Abstract
This paper is primarily about sport in the "civilizing process" in Norbert Elias's sense of that term (1939; 1978a; 1982). It is divided into two broad sections which are entitled: (i) Aspects of Time, Space and the Sociology of Sport and (ii) Aspects of Sport in the Civilizing Processes of Western Europe. Section 1 involves a discussion of some complex conceptual, theoretical and methodological issues, together with a critique of the ways in which some historians, philosophers and philosophically-orientated sociologists have conceptualized "space" and "time". This first section both starts and finishes with a consideration of sport-related issues. Section 2 involves an attempt to explain why specifically modern forms of sport developed first of all in England. Light is shed on this issue by means of a comparative and developmental analysis focused on the differential trajectories of state-formation of the emergent nation-states of Western Europe.
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