PhD N.V. Smirnova¹
PhD, Associate Professor M.A. Elmurzaev^1
1St. Petersburg Mining University, St. Petersburg

Keywords: physical recreation, cultural aspect, motor activity, leisure, development prospects.

Background. Every research process includes theoretical and empirical dimensions, and new data and knowledge generated by studies are also to be classified into the theoretical and empirical ones. Empirical knowledge may be described as the key information about the subject phenomenon; and theoretical knowledge as referring to the nature of the latter. Empirical data accumulation process will unlikely help find actual relationships and logics of the facts unless due theoretical grounds are found for explanations. Analyses of the available literature on the subject and practical experience make it possible to identify a few popular notions of physical recreation that may be used as a starting point for the physical recreation theory building process.

The term physical recreation has been in use in the national science since the mid-1960ies when prominent sociologist M.Y. Yakobson was the first to introduce the term – that means both the physical culture domain and social phenomenon geared to form a comprehensively developed and socially active personality giving a high priority to health improvement, physical progress and excellence [6].

As provided by renowned national physical culture researcher N.I. Ponomarev, physical recreation may be referred to as the gaming leisure activity with the physical practices intended for pleasure and active recreation. The author makes an emphasis on the two key aspects of physical recreation that is exercising in leisure time and fun as one of the key goals and results of exercising [3].

The available theoretical studies of the subject have traditionally considered physical recreation as the discipline focused on individual physical health improvement and ranked among physical culture disciplines with the functionality typical for the latter.                                                   

However, it was in early 1980ies that honoured national researcher V.M. Vydrin and his followers offered in their study reports a broader interpretation of physical recreation with the scope of the latter being expanded by a few social and humanitarian research disciplines in some fields of philosophy, sociology, culture etc. In addition, the subject field has been increasingly addressed by some borderline research disciplines like psychophysiology, social psychology, philosophy of religion and other relevant disciplines, and it somewhat complicates to the efforts to develop its modern theory [1].                     

Objective of the study was to analyse the theoretical and empirical aspects of the modern physical recreation concept.

Study results and discussion. The high priority given today to the modern physical recreation theory may be explained by the following considerations. First, the science has accumulated new facts, hypotheses and findings need to be addressed and interpreted in the modern research terms. The notions of physical recreation available in the relevant study reports, however, are quite uncertain, vague and contradictory and, hence, its design model still lacks sound logical grounds and a consistent set of process indicators, and all that makes interpretations of its nature and content quite deliberate and inconsistent. The relevant notions and parameters are often borrowed from the closely related research disciplines being largely irrelevant to the essence of physical recreation. It should be mentioned that notions may be interpreted as reflections of the objectively existing in things and phenomena specifications, aspects and components defined by the relevant terms. The terms have clear, definite and stable meanings and clear application scopes. The essence of every notion includes specifications of the subject for cognition, whereas essence means the key aspect of the cognisable phenomena, its internal genuine part, fundamentals and deep-rooted processes taking place within it. The scope of notion means the integrity of all the indications embraced by the notion save for the occasional and untypical specifications. The narrow totality of physical recreation specifications gives the grounds to consider it as a specific notion, whereas a wider totality shows its connections with the other generic notions like physical culture, general recreation and other close research disciplines.

Essence of a phenomenon never manifests itself in a “clear-cut form” favoured by existentialists as it is found in the special nature of the latter and its role and mission rather than the subject for activity. Identifying the essence of physical recreation is a challenging task that may be solved only at multidisciplinary level. However multiple the notions of physical recreation and the relevant research thrusts may be, the commonly acknowledged research paradigm may be identified within its mission that is the individual health improvement. This is the prime basis for a variety of theoretical models being designed and empirical studies being completed. However, an essence of physical recreation should not be reduced to only the biological dimension of the notions as this approach is as wrong as the underestimation of the integrity and unity of different aspects of human nature. Natural (biological) components provide only a material input for the human nature building process, whereas it is the social culture that provides the toolkit and methods for the process design. In this context it is only natural that the modern science needs to make a transition from the biomedical priorities in the studies of physical recreation to the socio-cultural ones. This updated research design concept is to help expand the notion of the physical recreation essence, its subject, role and importance in the modern society.

It should be mentioned that every form of human activity is always culturally grounded and its processes cannot be run beyond the frame of the relevant culture. This key methodological provision holds true for the physical recreational activity too. The socio-cultural nature of physical recreation is defined in the context of general genuine human activities and the overall progress of culture that mostly includes physical recreation as one of its logically important components.

Physical recreation may be described as including two closely interrelated albeit different in content parts. One part may be referred to as the system of specifications, notions, regularities i.e. knowledge about physical recreation viewed as the field of objective reality subject to the theoretical cognitive level. The second part implies the above knowledge generation process and the ways to apply this knowledge in practice, i.e. the application level. Both of the parts are critical for the phenomenon study methodology. The physical recreation study methodology needs to be identified for the following reasons. Physical recreation research may be defined as a system including the relevant theory as a subsystem plus notions – viewed as the system elements spelling out the subject. A methodological approach gives the means to specify the study subject with the ways, tools and concepts of the theoretical and practical research and the key vectors of its practical application.

Methodologically, issues of physical recreation can be addressed based on integration of the following: system, interdisciplinary and functional-design approaches; philosophical, historical, natural scientific, social and humanitarian research concepts; and biological, psychological, social and cultural research strata.

Traditional frames of the research methodology driven by interaction of the empirical and theoretical research components are often too restrictive for the modern research innovations. Presently the research methodology tends to combine the philosophical, methodological and socio-cultural research domains. As demonstrated by our analyses of the reference literature on the research methodology, the latter is now in the process of transition from the traditional methodological problems (structural analysis, functionality analysis and scientific knowledge formation logics) to the socio-cultural determinants. The traditional arsenal of physical recreation research methodologies being expanded to include studies of the socio-cultural determinants of the knowledge genesis with an emphasis on the relationship of the natural scientific and socio-cultural aspects of the latter – is presently viewed as the most promising and beneficial field for the modern research [5].