Logiques de conversion identitaire dans l’exercice du métier

Abstract

Media attention seems to distil a homogeneous or even standardized image of team sports. However, behind the apparent uniformity of sports, we glimpse a variety of images/portraits, from which flow many ways of verbally and corporally expressing team sports. In delving into the milieu of professional handball, our methodological work, of a hermeneutical type, tries to reach the meaning the actors give to their practice of predilection through their speech and their behaviours. The results show that a veritable process of conversion takes place in practicing the sport, confronting each of them with the problem of his own professional identity. Being a high level handball player, being a professional player and being an expert sports player, these three combined postures are at the heart of the athlete’s identity definition.