ORI GIN AL PA PER

An Assessment of the Dynamic of Religious Ritualismin Sporting Environments

Oscar Fernandez • Roberto Cachan-Cruz

� Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013

Abstract The main focus of this study is the analysis of the link between sport, leisure

and the behavior, and phenomenon of religion. From the qualitative point of view of social

anthropology, fieldwork has been carried out with different informers from different

sporting environments. Rather than directly show the fieldwork itself, we have decided to

present an interpretation of it through an analysis of the environments, behaviors, attitudes,

the discourse of leisure and sport and its relationship with market forces, advertising and

the media. In this regard, we point out a reality which for some people is their conscience

or reason for being, opening new directions of study and viewpoints in this area of sporting

and health studies.

Keywords Anthropology of sport � Religion � Ritualism

Introduction

At first sight, sport and religion would seem to be unrelated, but in fact they have interacted

in different ways throughout history. The ancient religious festivals of classical Greece, for

example, included sports competitions. Guttmann (2004, 2007) states that sport for the

Greeks was a sacred enterprise, and something that existed for the moment of its perfor-

mance. Likewise, Sansone (1992) explores the relationship between ancient Greek sport

and sacrificial ritual and traces elements common to both back to primate origins. In time,

however, many institutionalized religions became opposed to sport, considering sports and

games a worldly distraction from people’s spiritual and human development. It is of course

true that religion has played a central role in helping people to find a purpose and meaning

O. Fernandez (&) � R. Cachan-CruzAntropologıa Social, Departamento de Historia, Facultad de Filosofıa y Letras, Universidad de Leon,Campus de Vegazana, 24071 Leon, Spaine-mail: oscar.fernandez@unileon.es

123

J Relig HealthDOI 10.1007/s10943-013-9751-9

for their lives, and to forget their fear of the unknown while laying down guidelines for

interacting with others.

Recently, claims have been made by scholars that sports are an authentic religion in and

of themselves (Higgs and Braswell 2004). Although the reasons for supporting this his-

torical link between religion and sport are many, complex and changing, as Guttmann

(2007) traces across cultures, some important threads have been identified, such as sport as

a vehicle for attracting and retaining members of a community (Carpenter 2001) or sport as

a way to spiritual exaltation and improvement (Coakley 1990; Eitzen and Sage 1993;

Prebish 1992). However, some scholars of sport have argued that the competitiveness of

high-level sport encourages anti-Christian behavior such as aggression and superiority over

others, thus undermining any spiritual exaltation (Higgs 1992; Hoffman 1992a, b; Ste-

venson 1991). The importance of sport has also been pointed out in what Bellah (1969,

p. 18) calls ‘‘civil religion,’’ which guided Joseph Price (1992) in his ‘‘The Superbowl as

Religious Festival.’’ It was also used by Butterworth (2008) for his study of the influence of

the media on the same event, where he posits the idea that civil religion unites Americans

around a set of ‘‘sacred’’ heroes, documents and ideals, it is community’s base line.

On these premises, and complementarily to them, the main focus of this study is the

analysis of the link between sport and the behavior and phenomenon of religion. For this,

from the qualitative point of view of social anthropology, fieldwork has been carried out in

the form of interviews, discussion groups and participant observation, with different

informers from different sporting environments. We have worked with professional and

amateur sportspeople; with supporters’ clubs, spectators and exclusive sports/social clubs,

to capture a more ludic, leisurely, even culinary and health-oriented side of sport, carrying

out observations in such places as gymnasia, sports bars and theme parks. We also

observed pilgrims on St James’s Way, over 800 km of which runs through northern Spain,

where this study is based, and which pilgrims undertake (usually on foot) out of religious

fervor or the spirit of adventure or a mixture of the two.

Rather than directly show the fieldwork itself, we have decided to present an inter-

pretation of it through an analysis of the environments, behaviors, attitudes and the dis-

course of sport and its relationship with market forces, advertising and the media.

It is beyond the scope of this article to deal with sport as a lay substitute for religion. We

are especially interested in exploring and analyzing certain key points of an emerging

ritualism in sporting contexts (lifestyles, fashion, the market, philosophies, practices,

sporting discourse, times, places, etc.) expressed as physico-sporting practices in what may

be seen as places of worship, and we shall research the incorporation of sporting religious

ideas in such phenomena as new forms of leisure or food culture, against the background of

a cartography of spaces that have not been studied in great depth, all from the standpoint

described below.

Sport and Religion: Mirror and Symbol of Culture

Padiglione (1996) states that in modern societies, sport is a total social fact. Durkheim

(1996) had stated that there are many religious displays that do not belong to any religion

as such and that in every society there were disperse practices and beliefs that did not

belong to any given system. In this regard, the displays found today with reference to

religion invite us to reflect on a process of decentralization. The conclusion, though not

definite, may be that there is a kind of metamorphosis: religion is not created or destroyed,

but transformed. Religion serves sport and acts within it, a recasting from which the fact of

J Relig Health

123

religion emerges strengthened because of the creation of new meanings. In this process of

sport-religious recasting, religion is camouflaged to infiltrate daily life, where it may be

seen in many situations and contexts, displays and conversations and in different sectors of

society.

We can speak of new institutionalized forms of religion, ranging from old official

churches to modern subcultures such as sport, which go beyond superstition and tend to

generate meanings. Here, religion is a system of ideas internally protected against its own

possible disappearance. With this sentence, we are considering religion simultaneously as

the epicenter of society and a filter that has gradually revealed itself; and today, it is

through sport that it appears to have been lucky enough to express itself and survive.

In particular, we shall concentrate, from an anthropological point of view, as we have

been, on religion or rather on religious facts, as defined by Durkheim (1982). In this regard,

Carl Diem (1966) states that all physical exercises were originally acts of worship and have

for a long time kept a religious character. And Durkheim (1982, p. 354) says that it is

obvious what the reasons are: it is because worship, even when it has different goals, has

been at the same time a kind of entertainment for people. Religion has not played that role

by chance, thanks to a felicitous coincidence, but through the needs of its nature. Indeed,

although religious thought is something completely different from a system of fictions, the

realities it corresponds to do are never quite expressed in a religious way unless imagi-

nation transfigures them.

The Ritualistic Dimension at Sporting Environments

Ritualism is more developed when the symbolic action is considered more efficient. Rituals

occur as actions performed mainly by a religion or the traditions of a community, which in

our case and for their symbolic value legitimize the system that they belong to. We

understand ritual, like Turner (1977, 1988), as a formal conduct prescribed on occasions

not dominated by technological routine and related with the belief in mythical beings or

forces, where the symbol appears as the smallest unit of ritual still retaining the specific

properties of ritual behavior. Rites, then, are conducts concerned with how man should

behave with sacred things, which arouse in the group a high feeling of belonging, of

communitas. Ritual, according to Turner, is the form taken on by the cultural expression of

the union of the sacred and the profane.

The ritual is a practice, a symbolic mechanism of social life. The sport has aspects that

serve as moorings for comparison with other plots of the system: separation, liminality,

discourses and practices, routines corporeal or status in a specific context that does nothing

but amplify the study of ritual beyond the most traditional ethnographic context. Sporting

ritual offers a symbolic dimension where the varied participation of individuals, groups,

teams, supporters’ clubs, theme areas and gymnasia have a multiple function: a form of

integration and status of differentiation (us versus them) and symbolic identification so that

certain groupings can reaffirm a right of territorial belonging and appropriate the field

where the image—beyond any religious consideration—converts a physical space into

conquered territory. In the anthropology of sport, spatial, temporal and symbolic borders

are pushed back to inspire sporting action, for as well as a place of action, the arena is a

place of interpretation. The most patent proof of this is the kinesthesia of the personages,

an absolute appropriation by individuals and teams of gestures, positions and rituals. The

ritual compression seems crucial to understanding how a given population thinks and feels

about social relations or sports, but also about the economic and political. We also consider

J Relig Health

123

that the evolution of sports performance boots from rituals’ factors, and sport is a relatively

recent ritual specialization, more menaced the competitive aspect. The ritual is thus an

aspect of the culture that symbolizes something may be non-religious, sacred or profane.

These are elements that we wish to explore in this study.

From the point of view of space, perhaps the most obvious indication that sport is

separate from daily life is the fact that it takes place in a specifically different space.

Although Bale (2003, p. 2) states ‘‘in short, sport, like geography, is a spatial science,’’ but

unconnected with normal space, sport’s space is an ideal space in a tidy microcosm,

carefully lined and ordered, set off from its workday environment. There is something

coherent and tranquilizing about the simplicity and exactitude of space redesigned by our

symbolic devices for nature humanized. There is also something sacred surrounding it;

after all, as Mircea Eliade wrote (1959, p. 32), ‘‘to organize a space is to repeat the

paradigmatic work of the Gods.’’ Both sport and religion mark off separate areas for their

activities; in other words, both celebrate the appearance of a finite world.

Let us now briefly look at a number of spaces contributing to this sporting religious

ritual, which perhaps more than religion as belief, manifests itself in a conscience-like

spirituality.

We can consider the links themselves between sport and religion, and specifically the

case that has most been studied, that of Christian worship. Church was a place of worship

and sport. For example, Church was one of the best agencies for spreading the message of

sport since Victorian England. Sports clubs and teams were formed under the auspices of

religious institutions, when the coadjutor and the parish priest, inspired by their own

upbringing, frequently went forth to save souls with the Bible in one hand and soccer in the

other.

Modern man, who feels and considers himself non-religious, still has at his disposal a

camouflaged mythology and numerous degraded ritualisms. Most of those ‘‘without reli-

gion’’ have not liberated themselves from religious behavior, from theologies or mythol-

ogies. Spectators are mobilized in sport, as sport tends to institutionalize two environments

or roles, those of actors and audience: athletes and spectators, the public. In our fieldwork,

we noticed that at the most superficial level, fans facilitated the creation of a group identity,

through different supporters’ clubs, by territorial allegiance, gender, following a team or

given sportsperson, etc. In other words, when we are part of an audience, sports allow us to

feel and consider ourselves ‘‘through and behind’’ the political, racial, ethnic, religious and

linguistic barriers that divide us, not forgetting those of conscience, but invoking a deeper

sense of communality, transcending the established order.

This emotional fervor, as we have noticed, is expressed through intense bodily par-

ticipation, the mark of any ritual activity replete with pilgrimages, words or conventional

chants, as in a tribe. The ceremonial aspect requires a congregation, where the most fervent

are grouped in supporters’ clubs and they administer communion-like priests charged with

the execution of the ‘‘sacrifice,’’ to the instructions of a guarantor. There would seem to

exist no ritual that takes place without singing. Behaviors, gestures, language and codified

attitudes, as in the most traditional rituals, vestments and specific materials contributing to

this metamorphosis of appearance are the characteristics of any ritual, whether ancestral or

post-modern. In this special pilgrimage to the totem, and as a sign of victory, the home

team is exalted, turning our surroundings: city, squares, monuments, etc., into public land

that has been conquered, retaken as a place of popular celebration and of communitas. The

domain ritual is to develop these activities: it is the practical ability to perform ritualized

schemes, which are a form of body awareness. Rituals are therefore somewhat abstract and

universal because the domain ritual is created by the bodies and environments in a given

J Relig Health

123

group and only means that context. Moreover, the ritual creates memory. Rituals such as

repetitive practice and, therefore, participants gain an unconscious memory of what should

be done. Likewise, memory is not only body of practices, but also of the places that these

spaces are used repeatedly and also reused spaces in addition, spaces are reused.

We have observed another example of similar tribes, in select sports and social clubs.

Here, bodily behaviors of a ritualistic nature act as metaphors, where a theatrically rep-

resented social identity is seen to be searching for a reference with other roles that are not

purely sporting. People gather together and converse specifically to be seen. At root, here

sport is an illusion, an agreed-upon fiction. The significant effect is not only the exchange

of fiction for reality, but the derealizing of life lived in terms of fiction.

A different and special case is that of spaces where local traditions exist side-by-side

with modern ones: skittles/bowling alley, darts/crossbows or where new games are rein-

vented out of old ones. Mythical attractions are needed with Olympic-like worldly qual-

ities. Thus, exotic natural paradises are designed nearby, like Eurodisney, Port Aventura,

Disneyland and Terra Mıtica, theme parks with copies of Polynesia, the Far West, China,

the Aztecs and Mayas, where archaeology, dances and expressiveness, dress and move-

ment are all recovered. In the same way, heroes and legendary kings or routes and journeys

are reestablished, which are set up to combine sport with leisure.

Furthermore, to mention another case, we have observed pilgrimages to Lourdes,

Fatima and the Road to Santiago functioning as treks, safety valves from a cloistered life:

people seek inner balance, while yearning for the traditional and the errant life. Physico-

sporting activities here and in other places are tribalized as experiences with ancestral

cultures—their food and drink and their rituals—around which such words have been

coined as ethnotourism, tribal tourism or tourism among native peoples. Archaic values

arise such as local particularisms, a more intensive spatial reference, religiosity, syncre-

tism, the cult of the body, ethnicity, group narcissism, etc.

An analysis of markets and advertising also reveals a kind of sacredness in the products

associated with sporting and popular culture. It is the market as sacralized logic, where

black is the king of sporting colors, and bodily mortifications match the tattoos or piercings

of sports idols. In television commercials, we can see monks playing soccer at Ucles

monastery, the monastery in Cuenca (Spain) of the Order of Santiago: angels and demons

vying for salvation (1995 Nike campaign) in a battle of soccer played on a hell field;

industrial scenes and catacombs in a confrontation of sportsmen, where clapping is tensed

with challenging cries (2007 Nike campaign). Many of the products have a sort of warrior

logic: Vikings and Fernando Alonso, the Spanish pilot motorsports has twice won the

Formula One world championship, in 2005 and 2006, or a ceremonial gladiator fight

(Adidas campaign 2006), on an analogy warrior or religious war, not delimit its meaning

but by thinking about a reformulation of content, because the two languages refer to the

effort, discipline and solidarity, focusing heavily on the imagery. Sport represents indi-

viduals who hold different identities and challenge: transmit courage, humility and honor,

appearing as liminal characters that bridge between the mythical past and the future

between tradition and modernity, discourses that promote learning and convey honesty,

patriotism, collective memory and decent values.

Nor does the emotional side of life escape from the interests of modern marketing

techniques—new sports markets demand new spaces and customs, recreating traditional

atmospheres of the purist European and American folklore: Disneyization and McDonal-

dization (Ritzer 1998). The sacred has not disappeared from the outer realities with the

processes of secularization. We could certainly say that, once the redeployment of the

explicitly religious was completed, the public arena at once became saturated with implicit

J Relig Health

123

forms, provided by the staging of the new mundane liturgies of politics, sport or show

business, or by the lure of advertising, the mass media, fashion and mass consumerism.

And ‘‘holy advertising’’ venerates everything. So, all the products on sale in sports

clubs, and in this regard, make up a body allegory. From a similar standpoint, we can say

that the follower, on buying, is contributing and giving significance to his thought. As well

as satisfying needs or wishes and appropriating objects, he loads them with significance,

because goods help to hierarchize acts and configure their meaning.

Also contributing to this is the significant case of the foreign player who rapidly and

somewhat mystically, like David Beckham or Cristiano Ronaldo, professional soccer

players and media players, ideal icons of spread of personality, image and values, take on

the role of ‘‘savior.’’ The sports hero, ‘‘mythological,’’ is armed with a code value and

moral holiness complement, as a ‘‘missionary.’’ The classic hero has persisted catapulted

by institutions or companies, being the reference idol of the society glorified and that

power confer sanctifying when that needs it. Sporting achievements, promotion stands for

attracting new members in different shopping centers, the constant visits of solidarity and

the countless educational talks on such topics as the prevention of bad behavior and health

recommendations in schools, all this contributes to publicity and consumption. Moreover,

the conception of the body is stimulated and sports people campaign more than anybody to

get people to improve their health, causing a body cult to be subconsciously modeled and,

in short, they get people to do sport, individually or together. This indoctrination becomes

localized, lays out paths to be followed and is configured through markets, with new

mission strategies under the slogan ‘‘buy and be like them.’’

The objection could nevertheless be raised that an essential element is missing to ensure

such an identity, for such a comparison: the belief in supernatural forces, which forms the

backbone of a religious rite and brings about a refuge universe where magical and religious

practices are created. Furthermore, in this universe, conditional belief exists in the efficacy

of symbols. Supernatural concepts which also appear in fantasy, dreams and superstitions

are very much conditioned by our knowledge of the real world and act as the basis of

morality in religious people. And sports stars use them to influence their luck. Other

studies, like those of Neil et al. (1981) or Gregory and Petrie (1975) had already shown that

the greater the level of competition and the greater the commitment to sport, then greater is

the prevalence of superstition. In our fieldwork with the first-division handball club

Ademar, the best representation of the region of Leon in the northwest of Spain, from

alumni of the Congregation of the Marist and whose values are humility, simplicity and

modesty, have permeated the sporting sense, the links between sporting cosmology and the

world of magic and religion are more than clear.

Although some sports people are simply superstitious, others use their religious beliefs

for spiritual safety, for good luck and to calm their nerves. Many athletes admit praying

before an important match to achieve their aims. But in general, they seem to need to cope

with uncertainty and anxiety. Superstitious practices are usually in some way present and

vital in sport. They are derived from magic-religious systems of the past and have not

become part of the institutionalized religious system, but they form another kind of reli-

gious belief expressed in rituals which, although they seem to vary from culture to culture,

all belong to a class of ‘‘religious behaviors,’’ constant in human culture. Superstitions are

considered beliefs of the past and outrageous as they may seem, they have not changed

very much in either nature or intensity. They all reflect possible fervent disorientation and

an inheritance of ancestral practices. They often imply the use of numbers; bright colors;

and symbols of purity, order or symmetry. Schechener (1985) observed this when he said

that sport, like religion, is often mixed with pseudo-cabbalistic superstition, concluding

J Relig Health

123

that if religion and magic were in the origin of play, then a circular evolution would cause

play to become religion.

Furthermore, anthropological studies of curing rituals show that illnesses, as well as

biological, is cultural and social, so illness, religion and ritual are all related. The physical

therapist acts as a faith healer, through suggestion and magic, whereby medicine arises as a

purifying ritual, an example made palpable by the treatment and preoccupation of the mass

media as the medical team works on the continual injuries, slight or chronic, of some of the

team’s players, who are fed with talk of redemption and fatalist considerations in human

suffering. This Augustinian idea that psychic pain in defeat is acceptable is in some way

rewarding. Evidence shows that defeat can mean a loss of identity and lead to trust in luck

and destiny: necessary wins thus act as curative rites, and restore the lost identity. In any

event, injuries are treated as punishments.

Another case is what we call the pagan food mysticism in gymnasia and theme bars. The

proliferation of gymnasia has imposed a set of health- and sport-related values in the daily

life of communities. In them, tendencies have been increasingly observed of reviving and

rescuing ancestral sporting displays considered religious and therapeutic, for example

biodance, capoeira, martial arts, oriental dances and yoga. The accent is on spirituality and

folklore along with healthy, ethnic and narcissistic eating tendencies. The real risk does not

lie in a balanced approach to the world of sport, but in overexposure to it, an immersion

that can easily lead to what we could call the complete athleticization of life: When we

veer into the special world of sport in order to live there, rather than to visit, sport as a

mediator dissolves and cult displaces convention.

On other hand, the most mystic form of food communion appears in the most rudi-

mentary religions. A sensitivity and a rhetorical, passive conscience that can be dehu-

manized arise, a modus vivendi with the sporting aspect of escapism, where subjects share

emotions, humor and anecdotes, a territoriality that feeds the egoist fact of being together

and playing the game of the place.

Another example is what happens when a whole monastic morphology arises, with a

sacred atmosphere. This is the case of sports bars, Sports City Cafes, etc. They are

appearing everywhere as chains of bars and fast-food restaurants and they are full of

examples of sporting atmosphere and attitudes, in their decoration, both classical and

modern, with objects donated by famous sports personalities, such as boxing gloves, shirts

and caps. They serve as altars, with photographs and trophy cabinets, where sportspeople

and teams are glorified and myths of yesteryear are relived. Even the original culinary

grammar is eye-catching: the orders and the arrangement of the preseason menu, the first

half, second half and extra time. In some of them, there are even sporting or vegetarian

options on the menu.

Another case is linked with the meal as a meeting place and communal rite. In this

regard, there are products that take on meaning by creating a place for themselves within

the ritual by delimiting ways of behaving, situational contexts and identities. The symbolic

schemes of the comestible are linked with the production processes, which generates a new

totemic order involving relationships between diners and their food. The mental repre-

sentation sometimes slides into the making of a food myth.

Each community has built up a world of meanings around food and the feeding of the

body and the soul whereby the ingestion of food supposes also the ingestion of its moral

and behavioral properties and therefore contributes to our individual and cultural identity.

In our case, the anthropological analysis reaffirms not only the products but also how,

when and with whom we eat them, while sport, leisure and festivities are realities whose

nutritional affirmation is generally manifested as seriously affected by consumerism.

J Relig Health

123

Perhaps for this reason, sport is also conducive to the insanity of the masses by centralizing

their attention and focusing their passions.

Finally, we cannot fail to mention the loudspeaker system forever reminding us of this

link between sport and religion through ritual. Today, sport and its social significance

would be nothing without the media. The importance given by the media to sport is taking

on a more and more spectacular and sensationalist line, especially in cases of real or

symbolic violence. Furthermore, myth, history, memory and identity appear in journalism

all the time. More specifically, the myth, the word and the symbol evoke the ancestral and

the primitive—they evoke everything—in apparent attempts to establish a network of

relationships to evoke that primeval totality, for, furthermore, muscular, tribal and

nationalist virtuosity takes place against a backdrop of gigantic liturgical spectacles,

magnified by the magma of television, whose link to the cult of health and bodily prowess

is obvious. In the same way, we must justify the fact that such words as ‘‘magic,’’ ‘‘pray,’’

‘‘kneel,’’ ‘‘revelation,’’ ‘‘shrine,’’ ‘‘offering,’’ ‘‘sorrow,’’ ‘‘agony’’ and the like are perfectly

recognizable in sporting slang, a language that justifies the symbolic consistency of a

phenomenon, applicable to any other and so transcendental in the collective imagination

for its high convening power, making it clear to us that the media bring these two realities

more than obviously closer together.

Conclusions

Interventionist behavior and the interfering action of language reveal patterns common to

the two processes examined, sport and religion. In other words, a number of sporting and

leisure practices have been analyzed that are impregnated with ritualistic and religious

connotations. Even such areas as food, processes of identification and new kinds of leisure

are affected. And of the two processes, which have had a great convening power over the

centuries, with religion with its customs and dynamics appearing to be the one more

interested now in processing and professing sporting values, it is sport that seems to serve

as a support for religion.

Sport has become a server of religion, where ritualism and sporting behavior go hand in

hand. Religion has also been seen to be accorded a utilitarian meaning, ensuring itself a

benefit of efficiency and privilege, making sport a setter of consumption trends. As San-

sone affirms (1992) participating in sport, spectating, reading about sport, even adorning

one’s self in sport-related attire constitute a ritual a symbolic sacrifice. In the final instance,

what is meant when it is stated that sport is a form of ritual behavior, as Blanchard and

Cheska (1986, p. 37) say, is that sport transmits a transcendental message concerning

tradition and the shared values of a given society, through competitive play.

Finally, it seems that many authors link the progressive weakening of religion in

modern societies with the growth of sporting practices. Sport seems to have a religious or

quasi-religious importance in that it has become one of the main, if not the main source of

identification, meaning and gratification in their lives, but as Higgs and Braswell (2004)

suggest, while sports may often be good things, they are not inherently divine. So, we have

tried to illustrate how sport and leisure contribute to a new and vital ways of understanding

the human condition. In this regard, we have not sought to force religious parallelisms with

sport but to point out a reality which for some people is their conscience or reason for

being, opening new directions of study and viewpoints in this area of sporting anthro-

pology, which has not yet been thoroughly studied.

J Relig Health

123

References

Bale, J. (2003). Sports geography (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.Bellah, R. (1969). Civil religion in America. Daedalus, 96, 1–21.Blanchard, K., & Cheska, A. (1986). Antropologıa del deporte. Barcelona: Bellaterra.Butterworth, M. (2008). Fox sports, Super Bowl XLII, and the affirmation of American civil religion.

Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 32(3), 318–323.Carpenter, P. (2001). The importance of a church youth club’s sport provision to continued church

involvement. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 25(3), 283–300.Coakley, J. J. (1990). Sport and society: Issues and controversies. St. Louis, MO: C. V. Mosby.Diem, C. (1966). Historia de los deportes. Barcelona: Caralt.Durkheim, E. (1982–1911). Las formas elementales de la vida religiosa. Madrid: Akal.Durkheim, E. (1996). Clasificaciones primitivas y otros ensayos de antropologıa positiva. Barcelona: Ariel.Eitzen, D. S., & Sage, G. H. (1993). Sport and religion. In C. S. Prebish (Ed.), Religion and sport: The

meeting of sacred and profane (pp. 79–118). Westport, CT: Greenwood.Eliade, M. (1959). The sacred and the profane. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World/Harvest.Gregory, J. C., & Petrie, B. M. (1975). Superstitions of Canadian intercollegiate athletes: An inter-sport

comparison. International Review of Sport Sociology, 10, 59–68.Guttmann, A. (2004). From ritual to record: The nature of modern sports. New York: Columbia University

Press.Guttmann, A. (2007). Sports: The first five millennia. Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press.Higgs, R. J. (1992). Muscular Christianity, holy play and spiritual exercises: Confusion about Christ in sport

and religion. In S. J. Hoffman (Ed.), Sport and religion (pp. 89–104). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.Higgs, R. J., & Braswell, M. (2004). An unholy alliance: The sacred and modern sports. Macon: Mercer

University Press.Hoffman, S. (1992a). Evangelicalism and the revitalization of religious ritual in sport. In S. J. Hoffman

(Ed.), Sport and religion (pp. 111–125). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.Hoffman, S. (1992b). Recovering a sense of the sacred in sport. In S. J. Hoffman (Ed.), Sport and religion

(pp. 153–160). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.Neil, G., Anderson, B., & Sheppard, W. (1981). Superstitions among male and female athletes at various

levels of involvement. Journal of Sport Behavior, 4, 137–148.Padiglione, V. (1996). Antropologıa del deporte y del ocio. en J. Y. Prat & A. Martınez (Eds.), Ensayos en

antropologıa cultural. Homenaje a Claudio Esteva. Barcelona: Ariel.Prebish, C. S. (1992). Heavenly father, divine goalie: Sport and religion. In S. J. Hoffman (Ed.), Sport and

religion (pp. 43–54). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.Price, J. (1992). The Super Bowl as religious festival. In S. J. Hoffman (Ed.), Sport and religion (pp. 13–15).

Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics.Ritzer, G. (1998). Mcdonalizacion de la sociedad. Barcelona: Ariel.Sansone, D. (1992). Greek athletics and the genesis of sport. Berkeley: University of California Press.Schechener, R. (1985). Between theater and anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Stevenson, C. L. (1991). The Christian-athlete: An interactionist-developmental analysis. Sociology of Sport

Journal, 8, 363–379.Turner, V. W. (1977). Variations on a theme of liminality. In S. F. Moore & B. G. Myerhoff (Eds.), Secular

ritual (pp. 36–52). Assen-Amsterdam: Van Gorcum.Turner, V. W. (1988). El proceso ritual. Estructura y antiestructura. Madrid: Taurus.

J Relig Health

123