La práctica de Actividad Física y Deportiva en los procesos de reinserción promueve escenarios formativos integrales para la construcción de relaciones saludables dentro del entramado social, presentándose como una herramienta efectiva para el trabajo con jóvenes en situación de riesgo por contexto de pandillas. Esta investigación tuvo como objetivo analizar la práctica del rugby como alternativa dentro de los procesos de reinserción social de jóvenes ex-integrantes de pandillas junto al Colectivo Calle, Paz y Respeto de la ciudad de Ibarra-Ecuador. (...) La investigación empleó un enfoque cualitativo basado en el estudio de caso y análisis etnográfico, utilizando entrevistas semiestructuradas para recopilar datos. El análisis, codificación y categorización de la información se realizó mediante el software MAXQDA, enfocándose en tres categorías: Actividad Física y Deportiva, Reinserción Social e Identidad. Los resultados revelan correlaciones significativas, como la relación entre reinserción social y oportunidades de superación; uso adecuado del tiempo libre y salud mental; y, la decisión de cambiar y oportunidades de superación. Se concluye que el rugby se presenta como un medio eficaz para la reinserción social de jóvenes en situación de riesgo, gracias a su potencial para mitigar conflictos, regular conductas violentas e inculcar hábitos positivos como la disciplina, respeto y compromiso. (shrink)

World Rugby (WR) announced in 2020 that transwomen should not be competing at the elite level because of safety and fairness concerns. WR and Jon Pike, a philosopher of sport advising them, adopted a lexical approach to get a grip on the three values in play: safety, fairness, and inclusion. Previously, governing bodies tried to balance these competing values. Michael Burke recently published a paper taking aim at Pike’s lexical approach. This is a reply to Burke.

Lloyd Jones’s *The Book of Fame*, a novel about the stunningly successful 1905 British tour of the New Zealand rugby team, represents both skilled group action and the difficulty of capturing it in words. The novel’s form is as fluid and deceptive, as adaptable and integrated, as the sweetly shaped play of the team that became known during this tour for the first time as the All Blacks. It treats sport on its own terms as a rich world, a (...) set of bodily skills, and an honest profession in itself. A reading of *The Book of Fame* can contribute to the interdisciplinary study of literature and cognition, exemplifying two-way ‘exchange values’. On the one hand, we gain insights into the nature of skilful group agency, of distinct forms and at distinct timescales, by focussing on the precise forms taken by the All Blacks’ creation of space. Here, we treat The Book of Fame as a brilliant evocation of features of collective thought, movement, and emotion that both everyday and scientific inquiry can easily miss. On the other hand, we also read back into the novel a subtle, fascinated interrogation of the mechanisms by which small groups form, evolve, and act. In this more ambitious mode of analysis, we use independently motivated theoretical concerns to help us see real features of the literary work that might otherwise remain invisible. We focus on the relationship between skilful performance and collective action. These topics fall outside the ambit of much current work by literary theorists using cognitive research, who tend to focus on theory of mind and modularity, metaphor and blending, emotion and empathy, consciousness and concepts, representation and so on. But skilled performance and collective action comprise surprisingly lively research fields across the sciences, from neuropsychology to philosophy of mind and cognitive anthropology. These areas of inquiry may provide even more productive avenues for future work in the interfield of literary and cultural theory and the cognitive sciences. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt to unpack the current public debate on racial transformation in South African sport, particularly with regard to the demographic make-up of its national cricket and rugby sides. I ask whether the alleged moral imperative to undertake such transformation is, in fact, a moral imperative at all. I discuss five possible such imperatives: the need to compensate non-white South Africans for the injustices in sport’s racist history, the imperative to return the make-up of our national (...) sides to what they would have been in the absence of that history, the requirement that national sides be representative of the country, the need to eliminate ongoing racial bias in selection, and the obligation to provide all South Africans, regardless of their race, the opportunity to compete as equals for places in the national side. I argue that the first three, drawn from talk of “rectifying the injustices of the past,” “achieving demographic proportionality between the sides and the country,” “representivity,” and “transformation” itself, are not compelling. The remaining two are of great moral import, but that the sorts of phrases just mentioned, and which are frequently used in the debate, have little to do with those genuine moral requirements. (shrink)

A common distinction is the one drawn between individuals and kinds. On the one hand, individuals are entities such as the chair where I am now sitting, my cat Aristotle, the particles that compose the chair and my cat, and the 2023 Rugby World Cup, that is, particular objects or events. On the other hand, kinds are entities such as chairs, cats, and world-cup finals, that is, roughly, groupings of particular objects or events. Granting this distinction and the assumption (...) that at least some entities have at least some essential properties, one faces two distinct types of questions: (1) what is essential to an individual? (2) what is essential to a kind? After giving a short discussion of the difference between individuals and kinds, this chapter will tackle the first question and consider various possibilities of what may count as essential to an individual. (shrink)