlin. Professor “Sport and Society” at the “Institut für Sportwissenschaft” (Institute for Sport Sciences) and associate Member of the “Institut für Sozialwissenschaften” (Institute for Social Sciences) at the Carl von Ossietzky-University Oldenburg. Teaching and Research. Sociology of the Body, Movement and Sport, sociological Practical Theory as well as Habitus and Educational Research.