Download - Sports In Brazil

The Editor’s task, with which we were entrusted by the FCDEF, was based on a
relationship marked by personal contacts and successive proofreadings with the
Authors who had been included in the book after the 1993 Symposium. However,
the first step toward the publishing of the book now being presented was taken
in 1992, while the summit conference of the United Nations on the environment
was taking place in Rio de Janeiro. We participated in the organization of the
event, where we also spoke during a conference on environmental education,
and it was during that event that for the first time a global commitment involving
practically all the nations on our planet was formally made.
On that occasion, sport was represented by the IOC, whose spokespersons
were Fekrou Kidane, one of the Authors who will be encountered below, and
Juergen Palm, president of the TAFISA - “Trim and Fitness International Sport for
All Association”, who held a memorable discussion with Maurice Strong, the
Secretary-General of the Conference, on the participation of sport in the
international mobilization for the survival of human life on Earth. It was concluded
in this public meeting that sport would be the perfect environment-friendly partner
for the environmental movement.
On that same day, June 7 th , 1992, the TAFISA invited the citizens of Rio de
Janeiro to take part in an ecological walk, a proposal to which 250 thousand
people responded among ECO-92 participants, members of a great number of
environment-related NGOs - Non-Governmental Organizations, and people in
general. This demonstration was surely one of the largest in the history of sport
in a single event and it contributed to the reinforcement of the image of international
commitment with regard to the protection of nature on a global scale.
However, aside from all the enthusiasm, the 1993 symposium as well as the three
years spent in the production of this book substantiated the ambivalence of sport
vis-à-vis the environment. In fact, sport has been one of the environmentalists’
travel companions at the close of our century. After all, sport activity can be
defined as a general attitude as well as an individual and collective type of awareness
with regard to nature. Nevertheless, sport also plays the role of the villain toward
that selfsame nature when it participates in the latter’s destruction.
The contributions collected in the book reflect this ambivalence of sport and
they conclude by suggesting solutions. In the first chapter, -”The Recovery of the
Meaning”-, the historical background is appropriately established, and is then broken
down into methodological and epistemological propositions regarding the book’s
central theme. The Authors who are present in this first approach have produced
theoretical perspectives, but they examine practical issues in their conclusions.
In the second chapter, which deals with emerging paradigms, there can be
found a description as well as an analysis of those central aspects of sport linked
to the circumstances which associate it with ecology. The Authors of the texts in
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