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Why is the term kinesiology misleading despite its high occurrence?
" It is too broad  it does not denominate a field concerned with human
movement but a discipline examining movement as such (KINÉSIS, LO-
GOS), i.e. various levels of mechanical, physical, psychological, social,
and spiritual movement.
" Various realities are denoted by the same word  in addition to the scienti-
fic field concerned with human movement also so-called spiritual doctrine
based on intuitive and spiritual concepts of recognition, not the rational
analysis of terminology. The term has also been criticized for additional
connotations (conducive to medical specializations).
Why is the term kinanthropology more accurate, more useful, and ap-
propriate?
" It is more accurate with regard to content  being reserved only for hu-
man movement strictly guides the subject of its investigations (KINÉSIS,
ANTHRÓPOS, LOGOS)
" It isn t entirely a neologism as it has been in use for several decades.
" It indicates an essential bond to anthropology, i.e. it implies that the main
goal and perspective is the human being, not external phenomena (victory,
money, performance). In this way it implicitly and clearly signs on to the
application of Kant s categorical imperative. Man is the goal, everything
else is merely a means.
What are the objections to kinanthropology?
" The word is too complicated. But its strangeness and difficult pronuncia-
tion is not any greater than with other terminology, and it has been shown
that in the Czech Republic people are able to get used to new terms very
Nomen  omen: Kinanthropology vs. Kinesiology
65
easily (up until the 1980 s a system of physical culture science was culti-
vated, in 1993 the scientific branch of kinanthropology was accredited
and was accepted rather quickly by the professional community).
" That it can be regarded as a subset of anthropology (Newell, 1990a,
275). This might be true, but it is a fear likely stemming from low self-
confidence in the field. After all, are representatives of cultural and social
anthropology afraid that they will disappear in other anthropological
disciplines? Does physical anthropology need to change its name in
order to avoid confusion with ethnic anthropology? And most impor-
tantly  isn t kinanthropology actually one of the youngest branches of
anthropology? After all, it examines man, specifically the movement of
man, and therefore has the full right to be categorized along with other
separate anthropological fields such as economic anthropology, cognitive
anthropology, ergonomics, ethology, anthropology, forensic anthropology,
gerontology, or linguistic anthropology.
I confess that I was not able to locate any other objections either in the
literature or in personal communication with professionals from various coun-
tries from around the world (for example, during the annual conferences of the
International Association for the Philosophy of Sport or the British Philosophy
of Sport Association).
Unlike the majority opinion I will continue to advance the use of the
term  kinanthropology for the field since it fulfils all argumentation de-
mands placed on the content accuracy of the term. What exactly does this
multi-discipline field pursue? I am certain that here the value of arguments
depends even more on personal preferences as well as on cultural habits and
the intellectual traditions of individual regions. I am afraid that it isn t possible
to reach a unified perspective. But because the main areas of investigation (the
forms of human movement) are in the intellectual space of journals typically
referred to as physical education, sport, game, exercise, dance, and even (in
the minority) other forms of human physical movement activity, I would like
to outline a different perspective coming from the Central European intel-
lectual context distinguished by a systematic approach more than a pragmatic
linguistic analysis.
Kinanthropology and movement culture
In the first place it is necessary to emphasize that not all of the designated
forms of human movement are essentially biological (as are, for example,
breathing, blood flow, the digestive processes, etc.), but instead cultural:
Movement skills (running, jumping, throwing, swimming, dancing, sport-
Ivo Jirásek
66
ing games...) are acquired through cultivation in society. This leads us to the
conviction that the connection of the phenomena of movement and culture
(and because culture is exclusively a sovereign human medium it implicitly
follows from the nature of the words that this exclusively concerns human
movement) into the cohesive term  movement culture is logical and accurate
with regard to content. While we more often encounter the term  physical
culture (Rose, 1986; Kirk, 1999), this designation generates several possible
critical objections: associating movement exclusively with the body separates
physical phenomena from their expressions of human existence and divides
individuals into mind and body. Hence the designation implies the possible
disunity of body and mind and in doing so accentuates only the mechanical
movement of the body in the framework of Cartesian dualism (Arnold, 1995,
15; Newell, 1990a, 270; Slowikowski & Newell, 1990, 286). The expres-
sion  physical carries with it the connotation not only of the body but also
the physical, practical, material, and perpetuating method of existence. The
other possibility,  body culture , also contains cultural phenomenon that
concern movement and which we perceive in the collocation of the culture
of the body (for example, hygiene, cosmetics, hairdressing, and aesthetics of
the body such as tattooing, eroticism, and medicine). This term is therefore
too broad with regard to content.
The potential of  movement culture is hence much greater than it
might appear at first glance. The main advantages of this term are: it argues
convincingly that the main goal of the given cultural subsystem is movement
and not other aspects of the culture of the body (from the hygiene mentioned
above to, for example, the physical expression of a religious cult). The term [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]