Fredagen den 3 juni 2022 försvarar John Berg sin avhandling i historia och historiedidaktik vid Malmö universitet, Den utställda idrotten: Idrott som kulturarv på idrottsmuseer i Sverige. Disputationsakten äger rum kl 13:15 och ett par timmar framåt i Sal 138, Orkanen, Nordenskiöldsgatan 10, Malmö. Disputationen kan också följas via livesändning, och adressen dit läggs upp här: https://mau.se/kalender/disputation—john-berg/ när det blir dags.
Avhandlingsarbetet har bedrivits med stöd av huvudhandledaren professor Mats Greiff och bihandledarna professor Susanna Hedenborg och universitetslektor Cecilia Axelsson Yngvéus, samtliga vid Malmö universitet
Docent Daniel Alsarve, Örebro universitet, är fakultetsopponent, och betygsnämnden utgörs av docent Jesper Johansson, Linnéuniversitetet, professor Lars Eric Jönsson, Lunds universitet, samt docent Karin S. Lindelöf, Uppsala universitet. Ersättare i betygsnämnden är professor Malin Thor Tureby, Malmö universitet.
Avhandlingen är utgiven av Bokförlaget idrottsforum.org och ingår i serien Malmö Studies in Sport Sciences som volym 41. Boken kan beställas här, och kostnadsfritt laddas ned som pdf här.
Abstract
The Exhibited Sport: Sport as Heritage in Sport Museums in Sweden
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the heritagisation of Swedish sports, which is examined through studies of five Swedish sports museums of today. Additionally, the disseration explores the heritagisation of Swedish sports in a wider historical perspective, mainly focusing on the years between 1900 and 2000.
There are plenty of sports museums in Sweden today, most of them run by amateurs related to sports history associations. The number of sports museums seem to have increased from the 1980’s, a development that can be seen in relation to a wider interest in heritage, especially heritage produced by amateurs and enthusiasts rather than experts. In the study, this tendency is referred to as “the heritage boom”, a term coined by archeologist Rodney Harrison. Heritage is seen as a both social and material construction which on one hand is determined by language, on the other hand by structural circumstances. When analysing heritage making on sports museums of today, categories such as gender, class, nation and generation have been used. Methodologically, archive studies have been conducted in order to study the heritagisation from a historical perspective, and ethnographic methods such as descriptions and interviews have been used to collect material in sports museums of today. All material have mainly been interpreted through discourse analysis.
The results show that the heritagisation of Swedish sports is as old as the organized sports in Sweden, since the first attempts to collect and exhibit the heritage was conducted in the early 1900s. However, despite numerous attempts, the sports heritage have had problems finding ways to be consistent until the very last few decades when the amateur-based heritage production have had its glory days. According to changes within museology and visitor interactment, the future for the Swedish sports heritage is difficult to predict. In the sports museums of today, exhibitions are generally focused on men’s sports, although changes seem to be in the making. Apart from that, there are several differences in how the sports museums constructs generation, class and nation, often depending on how the museums are managed.
