Book Review 'What is Sport: a Controversial Essay about why Humans Play Sports'

Abstract

This review portrays the book “What is sport: A controversial essay about why humans play sports” by social psychologist Rob Alpha. Based on Freudian theory, the book consists of an analysis of characteristics of human sexuality, unconsciously present in sports phenomenon in general, investigating more than twenty modalities in aspects such as equipment, rules, spaces and practitioners. With the proposal to answer what are sports, the approach adopted by the author ends up being too much restricted, lacking a dialogue with the academic literature that could contribute to such clarification. The book ends up bringing a very emphatic perspective on sexuality, overestimating this characteristic in relation to other aspects that permeate the sport phenomenon and that could help to better answer what sport itself is. Moreover, the text is sometimes incoherent and inaccurate, presenting divergences in relation to data and arguments raised by the researcher himself. The ideas put forward by Rob Alpha may be of interest by the academic-scientific community, but a cautious look is required because it is an intentionally controversial and provocative work.