Revisiting the notion of cohesion in community sport: a qualitative study on the lived experiences of participants

ABSTRACT

Research has focused on the question if and how leisure can create social cohesion and can alleviate cultural segregation in divided community contexts. Community sport in particular is believed to create socio-cultural cohesiveness, as it aims at a sense of community, a task in which regular sports often seem to fail. However, the experiences of participants in relation to socio-cultural cohesiveness in community sport remain absent in the existing body of research. This article provides insights into those experiences, by drawing on a qualitative study in Flanders, Belgium. Based on the findings, we challenge the one-sided focus on socio-cultural cohesiveness to obtain a sense of community, as the perspectives of participants reveal that also political and economic dimensions of cohesion are relevant, next to socio-cultural dimensions. We argue that community cannot be reduced to socio-cultural cohesion, but should be understood from the intersection between cultural, economic and political dimensions of cohesion. Implications for practice, both in relation to community sport and the broader leisure field and further research are given.

KEYWORDS:

• Community sport
• community
• diversity
• social cohesion
• socio-cultural cohesiveness

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by VLAIO, Flemish Government Agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship [project no. IWT 150060].

Notes on contributors

Shana Sabbe

Shana Sabbe is a PhD student at the Department of Social Work as Social Pedagogy at Ghent University (Belgium). She is a researcher on the SBO-IWT project CATCH (Community Sport for AT-risk youth: innovative strategies for promoting personal development, health and social CoHesion).

Lieve Bradt

Lieve Bradt is professor of Social Pedagogy at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University (Belgium). She is coordinator of the Youth Research Platform, an interuniversity and interdisciplinary policy research center subsidized by the Flemish government. Lieve Bradt is national correspondent for the European Knowledge Centre for Youth Policy and the Youth Wiki. She is co-promotor of the SBO-IWT project CATCH.

Griet Roets

Griet Roets has a PhD in educational sciences and is professor of social work, affiliated to the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy, Ghent University (Belgium). Her research interests include conceptualization of citizenship and social rights, intersections of social inequalities of poverty, gender, age and disability, and interpretative and biographical research methodologies.

Rudi Roose

Rudi Roose is professor of Social Work at the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogy at Ghent University (Belgium). He is chairman of The International Social Work & Society Academy. He is associate editor of the European Journal of Social Work and member of the editorial board of Child & Family Social Work. He is promotor of the SBO-IWT project CATCH.