The Position of Sport in the Theories of Quality of Life

Abstract

The term and the conception of "Quality of Life" have originated in the increasing gravity of the economic and the general crisis of capitalism in the late sixties as an answer to the appearing "limits to growth".

The scientific nucleus of this conception lies in the recognition of the indispensable integration of quantitative and qualitative growth of social living conditions (connection between living standard and quality of life). But as a re sult of its genesis as a bourgeois respectively as a social democratic reform concep tion it has specific scientific and political limits.

But if the theory and the conception of quality of life could be severed from their idealistic premises (assumption of general-humanistic aims, abstraction of politico-economic pre-conditions and of tying up to class interests) and could be approximated to the marxist theory of way of life and theorie of culture, they might become very scientifically fruitful and practically significant. This is particularly right:

— for the suspension of the mutual isolation of the different spheres of Life as work, everyday life, culture, leisure time etc.;

— for the theoretical and practical generation of the connection between the spheres of production and culture: improvement of quality of life as a demo cratic and humanistic reform of all spheres of life of the working class on the basis of a democratic and (with reference to the interests of the working people) efficient development of the production sphere;

— for the recognition of the dependence of progress in all spheres of quality of life on the political activity of the working class and its organizations as well as on the connection between quantitative aims (individual consumption, wages) and qualitative aims (social consumption, education, social influence and co-deter mination of the working class).

The social position of sport has hardly been discussed in the framework of the theories of quality of life and of culture up to now. But for the theories of sport as well follow substantial new points of view by its incorporation

— into a concept of quality of life, which makes possible the connection between quantitative expansion of existing needs and living conditions of the working people and their qualitative enlargement and higher development, and;

— into a concept of culture, which comprehends culture as historical- and social-specific, individual and active appropriaition of the natural and social environment and which realizes the valuation of the social importance of particu lar cultural activities (as for example sport) not for itself out of its position within the entire life activity.

By means of this incorporation of the theory of sport the politico-economic foundations of sport, the historically given social, institutional and substantial structures of the sport system and aims for the reform of sport can be realized more comprehensively and more differentiatedly.