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The societal comparative approach used in this article to assess voraciousness for sport is based on local surveys. The global was studied at a local level, based on a lengthy process of harmonization of quantitative local surveys. The research is carried out in two countries that are geographically close, but quite different to each other: France and Spain. In an increasingly globalized world, the objective is to examine differences in the social uses of physical activities and sports (PAS) between the two populations, by explaining them with respect to the differences between these two societies as a whole. The social differentiations identified in the portfolio sizes of PAS in France and Spain show more a dynamic of glocalization than globalization.

The article explores the process of "sportification"--i.e., processing physical activity in a sport regulated by a set of rules and standards, legitimized by supervisory institutions--from two originals practices, parkour and urban golf. To study these practices, we crossed the contributions of urban sociology and of the contemporary sociology of sport while respecting the methodological principles of qualitative sociology. A first point concerns the process of"sport" itself, its definition, its various stages, and the role played by communication of stakeholders on public space. The cultural mediation shows us how to institutionalize the movement that represents the "sports" resulted in the same time reconfiguration of physical practices themselves. Recent events illustrate the ongoing reconfiguration, we will detail them. Finally, we show the effects produced by the process on the definition of urban culture and sports: setting sight of activities, enhanced cooperation with the media-cultural, polarization between different types of practical in the case of parkour, around a confrontation between two of the founders.

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