CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Bursevich, Veranika Uladzimirauna |
|---|---|
| Title | Under water: life strategies of professional swimmers in Belarus |
| Summary | Based on deep interviews with professional athletes, analysis of legislative, statistical and protocol documents the paper presents the socio-analysis of the current state of the sphere of sport of high achievement in Belarus. Swimming was selected as particular and representative case of sport for reconstructing this sphere of social relationship in post-soviet social conditions. Using the methodology and theory of fields elaborated by P. Bourdieu, the author tries to show the specificity of social and structural conditioning of sport and post-sport personal life experience and strategies of professional and semi-professional swimmers in Belarus. The paper tries to contribute both in ontological and epistemological directions, firstly, to better understanding of the processes and trends which take place in the sphere of professional sport in given region and, secondly, to show how the field analysis developed in the context of western societies could be applicable in post-soviet social context to complex analysis of such issue as sport, which found little attention in works of P. Bourdieu. To achieve these purposes the peculiar characteristics of social structure of the field of swimming was articulated based on analysis of the main capitals and its unequal dispersion between social agents in the field. The positions of the swimmers in this structure determine the main sport and post-sport life strategies and trajectories. The author analyses the reasons of sport retirement, specific mechanisms of capital conversions and further life strategies in regard to different positions in sport field. The further elaboration and specification of such notions as sport, swimming, bodily and time capital is given. The claim of the paper is that despite the absence of appropriate state and private material support of the “large” sport and limited possibilities of the utilization of the sport capitals and building post-sport trajectories out of the sphere of sport the athletes are still motivated go in for sport (for profits of non-economic nature) and evaluate their engagement in professional sport as positive. |
| Supervisor | Monterescu Daniel Benno Jacques |
| Department | Sociology MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/bursevich_veranika.pdf |
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