Resisting Global Competition
Delegitimizing the Third Parties of the International Gymnastics Festival in Stockholm 1891
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11203449 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Joakim Landahl (0000-0001-7931-2063, Department of Education, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 1-14 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social Science History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0145-5532 • E-ISSN: 1527-8034 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/ssh.2026.10123 |
| OpenAlex | W7130422823 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 30 |
The 1891 International Gymnastics Festival, Sweden’s first international sports event and five years before the first modern Olympic Games, was hugely controversial. Many people argued that hosting the festival threatened the survival of Sweden’s own “Ling gymnastics” and even Swedish culture itself. These critics feared that hosting the competition, which would be shaped by outside influence, in turn would disadvantage Ling gymnastics and reduce confidence in a system that Swedes had believed to be the best in the world. The episode illustrates the complications arising from the emergence of international athletic competition and the underlying tension between nationalist and internationalist considerations
Competition (biology · Disadvantage · Event (particle physics · Nationalism · Threatened species · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts · Sports and Physical Education Studies · Sports, Gender, and Society
Practices of Comparing
The Global Transformation of Time
Nations Matter
The Force of Comparison
Sport and International Politics
Transnational History
Cultural confrontations
The Janus Face of Valuation
Anti-Sport
Why do we believe in competition? A historical-sociological view of competition as an institutionalized modern imaginary
Rethinking the History of Criticism of Organized Sport
Globalizing the Nation-Making Process
Body culture and nation building
Tracking the Origins of Physical Education in Argentina and Australia
Swedish Gymnastics for Export
Body culture and democratic nationalism
The Swedish schoolhouse
Ling’s Gymnastics Method in Brazil
The Urban Politics of Mega-Events
On Public Forms of Competition
Sport Mega-Events and Public Opposition
Commensuration as a Social Process
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |