The maturation of the field of ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) is reflected in the growing number of research publications on the topic. This article focuses on a recent review of ...English-language research publications on SDP from 2000–2014 conducted by Schulenkorf et al. (2016. Sport for development: an integrated literature review. Journal of Sport Management 30: 22–39). We attempt to extend the analysis of current SDP research offered by Schulenkorf et al. through an exploration of the sociological implications of their key findings. In particular, we offer critical sociological commentary on key insights regarding the conceptualization of SDP; the dominant theoretical perspectives used in SDP research; the methodology and dissemination of SDP research and the demographics of researchers and research teams. In so doing, we seek to encourage critical reflection and practical considerations for scholars interested in the critical sociological analysis of SDP.
In a context where striving for gender equity in relation to achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals seems more pressing than ever before, Sport, Gender and Development: Intersections, ...Innovations and Future Trajectories brings together an exploration of sport feminisms to offer new approaches to research on Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) in global and local contexts. Including postcolonial and decolonial feminist lenses by drawing upon fieldwork with organizations and individuals in Afghanistan, Uganda, Nicaragua, and India, Sport, Gender and Development reveals the complexities of development and gender discourses and how they operate on and through researchers, practitioners, and participants' bodies. Delving into a thoughtful engagement with the (dis)connections and comparisons across these diverging contexts, this book offers a critically reflexive account of what is transpiring in the transnational sport, gender and development field, while remaining sensitive to the importance of community context and local iterations. Taking up emerging and contemporary feminist issues in sport related international development, this book advances empirical, conceptual, and theoretical developments in sport, gender and development.
The majority of ‘Sport in Development’ (SiD) research imparts a heteronormative framework that serves to prevent nuanced understandings of how sexuality and gender matter in programming that aspires ...to achieve development through/with sport. The authors review existing SiD academic literature and draw on personal work and research experiences within the SiD field to evidence this claim. Three reasons for this heteronormative frame are identified: (1) limited engagement with themes of sexuality within research on international development; (2) few examinations of queer desire and sport in areas of the Global South; and (3) the emphasis on quantitative monitoring and evaluation tools within SiD programming. The authors conclude by offering suggestions on how to challenge the existing heteronormative framework within SiD research.
This article examines current professional basketball player, Brittney Griner, and the ways in which her personal and athletic lives are represented on social media. In particular, her visibility and ...posts on her public Instagram account allow for a consideration of the digital possibilities for social change by lesbian sporting celebrities. This analysis interrogates these possibilities through a close reading of several Instagram posts regarding Griner's romantic relationship with fellow basketball star, Glory Johnson. This article ultimately argues that Griner's Instagram profile helps challenge the intersectional invisibility of Black lesbian sporting celebrities and discusses the implications of this visibility for similarly positioned LGB youth.
Since gaining momentum in the early 2000s, critics and supporters of the sport for development and peace (SDP) movement have called for evidence to substantiate the claim that sport can deliver ...'social good' for people and communities around the world. This paper aims to consider broad themes of epistemology and methodology in light of calls for evidence-based SDP research by presenting four autoethnographic vignettes from my work and research experiences within the SDP field. By turning attention to multiple readings of my embodied self in the SDP realm and in foregrounding the body as something that one can know with, about, and through, I highlight the complexities of SDP subjectivities. Moreover, my use of autoethnography raises complex questions about how and what personal accounts from 'Northern' practitioners contribute to debates around evidence, impact and the utility of SDP work.
Located at the intersection of feminist geographies of development and embodiment, this paper explores the everyday gendered experiences of international women staff working for an education-related ...NGO in Afghanistan. Drawing from a larger study, this paper is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight international women who have spent extended periods of time working in Afghanistan. It reveals the various ways international staff experienced and managed their western female bodies within and across public, non-work related spaces. Our analysis focuses on the participants' ethical and cultural considerations of covering, navigation of gendered eye contact, and experiences of sexual harassment in the streets of Kabul. It reveals how women's embodied experiences within and across non-working spaces of development led to (partial) knowledge, heightened reflexivity, critique of the development industry, and deep questioning about identity politics. Ultimately, this paper offers valuable insights into the corporeality of international women in public spaces in Afghanistan. It highlights the importance of non-work related spaces for cultivating women's understandings of difference, relationality, and ethical relationships with the Afghan women they work for and with.
This study seeks to better understand broad management issues associated with the employment of female workers in one sport for development (SfD) project. Through interviews with the executive ...director and five female staff members of Skateistan—the skateboarding SfD project operating in Afghanistan, Cambodia, and South Africa—this study offers insights on female transmigrant workers who relocated to work for the project in Afghanistan, focusing particularly on how formal and informal management strategies are experienced by international female staff and volunteers. Extending the work of Black, Mendenhall, and Oddou with a poststructural feminist approach, we identify six key themes related to the experiences of female transmigrant workers moving into and during SfD assignments: (a) initial motivations, (b) organizational selection mechanisms, (c) management of risk, (d) work–life balance, (e) managing the self, and (f) negotiating postcolonial critiques of development work. In so doing, this paper recognizes women’s lived experiences as a valid and valuable form of knowledge that could be used to inform management approaches adopted by SfD organizations.
This article elaborates on the significance of the 'family factor' in facilitating sport for development (SfD) opportunities by presenting findings related to a research project with an SfD project ...based in Delhi, India, which seeks to empower adolescent girls through sport. The findings add to the limited understanding of the role of the family in SfD opportunities; the paucity of studies which examine SfD initiatives in India and more recent studies of sport and physical culture in India. The girls of this study emerged from families who were largely supportive of the sporting opportunities and the empowerment promised through their SfD involvement. However, these families expressed concerns about issues of violence against girls and women in Delhi which impacted girls' opportunities to enact empowerment in public spaces and to access non-traditional gender roles. Furthermore, an additional understanding of the family emerged wherein the extended family of origin served as a foil to the empowered girls within this study. The findings offer more nuanced understanding of the effects of the family for SfD programming that seeks to empower girls.
