Abstract

The development of the world market, beyond the increasing economic interdependence, results in the globalisation of cultures and life styles. In any of these dimensions sport plays an important role and contributes to this globalisation, as demonstrated by the international organisations of world events, international communities and international structures based on sport. However, the way in which these dimensions, in the age of disorganised capitalism, are related is based on disjunction. According to this thesis, Appadurai (1996) proposes a basic scheme for the analysis of disjunctions between different dimensions of globalisation, suggesting the concept of “scapes” to underline the fluid yet irregular way that characterises either the flow of capital, communications or life styles. While emphasising that globalisation is strongly influenced by the historic, linguistic and political contexts of those intervening in it, the author stresses the imaginary worlds that help to construct these scapes. In this article we take advantage of some of these theoretical indications, analysing three types of scapes in the contexts of leisure and sport, in an attempt to show the relation of disjunction, contributing some of them to the increase in homogenisation and others to greater differentiation. Successively, we analyse the mass media scapes (sport as a global spectacle), technological scapes (the role of new communication media and the speed with which decontextualised global cognitive maps are created), the scapes of ideas (the role of images and of aesthetics in the experiences of leisure sport).