Assessing the sociology of sport: On Sport for Development and Peace

On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, Cora Burnett, one of the world’s leading scholars on studying the ways that sport has been used for development, considers the trajectory, challenges and future for understanding sport’s role in conflict resolution and peace. The emerging field of sport-for-development has proliferated since the early 2000s under the auspices of global leadership emanating from the UN, FIFA, the IOC and governments facilitating national sport-for-all and sport (for) development programmes. In the wake of major events such as the Olympic Games and FIFA World Cup competitions, international development agencies collaborated with non-government organizations to address a wide range of social ills at grassroots levels across the world. Particular challenges for this line of research reside in tensions between donors who seek proof of how often limited focused programmes may have successfully addressed societal problems, and critical scholarship which may see such programmatic efforts too often aligned with hegemonic practices and neoliberal agendas. It is argued that future research will need to employ tactics derived from ethnographic and interpretive frameworks in order to assess better how efforts aimed at development through sport may be understood in local communities and facilitate better the shared ownership of these programmes.