Amatör eller professionist? : Studier rörande amatörfrågan i svensk tävlingsidrott 1903-1967

Sammanfattning: This thesis studies the amateurism question within Swedish competitive sport from the perspective of the Swedish Sports Confederation (RF). As a background, a study is included about both the early development of Anglo-Saxon amateur sport, as well as the initial phase of the Swedish sports movement (ca.1870–1900), and the role the amateurism question played during this period. The actual research period is 1903–1967, i.e., the years when the RF, as the driving force in the issue, acknowledged amateur sport though its regulations. The main task has been to establish the position of the amateurism question between amateurism and professionalism.The research has involved examining three main perspectives for the amateurism question, which are discussed in the introductory chapter: large scope and significance, complexity, and uniqueness. The research has convincingly substantiated all three characteristics. The “amateur inquest” of the 1940s, a very far-reaching and complicated debate without parallel elsewhere, either within or outside the sporting world, constitutes the best piece of evidence.The four main questions, which also determine the disposition of the chapters, are: 1) What did the amateurism of sport entail? What reasons were behind this and how were the rules and regulations developed? 2) What important disputes (legal cases, practices) occurred with amateurism as the cause and what consequences did they have? 3) How did the different opinions view amateurism? What arguments were presented for and against? 4) In what way did the amateurism question reflect the sports movement’s autonomy, ideology and positioning within the dividing line between power aspirations and ideal/moral? Here, attention is given to the concepts of ‘parallel system’ and ‘hybrid system’. The complexity of the amateurism of sport has been illustrated using four aspects. They are to be seen as an attempt to categorise the values and the practice that together underpinned amateurism: 1) the moral aspect (ethics/moral); 2) the social aspect (class/occupation); 3) the economic aspect (income/compensation for expenses); and 4) the peripheral aspect (ethnicity/traditionalism). Through these aspects, the content and the changes of focus in the amateurism question have been highlighted.