Sports has always been a hot topic. Judging from the types and quantity of national sports newspapers and periodicals, the scale of sports field is incomparable to other disciplines. Even some comprehensive national and local newspapers have special sports pages. Nevertheless, pure sports research is rare. It should be said that the vitality of sports science lies in its integration with other disciplines. At present, many courses (such as sports psychology, sports sociology, sports statistics, etc. The physical education departments of physical education colleges and normal universities are the products of integration with other disciplines.
In fact, no matter from the historical origin and evolution, or from the realistic development, sports is a kind of popular culture full of strong social atmosphere. The spatial environment for the emergence and development of sports culture has become the link between sports and geography.
Fundamentally speaking, geography pays attention to three aspects, namely, the position and spatial order of various phenomena on the earth, the relationship between man and land and regional differences. Therefore, two concepts that any branch of geography attaches importance to are "space" and "place". All kinds of geographical research must pay attention to space and place.
In recent years, "so-and-so geography" has proliferated and spread into a huge branch system, and geographers have turned their attention to a wide range of fields. Geography pays attention to the recording, description and analysis of earth surface phenomena, and sports and cultural phenomena closely related to geographical environment naturally belong to the category of geographical research.
It is generally believed that traditionally, geography has always ignored sports, and sports has always ignored geography. However, the opportunity for the integration of sports and geography is completely there. This is because: sports industrialization makes sports an important economic activity, so it is a reasonable content of economic geography; At the same time, sports is an important part of modern culture, so it is reasonable to study sports from the perspective of cultural geography. In addition, the natural environment also undeniably affects the difference of sports performance, which makes sports penetrate into the research of sports environment theory.
Both sports and geography pay attention to space and the way to occupy space; At the same time, they also pay attention to the movement and interaction between people and things in geographical space, and the region constitutes the central feature of sports organizations (groups); Rank is the naming method of many sports teams; Sports are often influenced by various natural environments and natural landscapes; Physical education is a combination of certain regions and grades. The characteristics of sports show that sports, like geography, is a space science. The concepts of space and location in geography are the basis of sports geography research, and also the central issue of defining sports and understanding its importance. Seminar on sports geographical characteristics and academic journal publishing. Since the 1970s, the United States has held a conference on sports geography every year, and there are also chapters on sports geography in American cultural geography textbooks. In 1980s, the United States published two iconic works of Baylor's sports geography, namely Sports and Places (1982) and Sports Geography (1989). 1986, the book "Sports Place: International Journal of Sports Geography" edited by Rooney was published in the United States, which marked the official birth of sports geography.
It can be said that from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, sports geography developed the fastest 10 year. From the existing sports geography literature, we can see that many classic theories and concepts commonly used in geography have been successfully applied in sports geography, such as spatial diffusion theory, spatial interaction theory, central place theory, spatial marginal income theory, regional diversification theory, distance attenuation law and so on. These theories provide a basic idea and framework for analyzing sports culture from the perspective of geography. During this period, the concepts and theories used in sports geography were obviously gradually formed and perfected.
Although sports geography is interesting, the existing level only stays in explaining the geographical elements contained in sports culture with limited examples, and the research methods of positivism and empiricism restrict the development of sports geography to some extent. After a period of rapid development, foreign sports geography has developed relatively slowly in recent years, and sports venues journals are also facing the embarrassment of closing down due to lack of manuscripts. The vitality of sports culture (including sports industry) is the vitality of sports geography. We have reason to believe that with the continuous improvement of research methods of sports geography and the extensive development of sports geography research in more countries, sports geography will usher in a new period of rapid development. At present, the conceptual framework of geographical analysis of sports culture is almost based on the conceptual system proposed by john rooney of Oklahoma State University (pictured). Because these conceptual systems were first put forward in the United States, and most of them are based on American cases, the development of sports research in other countries is slow.
Sports geography often discusses the prototype, origin, diffusion and innovation of sports from two aspects of time and space, which needs to be based on the study of the spatial organization of sports and the interaction of sports. These studies are basically based on certain theoretical laws and seek the laws and patterns of sports spatial organization by scientific methods. An important content of sports geography research is the regional differences of sports. Different sports fields can be divided, and some sports have different degrees of localization tendency. In time, the origin, diffusion and regionalization of sports culture, the formation and optimization of spatial organization and the influence of sports spatial interaction form the conceptual system of sports geography. Baylor said in the preface of "Sports Geography": "When I started to study sports, I was used to explaining geography with sports phenomena. I found that this combines geography and sports; Revealing the comprehensive trend of modern science can broaden students' thinking and make my geography class interesting. "
Indeed, sports geography is a theoretical field worth studying, which provides a unique vision for both sports and geography. Compared with other branches of human geography, the research of sports geography is still immature, and the rules, related concepts and theoretical system of subject research need to be further improved. The development of sports is a comprehensive process of time and space. The level and/or area where movement spreads from one place to another over time. Now all sports have their prototype and origin in time and space, and most of them have spread all over the world, even the whole world. Many historical studies of sports are both popular and academic, which implies regional factors, especially early sports with obvious local characteristics.
The formation of sports culture is not only related to the development level of productive forces, national habits and religious beliefs, but also related to people's geographical environment. Badminton, for example, originated in Bloomington, England, and is popular in Denmark and Indonesia, which is related to the calm weather there. Once sports culture originates in a certain place, it will spread in space.
The spatial diffusion of sports culture, like other popular cultures (such as clothing, music and dance), is a complicated process. It is a meaningful research field of sports geography to analyze the geographical factors of the origin of a sport, find the direction and path of its spread, and explore the geographical scope of its influence.
Take China Wushu as an example, it originated in China, and its spread mode can be regional diffusion, that is, the spread of regional continuous space centered on the cultural origin; It can also be layered diffusion, that is, spatial jump discontinuous propagation from the high-rise center to the low-rise center. For example, martial arts can find new communication centers in Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, France and even Europe, and continue to spread regionally on the basis of sub-centers. Graded diffusion and regional diffusion penetrate each other. In addition, the spread of sports culture can also be simulated in space to determine its spatial diffusion model. With the spread and application of sports, the spatial organization of sports will also appear, and the spatial distribution of sports facilities can be studied according to Crystal's central place theory. Sports facilities are also hierarchical, and a sport should have a minimum population limit, which is the "threshold population". If it is higher than this population, this will prevail. There are strict site selection requirements for hosting the Olympic Games, and only a few cities in the world can meet this requirement. On the other hand, for recreational football matches, 90% of the football population in Britain plays within 1 mile. There is an unwritten rule in American professional baseball that the home court of a team must attract 654.38+100,000 spectators to watch the game every year. So from this perspective, big cities have obvious advantages.
For a certain sport, the number of sports teams is related to the size of the city. In fact, on different spatial scales, the level of sports is also lacking. According to its scale, many places should have corresponding sports facilities according to the general law, but there are not. For example, in Guangdong, there used to be five first-class clubs: Hongyuan, Shenzhen, Songri, Sun God and Foshan, while in Henan, Jianye has the largest population. According to the location type of football clubs, there is an unbalanced distribution of supply (the number of clubs) and demand (the size of fans) in the football market. Some cities with enough fans, because there are no clubs, often want to attract a football club to arrange all or part of the games locally to meet the needs of local football cities. Such as Shaoguan, Guangdong (home of Guangzhou Songri in 1998 season), Liuzhou, Guangxi (home of Hongyuan in 1999 season and home of Bayi team in 2000 season), Shijiazhuang, Hebei (home of Bayi in 1999 season) and Mianyang, Sichuan (home of Quanxing team in 2000 season). Going to the football field to watch the game is more and more like going to the theater to watch the performance, which has become people's daily consumption. Therefore, the maximization of interests has naturally become the main principle of sports club operation, and the team's home relocation is to seek a more ideal position.
At present, the commercialization of sports is booming. As an important part of leisure industry, sports is different from the traditional tertiary industry and is called the fourth industry. The industrialization or economization of sports objectively requires us to cooperate with agriculture and industry when determining the location of sports activities; Like business and other industries, we must consider the principle of maximizing benefits. How to choose the best place for sports activities, so as to minimize input and maximize output, is also the content of sports geography research. For example, the spatial layout of venues, whether adopting the decentralized layout of Beijing Asian Games venues or the centralized layout of Guangzhou tianhe sports center, should consider the distribution of athletes' villages and urban residential areas and the transportation convenience of venues, as well as the expropriation of urban land, the coordination of urban functional areas and a series of issues closely related to urban geography. The interaction between sports spaces is that sports venues have circle influence, which is restricted by the scale of sports venues, the quality of services provided by sports venues and the opportunities (frequencies) to participate in sports activities. The circle most obviously influenced by sports is called the "fan area", and the number and distribution of sports teams are basically the same as those in the fan concentrated area. Some areas may be small, including only dozens of people, while some "fan areas" associated with professional clubs may have tens of thousands of supporters. The core of the fan area is the home field, and the size of fans is affected by the law of distance attenuation. People living in the "fan area" can take advantage of being close to sports nodes to gain benefits. People living in the second circle under the influence of sports nodes are more interested in a particular sport as entertainment, and can't choose arbitrarily like the first circle.
The economic and geographical effects of various circles in sports space have both positive and negative contents. On the one hand, sports can create various economic benefits; On the other hand, when sports nodes are hated by people around them, it is a "negative circle of influence", and sports fans can also create some "sports pollution", such as some noise pollution and even sports riots, which will bring certain losses to the economy. Sports landscape is evolved from pure natural geographical environment. When sports develop to a certain extent in a certain geographical space, sports signs (such as water sports bases or indoor track and field) may appear in this space and become a temporary (or permanent) sports landscape.
Like other places of human activities, stadiums and gymnasiums are formed in a certain geographical environment. After eating and wearing warm clothes, people pursue leisure and physical perfection. In many countries, there has been a "sports green revolution", and a large number of grass-based sports, such as equestrian and football, have appeared, which is called "green sports"; With the enhancement of human ability to control the geographical environment, "blue sports" (such as surfing, windsurfing, rowing, etc. ) and the "white movement" (such as the Winter Olympics) appeared one after another.
/kloc-before the 0/9th century, the sports landscape was dominated by nature, but with the development of human activities, the components of natural sports landscape decreased, and the ground became a kind of "synthetic carpet". More and more sports landscapes are semi-natural and semi-artificial. In particular, it is necessary to artificially control various conditions of the competition to ensure fair competition.
With the formation and development of modern sports, more and more stadiums of different sizes and properties are spread all over urban and rural areas, gradually becoming the main environment for human sports activities. This kind of environment protects sports from the influence of natural environment, and contributes to the popularization and communication of sports of different natures in the world. For example, in tropical and subtropical areas, all kinds of ice sports can be carried out through indoor skating rinks. Understanding the distribution laws and characteristics of different sports cultural phenomena in different regions under different natural and social conditions is the essential embodiment of the regionality of sports culture, which includes three aspects:
The first is the regionality of sports. For example, countries near the Alps (Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, etc. ), snow sports are popular and the level of sports is high; In the United States, Australia, New Zealand and other countries with vast coastal resources, they are keen to show their wisdom and strength in sailing.
The second is the geographical distribution of sports fans. The existence of this cultural phenomenon of sports fans is based on certain regional sports culture. Without the extensive development of football, there would be no fanatical fans in Brazil, Italy and England. Chengdu, Dalian and Beijing are no exception.
The third is the technical style of regional sports. For example, China Southern Basketball Team, represented by Guangdong Team, is characterized by "small, fast and agile", while the Northern Team, represented by Liaoning Team, gives full play to the advantages of inside attack by virtue of its figure and physical strength. There is a similar situation in football.
In addition, the regionality of sports culture is sometimes manifested as the concentration of a certain sport in a specific geographical space, which can be expressed by indicators reflecting the high level of competition and high popularity of the sport in this area. For sports geography, it is also difficult to determine the regional differences of sports events, but it is feasible to use location quotient to determine which regions emphasize which sports events more. At least in the following aspects.
1. The vast traditional sports culture in China needs us to trace back to the source from the perspective of cultural geography.
2. The multi-ethnic population structure needs to study the origin and diffusion law of national traditional sports.
3. The vast geographical space provides rich contents for the study of sports landscape.
4. The development of national fitness and competitive sports needs to study the location choice of sports venues from the perspective of location theory.
5. The professionalization and industrialization of sports need to study the optimal allocation of sports resources from the perspective of economic geography.
China has a vast territory, and its natural and geographical conditions vary greatly. Different geomorphic regions and climatic regions have different main forms of movement. At the same time, due to the constraints of China's economic strength, it is impossible for all regions to develop all kinds of sports in an all-round way. Therefore, it is of practical significance to study the relationship between the setting of sports events and geographical environment and evaluate the adaptability of geographical environment and sports events.