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Abstract
Global development praxis has featured a chronic tension between ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ orientations, encompassing both actors and the values and objectives they promote. Top down and bottom up manifestations of sport for development (SFD) have been more closely integrated, practically and imaginatively, than most other development domains, with the logic of ‘bottom up’ development typically subordinated to ‘top down’ assumptions and practices. Scholars and practitioners need to better understand why this situation prevails and how a more mature relationship can be built, based on a healthy measure of critical distance between these orientations in SFD policy and practice.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. I would also like to thank the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA) for the invitation to formulate these reflections.
Notes
1. See Kidd, “A New Social Movement.”
2. For evidence of the proliferating array of SFD organizations, see www.sportanddev.org, and http://www.beyondsport.org/Network. A small sample of critically informed SFD scholarship would include: Darnell, Sport for Development and Peace; Hayhurst, “Sport for Development and Peace”; Coalter, Sport for Development; and Burnett, “Engaging Sport for Development.”
3. As will be discussed below, SFD has come to be widely used as the designation for the self-identified sector or movement that explicitly seeks to harness sport to various development objectives. I occasionally use ‘Development through sport’ (as in the title of this paper) to denote a broader relationship, encompassing SFD but extending to less self-conscious uses by a wider range of development actors that may not self-identify as sport-based organizations.
4. On the distinction between ‘strategic’ and ‘practical’ interests, specifically pertaining to gender, see Molyneux, “Mobilization without Emancipation?”
5. For an earlier exploration of this distinction, see Black, “The Ambiguities of Development,” 2008.
6. See Sinclair, “Beyond International Relations Theory,” 4–6; and Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders.”
7. See, for example, Escobar, Encountering Development; and Rist, The History of Development.
8. Pieterse, “Development Theory,” 182–202.
9. Thérien, “Beyond the North-South Divide”. See also Nöel and Thérien, Left and Right in Global Politics, 56–82.
10. See e.g. Onis and Senses, “Rethinking the Emerging post-Washington Consensus.”
11. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful. While there are important methodological and ontological distinctions between dependency and neo-Marxist approaches, on the one hand, and small-scale and grassroots or ‘Alternative development’ perspectives, on the other, they have all served to highlight the inequities and injustices of the current order, and seek to understand the processes by which a more equitable order could be achieved.
12. See also Kapur, “A Third Way for the Third World.”
13. Li, The Will to Improve.
14. Kaldor, “The Idea of Global Civil Society.”
15. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
16. For a discussion, see Black and O’Bright, “International Development and the Private Sector.”
17. See Picciotto, “Multilateral Development Cooperation and the Paris Process.”
18. Easterly, “The SDGs Should Stand for.”
19. Kidd, “A New Social Movement”; and Giulianotti, “The Sport, Development and Peace Sector.”
20. Giulianotti, “The Sport, Development and Peace Sector.”
21. Allison, “The Changing Context of Sporting Life,” 5–6.
22. That is, strategies that emphasize attempts to influence development praxis through inside access and quiet persuasion, versus those that emphasize popular mobilization and outspoken advocacy. On the ‘inside/outside’ distinction, see e.g. Nelson, “The Varied and Conditional Integration of NGOs.”
23. Fukuyama, The End of History.
24. Peacock, “A Secret Instinct of Social Preservation.”
25. Donnelly et al., “Sport for Development and Peace,” 592.
26. Kidd, “A New Social Movement,” 376.
27. I am indebted to Owen Willis for highlighting this point.
28. See Clarke and Mehtta, “Five Trends that Explain.”
29. See e.g. https://www.olympic.org/cooperation-with-the-un.
30. See Peacock, “A Secret Instinct of Social Preservation”; and Hoberman, “Towards a Theory of Olympic Internationalism.”
31. Gaffney, “The Mega-event City”; and Pentifallo, “The City and the Spectacle.”
32. Cornelissen, “More than a Sporting Chance?”; and Swart et al., “A Sport and Cultural Legacy.”
33. On the case of Rio e.g. see Carey et al., “Social Responsibility and the Competitive Bid Process”; Millington and Darnell, “Constructing and Contesting the Olympics Online.”
34. Kidd, “Canada Needs a Two-track Strategy.”
35. See e.g. Cornelissen, “More than a Sporting Chance?”
36. See Bairner and Cho, “The Legacy of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.”
37. See e.g. Zolov, “Showcasing the ‘Land of Tomorrow’”; Baviskar, “Spectacular Events, City Spaces, and Citizenship”; and Kaiser, “Legacy of Rio Olympics So Far.”
38. Indeed, such ‘displacement effects’ have been a ubiquitous feature of most subsequent Games, including widely agreed ‘success stories’ such as Barcelona (1992), Sydney (2000), and London (2012). See e.g. Diamond-Welch, “The Olympic Transformation.”
39. See e.g. Southall, “Inequality in South Africa.”
40. See Van der Westhuizen, “Glitz, Glamour and the Gautrain.”
41. For a relatively positive assessment, see Nolen, “The Party in Rio is Over.”
42. See Black and Northam, “Mega-events and ‘Bottom-up’ Development.”
43. Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders,” 90.
44. See MacAloon, “Agenda 2020 and the Olympic Movement.”
45. See Black and Northam, “Mega-events and ‘Bottom-up’ Development.”
46. Coalter, “The Politics of Sport-for-Development.”
47. The surprising election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the US merely reinforces the importance of this task.
48. Hayhurst and Frisby, “Inevitable Tensions.”
49. Sanders, “An Own Goal for Sport for Development.”
50. This point needs to be qualified. There are some CCIC members – among them Canada World Youth, the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, and the YMCA – that engage in some sport-based initiatives and programming. However, no ‘sport first’ SFD organizations are current members. I am indebted to an anonymous reviewer for highlighting this qualification.