The 5th Congress of Exercise and Sport Sciences - The Academic College at Wingate

A Multidisciplinary Approach to Olympic Studies

Emilio Fernández Peña
Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

This presentation discusses the nature of Olympic Studies as a multidisciplinary approach which is able to unravel the complexity of the different phenomena which lie in the Olympic Games and its culture. The modern Olympic Movement has developed on the basis of the late 19th-century Western and European cultural parameters and a Eurocentric view of the world. The contemporary Western thinking and of its cultural derivatives (products, services, institutions, imaginaries) have been constructed in a linear, minimally interconnected and very hierarchical way, with a center and periphery and, on occasions, very little flexibility. The East, however, draws its inspiration from other sources. Its way of thinking is circular; everything is relative, nothing is central or peripheral and everything changes, though the essence remains the same. An Olympic Movement that really wants to be universal should seek out a blend of East and West. Olympic Studies are a universal phenomenon. Two important reasons for that are the role of old and new media, through which the sports phenomenon is universally disseminated and followed, and the focus of the Olympic studies on multiple interconnected dimensions of the Olympic Games and the complexity that they enfold as a cultural and social event.

Emilio Fernández Peña
Emilio Fernández Peña








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