Orientalism through sport: towards a Said-ian analysis of imperialism and ‘Sport for Development and Peace’

Abstract

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the mobilization of sport to meet international development goals through the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) sector. Research has not only documented important contributions made by and through SDP, but also drawn attention to important limitations of such programmes and policies. In this paper, I aim to contribute to this literature by investigating the construction of cultural knowledge of SDP within the popular magazine Sports Illustrated and the political implications thereof. Employing the theoretical tradition of Edward Said, I suggest that popular representations of sport in SDP can serve to secure the innocence and benevolence of global sport for western audiences while insulating them from, and therefore solidifying, the political economy of unequal development. As a result, SDP remains amenable to the politics of Empire in the new millennium.

Notes

^1. I say ‘for the purposes of this paper’ in recognition of Giulianotti's (2011, 51) important recent contention that SDP scholars may have, to date, underestimated the diversity, dynamism or ‘transnational complexity’ of organizations and efforts under this banner.

^2. At the same time, McEwan (2009, 19) reminds that a number of traditional colonial powers, such as Great Britain, France and the USA, continue to maintain overseas colonies into the twentieth century.

^3. This is an admittedly simplified treatment of the complex relationship between sport, globalization and neoliberalism, a topic that has been subject to significant analysis and critique in recent years (e.g. Maguire, 2005; Andrews and Grainger, 2007; Giulianotti and Robertson 2007; Andrews and Silk, 2012). While recognizing that structures and cultures of sport at a global level are regularly interpreted and even resisted locally, my point is that SDP should not be viewed as insulated from the imperialism perpetuated within neoliberal and globalized sport.

^4. This should not be taken to mean that a Said-inspired analysis of SDP is necessarily or ideologically against sport-for-development. While Said's analyses have been (too) often described, or even rejected, for being biased or polemical, his commitment to the contrapuntal perspective illustrated his commitment to humanism and secular criticism. Said did not explicitly reject meta-narratives like nationalism and universalism, but proffered the ‘… recognition that all claims of a universal nature are particular claims’ (Mufti, 1998, cited in Iskandar and Rustom, 2010, 8). In this way, depicting Said strictly as a relativist, post-structuralist is to a large extent misleading (Abu El-Haj, 2005).