A critical reflection on sport-for-development discourses: A review

The work being done in the area of Sport-for-Development (SfD) or Sport-for-Development and Peace (SDP) has increased in critical mass in the past decade with several of the research paradigms emanating from neo-colonial and neo-liberal traditions in the Global North. Under scrutiny is the collective hegemony of powerful northern stakeholders in multiple partnerships directing ‘development’ for achieving the Millennium Development Goals through sport. There is a need for original and innovative counter paradigms underpinned by alternative Southern worldviews to challenge these hegemonic (intellectual) practices. Radical post-colonial paradigms inform the interrogation of four prominent discourses relating to: North-South polarisation; positionality in terms of locality and thematic fields; lack of evidence; and a deficit (reduction) model approach. The politics rooted in the academic/donor/NGO complex exposes privileged voices in the neo-colonial space of SfD work that will remain entrenched in Western intelligibility unless exposed to radical transformation and collective agency at all levels of engagement.