Critical pedagogy and power relations in sport for development and peace: lessons from Colombia

Abstract

Recent research highlights promise and limits of critical pedagogy within Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). Drawing on ethnographic research with an SDP organisation in Colombia, this paper analyses how critical pedagogy implicitly transpires in daily practice and how SDP employees and participants understand and respond to these practices. We specifically examine how donor-non-governmental organisation relations affect the experience of SDP practitioners and participants in ways that do not support the successes of critical pedagogy and may potentially undermine it. The findings raise critical questions such as what SDP organisations can accomplish within these ‘normative’ power relations and potential reconfigurations.

Keywords:

• Sport for development and peace
• critical pedagogy
• Colombia
• donor-NGO relations

Notes

1. Banda and Gultresa, “Using Global South Sport-for-development Experiences”; and Kidd, “A New Social Movement.”

2. Lindsey, “Governance in Sport-for-development”; and Giulianotti, “Sport, Transnational Peacemaking, and Global Civil Society.”

3. Giulianotti, “Sport, Transnational Peacemaking, and Global Civil Society”; and Donnelly et al., “Sport for Development and Peace.”

4. Levermore, “The Paucity of, and Dilemma in, Evaluating Corporate Social Responsibility for Development through Sport”; Jeanes and Lindsey, “Where’s the Evidence?”

5. Spaaij and Jeanes, “Education for Social Change?”; Jeanes and Spaaij, “Examining the Educator”; and Darnell, “Ethical Challenges and Principal Hurdles.”

6. Giroux and Giroux, “Challenging Neoliberalism’s New World Order,” 21.

7. Freire, Cultural Action for Freedom, 128.

8. Chambers, “Paradigm Shifts and the Practice.”

9. Leonard, “Critical Pedagogy and State Welfare,” 162.

10. Giroux, “Lessons from Paulo Freire.”

11. E.g. Ellsworth, “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering?”; Gabel, “Some Conceptual Problems”; Burbules and Berk, “Critical Thinking and Critical Pedagogy.”

12. Escobar, Encountering Development, 108–9.

13. Darder and Mirón, “Critical Pedagogy in a Time of Uncertainty,” 7.

14. Escobar, Encountering Development; and Macrine, Critical Pedagogy in Uncertain Times.

15. Revista Semana, “Proyecto Victimas.”

16. World Bank, Word Development Indicators.

17. Pallitto and O’Campo, “Community Level Effects of Gender Inequality”; and Daniels, “Tackling Teenage Pregnancy.”

18. In 2016, The Internal Displacement Monitoring Center reported more than 6 million Colombians were displaced due to conflict, equivalent to 1/8th of Colombia’s population.

19. References (local policy reports) withheld to maintain anonymity of research sites.

20. Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers.

21. Spaaij and Schulenkorf, “Cultivating Safe Space.”

22. Freire, Teachers as Cultural Workers; and Ledwith, Community Development.

23. Spaaij and Jeanes, “Education for Social Change?”

24. E.g. Lindsey, “Governance in Sport-for-development.”

25. Aronowitz, “Foreword.”

26. See note 23 above.