The Role of Sport in Health-Related Promotion of Physical Activity: The Perspective of the Health System

Michelini, Enrico

Enrico Michelini illustrates that sport plays a very marginal role in the contemporary health promotion. This is the main result of the present analysis of national strategies for the promotion of physical activity issued by the health ministries of France, Germany, and Italy. All these health-strategies are rather ambiguous on this subject: They mention sport systematically as an abstract term, but they marginalise it as a medium of health in its traditional-competitive form. As a consequence, while sport has generally been considered healthy over a long period in the past, most health organisations today recommend only moderate physical activity as conducive to good health. The author examines this paradigmatic change in the international discussion about the forms of health-enhancing physical activity through a theoretical framework based on Luhmann’s systems theory.

Details

Published by: Springer VS

Publication Date: 2014-12-04

Format: Paperback

ISBN-13: 9783658081874

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-658-08188-1

Dimensions: 210cm x148cm

Pages: 198