Hiroshi Mizukami 1 and Mitsuru Kurosu 2 : Public spheres created by an intermediary network NPO for community sport clubs. Japan J. Phys. Educ. Hlth. Sport Sci. 61: 555 574, December, 2016AbstractThis article aims to elucidate the activities of an intermediary network NPO for community sport clubs (CSC) based on the theory of civil society. The activities of this intermediary network NPO occur in the intermediary sphere between the public and the private realm, creating a public sphere. This article discusses the implications of this public sphere created by the intermediary network NPO. This NPO started with the publication of a newsletter in 1998. Later it obtained corporate status and built an internet community. In 2007, it selected promoters for the nationwide organization. The target of analysis was the activityˆelds from 1998 to 2007. This article refers to the theory of new social movements by Albert Melucci and the theory of radical democracy by Ernesto Laclau. These 2 theories provide an approach for understanding and interpreting the process whereby individuals challenging the limitations of a social structure develop into citizens with public intentions, as a public sphere.While the newsletter community was a public sphere, where public intentions could be expressed through the representatives of the network NPO, the internet community was a free discourse space, where individuals could express their personal intentions. These 2 communities corresponded to a process of individualization from individuals engaging mainly in private acts to citizens with public intentions. Melucci explained this process as the potential for individualization. These communities (discourse spaces) promoted awareness of structural undecidability and non-recovery of a unique hegemony in theˆeld of sport administration. Many sport practitioners were equivalently aware of it. Laclau explained the situation with the phrase,``chain of equivalence''.The intermediary network NPO selected the promoters of community sport clubs from among people with public intentions and created a mechanism that enabled the mobilization of these people from the intermediary realm. This mechanism was achieved by leveraging information and human resources in aˆeld independent of politics and economy. This is how a new political hegemony was generated against the sport administration. This article discussed the creation of a public sphere that promoted awareness of structural undecidability and non-recovery of a unique hegemony through the potential for individualization, which has led to the next political stage of sports.

: The complementary relationship between the Japan Sports Association (JASA) and an Information Network Support NPO: Creation of a public sphere through the relationship between mobilization and symbolic movement. Japan J. Phys. Educ. Hlth. Sport Sci. 62: 491 510, December, 2017 AbstractThe purpose of this research was to clarify the importance of the complementary relationship between the Japan Sports Association (JASA) and an Information Network Support NPO (NPO) for creation of a public sphere based on the main arguments of Albert Melucci in his theory of new social movements and Ernesto Laclau and Chantal MouŠe in their theory of radical democracy. For this, the JASA (a private sporting organization that plays a central role in theˆeld of Japanese sports) and the NPO (an external organization that has supported the development of community sports clubs [CSCs]) were regarded as civil society organizations that are independent of the public and private sectors, in order to comprehend the complementary relationship between the 2 in real terms.Data on the actual practices of the JASA and the NPO between 1997 and 2007 were analyzed, and the complementary relationship between the 2 organizations was then discussed based on the concepts of mobilization and symbolic movement. Mobilization is a social space in which individuals redeˆne their social roles in a self-recursive manner through acceptance of information resources related to the values and ideals that society requires. Symbolic movement is a generic term for social movements whereby individuals' voluntary discourse act and associations act are transformed into civil societybased public intention.As a result, it was clariˆed that the JASA has been facilitating mobilization that can temporarily remove individuals from public bureaucracy and customs and direct them towards parties related to CSCs through announcements of investigation and research results and lifelong sports vision and recommendations. On the other hand, it was revealed that the NPO has been playing a symbolic role, leading to normative discourse act and associations act that are initiated by various individuals who are interested in CSCs, namely the private sector, through interactive information exchange that leverages the information and telecommunications infrastructure. Although the business methods of these 2 civil society organizations seem to be confrontational when viewed from the perspective of a complementary relationship, it was suggested that creative confrontation between mobilization and symbolic movement is a requirement for creation of a public sphere. Furthermore, the complementary relationship between mobilization and symbolic movement that attempts to aggregate and share various sources of information related to CSCs, showed some degree of ambiguity, and accordingly may be transformed into public intention in the form of collective/political action.

This study investigated the human network that was formed through relationships between community sports clubs (CSC) and information network support NPOs (NPO) for formation of social capital, focusing on the relationships that enabled NPOs of CSCs to receive donations from CSCs across Japan after the Great East Japan Earthquake. The study analyzed 45 CSCs that had made donations to NPOs, which had conducted support projects for earthquake-stricken CSCs over a two-year period from April 2011 to March 2013. For this analysis, the period of about 13 years from 1998, when the NPOs were established, to 2011, when the earthquake occurred, was divided into 3 phases, and the requirements for social capital formed in each phase were analyzed. The following 4 concepts were used as the frame of analysis: double contingency, a key concept in Niklas Luhmann's theory of social systems; Robert D. Putnam's bridging social capital; and Misumi's cognitive base and net base. The following features were found: (1) Social capital shared the philosophy of CSCs, which was published by sport administrative agencies and the Japan Sport Association (JASA), with CSCs as a cognitive base obtained through the internet tools of NPOs; (2) The relationships between NPOs and CSCs constituted a double contingency, namely a network of uncertainty where one party cannot anticipate the behavior of the other party; (3) Individual relationships between similar CSCs constituted a net base for the connection (same type) network; and (4) the CSC, which had played a central role in the bridging network that connected the various CSCs, formed bridging social capital. Thus, NPOs that used internet tools formed the requirements for social capital through the aforementioned 4 processes.