Practicing Children

Abstract

In Denmark, children’s sports are organized in voluntary associations. This article addresses two recreational sites: a volunteer gymnastics association and a capoeira school. Whereas gymnastics associations are embedded in Danish movement culture, the capoeira school is a new, exotic import. Debates construe volunteer associations as more democratic and thus more moral socialization sites than privately run schools. To explore relations between children and sport, the sociality of gymnastics and capoeira, which differ in recruitment and age organization, is contrasted. Children join gymnastics through family and school relations, whereas children who start capoeira are inspired by videos. In a neighborhood dominated by age-graded sports, the capoeira school opens an age-integrated domain for sport practice. The author argues that gymnastics sociality creates an identity space for consuming sport as a “child,” whereas the capoeira school creates an identity space for being consumed by sport as “ capoeiristas.”