This book presents a history of Swedish sport, highlighting in particular the relationship between sport politics and people’s changing attitudes towards sport from the eighteenth century until today. It scrutinizes the interaction between sport politics and people’s different approaches to sport in everyday life. By investigating how different ways of pursuing and conceptualizing sport have progressed and interacted, and how they have influenced as well been influenced by sport politics, this book discerns the role of both governmental and municipal politics in the development of sport in Sweden.

In the 1970s and 1980s, influential researchers argued that competition made children feel bad and that this caused them to quit sport. This soon became the dominant perspective among educational and behavioural researchers in Sweden, and this study examines why this narrative developed. This was not because different perspectives were systematically tested against each other and debated scientifically. Instead, to understand the dominance of the competition criticism, this study scrutinises how researchers interacted with other actors in sport and society. In terms of source material, the analysis is based on two conferences on child and youth sport held at Bosön in 1982 and 1989.

Vägen till idrottshistoria som akademisk disciplin har förvissovarit lång, långsam och krokig. Redan 1709 försvarades en av-handling om de antika olympiska spelen vid Uppsala universitet.Under 1800- och 1900-talen blev Ling-gymnastiken föremål fören rad mestadels oakademiska och starkt nationalistiskt färgadehistoriska studier. Statsvetaren Hilding Johanssons omfattandestudie av idrottens sociala, politiska och ekonomiska utveckling1953 följdes dock inte av några ytterligare historiska studier. Ge-nombrottet för idrottshistoria som akademisk disciplin i Sve-rige skedde först på 1970-talet, och när Jan Lindroth tillsattessom professor i idrottshistoria vid Stockholms universitet 1992konsoliderades ämnet. I dag bedrivs idrottshistorisk forskningoch undervisas i idrottshistoria utifrån en rad olika analytiskautgångspunkter vid flera olika universitet och med etableradeinternationella förgreningar.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyze, from anemotional-historical perspective, how and why adults’ attitudes regarding sportsfor children and young people changed during the period and how this affectedthe activity. The chapter’s main argument is that, because new emotional normsprevailed in society, dominant attitudes and practices in children’s and youngpeople sports were challenged and new pedagogical ideas adapted. To understandthis process, and to complement the two already established analytical notionsin Swedish sports research (association and competition education), this studyintroduces the analytical concept of personality education, which points out howthe upbringing of the young athletes was aimed at developing them as individuals.