The diffusion of development-through-sport: analysing the history and practice of the Olympic Movement's grassroots outreach to Africa

Abstract

The idea of sport as a tool for development has a long and ambitious history, up to and including a recent proliferation of international sport programmemes targeting grassroots development. The popularity of these programmes, however, raises interesting questions about the influence of sport across diverse contexts: how do ambitious claims about the universal value of sport diffuse into actual practices in distinct cultural communities? This essay uses the case of the Olympic Movement's grassroots outreach to Africa to document a historical pattern of grand and problematic ambitions for the role of sport in development consistently diffusing into modest, diverse and generally neutral practices. To analyse this pattern, the essay begins by drawing on concepts from existing scholarship related to the cultural diffusion of sport, and then considers examples in two parts: first, analysing the historical record of Olympic Movement outreach to Africa and second, analysing ethnographic examples from fieldwork in Angola with a contemporary development-through-sport programmes descended from the Olympic Movement. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of how analysing empirical examples from the history and practice of grassroots sport outreach might inform understandings of the development-through-sport endeavour.

Notes

¹ From the ‘Fundamental Principles of Olympism’, in IOC, Olympic Charter, 11.

² See, for example, Darnell, ‘Playing with Race’; Donnelly, ‘Prolympism’; Giulianotti, ‘Human Rights’; Guttmann, Games and Empires; Morgan, ‘Cosmopolitanism, Olympism, and Nationalism’.

³ See, for example, Kidd, ‘A New Social Movement’.

⁴ For a general perspective on Coubertin's attitudes toward different cultures see MacAloon, ‘On the Cultures of “Culture”’.

⁵ MacAloon, This Great Symbol.

⁶ From the ‘Fundamental Principles of Olympism’, in IOC, Olympic Charter, 11.

⁷ Samaranch, ‘The Olympic Culture’, 38.

⁸ Oswald, ‘The Fundamental Principles of Olympism’, 39.

⁹ Oswald, ‘The Fundamental Principles of Olympism’

¹⁰ For a thorough discussion of how the global and the local always interact, see Andrews and Ritzer, ‘The Grobal in the Sporting Glocal’.

¹¹ Maguire, Power and Global Sport. Note also that Sahlins refers to a similar process he calls the ‘indigenization of modernity’ where ‘as the world becomes more integrated globally, it continues to differentiate locally—the second in some measure stimulated by the first’ (Sahlins, ‘“Sentimental Pessimism”’, 170). Sahlins obliquely applies this perspective to global sports in ‘China Reconstructing or Vice-Versa’.

¹² Giulianotti, ‘Sport and Social Development in Africa’, 8.

¹³ MacAloon, ‘On the Cultures of “Culture”’, 21.

¹⁴ MacAloon, ‘Humanism as Political Necessity? Reflections on the Pathos of Anthropological Science in Olympic Contexts’, 80.

¹⁵ See, MacAloon, ‘Humanism as Political Necessity?;’ and Segrave, ‘The (Neo)Modern Olympic Games’.

¹⁶ Sahlins, ‘“Sentimental Pessimism”’, 170.

¹⁷ See Sahlins, ‘China Reconstructing or Vice-Versa’.

¹⁸ Maguire, Power and Global Sport.

¹⁹ Lamine Ba, ‘Africa and Sport for All’, 28.

²⁰ Kaufman and Patterson, ‘Cross-National Cultural Diffusion’.

²¹ See, Guttmann, Games and Empires; Mangan, The Games Ethic.

²² Darby, ‘Football’.

²³ Darnell, ‘Playing with Race’.

²⁴ Kidd, ‘A New Social Movement’, 377.

²⁵ Giulianotti, ‘Human Rights’.

²⁶ Coakley, ‘Socialization through Sports’, 356. See also Shields and Bredemeier, ‘Can Sports Build Character?’ noting that there is, in fact, no significant evidence that sports directly socialize character in any setting, let alone in identical ways across diverse socio-cultural communities. If anything, sports participation has an indirect socialization effect by virtue of providing one of many forums for interaction and experience.

²⁷ Darnell, ‘Playing with Race’, 562.

²⁸ Boulogne, The International Olympic Committee, 171.

²⁹ Coubertin, Olympism, 498.

³⁰ MacAloon, ‘On the Cultures of “Culture”’.

³¹ Boulogne, The International Olympic Committee, 171.

³² Boulonge, The International Olympic Committee, 171

³³ Coubertin, Olympism, 703.

³⁴ Boulogne, The International Olympic Committee, 171.

³⁵ Espagnac, ‘Olympafrica’, 11.

³⁶ A 2000 series in the Los Angeles Times addressing Olympic reforms in the wake of several scandals involving IOC members suggested that having the son of a prominent IOC member run a well-funded outreach effort was inappropriate. See A. Abrahamson and D. Wharton, ‘A Shaky Start for Olympic Reforms’. Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2000, front page. As far as I know, however, there is no evidence of direct impropriety related to Olympafrica.

³⁷ ‘Olympafrica International Foundation’, 1. Note that the information here regarding Olympafrica derives largely from several undated brochures available in the archives of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne Switzerland including those titled ‘Olympafrica International Foundation’ and ‘Presentation of Olympafrica Programme Summary’. Each such report includes slightly different key details and dates related to the implementation of the programme, supporting my general argument that high level rhetoric from the Olympic Movement is not necessarily attuned to local reality.

³⁸ As of February 2008 the Senegalese NGO has some information available at: http://www.komkom.sn/pme/PME_index.asp?CodeEntreprise = 331#4.

³⁹ According to the website of the Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa, an ‘Olympafrica network’ was constituted in November of 2007. See, http://www.anoca.info/olympafrica.php.

⁴⁰ One example of work by an earlier incarnation of ‘Olympic Aid’ was a 1963 effort to aid ‘the development of Olympic sport in the newly independent countries’ of Africa that seems focused primarily on providing funding for new National Olympic Committees. See ‘The International Olympic Aid Commission’.

⁴¹ Retrieved from http://www.righttoplay.com/site/PageServer?pagename = rtp_History.

⁴² Right to Play, ‘2002 Annual Report’, 14.

⁴³ Right to Play, ‘2002 Annual Report’

⁴⁴ The video, though not widely available, is part of the collection in the Images & Sound Department at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.

⁴⁵ Olympic Aid only became an direct service/development agency in 2001, but by February 2008 the International Platform for Sport and Development listed 259 sport and development projects, and 157 organizations involved in sport and development work. See, http://www.sportanddev.org/en/index.htm.

⁴⁶ Right to Play, ‘2002 Annual Report’, 17.

⁴⁷ This rhetoric also bears a striking resemblance to the ‘muscular Christianity’ often associated with colonial sport. See MacAloon, ed., Muscular Christianity.

⁴⁸ See www.righttoplay.com.

⁴⁹ From the Sub-Committee on the Study of Sport in Canada of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage, ‘Minutes’.

⁵⁰ Giulianotti also discusses the connection between the missionary zeal of sports outreach, noting that ‘in their development and peace work the shift of “sport evangelists” to locations outside the West may constitute a form of neo-colonial repositioning’. Giulianotti, ‘Human Rights’, 356.

⁵¹ The many possible meanings for sport and play are well documented in Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play. Development through sport programmes seem to be a paradigmatic example of the rhetoric of ‘play as progress’, while Pena residents more typically expressed the rhetoric of ‘play as frivolity’.

⁵² Right to Play, ‘2002 Annual Report’, 17.

⁵³ See, , ‘Cultures of Childhood’, and, ‘Reconsidering Teamwork’.

⁵⁴ See Baumeister et al., ‘Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance’; Hewitt, The Myth of Self-esteem; Miller et al., ‘Self-esteem as Folk Theory’.

⁵⁵ motivatingquotes.com, ‘Quotes for Teamwork’.

⁵⁶ This process is often generally termed ‘local agency’ or resistance and is familiar to sports scholars considering the diffusion of everything from event organizing (see Alegi, ‘Feel the Pull in Your Soul’) to social movements (see Harvey and Houle, ‘World Economy’).

⁵⁷ Maguire, Power and Global Sport.

⁵⁸ When proposing an ‘African Games’ to be held in Alexandria, the events were to include the ‘Egyptian national sports of Nabout (“sword fights”) and “Fantasia à cheval”’. Boulogne, The International Olympic Committee , 287.