On problems of the emotions in sport and leisure: critical and counter-critical comments on the conventional and figurational sociologies of sport and leisure

Abstract The subject of this paper is the emotions which are aroused in sport and leisure and their significance for a full sociological understanding of sport and leisure behaviour and sport and leisure institutions. The paper deals more with sport than leisure in general and is primarily conceptual and theoretical in its focus. It advances the claim that a 'figurational' (or 'process-sociological') approach, above all Elias's theory of 'civilizing processes' (Elias, 1939; l994a), whilst by no means representing a panacea for all of sociology's current problems, does represent a means of circumventing and hopefully overcoming some of the dilemmas on the horns of which practitioners of our subject recurrently become impaled.