Felix Lebed
Physical and agonistic cultures form the bedrock of human culture and give rise to sport culture. Together and separately, this trio forges unique social values. Some of these values, such as the pursuit of physical excellence and the principles of agonistic social interactions, have been long celebrated. Meanwhile, other values have evolved into contemporary cultural norms, including ideologies stemming from the quest for physical perfection, like eugenics and racial theories. My research explores the evolution of various values within these cultural spheres across an extensive historical scale. The analysis, once again, sharpens well-known sociological findings about ethical deviations and negative shifts toward a desire for rapid improvement of human "material" that frequently occur within totalitarian regimes significantly swayed by ideological biases. This insight leads to a discussion within a specific part of conflict theory in sociology focused on Antonio Gramsci's concept of "hegemony," which suggests that any altered values (superstructures) are a result of the formed by intellectuals prevailing ideologies that dominate a particular historical period, shaping its cultural priorities. Analyzing different superstructures I propose an antithesis: stable cultural trends (structures), emerging from deep-rooted biosocial interactions among people, are immutable because they even precede the economic foundations of society.
