Читать книгу Innovation in Sport. Innovation Trajectories and Process Optimization онлайн

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Classical approaches in sociology are therefore interested in the intrinsic properties of objects in order to deduce their advantages and disadvantages in relation to the social or cultural context in which they are received. Innovation spreads (or doesn’t spread) in a more or less receptive environment and makes it evolve or transforms itself to respond to major trends. This is how the relatively rapid adoption of the fiberglass pole vault in the 1960s was analyzed (Defrance 1984). However, in spite of obvious relative advantages compared to the previous solutions (bamboo or metal poles), it is again the compatibility with the traditional definition of the activity (body techniques, the spectacle on show, the validity of records) that is debated. For Defrance, the context (ideology of progress) and the adoption of the fiber in other countries obliged the French athletes to imitate. But if the contextual dimension of an acceptance or rejection is undeniable, the mechanisms of adoption (or rejection) are not always made explicit.