Building a motor habitus: Physical education in the Portuguese Estado Novo

Abstract

The physical education model implemented by the Portuguese Estado Novo regime (1933—74), a specific adaptation of European models of physical education, aimed to train the ‘body’ and oversee the movements of athletes and students. This model intended to impose, through the action of state institutions, a practice that led to the creation of what is referred to in this article as an official motor habitus. Founded on an ideological basis, this state-controlled ideal type of bodily performance aspired ultimately to regulate all social phenomena that influence the production of sporting movements. Based on the works of the most relevant theoreticians of the Portuguese physical education model in this period, this article will analyse the ideological conception of an orthodox model of physical education that was a particular product of ‘state reasoning’.