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Embodying citizenship: children's spatial and bodily experience in a football club academy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

Caterina Satta
Caterina Satta*
Affiliation:
Department of Humanities, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy
*
∗Email: sattacaterina@gmail.com
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Abstract

In Western countries children's identities have been constructed through their bodies and the different meanings attached to them. Children's bodies are central to defining their social and spatial position in the city. They are in fact, more than any other group, subjected to a set of spatial bans and prohibitions that confine them within places specifically targeted at them during their free time (i.e. recreational, ludic and sports organisations). One of the recreational activities most commonly engaged in by Italian children is sport. However, little is known about children's approach to sporting activities. What is proposed here is that the site of children's involvement in sport is a valuable key for the observation of the ambiguous construction of children's citizenship through spatial borders and body training. Based on a long-term ethnographic study of the Cagliari football club academy for children, and informed by the new sociology of childhood approach, this article investigates the role of organised sport contexts in the urban generational order. The conclusions stress the contradiction detectable in a structured football club academy as a site that, on the one hand, promotes children's rights to play and, on the other, restricts their substantive citizenship within the public space.

Nei paesi occidentali l'identità dei bambini è stata storicamente costruita attraverso il loro corpo e i diversi significati ad esso attribuiti. I corpi dei bambini sono fondamentali per definire la loro posizione sociale e spaziale nella città. Essi sono infatti, più di ogni altro gruppo sociale, sottoposti a una serie di divieti spaziali e di limiti che li confinano all'interno di luoghi specificamente destinati a loro durante il tempo libero (ad es. organizzazioni sportive, ludiche e ricreative).

Una delle attività extrascolastiche più comunemente praticata dai bambini italiani è quella sportiva, tuttavia poco si sa di come essi vivono il loro coinvolgimento nello sport. L'ambito sportivo può essere quindi una chiave d'accesso preziosa per l'osservazione dell'ambigua costruzione della cittadinanza dei bambini svolta attraverso una regolazione spaziale e uńeducazione corporea.

Sulla base di uno studio etnografico a lungo termine presso la scuola calcio del Cagliari Calcio, e adottando la prospettiva della nuova sociologia dell'infanzia, questo articolo indaga il ruolo dei contesti sportivi organizzati all'interno dell'ordine generazionale urbano. Le conclusioni evidenziano le contraddizioni rilevabili in uno spazio “per bambini” che, se da un lato, promuove il loro diritto al gioco, dall'altro, limita l'attuazione di una loro cittadinanza sostanziale all'interno dello spazio pubblico.

Keywords

childrensporteducationbodycitizenship
Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , August 2015 , pp. 273 - 284
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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