The purpose of this paper is to investigate "sport as a culture" analytically, and to indicate related concepts necessary for building a general theory in sport sociology. In the past, sport as a culture has been reduced to psychological elements and has been argued to exist at the same level as action, material and society on the one hand, or as isolated individual factors on the other. Through the re-ex amination of past theories of culture and sport, "sport as a culture" is reconstructed as a ''sport symbol system". This system is an analytical and hypothetical construct abstracted from concrete phenomena of sport action and products, and presents, a generalized medium for analysis of sport phenomena. In other words, a reality of sport phenomena is recognized, reconstructed and transmitted through the me diation of sport symbol system as a cognitive and control symbol. Based on these conceptualizations, several related concepts, such as need, action, material and society, are re-examined in relation to the sport symbol. Finally, it is proposed that the interrelational system of these re-constructed elements is "sport system".
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