The Cultural Constitution of Athletes’ Careers

There is growing evidence within psychology that cultures and selves are mutually constituting. Development, therein, is conceptualized as a process of transformation through participation in cultural practices. Although increased interconnectivity of globalized high-performance sport functions to normalize certain experiences, identities, and ways of being, a closer examination of athletes’ career trajectories reveals that the global practice of athlete development is similar yet unique when rooted in a specific place. Recent scholarship, aligned with cultural praxis sensibilities (Ryba et al., 2010; Stambulova & Ryba, 2013), has explicated the ways in which cultures at a particular historical conjuncture modulate the biological considerations that underpin the modernist logic of an athletic career. For example, making a comeback to elite sport after childbirth, as well as the age in which career termination occurs, now has a wider culturally acceptable vantage than previously. Moreover, with labor market instability among young people and the heightened requirements for both education and work-related practical competencies, adolescence has expanded to encompass what was previously considered young adulthood, presenting a ‘new’ challenge for youth athletes to construct a dual career in sport and education. Approaching career as a story about learning, paid and unpaid work, and relationships embedded in specific biographical and cultural events, I will first map a narrative-discursive content of elite sport from which youth athletes derive their meaning-making resources. Secondly, I will introduce my longitudinal study of adolescent athletes’ dual career construction through elite sport high schools, situated within the Finnish version of the Holistic Athletic Career model (Ryba et al., 2016; Wylleman et al., 2013). Finally, I will share some of the project’s novel findings that extend current understandings into how psychological and sociocultural processes intertwine in the construction of youth athletes’ identities, motivations and orientations to the future.

References:

Ryba, T.V., Aunola, K., Kalaja, S., Selänne, H., Ronkainen, N.J., & Nurmi, J-E. (2016). A new perspective on adolescent athletes’ transition into upper secondary school: A longitudinal mixed methods study protocol. Cogent Psychology (Open Access), 3(1), 1142412-15. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2016.1142412

Ryba, T. V., Schinke, R. J., & Tenenbaum, G. (2010). (Eds.) The cultural turn in sport psychology. Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology. ISBN: 978-1-935412-03-8

Stambulova, N. B., & Ryba, T. V. (2013). (Eds.). Athletes’ careers across cultures. London: Routledge. ISBN: 978-0-415-50530-7

Wylleman, P., Reints, A., & De Knop, P. (2013). A developmental and holistic perspective on athletic career development. In P. Sotiaradou, & V. De Bosscher (Eds.), Managing high performance sport (pp. 159–182). New York, NY: Routledge.