Analysis of the material culture of children through the object of sport: materiality and representations.

Abstract

Sports objects aimed at children are a fundamental element
for the analysis of the material culture of children, as much in
its design as in its production, commercialization and use.
Simultaneously at play are the child's body and the
representations befitting age. Since the 1960s, sports objects
have been undergoing changes in light of their aims,
modalities and the practitioners’ age range. However, a few
questions arise: how far is it possible to lower the age
ranges? How sports and their equipment move into children’s
lives? How objects integrate themselves into sports and
cultures at the same time, and what is their effect on children?
To understand these cultural hybridizations between the
sports world and the childhood world, the analysis of the
objects becomes central. This article, based on an empirical
research of qualitative nature, approaches this centrality and
presents results from the point of view of a technological and
semiotics analysis of sports objects for children (Douglas &
Isherwood 2008; Merleau-Ponty 1978). It takes into account
the materiality of sports objects and their influence on the
children’s bodies, as well as the ways to signify sports and
childhood.