The power of sport in peacemaking and peacekeeping

Abstract

This paper argues that sport is not about conflict but competition; not about violence but controlled aggression; neither is it amoral and value-free but is itself a moral enterprise. The paper provides an analysis of the internal values and the internal logic of sport, which combine to ‘make peace’ via their isomorphism with political liberalism, especially the liberal idea of the ‘contract to contest’, and its emphasis on equality, respect, mutuality and other ‘human rights’ values. It is not only just sport's popularity, but also this peacemaking capacity of sport, which informs its peacekeeping potential.

Acknowledgements

This paper was written with support from a Research Grant from the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports MSM 0021620864, Czech Republic; and institutional support PRVOUK P39.

Notes

¹ Kvalsund, ‘Sport and Peace Building’, 11.

² Palaeologis, ‘The Institution of the “Truce”’.

³ Quoted in Goodhart and Chataway, War Without Weapons, 19.

⁴ Goodhart and Chataway, War Without Weapons.

⁵ Schwery and Eggenberger-Argote, ‘Sport as a Cure’; Jarvis, Sport Psychology, 56.

⁶ See Parry, ‘Aggression and Violence’, 207–8.

⁷ Parry, ‘Aggression and Violence’, 212; Harris, Violence and Responsibility, Chapter 1.

⁸ Parry, ‘Aggression and Violence’, 221–2.

⁹ Parry, ‘Values in Physical Education’.

¹⁰ Parry, ‘Values in Physical Education’, 144–5.

¹¹ Nissiotis, ‘Psychological and Sociological Motives for Violence in Sport’, 106–8.

¹² Sugden, ‘Sport Intervention in Divided Societies’, 6.

¹³ Bailey, ‘Games, Winning and Education’.

¹⁴ Aspin, ‘Games Winning and Education’.

¹⁵ Meakin, ‘Moral Values and Physical Education’.

¹⁶ Kvalsund, ‘Sport and Peace Building’, 5.

¹⁷ The Council of Europe's The European Sports Charter 2001 says: ‘“Sport” means all forms of physical activity which, through casual or organised participation, aim at expressing or improving physical fitness and well-being, forming social relationships or obtaining results in competition at all levels’. Such a definition is impossibly wide, since it includes walking to work, sunbathing, sex and line-dancing as sports.

¹⁸ Whereas Guttman, From Ritual to Record, 15–55, offers seven characteristics of ‘modern’ sport, I would suggest that universalisability underlies them, or is a consequence of them – see Parry, ‘The Idea of the Record’, 204.

¹⁹ Borotra, ‘Olympism and Fair Play’, 84.

²⁰ Fraleigh, Right Actions in Sport, 41–6.

²¹ Reddiford, ‘Playing to Win’, 115.

²² Sugden, ‘Sport Intervention in Divided Societies’, 8.

²³ Rawls, ‘The Law of Peoples’, passim.

²⁴ Hollis, ‘Is Universalism Ethnocentric?’, 42.