Sport Religon

The study of sports has been overlooked for many years by anthropologists. Anthropologists study human beings and their culture that surrounds them. However, sports reflect society or culture (Sands p. 8). Culture is a society or group of people that are connected from time, place, or similarity. There are two main views of culture, first is the idealist view and the second is the realist view. Sports can be considered a culture because of three different aspects that it includes: common characteristics, shared boundary, and it has a cultural identity. Sports such as Football reflect the surrounding American culture for various reasons such as: attitudes, beliefs, race, social position, economic success, and power.

Anthropology is the study of human beings. Sport can be defined from a cultural perspective as the visible fields of that help to "illustrate hegemony, racism, and social inequality" (Sands p. 6). The history of studying sports from a cultural perspective can start with the studying of the games throughout the late 1800's to the TAASP which was formed in the early 1970's (Sands p. 4-5). Anthropologists have failed to exercise the study of sports for many reasons. First, during the late 19th century, the anthropologists were more interested in looking at "human behavior through economic systems, social structure, religious and political systems, marriage, and kinship" (Sand p.3). Second, in the late 19th century sports was not an upper class activity, rather a lower class activity (Sands p. 4). Third, few colleges or universities offer classes on sports in the Anthropologist departments (Sands p.5). The forth reason why anthropologists overlooked sports is that they found sports to be anti-intellectual or they were not interested in sports because they themselves did not participate in them (Sport p. 6).

Culture was first defined in the late 1800's by Edward Tylor. Edward Tylor, defined culture as being a "complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society" (Sands p.47). Culture can not be seen as an object, but the image of it appears when "members are faced with those not included into that culture" (Sands p. ).

Culture can be viewed in many different ways. Two primary views of culture asre the Idealism view of culture and the Realist view of culture. The Idealism view sees that cultures are "infused with a transcendent quality that harbors a reality that can exist independent of cultural members" (Sands p.51). This view sees that the "function of sharing knowledge that living members can access and that is reborn in generations after people pass on" (Sands p. 51). However, Realists see that culture is a learned or obtained "behaviors, habits, customs, and beliefs" (Sands p. 51). Realists help ethnographers because it tracks history, or helps