The conventions of sport clubs: enabling and constraining the implementation of social goods through sport

In order to shed light on the possibilities for using sport as a vehicle for the realization of social goods—understood as sport having a wider social role—this paper scrutinizes Norwegian sport clubs. The study is guided by the concept of convention, which refers to individuals’ cognitive structures, and to social structure. Three sport clubs were investigated and three qualitative methods, including document analysis, observation and interviews, were employed. First, in the results section, the main sport convention is identified as being competitiveness. Secondly, it is argued that as a consequence of the main convention for sport there are limited possibilities for the realization of social goods such as health. The possibilities of sports clubs combining the convention of competitiveness with others is discussed, considering the former as substantial for practice and discussing whether the latter is mere rhetoric.

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