ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag befasst sich mit Prozessen der Spielplanung und -analyse im gegenwärtigen Profi- und Leistungsfußball. Auf der Basis einer ethnografischen Studie analysiert er, wie in diesen Prozessen die dem Spiel inhärente Unsicherheit einzuhegen und seine Kontingenz zu managen versucht werden, und eruiert dabei die vielfältigen Implikationen des Planens und Analysierens für die (Re-)Organisation der Spielpraxis sowie die Subjektivierung von Trainern und Spielern. Die interessierenden Prozesse werden praxissoziologisch als Praktiken perspektiviert und in ihren ‚natürlichen‘ Kontexten und soziomateriellen Anordnungen in den Blick (...) genommen. Besondere Aufmerksamkeit wird auf den Beitrag verschiedener Artefakte gerichtet, die im Planen und Analysieren als Medien der Hervorbringung eines neuen spielbezogenen Wissens bzw. spezifischer Vorstellungen des Spiels zum Einsatz kommen. Es wird gezeigt, wie Spieler vermittelt über die Medien ‚teamförmig‘ eingestellt werden und ihnen ein ‚theoretisch-analytisches‘ Wissen für ein sicher(er)es Zusammenspiel verfügbar gemacht wird, das in anschließenden Trainingspraktiken auf dem Platz verkörpert und in ihrem praktischen Sinn verankert werden muss. (shrink)

Questions about knowledge in expert sport are not only of applied significance: they also take us to the heart of foundational and heavily-disputed issues in the cognitive sciences. To a first (rough and far from uncontroversial) approximation, we can think of expert ‘knowledge’ as whatever it is that grounds or is applied in (more or less) effective decision-making, especially when in a competitive situation a performer follows one course of action out of a range of possibilities. In these research areas, (...) studies of motor expertise have for many years actively contributed to broader debates in philosophy and psychology (Abernethy, Burgess-Limerick, & Parks, 1994; Williams, Davids, & Williams, 1999). When we navigate the world flexibly and more or less successfully, how much is this due to a capacity to represent it? In considering alternative options, or planning future actions, we seem to transcend our present environment in some way: what is the balance or relation here between highly-tuned bodily dispositions and background knowledge of the world and its patterns? What changes in these regards as we gain experience and adapt to more complex and challenging environments? Is know-how fundamentally different in kind from ordinary factual knowledge of the world, or knowledge-that? And if expertise in a domain does involve or depend on a knowledge base that is somehow more organized or deeper than that of novices, how is this knowledge selectively and appropriately deployed, often under severe time constraints? (shrink)

Being social creatures in a complex world, we do things together. We act jointly. While cooperation, in its broadest sense, can involve merely getting out of each other’s way, or refusing to deceive other people, it is also essential to human nature that it involves more active forms of collaboration and coordination (Tomasello 2009; Sterelny 2012). We collaborate with others in many ordinary activities which, though at times similar to those of other animals, take unique and diverse cultural and psychological (...) forms in human beings. But we also work closely and interactively with each other in more peculiar and flexible practices which are in distinctive ways both species-specific and culturally and historically contingent: from team sports to shared labour, from committee work to mass demonstrations, from dancing to reminiscing together about old times. (shrink)