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. 2020 Oct 21:11:593877.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.593877. eCollection 2020.

The Universals of Games and Sports

Pierre Parlebas  1   2   3
Affiliations

The Universals of Games and Sports

Pierre Parlebas. Front Psychol. .

Abstract

The so-called traditional motor games are group situations that function like small-scale societies, full of emotionally rich vicissitudes and proper objectives, alliances, and antagonisms. Traditional games have certainly been the object of many dispersed, really interesting studies, but no general conception of them, based on a scientifically supported methodological approach, has been developed so far. How do these games work? Does their development depend on sheer chance? Does it respond to any underlying structures? Is this development anyhow related to the socio-emotional dynamics of the group of players? As a whole, do these games, so different from each other, have any common characteristics that generate similar effects on the personality of the players? In the end, is what we know about a given game comparable and generalisable to any other one?

Keywords: ethnoludism; internal logic; motor action; motor praxeology; sociometric assessment; structural invariance; traditional sporting game.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Basketball’s universal of motor interactions. Independently of the number of players, this model represents the universal of motor interactions of all European team sports. It is a symmetric duel of teams that strictly opposes two cliques whose relationships of cooperation and opposition are exclusive and stable.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Sitting ball’s universal of motor interactions. Any two pair of vertices are linked at the same time by solidarity relationship S and rivalry relationship R. This ambivalence creates a «paradoxical» game.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Hens-Vipers-Foxes game’s universal of motor interactions. Three (solidarity) cliques are situated on an (intransitive) circuit of rivalry.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Mechanism of reversal of relationships that makes part of the internal logic of Hens-Vipers-Foxes. The fact that player «a» can tag «b» (who is a menace for «c») protects «c» from the attacks of «b»; thus, if «a» is captured «c» has no defence from «b». Therefore, «c» will be reluctant to tag their designated adversaries for they are their paradoxical protectors.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Percentages of duels within sociomotor games. After an evaluation of games corpora from the Renaissance to nowadays, it shows the spectacular of the progressive increase of the proportion of duels. The duel structure has prevailed little by little becoming the dominant model of sports today.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Distribution of the main ludic categories in several cultural areas. The distribution of the categories of the universal of motor interactions models is very variable in regard to different cultures. Along with the clear differences between Ango and Rio, separated by five centuries, there some similarities to be explored among Bruegel, Prévost and Kerkennah.
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References

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