A history of sport historiography in Brazil: Proceedings of the Brazilian Congress of Sport History, Leisure, and Physical Education (1993-2016)

Abstract

The Brazilian Congress of Sport History, Leisure and Physical Education (CHELEF) is a traditional event in Latin America which has been celebrated for more than 25 years in Brazil. Current paper, focusing on bibliographic production, investigates sport historiography in Brazil as provided by the proceedings of the Brazilian Congress of Sport History, Leisure and Physical Education between 1993 and 2016. Proceedings provided 1517 texts, of which 694 focus on sports. The history of sport historiography took into account themes, source types, historical periods, theory and methodology and the most quoted authors/papers in the texts in the Proceedings. Current sports historiography in Brazil has tried to break away from the legitimization of official narratives which proved to be universals and based on the myth of their origin. New aims, sources and theories of history were required for the social and dynamic conditions of academic events and post-graduate courses.

Keywords:
theory of History; History of Historiography; Brazilian historiography

Introduction

During the last 25, the Brazilian Congress of the History of Sports, Leisure, and Physical Education (CHELEF) has consolidated itself as one of the main and most important spaces for Sports in Brazil and Latin America. Throughout its 14 events, between 1993 and 2016, CHELEF ¹ has published most of its experience in its proceedings. Its memoirs made its past come alive and truly significant as an essential part of the historiographical trends about Sports in Brazil.

Proceedings are documents containing the event’s record on the central theme of the event, the (co)organizing institutions, committee, funding organs, general program, and the publication of scientific and academic texts. CHELEF Proceedings are a source of historical research in current paper since they are a collection of texts that reveal the production of the history of sports in Brazil. Production is the representation of academic historical culture shared in language, values, knowledge, and practices within a given research community.

CHELEF production has never been analysed from the point of view of the History of Historiography. According to Malerba (2002), Rüsen (2009) and Araujo (2013), the History of Historiography is a systematic investigation on the writing of History, a critique on historian’s intellectual productions and their historical culture. The past is reviewed to see in hindsight what has been produced. In fact, historiographical work is linked to a sort of tradition to be interpreted as a cultural practice directed in social terms and historical awareness.

Current paper (1) analyses the Historiography of Sports in Brazil, published in the CHELEF Proceedings (1993-2016); (2) presents through several tables the historical periods under analysis, the types of historical sources employed and the most cited authors/works in the texts published in CHELEF Proceedings; (3) provides discussions about historiographical trends about Sports in Brazil.

Current research focuses about the fourteen CHELEF Proceedings kept at the Centre for Memory, Information and Documents about Physical Education, Sports and Leisure of the State University of Londrina (CEMIDEFEL-UEL). ² The Proceedings of the fifteenth edition of CHELEF, held in Curitiba, Brazil, in November 2018, have not been published yet and, therefore, are not being analysed in current paper.

Table 1 gives general information about the Proceedings and the number of papers about Sports.

Table 1 -
Number of texts on Sports published in the Proceedings

Event	Year	Place	Organized by	General articles	Sports articles	General abstracts	Sports abstracts	TOTAL Texts
I	1993	Campinas/SP	UNICAMP	37	14			37
II	1994	Ponta Grossa/PR	UEPG	42	21			42
III	1995	Curitiba/PR	UFPR/UEPG	70	29			70
IV	1996	Belo Horizonte/MG	UFMG	81	32			81
V	1997	Maceió/AL	ETFAL/UFAL	103	39			103
VI	1998	Rio de Janeiro/RJ	UGF	93	46			93
VII	2000	Gramado/RS	UFRGS	133	52			133
VIII	2002	Ponta Grossa/PR	UEPG	86	47	88	29	174
IX	2004	Recife/PE	UFPE	38	27	42	11	80
X	2006	Curitiba/PR	UFPR/UNICENP	191	87			191
XI	2009	Viçosa/MG	UFV	133	54			133
XII	2012	Rio de Janeiro/RJ	UGF	34	17	123	70	157
XIII	2014	Londrina/PR	UEL/UEM	115	66			115
XIV	2016	Campinas/SP	UNICAMP			108	53	108
			TOTAL	1156	531	361	163	1517

• Source: CHELEF Proceedings (1993-2016); Table prepared by the author.

Proceedings were published between 1993 and 2016, or rather, they were published yearly until 1998 as from the Congress in Rio de Janeiro and, later, every two years as from the Congress in Gramado, except for the eleventh edition published after three years. Texts were published in print, annually, between 1993 and 2000, and electronically on cd-rom (2002-2016).

Documents for current research comprised 1517 texts, with 1156 full papers and 361 abstracts. However, only 531 full articles and 163 abstracts were chosen, totalling 684 publications analysed. Selection criteria were reading of titles, abstracts, keywords, introduction of the full texts, bibliographic references listed at the end or in the footnotes.

Reference authors in the theory and philosophy of History, such as Burke (1992), Ankersmit (2011) and Rüsen (2009), and in the Historiography of the History of Sports, such as Barbosa (1995), Freitas Jr. (1995), Melo (1994; 1996a; 1996b), Freitas Jr and Pilatti (1996), Gamboa (1997), DaCosta (1998), Ribeiro (2000), and Honorato (2016), mentioned in the CHELEF Proceedings, were consulted.

Consequently, information that provided a follow-up of Sports historiographical publications in Brazil and disseminated within the CHALEF was systematized. However, the investigation of CHELEF historiographical production must take into account the conditions it was produced and published. The materiality of Proceedings, the participation of several institutions and people involved in the events´ organization, the presence of national and international guests, debates within the context of postgraduate programs involved at the start of the event - such as the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Universidade Gama Filho (UGF), and Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) -, the emergence of several concerns and the enunciation of specific proposals from the several conferences and round tables about the History of Sports and its Historiography should be taken into account. In other words, the history of the Historiography of Sports in Brazil is under analysis.

The author also intends to undertake wider investigations about Brazil's production of Historiography of Sports, albeit without great pretentiousness. The above requires, at least, a dialogue of sorts with such publications as Simpósios Temáticos de História do Esporte e das Práticas Corporais of the Associação Nacional de História (ANPUH), GTT, Memórias da Educação Física e do Esporte do Colégio Brasileiro de Ciências do Esporte (CBCE-CONBRACE), Centro de Memória do Esporte da Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (CEME/UFRGS), Centro de Memória da Educação Física, do Esporte e do Lazer da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (CMEF/UFMG), seminars and articles in specialized journals, such as Recorde: Revista de História do Esporte, and others, place of publication, dissemination and appropriation. It is expected that, by the end of current analysis of the production site of sports history in Brazil published by CHELEF, the contrasts and comparisons, mentioned above, are undertaken. An analysis on the production of the site will be undertaken, or rather, of the texts published in CHELEF Proceedings (1993-2016). Research data will be presented and, later, the trends in the history of Historiography of Sports in Brazil will be discussed.

Historiography of sports in CHELEF Proceedings

Production modes of published texts were analysed so that the Historiography of Sports in Brazil could be narrated. They consisted of the systematization of information that involved the required discussion and interpretation of a historical process with its academic stance and direction. The narration of the History of Sports took into consideration sources, historical periods, theoretical and methodological bases and the most cited authors/works in the texts published in the CHELEF Proceedings (1993-2016). Data are given in the tables. Table 2 shows the recurring themes found in texts on the History of Sports:

Table 2 -
Recurring themes on sports

Themes	Number of instances
Soccer	117
Sources, theories, methodologies/Writing of History	47
Sport and gender	43
Olympics: Olympic Games	33
Public policies/state/government - Sports	29
Martial Arts	27
Sports in cities/states	23
Sports at school/university	20
Adventure, nature, radical sports	17
Sports and clubs/associations	17
Sports and modern society	16
Athletics	16
Young people, school, university games	16
Sports programmes (EPT, SESI, INDESP)	15
Basketball	15
Paths, biographies in sport	15
Volleyball (court/sand)	15
Historiographical balance	11
Archives/ Memory Centres	11
Nautical and aquatic sports	10
Ethnicity and sport	9
Urban space	7
Adapted sports and Paralympics	7
Violence in sports	7
Sports institutions (Federations; ACM)	7
Olympic/Rhythmic Gymnastics	6
Horse racing	5
Fashion/ Sportswear	5
Cycling	5
The concept of sports	4
Sports and values (fair play)	4
Management, sports marketing	4
Media and sports	4
Rugby (beach)	4
Radio and sports journalism	4

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016). Table prepared by the author.

Soccer/football traditionally dominates the history of Brazilian sports due to its social load in Brazilian culture since the last decades of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century ( LUCENA, 2001). According to Ribeiro (2000), football researchers delving into the CHELEF Proceedings should also take into account the playfulness, obsession, pleasure, unreasonableness, or rather, the force of subjective introjection that makes up the uniqueness of football in Brazilian society, going beyond the social, economic and political variables.

Besides football, other sports themes are underscored, including the narration of the History of Sports (theory, methods, sources, periodization), gender identity, competition, sports in Brazilian towns and cities, manifestation of conflicts/struggles, sports institutions (clubs, associations, federations), collective and individual modalities, adapted sports, games/sporting competitions, school/college sports, sports models in societal, mercantile and televised sports dynamics, sports policies/programs, adventure/risk/extreme sports, public space/sites for sports, ethnicity/sociocultural values, trajectories/biographies of sports people, violence in sports, sports broadcasting and journalism and others.

Table 3 -
Historical periods in the History of Sports discussed in the texts

Researched historical periods	TOTAL	%
Prior to the 18th century	12	2.6
19th century	27	5.9
Later 19th century/ Early 20th century	31	6.8
20th century	301	65.5
Late 20th century/early 21st century	57	12.4
21st century	31	6.8
Total	459	100

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016). Table prepared by the author.

Table 3 reveals an important trend: A small number of publications on the History of Sports at the 19th century and earlier (8.5%); a relevant cluster of publications at 20^th century sports (65.5%), with an increasing number for the late 20^th century and early 21^st century (19.2%). However, the survey demonstrates 136 full articles and 28 abstracts without any historical periodization. The fact may be glossed as the existence of articles in the Proceedings on other areas of knowledge. Actually, the central themes of the fifth, eighth and ninth CHELEF reveal dialogues between the Social Sciences and the History of Sports, Leisure and Physical Education. There is no evidence of quality decline in the wake of the introduction of Sociology, Anthropology, and other areas. Rather, they constitute conditions in which production sites and field segments were being built for researchers of the History of Sports in Brazil. However, as from the sixth CHELEF, the studies of social representations, perceived from the point of view of Social Psychology in the works of Serge Moscovici, Denise Jodelet, Jean Claude Abric, Mary Jane Spink, Pedrinho Guareschi and others, became more and more present in Sports production published in the Proceedings under analysis.

The tables on themes and historical periods boil down to the practice of one of the historians’ tasks, or rather, to provide meaning and systematize concepts based on the agents’ experience throughout the period. CHELEF proceedings are the bases of one’s idea of sports as a social, cultural, political, economic, and psychic practice which gained force in Brazilian society in the 19^th century and became one of the main experiences of the population in the 20^th century within urban and rural contexts, public and private institutions, urban and rural equipment, discourses/political activities and competition. These factors aim at enhancing and revealing plural identities, values to be instilled, behaviour to be codified, the production of heroes, body education of the agents and conquests to be remembered. It is not only a practice discovered by practitioners of adventurous / risky activities, but also a phenomenon in an increasing process of full merchandizing, spectacularization and professionalization, especially from the last quarter of the 20^th century till the present.

On the other hand, according to Burke (1992), “sources and methods are precisely the greatest issues for new historians”. When new questions were addressed to the past in search of new aims, researchers had (and still have) to seek new types of sources to supplement official documents and census statistics. Certeau (2010) states that “everything starts by an act of separation, encounter, transformation into ‘documents’ of specific objects distributed otherwise”.

Tables 4 and 5 quantify occurrences with regard to written, oral, imagistic/iconographic, virtual and audio-visual sources.

Table 4 -
Types of sources retrieved from publications on the History of Sports

Types of sources	Number of publications	%
Written	605	76.2
Oral	122	15.4
Imagistic/iconographic	30	3.8
Virtual	24	3.0
Audio-visual	11	1.4
Material artifacts	2	0.2
Total	794	100

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016). Table prepared by the author.

Table 5 -
Types of sources in publications on the History of Sports

Main types of sources cited	TOTAL	%
Bibliography/ theories/reviews	219	27.6
Oral interviews	122	15.3
General newspapers	115	14.5
Specialized newspapers	79	9.9
Institutional documents	66	8.3
Official documents (government)	56	7.0
Internet (site, blog, twitter, e-sports)	24	3.0
Literature, chronicles, memoirs	22	2.8
Photographs	21	2.6
Questionnaires	14	1.8
Dictionaries/Encyclopaedias	10	1.3
Proceedings	10	1.3
Films/Documentaries	6	0.8
Letters	6	0.8
Advertisements	5	0.6
Audio-visual devices (sound; radio; TV)	5	0.6
School curricula	4	0.5
Paintings	3	0.4
Catalogues	3	0.4
Material artifacts	2	0.3
Musical compositions	1	0.1
Ethno-historical narratives	1	0.1
Total	794	100

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016). Table prepared by the author.

Written sources comprise bibliographies, printed matter (newspapers, journals, bulletins), institutional documents, questionnaires, letters, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, laws, handbooks/gymnastics, music, and others. Oral sources consist of interviews for the production and recordings of orality. Imagistic and iconographic sources comprise photographs, pictures, outdoors. Virtual sources are contents derived from internet sites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, e-sports, and others. Audio-visual sources consist of films, documentaries, radio, and TV advertisements. Studies on cultural material artifacts are a feature in the 2018 CHELEF Proceedings. However, only a superficial problematization of the type and statute of the sources was extant. The exercise is required to avoid the writing of history with finalist truths established in an explicatory co-relationship of cause

and effect in past events. In fact, historical sources are human productions, with historicity and intentionality, interpreted by the historian within a given moment.

CHELEF Proceedings mainly contain productions that consider the press as a historical source, although few problematize the production of journalistic narrative and its agents. There are even fewer texts that consider the press as a historical object, beyond the recording of past events. This is particularly true when press records are used as historical sources. Most consider them as “dead” objects and “cold” letters, unhinged from the historical events in which they are constructed.

In his Cultural history: between practices and representations, Chartier (1990) aims to capture the history of a particular printed matter and detects the greater and lesser conflicts caused since its production up to its dissemination and appropriation by readers. In their article Na oficina do historiador: conversar sobre história e imprensa Cruz and Peixoto (2007) show that it is the duty of the researcher to understand the press as a live force in society, as a fertile source for the knowledge of the past, a source of daily information, underscoring materials for the recovery of historical events. In fact, they are assets of the press for historical research spread throughout the texts and which, in a certain sense, have contributed for the naturalization of usage forms. A more profitable trend would be to conceive the press as a historical source and object.

On the other hand, one may detect discussions on oral history since the first issues of CHELEF. In the tenth CHELEF, oral sources were the most quoted sources, actually more than the bibliographies. However, a more in-depth research should be undertaken on the manner each text produced, dealt with, described and interpreted its research sources.

The following three tables (6, 7 and 8) record data on authors and their most referenced works in texts on sports published in the CHELEF Proceedings.

Table 6 -
Most cited authors in publications on the History of Sports

Most cited authors	Total
Pierre Bourdieu	93
Norbert Elias/ Eric Dunning	75
Norbert Elias	61
Eric Hobsbawm	43
Victor Andrade Melo	37
Jacques Le Goff	30
Paul Thompson	25
Nicolau Sevcenko	23
Peter Burke	21
Marcelo W. Proni	20
Silvana V. Goellner	20
Leonardo A. M. Pereira	18
Mario Rodrigues Filho	18
Ademir Gebara	17
Lino Castellani Filho	17
Ricardo Lucena	17
José Carlos Meihy	16
Roberto DaMatta	15
Max Weber	14
Valter Bracht	14
Allen Guttmann	13
Carmen Lucia Soares	13
Inezil Penna Marinho	13
Michel Foucault	13
Antonio Jorge Soares	12
Edward P. Thompson	12
Johan Huizinga	12
Mauro Betti	12
Ecléia Bosi	11
E. Hobsbawn e T. Ranger	11
Michel de Certeau	11
Roger Chartier	11
Waldenyr Caldas	11
Wanderley Marchi Jr	11
Fernando de Azevedo	10
Giampiero Griffi	10
Katia Rubio	10
Sebastião Josué Votre	10
Carlo Ginzburg	9
Lamartine P. DaCosta	9
Luiz Henrique de Toledo	9
Marieta L. Ferreira; Janaina Amado	9
Maurice Halbwachs	9
Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr	9
Pierre Parlebás	9
Serge Moscovici	9
Adam Schaff	8
Henri Irénee Marrou	8
Sonia Jatahy Pesavento	8

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016); Table prepared by the author.

Table 7 -
Most cited authors as theoretical and methodological reference

Authors	Total
Pierre Bourdieu	93
Norbert Elias/ Eric Dunning	75
Norbert Elias	60
Eric Hobsbawm	43
Jacques Le Goff	29
Paul Thompson	25
Nicolau Sevcenko	22
Peter Burke	19
José Carlos Meihy	16
Max Weber	14
Michel Foucault	13
Edward P. Thompson	12
Michel de Certeau	12
Ecléia Bosi	11
Eric Hobsbawm/ Terence Ranger	11
Roger Chartier	11
Verena Alberti	10
Carlo Ginzburg	9
Marieta L. Ferreira; J Amado	9
Maurice Halbwachs	9
Serge Moscovici	9
Walter Benjamin	9
Adam Schaff	8
Henri I. Marrou	8
Sonia Jatahy Pesavento	8
Ciro Flamarion Cardoso	7
Michel Pollak	7
Alessandro Portelli	6
Georges Vigarello	6
Gilberto Freyre	6
Hans Lenk	6
Karl Marx	6
Paul Veyne	6
Stuart Hall	6
Alain Corbin	5
Marc Bloch	5
Tania R. Lucca	5
Antonio Gramsci	4
Carlos Bacelar	4
Ciro F. Cardoso; Ronaldo Vainfas	4
Guy Debord	4
Michel Maffesoli	4
Mike Featherstone	4
Norbert Elias; John Scotson	4
Pedro Guareschi; S Jovchelovitch	4
Richard Holt	4
Clifford. Geertz	3
Denise Jodelet	3
George Simmel	3
Heloisa F. Cruz; Maria R.C. Peixoto	3
José A. Barros	3
Lynn Hunt	3
Marcel Mauss	3
Mary Jane Spink	3
Peter Berger; Thomas Luckmann	3
Richard Rorty	3
Anthony Giddens	2
Antonio Torres Montenegro	2
Antonio Candido	2
Carla Pinsky	2
Cornelius Castoriadis	2
David Le Breton	2
Edward Said	2
Emile Durkheim	2
Fernand Braudel	2
François Dosse	2
Franz Boas	2
Gibert Durand	2
Georges Duby; M. Perrot	2
Gilberto Velho	2
Henri Lefebvre	2
José Carlos Reis	2
Jean Baudrillard	2
Jean-claude Abric	2
Karl Manheim	2
Lucien Fevbre	2
Milton Santos	2
Pierre Nora	2
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda	2
Sonia M. Freitas	2
Umberto Eco	2
Frank Ankermist	1
Jeffrey Lesser	1
Michelle Perrot	1

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016). Table prepared by the author.

Table 8 -
Most cited works

Works	Total
Deporte y Ocio en el proceso de civilización (Elias & Dunning)	76
Sociology in question (Bourdieu)	74
In other words (Bourdieu)	26
The Civilizing Process. Vol. 1 (Elias)	26
History and Memory (Le Goff)	25
The Voice of the Past (Thompson)	24
The Civilizing Process. Vol. 2 (Elias)	23
Footballmania: uma história social do futebol no RJ (1902-1938) (Pereira)	18
O esporte na cidade: aspectos do esforço civilizador brasileiro (Lucena)	17
New perspectives on historical writing (Burke)	16
Cidade Sportiva: o turfe e o remo no Rio de Janeiro (1849-1903) (Melo)	16
What is Sociology (Elias)	15
O negro no futebol brasileiro (Rodrigues Filho)	15
The age of Empires, 1875-1914 (Hobsbawm)	14
The society of individuals (Elias)	14
Educação Física no Brasil: a história que não se conta (Castellani Filho)	14
Orfeu estático na metrópole (Sevcenko)	14
From ritual to record: the nature of modern sports (Guttmann)	13
The age of Extremes - the brief 20th century, 1914-1991 (Hobsbawm)	13
The invention of tradition (Hobsbawm & Ranger)	12
Manual de história oral (Meihy)	12
Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations (Chartier)	11
Esporte-espetáculo e futebol-empresa (Proni)	11
Homo ludens (Huizinga)	11
The Protestant Ethic and the spirit of Capitalism (Weber)	10
Educação Física e Sociedade (Betti)	10
Educação física progressista (Ghiraldelli Jr)	10
História da Educação Física e do Esporte (Griffi)	10
História Oral: a experiência do CPDOC (Alberti)	10
O pontapé inicial: memória do futebol brasileiro 1894-1933 (Caldas)	10
A grande sacada do voleibol. Sacando o voleibol (Marchi Jr)	9
A representação social da mulher na EF e no esporte (Votre)	9
Educação Física: raízes Europeias e Brasil (Soares)	9
Symbolic Power (Bourdieu)	9
A capital irradiante: técnicas, ritmos e ritos do Rio (Sevcenko)	8
On historical knowledge (Marrou)	8
Educação Física e Esporte: perspectivas para o século XXI (Moreira)	8
História e verdade (Scaff)	8
La societé de consommation: ses mythes, ses structuras (Baudrillard)	8
Memória e sociedade (Bosi)	8
Universo do futebol: esporte e sociedade brasileira (DaMatta)	8
Usos e abusos da história oral (Ferreira; Amado)	8
Discipline and punish (Foucault)	8
A representação social da psicanálise (Moscovici)	7
Futebol, raça e nacionalidade no Brasil: releitura da história oficial (Soares)	7
História e História Cultural (Pesavento)	7
História política do futebol brasileiro (Santos)	7

• Source: Proceedings of CHELEF (1993-2016). Table prepared by the author.

The quantitative analysis in bibliography and most cited authors as theoretical and methodological references demonstrates ranks from the highest to the lowest, featuring respectively Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, Eric Dunning, Eric Hobsbawm, Jacques Le Goff, Paul Thompson, Nicolau Sevcenko and Peter Burke ( Tables 6 and 7). The production on Historiography of Sports also demonstrates the influence of sociologists and historians and of specific works on Sports, Sociology and History. In the case of Paul Thompson, there is the methodological stance in oral history. The common denominator among reference authors is that they contribute towards historiographical renewal, in their specific manner, within the field of History. Since the last quarter of the 20^th century, the New History predominates, or rather, “history written as a deliberate reaction against traditional paradigms” ( BURKE, 1992, p. 10). The analysis and the differentiation of their usage and that of other authors in the works under analysis should be undertaken to identify the types of appropriation by researchers. The latter constitutes the limit of current investigation.

In the case of authors and research works on Sports in Brazil ( Table 6), in decreasing order, comprise Victor de Andrade Melo, Marcelo W. Proni, Ademir Gebara, Leonardo A. M. Pereira, Lino Castellani Filho, Ricardo F. Lucena, Roberto DaMatta, Silvana V. Goellner, Carmen Lucia Soares, Inezil Penna Marinho, Valter Bracht, Antonio Jorge Soares, Mauro Betti, Waldenyr Caldas, Fernando de Azevedo, Giampiero Griffi, Kátia Rubio, Lamartine P. DaCosta, Luiz Henrique de Toledo, Paulo Ghiraldelli Jr, Sebastião J. Votre and Wanderley Marchi Jr. The above authors represent different generations in the Historiography of Sports and Physical Education in Brazil, ³ some of whom were researchers on football within the perspectives of the Social Sciences.

Research in the Proceedings shows that Victor A. Melo, Marcelo W. Proni, Antonio Jorge Soares, Silvana V. Goellner, Wanderley Marchi Jr and others represent a renewal on the study of Sports in Brazil, since the 1990s. Several texts of these authors, published in the Proceedings, have been written during their academic formation and in the wake of their master’s and doctoral research. In other words, renewal is associated with the history of CHELEF which, during the early congresses, was linked to the Research Group on the History of Physical Education and Sports at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas under the direction of Dr. Ademir Gebara, and with the increasing participation of researchers affiliated to the Universidade Gama Filho and to the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. In recent Proceedings, one may encounter texts written by students of the said researchers of the 1990s and texts by students of the latter. This fact demonstrates the consolidation of the renewal movement, at levels of deeper academic requirements.

Considerations on the historiography of sports in Brazil: ‘sprouting from the tree trunk’

The History of the Historiography of Sports in Brazil makes us employ the metaphoric and thought-provoking phrase: “History is a tree without a trunk”, coined by the Dutch historian and philosopher Ankersmit (2011, p. 20). Through the metaphor of the tree, Ankersmit gives us food for thought on the recent historiographical production in Brazil, especially from the 1990s, within the following terms.

The History of Sports may be compared to a tree. First, within the Historiography of Sports, the essentialist tradition predominated until the 1970s and historians were focusing on the tree trunk, defining the trunk’s nature and shape. This fact caused historical narratives to be centred on the origin and evolution of sports within the descriptive, factual, and linear modes of history. Second, when research, with its 1980 productions, imbued by Marxism and political criticism, focused on the tree branches, the trunk was not discarded. The above provided narratives based on significant documental bases to explain the demands of changes as from the past or, at least, to say something on the tree’s final trunk.

Thirdly, since the 1990s, the historiographical movement of Sports in Brazil, either formulated through an ontological, or epistemological or methodological terminology, critically reviewed the essentialist stance that imbued its past or sections of it. According to Gebara (2003), ⁴ the theoretically diversified research movement established its relationships mostly in postgraduate courses and in the CHELEF events, fomenting a network of researchers. It should be underscored that in the first four CHELEF proceedings (1993-1996), texts for instance by Cavalcanti (1994) and by de Melo (1996a) were critical of the Historiography of Sports

Consequently, the Proceedings demonstrate a more intense debate on production, appropriation and use of sources and methods. In his Norbert Elias e Pierre Bourdieu: novas abordagens, novos temas, published in the Proceedings of the VI CHELEF, Gebara (1998) discusses two of the most quoted authors of Sociology in the production of the area ( Tables 6, 7 and 8) and ends the paper by quoting the historian Edgar DeDecca:

[...] the historians´ great contribution is still the construction of their sources, regardless of methodological options. It is a task full of difficulties. Other areas of historical knowledge already have an advanced source treatment, coupled to consistent and diversified themes. The historiography that is currently being built on sports, leisure and physical education has to cope with the issue: how may one build themes, objects of analysis, sources? ( GEBARA, 1998, p. 81).

Other questions may be added to that by Gebara. Which and in what manner a possible academic legitimation for the History of Sports and Physical Education in Brazil is possible? How are historical studies in the field being developed? The questions above have been made by Melo (1996a) in Encontros Nacionais e o movimento da história da Educação Física/ Esporte no Brasil - perspectivas internacionais.

To cope with such issues, we may observe papers written by guests or researchers from other fields of knowledge, such as History, History of Education and Social Sciences. Consequently, debates were on theories, methods, and sources in History. Few deal with the object of Sports. However, at that specific period, these guests were greatly relevant for a group of researchers involved in an in-depth reviewing and structuring of the History of Sports in Brazil.

Still employing Ankersmit’s tree metaphor, the New History, used and adopted specifically by several texts in the CHELEF Proceedings reveals that an anti-essentialist aspect of history lies neither in the branches nor in the tree trunk, but in the leaves of the tree of the History of Sports. However, Ankersmit insists that we may not forget that one of the “characteristics of the leaves is their loose hold on the tree. On the arrival of autumn or winter, they are swept away by the wind” ( ANKERSMIT, 2011, p. 129).

Consequently, CHELEF Proceedings indicate that autumn has arrived for the History of Historiography of Sports in Brazil. Leaves are scattered by the wind and the writing of History increasingly gets out of focus off the tree trunk, more for some, less for others.

In the Historiography of Sports in Brazil, anti-essentialism has decreased, but failed to eliminate totally the commitment of the field with traditional, factual, episodic, laudatory, linear history or that controlled by the desire of political militancy. We insist on the term “not totally” because, for an emphatic review of essentialist historiography, we are somewhat debating it and in conflict with it. It is the past and says a lot on the more recent history of the Historiography of Sports. On the other hand, the essentialist aspect still affects a series of analysed productions, although the New History is often described as a theoretical and methodological trend by contemporary authors.

The History of Sports in Brazil is endeavouring to gather the swept leaves and study them, regardless of their origins and trunks. This boils down to the fact that, for many researchers, historical awareness is going upside down and spreading outwards by the wind, similar to tree leaves. Historical awareness and historiographical production may be presented, in a general way, as the counter-history of the past tied to tree trunks.

The theoretical and methodological influence of the École des Annales and of critical perspectives, the auto-critical characteristics of the linguistic turn, the insights of Social Psychology, micro-histories and interdisciplinary writing have capacitated the centrifugal forces of renewal of the Historiography of Sports in Brazil. In other words, through the theoretical perspectives listed in Table 7, such as “history seen from below”, “history of women”, “history of images”, “history of the press”, “history of reading and literature”, “history of the body”, “history of crumbs” (limiting ourselves to the New perspectives of historical writing, edited by Burke (1992) and The new history, edited by Le Goff (2005), the Historiography of Sports in CHELEF events is similar to the gathering of leaves. It does not aim to replace them in their respective trees from where they were retrieved, but to form readings on the past and sometimes on the present. Such a situation emerges in the texts of the CHELEF Proceedings when one notes different leaves composing the Histories of Sports, such as the History of Soccer, Olympic Games, Californian Sports, Cycling, Cars, Volleyball, Turf, Fighting, and other stories listed in Table 2.

Contemporary Historiography of Sports in Brazil has demonstrated that one should not be tied to legitimizations influenced by standard official histories and universalist explanations, based on the myth of origin (the tree trunk). However, the number and diversity of historical objects within the CHELEF Proceedings require a search for links between the different leaves of the sports tree. In fact, they represent a series of fragmented, isolated, and broken historical contexts throughout time. This is the meaning of the logo that “history is a tree without a trunk”.

Final considerations

Current paper on the History of the Historiography of Sports in Brazil, in which we may include Physical Education and Leisure, phenomena linked to one another, tried to show that Sports historians or researchers may be able to reflect on the history of the discipline they lecture, problematize the different meanings of historical facts, analyse the movements that through time led towards the structuring of their academic field. In other words, CHELEF and its Proceedings represent a social academic space of dissemination of the production of historical knowledge on Sports. It is from historical knowledge on sports that CHELEF is being built as such.

Due to the number of different themes, sources, periodization, and theoretical-methodological bases selected by researchers, current analysis demonstrates that the History of Sports is not a reconstruction of what happened in different periods of society, but an endless game with the representation of memoirs of experiences through time. Consequently, it is not enough to have a thorough survey of sources on the past to write the history of sports, inspired by the greed of the discovery of an experience and by its perfect reconstruction. It would be better to note the result of in-depth research, made up of different sources that more often ask the meaning of everything produced until the moment. The time has come to think deeply on the past and on the set of events on the history of the Historiography of Sports in Brazil rather than to make a survey and describe sources individually.

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• 1
  Research reveals that the event was initially called “Meeting on the History of Physical Education and Sports”; its second edition was called “National Meeting on Sports, Leisure, and Physical Education”; the sixth edition, in 1998, celebrated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, became known as The Brazilian Congress of the History of Sports, Leisure, and Education, abbreviated to CHELEF, acknowledged by Brazilian researchers, and employed in current paper.
• 2
  Laercio Elias Pereira, current author and other collaborators have published a digitalized edition and indexed papers published in the CHELEF Proceedings on the homepage of the Virtual Sports Centre (CEV). See CEV Collection CHELEF in http://bit.ly/chelefcev
• 3
  For the historiography of sports and physical education in Brazil, see: Melo (1999).
• 4
  This paper was read in the first Simpósio Temático de História do Esporte at the National Association of History (ANPUH). The discussion on Sports and Body Practices in ANPUH seminars may be considered a landmark for the Historiography of Sports in Brazil.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

• Funding

  Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES).

• Ethics Committee approval

  Not applicable.

• Research context

  The article derives from “Conferência - A historiografia do esporte nos anais do CHELEF”, presented in the event “Congresso Brasileiro de História do Esporte, Lazer e Educação - UNICAMP”, in 2016.

• Evalution method

  Double-Blind Peer Review.

• Preprints

  The article is not a preprint.

• Availability of research data and other materials

  Not applicable.

Edited by

Editors

Flávia Varella - Editor-in-chief

Maria Inés Mudrovcic - Handling editor

Data availability

Not applicable.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Oct 2023
• Date of issue
  Sep-Dec 2022

History

• Received
  17 Aug 2021
• Accepted
  23 Jan 2022