Proceedings of the 7th World Conference on Research in Education
Year: 2024
DOI:
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The social significance of a sports club for university students in South Korean local
Y. Y. Chen, C. Hur
ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this study is to explore the meaning and value of the space of a sports club for university students in daily life in South Korea by employing the idea of spatial culture by Henri Lefebvre. The idea of this study is to find the meaning and value of all the interactions, which include communications, reactions, and behavior, in a sports club space for university students and the social significance centered on the space of the sports club. This study explored a sports club culture in South Korea from September to December 2022, employing participant observation as the primary research method. The foundation of the cultural experience of a sports club is the cultural experience of a specific space; therefore, this paper takes the concern of spatial culture as the theoretical starting point. To explore the social significance of the sports club, topics such as, first, the boundaryless atmosphere within the sports club, which provides the possibility for students to seek empathy; second, the sports club provides an obvious boundary with daily life, it allows students to build another identity for resisting dissatisfaction with life; and last, it also gives the possibility of learning for students in a changing and diverse campus environment are discussed in detail from the perspective of spatial culture.
keywords: spatial culture, sports club culture, participant observation