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Lassitude and Latitude

Observations on Sport and Environmental Determinism

Aarhus University, Denmark and Keele University, UK bale{at}idraet.au.dk/j.r.bale@keele.ac.uk

During the first half of the 20th century, environmental determinism was a powerful paradigm of geographical scholarship. Among those who accepted environmentalism were Ellen Semple, Ellsworth Huntington and Griffith Taylor. In essence, they argued that the physical environment determined human behaviour. Their writings implied that physical activity was determined by physical-environmental factors, ignoring culture, politics and history. Sports scientists also argued that environment was the explanatory variable in `explaining' differences in sports ability and success. The argument that some peoples were athletically underdeveloped because of the climate in which they lived was an essentially racist view. A study of the 1952 Olympics by Ernst Jokl contested the environmentalist perspective but it lives on today in popular and academic writing.

Key Words: environmental determinism • geography • sport

International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Vol. 37, No. 2, 147-158 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/1012690202037002002


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