Masters Theses

Date of Award

8-1991

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Human Performance and Sport Studies

Major Professor

William J. Morgan

Committee Members

Mike Lavin, Joy DeSensi

Abstract

The purpose of this study was twofold: the first was to suggest that technical rationality, or instrumental reason, is the leading culprit behind the degradation of sport in contemporary liberal capitalist society. It reorders the goals, logic and rationality of sport away from its internal standards and goods, onto external instrumental standards and goods. This reorintation has resulted in the degradation of the standards of excellence of the life of the athlete, a life constituted by the willing acceptance of gratuitous difficulties.

The second purpose of this study was to focus on the effect of technical rationality on liberal democracy's ability to maintain a diverse society. It was argued that liberal society has allowed the goals and rationality of the market to seep into social practices like sport, to the extent that these practices all speak the same language of external goods. The result has been that liberal society is unable to offer the kind of diversity that it prides itself on. To reverse this anti-pluralistic trend, it was suggested that practitioners ought to locate democratically a consensus on the contingent ideals of their practice, and artfully re-draw the social map so as to protect sport from undue market influence. Practitioner generated protection V was argued to further both the ideals and goals of social practices, and the diversity that liberal society prides itself on offering.

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