Ritualization in sport

Abstract

The presence of rituals in sports is a widely known phenomenon.
Ritual samples describe both the playful core of sport and its
events. Also, sport is often compared with religion, especially with
its ceremonial style, formalized manner of behaviour and feast tension.
Sport and religion are very close, not only by their formal similarity,
but also exactly by the ritual function. Drawing on the common
cultural and anthropological basis of so different but comparable
phenomena of religion and sport, the lecture will try, on the basis
of anthropological analysis, to highlight the three segments: ludic
shaping (expressive function), sport as a ritual system (transformative
function) and sport as a ritualized emotion (aesthetic function).
Finally, the lecture is going to answer the question: Does sport provide
substitute rites for today’s society and doesn’t sport offer itself, by
its ritual structure, vigour and emotion, as a “post-modern religion”?