Power, Politics and “Sport for Development and Peace”: Investigating the Utility of Sport for International Development

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon C. Darnell

Sport is currently mobilized as a tool of international development within the “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) movement. Framed by Gramscian hegemony theory and sport and development studies respectively, this article offers an analysis of the conceptualization of sport’s social and political utility within SDP programs. Drawing on the perspectives of young Canadians (n = 27) who served as volunteer interns within Commonwealth Games Canada’s International Development through Sport program, the dominant ideologies of development and social change that underpin current SDP practices are investigated. The results suggest that while sport does offer a new and unique tool that successfully aligns with a development mandate, the logic of sport is also compatible with the hegemony of neo-liberal development philosophy. As a result, careful consideration of the social politics of sport and development within the SDP movement is called for.

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabrina Moro ◽  
Samita Nandy ◽  
Kiera Obbard ◽  
Andrew Zolides

Using celebrity narratives as a starting point, this Special Issue explores the social significance of storytelling for social change. It builds on the 8th Centre for Media and Celebrity Studies conference, which brought together scholars and media practitioners to explore how narratives inspired by the lives of celebrities, public intellectuals, critics and activists offer useful rhetorical tools to better understand dominant ideologies. This editorial further problematizes what it means to be a popular ‘storyteller’ using the critical lens of celebrity activism and life-writing. Throughout the issue, contributors analyse the politics of representation at play within a wide range of glamourous narratives, including documentaries, memoirs, TED talks, stand-up performances and award acceptance speeches in Hollywood and beyond. The studies show how we can strategically use aesthetic communication to shape identity politics in public personas and bring urgent social change in an image-driven celebrity culture.


2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 1684-1707 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saif Shahin ◽  
Zehui Dai

This study develops a technosocial framework for assessing the efficacy of global aid agencies’ use of Twitter’s algorithmic affordances for participatory social change. We combine computational and interpretive methods to examine tweets posted by three global aid agencies—U.S. Agency for International Development, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and the International Committee of the Red Cross—as well as public tweets that mention these agencies ( N = ~100,000). Results indicate that when an agency (a) replies to or retweets public tweeters, (b) includes publicly oriented hashtags and hyperlinks in its tweets, and (c) tweets about topics that the public is also interested in and tweeting about, the social network that develops around the agency is more interconnected, decentralized, and reciprocal. Our framework can help development institutions build more participatory social networks, with multiple voices helping determine collective goals and strategies of collective action for sustainable social change. We also discuss the theoretical implications and methodological significance of our approach.


2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Copestake

This paper contributes to an ongoing conversation between development studies (DS) and social policy (SP) as academic fields, particularly in the UK. Using Andrew Abbott's analysis of the social sciences as an evolving system of knowledge lineages (KLs), it reflects on the status of DS and its relationship with SP. Defining DS as a distinctive KL centred on critical analysis of ideas and projects for advancing human well-being, I suggest that it has lost coherence even as research into international development thrives. Indeed it is easy to envisage its gradual assimilation into other KLs, including SP. The two increasingly overlap in their analysis of the causes of relative poverty and injustice, and what can be done to address them, within countries and globally. Strengthening links between the two fields can be justified as a political project, even at the risk of some loss of plurality and plenitude across the social sciences.


2016 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-139
Author(s):  
Kimberly A. Bush ◽  
Michael B. Edwards ◽  
Gareth J. Jones ◽  
Jessica L. Hook ◽  
Michael L. Armstrong

Recently, scholars of sport management have called for more research aimed at understanding how sport can be leveraged for social change. This interest has contributed to a burgeoning paradigm of sport management research and practice developed around using sport as a catalyst for broader human and community development. In order for sport practitioners to successfully develop, implement, and sustain these programs, integration of development-based theory and concepts are needed in sport management curricula. Service learning is one pedagogical approach for achieving this objective, and is well suited for promoting social change practices among students. This study assesses how participation in a sport-for-development (SFD) service learning project impacted the social consciousness and critical perspectives of sport management students. Results suggest the experience raised student’s awareness of community issues, developed a more holistic perspective on the role of service, and influenced their future careers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 15-38
Author(s):  
Kai Arne Hansen

The chapter connects theoretical perspectives on the role of masculinity in maintaining gender hegemony to aesthetic and discursive concerns of particular relevance to a study of gender and pop music. Identifying the late 2010s as a period of supposed upheaval in gender politics, it outlines reinvigorated aspiration for “new” masculinities following the emergence of the #MeToo movement and tackles some of the tensions that arise from celebrating pop artists as harbingers of positive social change. The focus then shifts to issues concerning genre, style, and the co-negotiation of masculine and musical authenticity, which provide a platform for homing in on the cultural mechanisms that have subordinated male pop singers in relation to dominant ideals. The chapter ends with further reflections on the social politics of ascribing meaning to pop representations, which direct additional attention to the complicated relationships between artists and audiences.


2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mitchell J McSweeney

Social entrepreneurship is a nascent concept within academia that is increasing in scholarly attention and practice, especially within the study of sport. A recent article has reviewed the concept of social entrepreneurship (SE) and sport and offered suggestions for future studies. Building on this article, I suggest that there is a need for critical, sociological explorations of sport and SE, most especially for scholars within the field of sport for development and peace (SDP). In this article, a review of SE and sport is briefly provided, as well as a presentation of recent critical perspectives on SE. Drawing attention to the connections between SDP and critical studies of SE, I suggest that there is an opportunity for sociologists of SDP to further understand the complex relations and neoliberal power structures involved in SDP social change, sustainability, innovation, and donor-recipient relations that would contribute significant insights for the future of the field.


2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Nathan Loewen

Religion, spirituality and faith are themes gaining interest and prominence in the field of development studies. This “religious turn in development” (Pearson and Tomalin 2008, 49) has gone largely unnoticed by religious studies scholars. The range of current publications on the topic is not produced by self-identified religion scholars. I wish to give an overview of this nascent topic for study in order to suggest how the acumen of religious studies scholars might engage it. I will first make some remarks about the field of international development in order to locate challenges within the ‘religious turn’ within the current IDS discourse. I wish to conclude with some proposals for studying the religious dimensions of international development.


Author(s):  
Marcio Luis Costa ◽  
Alex Silva Messias

Nas últimas décadas se observa o retorno da religião sob forma de fundamentalismo religioso, utilizando a mídia e instrumentos de pressão política para fazer valer suas crenças, pois diante do receio ao questionamento, os fundamentalistas veem no “outro”, no diferente, uma ameaça a ser combatida e, em alguns casos, extirpada para preservar suas convicções. O presente estudo tem por objetivo discutir as tendências sócio-políticas do fundamentalismo religioso cristão. Para tanto, com método bibliográfico narrativo, visitamos alguns autores em nível nacional e internacional, que abordam as condições que fizeram emergir o fenômeno social do fundamentalismo religioso, sua estruturação e atuação, até suas demandas sócio-políticas. Os resultados apontam que quando se identifica e transfere qualquer responsabilidade pessoal e histórica para as forças externas, o “outro”, entendido como pessoa e/ou instituição, não podemos negar que esse processo alcança dimensões de problema social. Notamos algumas tendências como mudança de movimento religioso para ideologia acirrada, da postura de fiel para militância, do “ad intra” das religiões para demandas “ad extra”, dos altares e púlpitos para ocupações políticas.Palavras-chave: Fundamentalismo Religioso; Protestante; Católico. CHRISTIAN RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM: SOCIAL-POLITICS TENDENCIESAbstractIn the last decades the return of religion in religious fundamentalism form can be observed, using media and instruments of political pressure, because when facing the fear of questioning, fundamentalists see in the “other”, in the different, a threat to be stopped and, in some cases, extirpated top preserve their convictions.  This study aims to discuss the social-politics tendencies of the Christian religious fundamentalism. For that, with the narrative bibliographic method, we visited some authors of national and international level, that approach the conditions that caused the emergence of the religious fundamentalism social phenomenon, its structure and role, until its social-politics demand. The results show that when any personal or historical responsibility is identified and transferred to external forces, the “other”, understood as person and/or institution, we cannot deny this process reaches dimensions of social problem. We notice some tendencies such as the change of the religious movement to fierce ideology, from the posture of faithful to militancy, from “ad intra” of religions to “ad extra” demands, from the altars and pulpits to political positions.Keywords: Religious Fundamentalism; Protestant; Catholic.


Author(s):  
Michael Germana

Ralph Ellison, Temporal Technologist examines Ralph Ellison’s body of work as an extended and ever-evolving expression of the author’s philosophy of temporality—a philosophy synthesized from the writings of Henri Bergson and Friedrich Nietzsche that anticipates the work of Gilles Deleuze. Taking the view that time is a multiplicity of dynamic processes, rather than a static container for the events of our lives, and an integral force of becoming, rather than a linear groove in which events take place, Ellison articulates a theory of temporality and social change throughout his corpus that flies in the face of all forms of linear causality and historical determinism. Integral to this theory is Ellison’s observation that the social, cultural, and legal processes constitutive of racial formation are embedded in static temporalities reiterated by historians and sociologists. In other words, Ellison’s critique of US racial history is, at bottom, a matter of time. This book reveals how, in his fiction, criticism, and photography, Ellison reclaims technologies through which static time and linear history are formalized in order to reveal intensities implicit in the present that, if actualized, could help us achieve Nietzsche’s goal of acting un-historically. The result is a wholesale reinterpretation of Ellison’s oeuvre, as well as an extension of Ellison’s ideas about the dynamism of becoming and the open-endedness of the future. It, like Ellison’s texts, affirms the chaos of possibility lurking beneath the patterns of living we mistake for enduring certainties.


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