Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective1
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Sport und Gesellschaft – Sport and Society Jahrgang 7 (2010), Heft 3, S. 191 - 212
© Lucius & Lucius Verlag Stuttgart
Kristina Brümmer
Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science
from a Praxeological Perspective1
Handeln und Praxis: Eine praxeologische Annäherung an sportwis-
senschaftliche Konzepte
Summary
The article aims at addressing a sport sociological research desideratum: the question of acting in sport.
So far, this question has mainly been dealt with in human kinetics and sport psychology. Here, action
theories refer to action as a rational-reflective and individual phenomenon whose cognitive and
ideational foundations must be given particular attention. Recently, however, the focus has begun to be
shifted to embodied, pre-reflective, and relational dimensions of action in these sub-disciplines of sport
science. Similar reorientations can be observed in sociology, where the mentalism and individualism
inherent in action theories is undermined by practice theories emphasizing the bodily, tacit, and
collective properties of practice. Practice theories promise additional advances and insights into
practical action in sport insofar as they explicitly take into account dimensions of practice widely
abstracted from by approaches of human kinetics and sport psychology. By means of a praxeological
reflection of the existing approaches to action in sport, the article identifies their blind spots and
presents initial ideas for overcoming them.
Zusammenfassung
Der Artikel versucht eine Annäherung an ein sportsoziologisches Forschungsdesiderat: die Frage, wie
im Sport gehandelt wird. Zum Gegenstand wird diese bislang hauptsächlich in Bewegungswissenschaft
und Sportpsychologie, in denen Handlungstheorien sportliches Handeln als ein rational- reflexives und
individuelles Phänomen ins Feld geführt haben, dessen psychische und insbesondere auch kognitive
Grundlagen von entscheidender Bedeutung und zentralem Interesse seien. Unlängst verschiebt sich die
Aufmerksamkeit hier jedoch auf verkörperte, vorbewusste und z.T. auch relationale Qualitäten und
Voraussetzungen des Handelns. Ähnliche Umorientierungen sind in der Soziologie zu beobachten: Der
handlungstheoretische Mentalismus und Individualismus wird von Praxistheorien hinterfragt und die
körperlichen, impliziten und kollektiven Dimensionen von Praxis hervorgehoben. Für eine Modellie-
rung des Handelns im Sport versprechen diese Theorien Erkenntnisgewinne, da sie Merkmale prakti-
schen Handelns in Anschlag bringen, die in bewegungswissenschaftlichen und sportpsychologischen
Ansätzen außer Acht gelassen werden. Durch eine praxeologische Reflexion der Konzepte zum Han-
deln im Sport werden deren blinde Flecken offengelegt und erste Überlegungen zur Behebung dieser
skizziert.
1
This article is the result of an oral presentation given at the 14th annual ECSS congress in Oslo 2009.
My thanks go to Volker Lippens for the invitation to present and to the Faculty IV – School of
Humanities and Social Sciences at the Carl-von-Ossietzky University of Oldenburg and the Univer-
sitätsgesellschaft Oldenburg (UGO) for their financial support.192 Kristina Brümmer
1 Introduction
It is more than difficult to find a generally accepted definition of ”sport”. In the
plurality of different propositions and contributions, one feature of sport is widely
met with approval, though: Sport constitutively depends on physical activity and
skilled motion performed by at least one individual. In sport science, the question of
how individuals act, i.e. behave and interact with their environment or other actors in
a meaningful and purposeful manner, mainly falls within the scope of its sub-
disciplines of human kinetics and sport psychology. In the sociology of sport, howev-
er, theoretical approaches to the question of how sport is actually ”done” have been
scarce until today. The skills and capacities involved in the performing of sport have
remained to be considered from a sociological perspective.2 By way of contrast,
sport’s economic, political, institutional and organizational conditions and regulations
have attracted major sport sociological interest, resulting in a large corpus of informa-
tion about the macrostructures of sport and their development (cf. Alkemeyer, 2006).
As a reaction to this theoretical imbalance, the article seeks to fathom perspectives as
to the ways in which the principles and conditions of meaningful activity and versed
interaction in sport might potentially be approximated from a sociological point of
view. For this purpose, the article unfolds in five steps. The first one serves the com-
pilation of characteristics of action in sport by dint of action theories, which – for a
certain amount of time – had been held in high esteem in human kinetics and sport
psychology.3 Here, action is conceptualized as the intentional behavior of a single ac-
tor who anticipates his or her doings by activating knowledge and generating mental
plans. Action is traced back to different psychic and in large part cognitive operations
not only preceding, but also accompanying and succeeding its execution. In contrast
with these ideational processes, the material – bodily-practical – dimension of the ac-
tion’s execution is attributed the status of a mere epiphenomenon and only devoted
marginal interest. Especially for the last two decades, however, this understanding has
been criticized for its individualistic, rational-reflective bias and its inadequacy to pro-
vide cogent explanations for the practical coping with sport-specific situations. In
many different sports, actors have to deal with complex and contingent situations
characterized by a significant amount of information to be processed. Moreover,
these often have to be mastered under time pressure and with co-actors or artefacts
involved. The intentions and activities of these can hardly ever be predicted entirely
by the actor. It seems more than obvious that in boxing or football, for example, the
2
In consideration of the fact that ever since the birth of its mother science – sociology –, the phe-
nomenon of human action has attracted major micro-sociological interest, this shortcoming is par-
ticularly astonishing.
3
These will mainly be exemplified by Jürgen Nitsch’s framework, which different handbooks and in-
troductions to human kinetics and sport psychology consider to be one of the most prominent rep-
resentatives of action theory (cf. e.g. Roth & Willimczik, 1999; Tietjens & Strauß, 2006).Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 193
successful execution of a counter-attack must not be preceded by time-consuming
planning- or thinking-processes, if it is not to be bereaved of its moment of surprise
and effectiveness. The capacity of acting quickly without deliberating rather seems to
draw on skills which defy individual deliberate control and which are marginalized by
traditional action approaches.4 By virtue of this neglect, secondly, the action-
theoretical assumptions will be supplemented by more recent ”alternative” frame-
works which invoke pre-reflective and embodied skills to be irreducible pillars for
meaningful activity in sport.
Thirdly, sociological practice theories will be consulted. These constitute an alterna-
tive theoretical corpus addressing the phenomenon of versed practical activity and re-
frain from hegemonic approaches to action5 by elucidating its collective, non-
conscious and non-reflective mechanisms as well as the fundamental contribution of
the socialized body’s intelligence. Practice theories thus seem to be indispensable
sources of information to approach the question of how individuals in general or ath-
letes more specifically act and interact. What is more, they may contribute to addi-
tional advances and yield new insights insofar as they take into consideration the so-
cial dimensions of practice largely neglected by concepts originating from human ki-
netics or sport psychology. Fourthly, the practice theories will be utilized as critical in-
stances helping to detect blind spots and desiderata in the approaches to action in
sport and to provide ideas in terms of the addressing of those. Based on this proce-
dure, the article aims at presenting some first theoretical and methodological ideas
which might help calibrating the eye for approaching the problem of how sport is ac-
tually done from a sociologically informed perspective. In the conclusion, the ques-
tion is addressed why in different academic disciplines – among these sociology and
sport science – attention is increasingly directed to ”alternative” forms of knowledge6
and with that to ideas and thought styles of which the established scientific main-
stream had been negligent for a long time. Relating to the theory of reflexive moder-
nization, ultimately, the reasons for this shift of focus and the conditions of the redis-
covery and rehabilitation of long forgotten theoretical traditions are explored and eli-
cited.
4
Even though these capacities are not only essential for acting under time pressure, their constitutive
contribution is particularly obvious in this condition.
5
Similarly to the fields of human kinetics and sport psychology, hegemonic sociological approaches
to action – as e.g. these of Weber or Schütz – are characterized by an inherent cognitivism and indi-
vidualism and largely neglect the material dimension of the action’s bodily execution (cf. Reckwitz,
2004).
6
For an overview and systematization of different concepts of knowledge see Brümmer (2009).194 Kristina Brümmer
2 The Action-Theoretical Perspective on Sport
During the heyday of behaviorism, psychological concepts tended to model human
activity in terms of a causal stimulus-response-relation. In the 1960s, however, the
behaviorist tradition was superseded by divergent conceptualizations of the human.
From then onwards, the linear relation of stimulus and response was understood as
being decoupled by a number of intervening internal and subjective mental processes
(cf. Miller, Galanter & Pribram, 1960). This cognitive turn was brought to German
sport science by the psychologist Gerhard Kaminski and rendered fruitful for the ex-
planation of sportive phenomena in the 1970s. In a pioneering article published in
1972, Kaminski made an effort to uncover athletes’ cognitive data and internal
processes occurring during skiing and its acquisition. He paved the way for current
action theories, which still primarily discuss action with regard to its psychic organiza-
tion and mental structuring and define it as a special case of behavior organized by
means of subjective intentions. In anthropological terms, this understanding presup-
poses a self-determined and rational-reflective subject disposing of ”an at least partial
autonomy” (Nitsch, 2004, p. 11) and acting on the environment in a conscious and
purposeful manner (cf. Roth & Hossner, 1999, pp. 131 f.). From this perspective, ac-
tivities are classified as target-oriented and meaningful actions under the condition
that their manifest execution is preceded, accompanied and followed by a number of
different anticipatory, regulatory and evaluative internal processes.
As one of the most prominent representatives of the action-theoretical approach in
sport science, Jürgen Nitsch (1986, p.189) aims at discovering ”the ’logic’ of human
action, i.e. the principles underlying the motivation, planning, execution, evaluation
and modification of actions”7. He analyses motor actions according to their ”triadic
structure”, under which he subsumes the three interdependent phases of the action’s
anticipation, realization and interpretation.8 Influenced by psychic states and
processes as emotions and motivations, the phase of anticipation is characterized by
the formation of intentions, the visualization of different alternatives and the ultimate
decision for the most promising one. By means of consulting prior knowledge and
taking into consideration perceived situational characteristics and features of the so-
cial and material context, the action’s aim and purpose are specified and the motor ac-
tivity planned in advance. In the subsequent phase of realization, the thus constituted
plan is implemented. Finally, the third – interpretative – phase serves the purpose of
7
All direct quotations of German texts were translated into English by the author.
8
Nitsch seizes the notion of an action to comprise different stages as introduced by the model of the
rubicon. According to this, during the pre-decisional phase, intentions are formed and the decision to
act is made. This decision represents the passing of the rubicon and the transition to the pre-actional
phase in which a plan is constituted to specify the way for the decision to be implemented. During
the actional phase, the previously generated plan is realized and the action initiated before the post-
actional phase terminates the action by evaluating it (cf. Heckhausen, 1989).Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 195
comparing the action’s anticipation to its actual effect and hereby evaluating the ac-
tion. Furthermore, this phase provides the basis for the generation of new stocks of
knowledge promoting the more adequate planning and the more precise anticipation
of future actions (cf. Nitsch, 2004).
Although Nitsch argues that each action involves different – emotional, automatic
and cognitive – regulatory systems as well as complex ”processes of perception,
thought, memory, emotion, motivation and volition” (ibid., p. 13) partially lying
beyond conscious control9, the functions accredited pivotal importance for an ac-
tion’s organization within his framework are of a conscious and cognitive kind.10 The
mind is taken to endow an activity with purpose, meaning and intentionality and ap-
pears as the primary instance to ensure an action’s success especially under non-
stereotypical, complex and variable conditions (cf. ibid., p. 21). Even though it seems
obvious that independently of their bodily materializations, actions would be nothing
but mental images, the aspect of their practical realization remains largely disregarded.
Implicitly at least, the body is merely attributed the status of an instrument delegated
by the mind, executing pre-actional plans, knowledge and subjective intentions, i.e.
incarnating mental representations.
3 Alternative Perspectives on the Doing of Sport
Especially for the last couple of years, the action theories’ assumptions have been
challenged by the emergence of approaches which call into question the conceptuali-
zation of action as the material and visual result of internal processes located primarily
in an individual’s conscious mind. As many other academic disciplines, the fields of
human kinetics and sport psychology have witnessed a development in the course of
which tacit, intuitive and embodied skills as well as non-individual and non-plannable
properties of action have increasingly been paid attention to. This shift, whose central
9
Action theories concede that knowledge about an action needs not be consciously available during
the execution entirely. Due to automation processes, declarative knowledge gets proceduralized
through habituation and turns into an action’s implicit foundation. Especially for the coping with
new and complex situations, however, declarative knowledge and conscious moments are consi-
dered indispensable (cf. Nitsch, 2004, p. 21). Explicit knowledge is hence attributed priority com-
pared to implicit knowledge. See Anderson (2000, pp. 319 f.) for further details about knowledge
proceduralization.
10
”Beyond any doubt”, Nitsch (2004, p. 21) maintains, ”consciousness plays an outstanding role in
human action regulation.” He further distinguishes between a causal and a functional understanding
of cognitions and states that for the adequate analysis of an action, the interpretation of its causes
should be supplemented by a reflection on its functions. This entails the methodological demand to
pay specific attention to the actor’s subjective perspective: ”The analysis of the subjective argumen-
tation structures […] therefore becomes the quintessence of an action’s analysis.” (ibid., p. 19) Cor-
respondingly, the explanation of acting within a collective – e.g. in a sports team – also centers on
psychic processes of individual actors.196 Kristina Brümmer
themes and postulations will be clarified in the subsequent chapters, indicates an in-
ter- and inner-disciplinary reaction to the traditional action theories’ reductionist Car-
tesian stance.
3.1 Decisions, Heuristics and Intuitions
The sport psychologist Markus Raab and his fellow researchers put the necessity of
elaborate deliberations and planning processes for versed action in sport into stark
perspective by emphasizing the moment of the intuitive. Based on different empirical
studies, they claim that contemplating different potential options by means of elabo-
rate deliberations processing the totality of contextual information available can have
a detrimental effect on decisional processes and action. Rather, athletes appear to
make more consistent and appropriate decisions when following intuitive ideas, i.e.
the first option coming to their minds. So-called ”heuristics”, which are the result of
practical experience, make up the intuitions’ foundation. In accordance with Herbert
Simon’s concept of ”bounded rationality”, these are defined as simple rules to govern
the search for information and as simple decisional algorithms to process it (cf.
Gröschner & Raab, 2006; Raab, 2003). Heuristics serve the function of extracting the
most relevant information from the environment and condense them in a way that
the athlete is – almost immediately – enabled to identify the contextually most ade-
quate way to act (cf. Gigerenzer, 2007, pp. 46 ff.). They are particularly relevant for
dexterous action in sport games as handball or football whose constellations – due to
the involvement of different actors and artefacts – are very tight and characterized by
informational complexities that have to be dealt with under time pressure.
Johnson & Raab (2003) exemplify the importance of the so-called ”Take-the-First-
Heuristic”, which underlies the intuitive mode of acting and deciding, by a study on
handball.11 Reassessing the action theories’ hypothesis that versed action in sport pre-
supposes several mental processes, such as the making of decisions and plans or the
processing of extensive information, players were confronted with a video sequence
of a handball-match which was stopped at a particular point. The players were then
asked to give an immediate, i.e. intuitive statement about the action they would
execute if they were involved in the game. In a second experiment, the test persons
were exposed to a video sequence again. This time, they were asked to contemplate
the freeze frame attentively and after compiling as many options as possible give their
perspective on the best action: forty per cent of the test persons in the second round
voted for an action diverging from their intuitive judgment. After surveying the test
persons’ decisions, these were evaluated by professional trainers, yielding the result
that the intuitive choices were on average judged as more promising and successful
than those which had been made after careful considerations of diverse alternatives.
11
For a description of the so-called ”Take-the-Best-Heuristic”, which players use when relying on one
satisfying reason or the best cue respectively, see Gröschner & Raab (2006) and Raab (2003).Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 197
In different studies, Raab and colleagues reveal that pre-actional decisions can be
conceptualized in terms of heuristic models and intuitions. Especially for contexts
which from the outset do not leave any time for an extensive contemplation of alter-
natives and processing of information, these concepts are of major explanatory value.
3.2 Priming and Tacit Knowledge
Even though experienced athletes are usually capable of dealing with complex situa-
tions instantaneously and appropriately, many of them fail to verbally provide any
knowledge or explanations for their intelligent doings and prove to be virtually
speechless about their practical expertise. In order to account for this empirical phe-
nomenon of athletes appearing to ”know more than [they] can tell” (Polanyi, 1967, p.
4)12, Armin Kibele formulated the theoretical concept of ”movement priming” to ac-
count for these phenomena (cf. Kibele, 2002). It exceeds the explanations of Raab
and colleagues insofar as it sheds light on the neuro-physiological and cognitive-
psychological mechanisms underlying the intuitive and implicit mode of acting de-
scribed.
Kibele’s framework builds on three theoretical pillars and starts from the postulation
of an implicit perceptual memory system called ”priming”13. By acting in a particular
learning environment or context, its characteristics and stimuli configurations are
stored in this memory system as consciously inaccessible perceptual representations.14
These perceptual representations are – secondly – coupled and commonly coded with
motor representations through continuous practice in a given field or surrounding,
resulting in the formation of action representations.15 The more frequently an actor
responds to a certain array of visual stimuli in a particular way, the stronger the un-
conscious coupling grows. Thirdly, Kibele elucidates the possibility of perceptual sti-
muli being processed in a temporally very economic way without the actor gaining an
awareness of this. Due to a functional differentiation of the visual cortex, stimuli may
12
In his book The Tacit Dimension (1967), the philosopher Michael Polanyi maintains that skillful action
may not be linearly traced back to explicit knowledge. It draws on tacit and embodied stocks of
knowledge instead which are only deficiently to be verbalized, resulting in the described phenome-
non. In contrast with the proceduralization-thesis (see footnote 9), he assumes that tacit knowledge
is not to be considered the unconscious result of an originally declarative knowledge. Rather, it is
thought to be acquired implicitly and of a tacit character from the very beginning of a learning
process.
13
For further information see Tulving & Schacter (1990).
14
According to Kibele (2001), this memory system represents the basis of implicit learning processes.
See e.g. Masters, Poolton, Maxwell & Raab (2008) for further information on implicit motor learn-
ing.
15
For further information see Prinz’ theory of common-coding (1997), which promotes a co-variation
of action and perception by postulating that actions are coded in terms of their perceivable effects.198 Kristina Brümmer
be processed via two different streams, dorsal or ventral.16 Procession via the faster
dorsal stream allows for stimuli to activate perceptual representations which had been
implicitly acquired during prior practice without expanding into conscious experience.
The neuronal coupling then allows for the activation of the respective motor struc-
tures and for the immediate induction of a motor response that proved appropriate in
the past. This occurs without any mediatory acts of consciousness, volition, or cogni-
tion, and constitutes the basis of the athletes’ tacit expertise as well as the observed
dissociation of intelligent acting and the apparent lack of explicit knowledge.
3.3 Feeling of Movement, Affordances and Emergence
As illustrated, different investigations from sport psychology and human kinetics call
into question the indispensability of conscious voluntary and decisional processes for
versed action in sport. Apart from these, phenomenologically and ecologically
oriented approaches eschew the action theories’ inclination of privileging and priva-
tizing the mind. While the phenomenological approaches take into account the im-
portance of embodied and sensual capacities impinging on an action’s regulation and
realization, the ecological approaches emphasize its emergent, situational and rela-
tional – hence non-individual and non-private – properties by distributing actions
across different persons, artefacts and settings.
As a representative of psychologically and phenomenologically oriented approaches in
the science of human movement, Volker Lippens claims that athletes regulate and
evaluate their doings by dint of ”subjective theories”. He defines these as conglome-
rations of explicit stocks of objective knowledge and subjective hypotheses and heu-
ristics which are largely implicit and the result of practical training processes and per-
sonal experience. Especially with athletes who have reached the level of expertise,
implicit and emotional-sensual components constitute the subjective theories’ preva-
lent elements. On enquiry, rather than only expatiating upon objective rules and rea-
sons or plans for their doings, many experienced athletes maintain to have a ”feeling
of movement”17 which arises from a plurality of subjective sensations, bodily impres-
sions and perceptions serving as a prominent reference value for their doings (cf.
Lippens, 1997; 2004). This phenomenal emanation and feeling is configured during
the practical coping with a variety of field-specific situations in the training process
and plays a vital role in the immediate regulation of an action and the immediate de-
tection of mistakes in situ (cf. Hebbel-Seeger & Lippens, 1995). Against the back-
ground of these findings, Lippens arrives at the conclusion that embodied, sensual
and implicit skills are at least equally important for successful action in sport and by
16
For further information see Neumann, Ansorge & Klotz (1998).
17
Many trainers, too, consider this feeling to be an essential factor for an action’s situational regulation
(cf. Roth, 1996).Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 199
no means of solely subsidiary relevance as compared with cognitive regulatory
processes.
Based on a survey on the nature of skill in cricket, the philosopher and phenomenol-
ogist John Sutton seeks to explore the relationship of memory, knowledge and
thought in athletic expertise. He describes batting in cricket as ”a form of regulated
improvisation under (what can be) severe time constraints” (Sutton, 2007, p. 764)
which challenges players to act instantaneously and in a flexible and minutely adapta-
ble way. What is more, these conditions require an anticipation of future develop-
ments instead of a mere concentration on present situations. Given these circum-
stances, Sutton believes that explicit knowledge and memory as well as time-
consuming deliberations mediated by internal mental representations can hardly be
taken to be the foundations of skillful action. Instead of dichotomizing doing and
thinking, though, he stresses that through continuous practical training athletes de-
velop a ”kinesthetic awareness” (ibid., p. 775) and ”mindful body”18 (ibid., p. 776)
which allow them not only to act flexibly under time constraints and to situationally
adapt their actions to diverse environmental conditions, but also to practically reflect
upon their doings. Sutton states that concentration, mental focus and thought do nei-
ther causally effect practical expertise and skill nor interfere or oppose it. The notion
of the embodied mind in Sutton’s terms consolidates the idea that cognition, deci-
sions, thoughts and intentions concur with embodied and kinesthetic capacities. By
assuming that these are situated and embedded in the skill, Sutton suggests a theoreti-
cal alternative avoiding the perpetuation of a reductionist understanding of skillful ac-
tion in sport.
In recent years, the ecological approach to perception and action, originally intro-
duced by the psychologist James J. Gibson (1979), has been increasingly incorporated
into sport psychology and human kinetics as a further alternative view on decision-
making and acting in sport (cf. Araújo, Davids & Hristovski, 2006; Davids, Button,
Araújo, Renshaw & Hristovski, 2006). With its core concepts of affordances, which
are defined as environmental features or qualities allowing suitably equipped subjects
to perform an action19, the ecological approach promotes a broadened and rigidly
anti-cognitivistic and anti-individualistic understanding of human activity. By assum-
ing a mutuality and reciprocity of performer and environment, perception, action and
decision-making behavior are not viewed as the result of individual capacities or in-
18
Contrarily to concepts of cognition psychology, as for example approaches to ”embodied cogni-
tion” (cf. e.g. Wilson, 2002) which claim that human cognition depends on physical states and bodi-
ly processes, Sutton emphasizes that bodily skills are suffused with cognition and intelligence. In-
stead of only discussing the body as one factor that influences cognition among others, cognitive
processes are defined as constituents of the bodily-practical action.
19
More accurately, affordances should therefore not be qualified as properties of the environment, but
as features of the organism-environment-system (cf. Good, 2007; Stoffregen, 2004). Affordances
are not objectively given, but exist only in relation to the perceiver’s capacities.200 Kristina Brümmer
ternal representations.20 They are understood to emerge from and to be embedded in
the practical interaction of individuals with their environments and the constraints
existing there. Amplifying the ecological by a systems perspective, Davids, Button,
Araújo, Renshaw & Hristovski (2006) argue that movement coordination in sport,
too, should be described and examined as an emergent behavior which self-organizes
under informative constraints. Thus, ”intentions, decisions or actions may be con-
ceived of as emergent, self-organizing, macroscopic patterns formed as individuals
adapt to the ecological constraints of their environments” (ibid., p. 77). From this
perspective, decisions and actions in sport are always jointly produced and not made
or planned in advance, but rather under constant situational regulation in the course
of an individual’s interaction with the environment.
By emphasizing not only the intuitive, tacit and bodily dimensions of human activity
in sport, but also its relational, situational and emergent properties, the development
of the frameworks above mentioned may be interpreted as the initiation of an anti-
cognitivistic and to some extent also anti-individualistic reversal of trend in human
kinetics and sport psychology. In order for these different – and partially even con-
flicting – alternative concepts to finally terminate the action theories’ aftermath, how-
ever, much further theoretical and empirical research will be required.
4 The Praxeological Perspective
The cognitivistic paradigm can not only be found in human kinetics and sport psy-
chology, but also permeates the field of sociology. Yet, in sociology, it has come un-
der more systematic fire for its reductionist stance, hitting its peak with the proclama-
tion of a paradigm-shift labeled ”practice turn” (Schatzki, Knorr Cetina & v. Savigny,
2001). This turn features the emergence of a heterogeneous corpus of practice theo-
ries, which have meanwhile been consolidated into and acknowledged as a serious al-
ternative approach to human activity. Differences between action and practice theo-
ries primarily concern the level of analysis. Action theories are mainly concerned with
the discovery of the internal processes which allegedly endow an action with meaning
and intentionality and are located in an individual’s mind. As opposed to this, practice
theories define and examine practices as observable and public ”embodied, materially
mediated arrays of human activity centrally organized around shared practical under-
standing” (Schatzki, 2001, p. 2). They dedicate primary attention to these very
practices of which they assume that actors get entangled in as participants. Practices
20
It is commonly agreed upon the fact that the traditional cognitivistic notion of representations only
takes a subordinate role within the scope of the ecological perspective (cf. Araújo, Davids & Hris-
tovski., 2006). Whether or not the existence of internal representations should be dismissed alto-
gether – as Gibson suggests – has remained an open question. Jacob & Jeannerod (2003, pp. 177
ff.), for example, argue for so-called visuomotor representations – representations with non-
conceptual content – to play a crucial action-guiding role.Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 201
are not defined as individual performances initiated by single actors, but are consi-
dered to be emergent events involving and embracing different human as well as non-
human entities, their doings, sayings and interactions, and to take place ”in between”
them (cf. Latour, 2007).21 Within the scope of the praxeological paradigm, some ap-
proaches aim at unveiling the conditions of the possibility for an actor to participate
in a practice. While neither Schatzki nor Latour reflect on these prerequisites, other
conceptions acknowledge that actors are always equipped with certain competences
and inclinations – a bundle of socially acquired dispositions – which influence wheth-
er they may get entwined in a practice or not (cf. Bourdieu, 1987; Alkemeyer, 2009).22
To the extent that individuals actually get involved, they participate in the knowledge
and practical understanding that hold the practice together and circulate between its
participants. In and through their involvement, competent ”knowing” actors are con-
stituted that keep the practice running.23
The knowledge that gradually allows for actors to keep a practice running is modeled
in terms of a non-verbalizable ”background knowledge” (Schütz & Luckmann, 1979)
or ”know-how” (Ryle, 1969)24. This knowledge is said to be inscribed in the body and
21
Within his Actor-Network-Theory, Latour (1996) pleads for the recognition of human and non-
human entities as actants of equal rank, constituting hybrid networks which co-produce practice.
Rammert & Schulz-Schaeffer (2002) develop the idea of a ”distributed agency” in order to account
for the potential obstinacy, self-will and activity of (technical) artefacts and to overcome the dualism
of technical operations and social action. Here, non-human entities are not attributed subject-status
in general, however. Rammert & Schulz-Schaeffer rather aim at revealing the conditions under
which technical artefacts are defined and treated as (co-)actors. Despite these differences, both con-
ceptions acknowledge that other entities may make as constitutive a contribution to the course of a
practice as the alleged ”center of agency”. This marks another difference compared to action theo-
ries, which address contextual and environmental features as external parameters among others that
need to be taken into account when an action is planned by the individual.
22
So far, the preconditions of participation in a given practice have remained to be explored empiri-
cally.
23
Reckwitz (2008, p. 13) refers to this priorization of practices and the analytical subordination of the
actor as the ”de-centering of the subject”. See chapter 3.3 for similar tendencies in other theories.
24
By thus shifting the focus, practice theories enforce the revaluation of competences and forms of
knowledge which had for a long time been displaced from the scientific mainstream. For the labe-
ling of these forms of non-verbalizable and incorporated knowledge, a number of other terms are of
common use. For a listing see Hirschauer (2008). Contrarily to procedural knowledge, these forms
are not understood to originate from declarative stocks of knowledge. They may to some degree be
transformed into an explicit content after their ”tacit” acquisition. From the praxeological perspec-
tive, declarative knowledge does not precede skillful activity or know-how as the proceduralization-
thesis implies, but is taken to be the possible result of a reflection on a practice’s knowledge founda-
tions operating tacitly in the background. What is more, these knowledge forms are viewed to be of
a supra-individual character, being acquired through participation in collective practice. Such a col-
lectivistic understanding defies a subject-theoretical approach and is hence beyond the scope of
phenomenological conceptions which also revaluate non-verbalizable and incorporated stocks of202 Kristina Brümmer
to govern practice implicitly, functioning as a ”tacit power” (Polanyi, 1967, p. 15).
The body is hence not only understood to fulfill the purpose of executing intentions
and materializing plans or rational-reflexive processes, but is implemented as the
bearer of a practical intelligence and tacit knowledge sui generis. Under certain condi-
tions, the tacit knowledge allows for quick, meaningful and goal-oriented activity
beyond and independent of conscious reflection. The activation of the habitus’ prac-
tical sense may be considered the paradigmatic case of this quasi-intuitive activity
mode: Whenever the habitus encounters structures homologous to its dispositions,
the habitus’ practical sense pervades the actor’s phenomenal experience in actu as a
quasi-intuitive ”sense of the game” (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 122), permitting the genera-
tion of activities ”which are objectively ’regulated’ and ’regular’ without being the
product of a compliance with rules” (ibid., p. 99) and governing decisions ”which are
not deliberate, but still systematic, and which are not goal-oriented, but appear pur-
poseful in retrospective” (ibid., p. 122).
Bourdieu mainly establishes the practical sense as an ”instinct” to retrieve contexts or
habitats homologous to its own structures, entailing the habitus’ hysteresis. Based on
the assumption of this unobstructed ”ontological complicity” (Wacquant, 1996, p. 42)
of habitus and habitat to be the common case of practical activity, Bourdieu’s theory
primarily accounts for social reproduction and the generation of routinized behavior.
Except for some passages in which Bourdieu emphasizes the innovative and creative
potential of the habitus and the practical sense (e.g. Bourdieu, 2001, pp. 165-209), his
attention is mainly directed to the structuredness and repetitivity of practices. As op-
posed to this, other praxeological approaches – especially those originating from the
area of cultural studies – underline that the logic of practice is characterized by ”in-
terpretative and methodical indeterminacy, uncertainty and agonality” (Reckwitz,
2003, p. 294). Therefore, they maintain that an embodied practical knowledge not on-
ly underlies the production of routines, but also embraces ”context-specific reinter-
pretations of practices” (ibid.) and allows for actors to depart from routines, to mod-
ulate practices in unexpected situations and to realize potentials or opportunities for
activity creatively in the practical interplay with their co-actors (cf. Joas, 1992;
Hörning, 2001).
5 Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives
Even though current ”alternative” approaches of human kinetics and sport psycholo-
gy accentuate similar qualities of meaningful activity as sociological practice theories,
the different disciplines have barely taken any notice of each other yet. In sport psy-
chology and human kinetics, informative surveys are conducted and results are
knowledge, but remain to be individualistic insofar as they focus on single subjects and their compe-
tences (cf. Alkemeyer, Brümmer, Kodalle & Pille, 2009; Linnebach, 2010).Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 203
yielded concerning the regulating principles and capacities underlying versed motor
activity. Yet, these surveys as well as the theoretical contributions resulting from them
prove to be largely indifferent against certain – social – aspects which are in turn ex-
plicitly taken into account by practice theories. Subsequently, it will be demonstrated
that through the lens of practice theories, blind spots of the former can be unveiled.
What is more, perspectives of their theoretical and methodological addressing will be
presented. This might contribute to a conceptualization of action or practice in sport
which incorporates social variables and might forward progresses in the sociology of
sport.
When re-examining the alternative approaches to decision-making and acting in sport
from a praxeologically informed perspective, it becomes evident that the majority of
them abstracts from the collective and relational properties of practice. Many of them
result from experiments conducted with single test persons in isolated contexts and
aim at the discovery of internal processes underlying an action’s regulation. By no
means shall the value of these experiments be undermined and called into question.
Per definitionem, psychological approaches are concerned with the human psyche and
internal processes. From a praxeological perspective, it is to be criticized that these ar-
rangements are characterized by an experimental artificiality: The test person is cut off
from the ”real” context in which sport is usually performed. Characteristic features,
such as informational complexities, time constraints and the involvement of further
actors and actants are therefore disregarded. Moreover, it is abstracted from the ”log-
ic of practice”25 (Bourdieu, 1987, p. 147) and adhered to a methodological indivi-
dualism, which gives rise to doubts about the experiments to allow for generalizable
statements about the mechanisms of acting in sport.26
As opposed to this, practice theories view practices to be socially embedded, collec-
tive and relational phenomena emerging ”in between” different actants instead of be-
ing borne by a single autonomous actor only. Following the assumption that practices
span individual activities, plans and intentions, they cannot be sufficiently explained
from the perspective of a single participant. Rather, their collective and relational cha-
racter entails a different – non-individualistic – methodology. This is particularly strik-
ing in sports in which the single athlete’s autonomy is confined by factors not subject
25
In chapter 3.1, an experiment is described which exemplifies the neglect of the practice’s genuine
and irreducible logic as well as its confusion with the logic of theory. In order to find out the me-
chanisms underlying decision-making in handball, players are sounded on their decisions without
being involved in the game and without being exposed to its practical complexities. Typical charac-
teristics of decisional situations in sport are hence factored out by the experimental design.
26
By describing and examining actions in sport as emergent and relational phenomena, the systems
and ecological perspectives overcome the rigid individualism and the exclusive focusing of internal
mental processes. Yet, in these schools of thought, too, experimental designs are applied which re-
duce the complexities of practice.204 Kristina Brümmer
to their own individual control.27 Still, questions of how athletes coordinate their ac-
tions with other actants in ”real” situations and under which conditions this coordina-
tion is successful have remained desiderata in sport science. This probably owes to
the fact that the phenomenon ”action in sport” is primarily delegated to the indivi-
dualistic disciplines of human kinetics and sport psychology, while being scarcely
problematized in the sociology of sport. Apart from that, it is rarely taken into ac-
count that the questions of skillful activity and participation in a sport practice have a
social dimension. From the praxeological perspective, material settings as well as the
doings of other actants are impregnated with social meaning and opportunities for
use or potentials for follow-up activity. Yet, settings only turn into affordances and
potentials may only be realized by an actor who – due to continuous training and
practical socialization processes – possesses certain dispositions, a particular practical
understanding and knowledge and who is to a certain extent pre-equipped for the
competent participation in a given practice. These social conditions – the relationship
of ”incorporated and objectified history” (Bourdieu, 2001, p. 193) – have so far been
taken into account by just a few concepts28, which are on top of that located at the
periphery of sport science and virtually disregarded by the hegemonic discourse on
action in sport. Beyond that, there is barely any empirical research on the ways in
which social parameters and conditions may impinge on the course of a practice. Be-
low, therefore, some first ideas for an approach to this problem and research area are
sketched.
In sport acrobatics, to give an example, barely any movement is performed by one
athlete alone. Mostly, several athletes co-produce a figure. In the collective acrobatic
movements even individual body boundaries seem to cease existing, to expand and
include other bodies. The praxeological claim of practices being thoroughly collective
phenomena takes a visible shape and can be witnessed vividly. Observing the training
process of sport acrobats not only forwards the insight that the adequate understand-
ing of this sport practice requires a radically anti-individualistic, praxeologically in-
spired approach, but also sensitizes to its peculiarities and the recurring patterns of
successful and failing co-operation among the athletes. Episodes as the following can
be perceived frequently: Athlete A produces a perfect a Swiss handstand on the land-
ing mat in a warm-up exercise. Being lifted and stemmed into the air by athlete B in a
partner exercise, though, provokes the failure of athlete A to perform this
handstand.29 In the case of another athlete C, the apparently identical doings of ath-
27
These factors are the activities of partners and opponents or the obstinacy of resistive material, for
example.
28
See for such an exception e.g. Alkemeyer (2006).
29
This empirical observation emphasizes the influence of the material setting and other actants on the
performing of a movement and provides further arguments against the laboratory studies prominent
in human kinetics and sport psychology and the generalizability of their results. A Swiss handstand
performed on a landing mat appears to be different from one co-produced with another athlete.Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 205
lete B, which had right before functioned as an impediment to athlete A, support the
completion of the handstand. Without yet gaining an understanding of the reasons, it
becomes immediately evident for the observer that athletes B and C are well attuned
to each other; their doings and even their bodies merge into one harmonious move-
ment. Contrarily, the doings of athletes A and B do not appear to afford any oppor-
tunities or potentials to complete the figure for each other. In their case, no harmo-
nious common movement comes about and the practice breaks off.
The desiderata and prompted questions of how athletes co-operate with other actants
in ”real” situations and which are the conditions for this co-operation and collective
practice to succeed might be approximated by means of ethnographic methods. In
order to shed light to the regularities and mechanisms of practice, the actual collective
performing of sport has to be accurately observed and described in view of its struc-
tural and generative principles. From a praxeological perspective, these principles are
actualized and manifest in public and observable practices (cf. Bergmann, 2000;
Schmidt, 2008). Hence, it is the ethnographer’s task to extract recurring patterns of
successful (or failing) practice or interaction through continuous observation. Qualita-
tive interviews in which the athletes get the opportunity to account for their doings
and the (social) conditions of its success or failure can then help to systematically un-
fold the generative principles and structures embedded in them.30
By reflecting the theoretical models of action in sport through a praxeological lens, a
further desideratum comes to light which, however, not only concerns the concepts
of human kinetics and sport psychology, but the praxeologies as well. Interdisciplina-
rily, it is agreed on the notion that the performing of an action or practice rests upon
a number of different functions, abilities and stocks of knowledge. Still, there is no
consensus about the quality of processes and structure of the knowledge involved. In
traditional action theories, knowledge relevant for the practical coping with new and
complex situations is modeled in terms of a largely explicit content and much atten-
tion is directed to cognitive and conscious processes located in the subjective mind.
In contrast with that, different – non-conscious and non-rational – stocks of know-
ledge are attributed a constitutive role for the performance of an action or practice
more recently. While many approaches of human kinetics and sport psychology tend
to relocate mental processes to the unconsciousness or redefine them in terms of im-
plicit intuitions, practice theories abandon the primacy of mental processes altogether
by privileging a collectively acquired and embodied tacit know-how. This anti-
Similarly, a movement performed in an isolated laboratory context can differ radically from the ap-
parently identical movement performed in a ”real” situation. Also see footnote 25.
30
For that purpose, in a group interview possibly, athletes could be invited to give detailed descrip-
tions of the conditions for the emergence (or failure) of a harmonious collective movement and the
required dispositions and capacities of the co-actors. It has to be borne in mind that certain stocks
of knowledge are only deficiently and laboriously to be verbalized. Observations and interviews
should therefore be critically correlated on a regular basis.206 Kristina Brümmer
cognitivistic twist implies the risk for practice theories, too, to contribute to a dicho-
tomization of different forms of knowledge and conceptions of activity. In theoretical
terms, therefore, a more balanced model of human action and practice is necessary; a
model, which allows for the recognition of these allegedly opposed dimensions in
equal measure. In this respect, intentions, deliberations, explicit knowledge and plans
should no longer be considered and treated as an opposition to practices. Neither
though, should they be regarded to precede or cause bodily activities as hidden mental
operations or inner representations and as such be attributed analytical priority. Ra-
ther, mental operations, conscious motives and intentional actions should be viewed
to inhere and develop in practices and to be their constituent components.31 What is
more, the allegedly antagonistic dimensions or stocks of knowledge labeled hegemo-
nic by the different theoretical conceptions – declarative knowledge about the prin-
ciples and parameters of a given movement on the one hand and tacit know-how, in-
tuitions or feelings (of movement) on the other – should be acknowledged as com-
plementary and equally relevant for successful activity.
The question of how exactly these different knowledge components, cognitive and
bodily or kinesthetic, conscious and unconscious processes interact with each other in
praxi and thus allow not only for the routinized, but also the creative, innovative and
adaptive generation of practices in sport is to be approached empirically. By ethno-
graphic observations of training processes and interviews with trainers and athletes,
the ways in which different competences are acquired and interplay or in which
knowledge components become intertwined to a specific action-relevant knowledge-
configuration might be decoded. Among other things, researchers will have to pay at-
tention to the strategies by which trainers transmit knowledge about movements to
the athletes and to the characteristics of this knowledge. Furthermore, it will have to
be focused on how athletes co-operate and correct each other and which kind of
knowledge they bring into operation in order to guarantee the continuation and suc-
cess of their common practice. Additional insights could be generated by asking ath-
letes to give accounts of their collaborative doings. Researchers will for instance have
to scrutinize the stocks of knowledge discernable in their descriptions and focus on
the status of individual intentions, decisions and plans within the collective practice.
6 Conclusion
At present, different academic disciplines witness the rediscovery of tacit, non-
reflective and genuinely practical forms of knowledge. For several decades, these had
been marginalized and de-thematized in academic discourse. Modern societies’ devel-
31
Whereas the tendency to dichotomize action and practice characterizes recent German praxeologi-
cal discussions (cf. Reckwitz, 2003; Hirschauer, 2008), the American sociologist Barnes (2001) sug-
gests that practice should be understood as comprising action and cognitions. Sutton argues along
similar lines from a phenomenological standpoint (see chapter 3.3).Action and Practice: Approaching Concepts of Sport Science from a Praxeological Perspective 207
opments and self-perceptions which emanate from a scientifically defined concept of
rationality are often given as reasons for this disregard. In the modern understanding,
knowledge is assessed and rated according to the criteria of objectivity, replicability
and reflexivity. It is imputed that an objective, replicable and reflexive knowledge is
essential for the methodical mastery and calculative, conscious control of modern life
and rational action. In turn, capacities and qualities that do not adhere to these cha-
racteristics – as for example knowing-how or intuitions – are devalued, denied know-
ledge-status and even come under suspicion of compromising rationality (cf. Alke-
meyer, Brümmer, Kodalle & Pille, 2009, p. 10).
Currently, modernity becomes subject to further – so-called ”reflexive” – moderniza-
tion (Beck, Bonß & Lau, 2001, p. 11), which does not imply an ”increase of mastery
and consciousness, but a heightened awareness that mastery is impossible” (Latour
quoted after Beck, Bonß & Lau, 2001, p. 19). This awareness is traced back to an ex-
pansion of the zones of uncertainty32 in the course of which the abilities to plan, an-
ticipate and control things on the basis of an objective, rational knowledge forfeit
their status of guaranteeing any mastery (cf. Böhle, Pfeiffer & Sevsay-Tegethoff,
2004). These contexts forward the scientific renaissance and revaluation of ”other
forms of knowledge” (Böhle, 2003; Sevsay-Tegethoff, 2007) which become to be
viewed to be indispensable resources for the practical accomplishment of uncertain-
ties, contingences and ambiguities. Reflexive modernity does not call for the actors’
abilities to follow rules or act methodically and rationally, but presupposes their
openness to depart from plans and rules in a creative, quick, flexible and adaptive
manner. As multi-disciplinary surveys on action in different social fields bring to light,
this capacity involves non-formalizable competences, as for example intuitions, em-
bodied know-how and skills emanating from practical experience. As a result, these
are gradually re-allotted a significant status within a plurality of knowledge forms (cf.
Böhle, 2003).
As indicated, the ”rediscovery of practical knowledge” (Hörning, 2001) picks up and
relates to traditions which had been buried in oblivion for several decades. More than
one hundred years ago, representatives of pragmatism, as e.g. John Dewey, George
Herbert Mead or William James, promoted the fundamental explanatory priority of
practical knowing-how as compared with theoretical knowing-that (cf. Brandom,
2000, p. 39). From the pragmatist perspective, practice represents the primary mode
of perceiving and understanding the world; the world and its meanings are constituted
through practical experience. Meaningful practice in that sense precedes theoretical
knowing-that. The latter is taken to build on a background and foundation of practic-
al knowing-how. The pragmatists explicitly define the ”Platonistic intellectualism” (ib-
id., p. 40) to be their chief adversary. Ironically enough, however, it was the modern
heirs to this very Platonistic intellectualism – the programs of cognitive science and
32
As for example manifest in social instabilities, contingences, and acceleration processes.You can also read
