Critical support for sport^†

Abstract

‘Critical support’ or ‘critical partisanship’ is the commitment to the rigorous scrutiny of and intervention into the ideas, institutions and practices to which one is committed, advocates and carries out. It has been the stance I have taken during a lifetime in sport – as an athlete, coach, teacher, researcher, athletic director and dean. Inspired by the example of public intellectuals in the 1950s and 1960s, it drew upon the Marxian traditions of praxis and the social science tradition of ‘critical pragmatism’ of C. Wright Mills and others. The papers in this special issue reflect that approach. This essay is half memoire, half manifesto. I grew up in sports and progressive politics, and became radicalized about both the shortcomings and possibilities of sports while coming of age in the 1960s as a track and field athlete, political science student and volunteer sports administrator. This introduction outlines the path to which those early experiences drew me.

Acknowledgements

I thank Melanie Belore, Chang Liu, Jasmine Olarte and Emma Arppe-Robertson for their assistance.

Notes

^†Nothing in the original publications has been changed, except that the referencing style has been harmonized with Taylor & Francis requirements.

^1.Kidd, ‘Athlete's Plea for a Games Boycott’.

^2.Kidd, ‘New Social Movement’; and Kidd and Donnelly, Literature Reviews on Sport.

^3.Kidd, ‘Canadian Athletes Should Support’; and Kidd, ‘In Spite of Everything’.

^4.Kidd, ‘Lubicon Boycott’; Gunderson, ‘Who's Kidding Who?’

^5.Kidd, ‘Toronto Olympic Commitment’. For the 2008 plan, see Community Social Planning Council of Toronto, Socio-Economic Impact and Equity.

^6. Kidd, ‘Taking the Rhetoric Seriously’.

^7.Kidd, Corner, and Steward, For Amateur Boxing.

^8.Kidd, ‘Phys Ed’.

^9.Gruneau, Class Sports and Social Development, 20–3.

^10.Kingston, ‘Shut Up or Stay Home’.

^11.Lapchick, Broken Promises; Scott, Athletic Revolution; and Zirin, Shut Up and Play?

^12.Shanahan, ‘Margaret Kidd, 89’.

^13.Kidd, Roby Kidd.

^14.Kidd, ‘Athletics’.

^15.Macpherson, Life and Times.

^16. For a fuller account of this episode, see Kidd, ‘Left Runner’.

^17.Kidd, ‘Brief to the Task Force’.

^18. Kidd, ‘Canada's National Sport’, the first article in this collection.

^19.Kidd, ‘Jocks of the World’.

^20.Clarkson, ‘Personal Success vs Public Failure’.

^21.Donnelly et al., ‘Sport for Development and Peace’.