TITLE:
Handicap and Tinkering of a Sports Career: Case of Tunisia
AUTHORS:
Imen Ben Amar, Ali Elloumi, Abdessatar Sahbeni
KEYWORDS:
Life Course, Career, Hobby, Determinism, Rationality, Disability
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.9 No.7,
July
12,
2019
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this article is to show the interest of craft as a sociological paradigm in the development of a sporting career of a handicap Tunisian athlete. Meeting the demands of a sporting career, the athlete goes through different stages of representation of disability. The representation is made from stage such as (shaped, composed, performed) through his or her sporting career. We analyzed the life story of “W” and “H”, two Tunisian Paralympic champions and their Sports career. This analysis allowed us to illustrate the necessity imposed by the social environment. It seems that athletes consider primarily the interactions in which it will keep the opportunity open and hazardous to their itinerary to finally pursue their individual actions. These actions are used to the structures, interactions, rational, irrational, subjectivity and objectivity. An entry in the sporting career which we have identified as an entry using the paradigm of high-level sports career craft formally determines the complexity of the professionalization of the Tunisian handicap. The interviews are guided by three dimensions related to civil status, sporting and social. The results indicate the sports career of a Tunisian handicap is filled with obstacle and obstructions. A difficult choice to keep that characterizes their existence and their sporting career. Passing through three stages of representation of disability: the “cursed” disability “used” disability and handicap “revered” the athlete who saw a fashioned route and anchored ambivalent and whose primary objective was the public recognition and social success. This success is achieved through learning a skill and a life of bricolage favoring the construction of a disability representation in sports career.