Sogawa, T. Paper : Cultural Anthropology Ethnic Sport, its Concept and Research Perspectives Tsuneo Sogawa * *Faculty of Sport Sciences, Waseda University 2-579-15, Mikajima, Tokorozawa, Saitama 359-1192 Japan
[email protected] [Received April 21, 2006 ; Accepted May 25, 2006] The present paper discusses a concept of "ethnic sport" and its research perspectives. Ethnic sport means the play and games which are practiced by a fi xed ethnic group or in a fi xed society, and relates more or less to the traditional culture, so contributes to identity building. Ethnic sport therefore looks to the ethnicity, and faces international sport such as the Olympics which looks to global standardization. However both were invented or discovered equally in the huge globalization current of the last two centuries. Ethnic sport has been studied from the different ethnological or cultural- anthropological theoretical models such as evolutionalism, diffusionalism, acculturation, structural-functionalism, symbolism and so on. Recently approaches from identity, tourism, ethnoscience body theory have attracted scholars. Keywords: ethnic sport, international sport, identity [International Journal of Sport and Health Science Vol.4, 96-102, 2006] The purpose of this study is to clarify the concept during the rice-growing season and serves as a prayer of ethnic sports and discuss the research perspectives to the Dragon, the god of water2) ; c) the swinging, that ethnic sport provides. an event held during the Tuan wu festival in Korea in which women compete to see how high they 1. The Concept of Ethnic Sport can swing on 10-meter-long swings. Competitions for this sport are held in North Korea and among Ethnic sport is a general concept for those sports Koreans in China3); d) the big tug of war in Okinawa, that are related more or less to the traditional culture Japan, performed annually from July to September.