Sport Violence In Sports

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In the Oxford dictionary the term ‘Sport’ is defined as ‘An activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment and violence as behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something’. (The OXFORD DICTIONARY) Clearly, in both definition a physical exertion against someone is used. It is a fact that throughout history, sport violence has always been a subject that science has underestimated. According to Michael Smith: ‘violence in sport is the spectrum of academic disciplines from anatomy to zoology’.( Seminar of Violence and Sport 1983) What this means is that science has always given a superficial look of how violence is really…show more content…
That is largely due to the fact that, it is really important before finding the appropriate definition of ‘sports violence’, to differentiate ‘violence’ and ‘aggression’. Coakley and Donnelly have defined ‘aggression’ as: a ‘verbal or physical action grounded in an intent to dominate, control or do harm to another person”. (2009:187-188) While ‘violence’ is understood by them as ‘the use of excessive physical force which can or could cause harm or destruction’ to another. (2009:187-188). This approach is not large enough to have clearer understanding, leaving the reader with a lot of contradictions and ambiguities. In fact, shouldn’t violence in sport be consider punishable if causing harm to another? This explanation of ‘violence’ does not consider the ‘illegal’ side of the action or the disapprovment of the person involved. Let me explain. If problems of violence and aggression are present at a societal level, meaning at all levels of society and its common use not being rejected by people, this could be easily compared to anarchy or extreme overconformity used by the…show more content…
We can further conclude, that there are various theories of violence that can be used to explain the behavioural problems in the sports’ environments. Having looked more in deepth we can see that athletes can be affected by the physiological and psychological behaviours but can also be socially influenced. In sports violence, we can find: direct acts of physical violence contained within or outside the rules of the game that can result in injury to persons, harmful or potentially harmful acts conducted in the context of sports that threaten or produce injury or that can violate human reactions. Finally, as stated by the respected sociologist in sport Jay Coakley: ‘aggression originates in some combination of frustration coupled with anger opportunities stimulus cues and social support or strategies used by athletes and encouraged by parents, cultures, spectators and sponsors. Intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group of community, that either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psycological harm or deprivation’(I.J Coakley
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