Body awareness is described as awareness of, and attentiveness to, one’s internal bodily processes and sensations. It is a sensitivity to normal bodily states that is separate from emotion yet originates from sensory proprioception and introspection and entails one’s focus of attention toward the self. Arguably, the most common perspectives used to understand body awareness
Body dissatisfaction is the negative subjective evaluation of one’s body as it relates to body size, shape, muscularity or muscle tone, weight, and fitness. Body dissatisfaction is considered to be an important negative affective factor related to body image. Typically, dissatisfaction involves a perceived discrepancy between one’s current body and one’s ideal body that fosters
Researchers and practitioners have long believed that how people feel about and describe themselves can strongly influence motivated behavior in sport and exercise. Two key constructs studied in the sport and exercise psychology literature are self-esteem and self-concept. Since many people have argued that judgments about the self will influence the selection and maintenance of
It is widely accepted that the way people view and evaluate themselves has important implications for how they feel, think, and behave. For this reason, researchers have come to see self-evaluations as a central and important topic of study. However, despite there being a great deal of literature on self-appraisal, self-assessment, and self-perception, a noteworthy
Self-awareness involves expert knowledge of oneself, independent of others. As such, self-awareness is central to one’s personal and social perception and meaning of self. Development Perspectives It has been argued that there are at least two interrelated levels of the self that psychologist William James (1842–1910) labeled the “I” self and the “me” self. The
This article examines the origins of the sociology of sport and explores its interdisciplinarity particularly in terms of its dual “location” in the disciplines of sociology and physical education. The development of sociology of sport is examined over three phases, together with a consideration of recent developments; and this is followed by an examination of
Given the centrality of the body in sport performance, it might be assumed that the corporeality of athletes has been an essential facet of sport sociological analysis. Despite its vital role, however, the body has occupied ‘‘an absent presence’’ in this research and only since the late 1980s have sport sociologists expressed a growing interest
As even a casual observer may recognize, the phenomenon of contemporary sports bears little resemblance to that of the fairly recent past. At the turn of the twentieth century, sports were occasional and unregulated events played by members of local sports clubs. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, an individual’s association with sport might
Everything outside the boundaries of the subsystem sport is considered to be its environment, and this can be influenced and altered by sport or, conversely, can itself influence sport. Examples of the latter are to be observed, for instance, in the effects on athletic performance of certain climatic qualities of the environment of Mexico City
Research and theoretical approaches to sport culture and subcultures in the sociology of sport fall into three overlapping periods: (1) early interest in sport subcultures from an interactionist perspective; (2) a transition period during which more critical theoretical approaches to culture and subcultures and more rigorous methodological approaches emerged; and (3) a wholehearted embrace of