Documents

Mother Nature and the Nature of the Practices

Pierre-Olaf SCHUT, CRIES, Lyon, France
Sebastien BERNIS, Corps et Culture (Body and Culture), Montpellier, France

Abstract

Physical activities practised in the heart of nature, or rather, nature sports, group together a great number of practices that can be characterized, according to Mr. Bouet , by their fundamental reference to the elements of nature. Although P. Parlebas contends that these activities proceed in a "dubious medium", we will show that they are indeed practised within a specific environment. This communication aims to clarify the importance of integrating geomorphologic characteristics into the definition of sport country, when this term is used to refer to nature sports. Indeed, we propose that a contingency exists between the distribution of sites where specific activities are practised and the physical characteristics of the environment.

Mr. Bouet has already considered the specific distribution of the practise of these disciplines within a space: "reference to the implied element easily makes it possible to distribute those [nature sports]. But this does not require that we ignore that, even when several specialities relate to the same element, they establish very different and unique universes, extending even to the aspects they adapt to and the tools they employ ".

Our study of the various sites for potholing, ski, surfing and alpinism in France, Spain, Italy and Switzerland revealed a number of regroupings of the sites of practices. For example, surfing is practised on the entire Atlantic coast (France and Spain). The massifs of Vanoise (France and Italy) conceal some of the greatest ski resorts.

These site regroupings correspond scrupulously to the physical characteristics specific to the activities studied. These characteristics are, perforce, oceanographic for surfing, geological for potholing, climatic and geomorphologic for alpinism and ski. To cite a few examples: potholing is practised almost exclusively in karstic regions like those of the Cantabrian mountains (Spain), Jura (France and Switzerland) or Vercors (France). Alpinism requires mountains of raised altitudes on which remain of the thousand-year-old glaciers like the massifs of Mount Blanc (France and Italy) or Oberland (Switzerland). The various site regroupings correspond to the sport countries, specific to each activity and delimited by a geomorphological unit.

One realises, in agreement with Pierre de Coubertin, the geography of sports does not correspond to the political geography; many countries of the countries we identified fall jointly within two, or even three political countries. Thus, our work confirms that the sport countries can be determined independently of nations. It also shows that, within the framework of the physical activities of nature sports, demarcation of sport countries is specific to each activity insofar as it depends on its characteristics. Moreover, the delimitation of the sport country specific to the physical activities of nature sports, corresponds to criteria of a geomorphological nature.