Cora Burnett

Building social capital through an 'Active Community Club'.

The building of social capital at community level is explored by assessing the impact of the Australia Africa 2006 Sport Development Programmes Active Community Clubs Initiative as a catalyst of developing networks and active citizenship in the impoverished rural village of Tshabo, in the Easter Cape Province of South Africa. Main paradigms of neo-classical capital theory (Bourdieu), Colemans rational choice theory, network theory, Putnams framework of civil engagement and Verweels multi-level analysis inform the conceptual framework for analysis. Pre- and post-impact assessments utilized interviews (18 major stakeholders) and focus group sessions during three intervals over a 13-month period which included a representative sample of community leaders (n = 13), households (n = 47), volunteer coaches and administrators ( n = 28) and participants who participated in the programme (n = 121). Participation in the Active Community Clubs programmes interfaced with other normative social institutional spheres to generate social capital at an individual and community level.

Engaging sport-for-development for social impact in the South African context

The politics of development ideology and global leadership set the scene for sport (for) development in South Africa. Academic inquiry followed in an ad hoc way, mostly in the wake of contracted and/or externally and diverse disciplinary infused research paradigms. Diverse research agenda and donor requirements set the scene for Participatory Action Research as an enabling tool for researchers, funders and research participants whereby indigenous knowledge systems can be accessed and enriched in a collaborative venture of knowledge production. Four case studies of sport-for-development projects in the South African context explain the evolving architecture in this field. A discussion of three distinct and interrelated models, based on the rationale of Mintzberg (2006), affords insights within a social capital framework of a top-down, bottom-up and outside-in approach in various integrated formats. It is apparent that social impact and networking evolved around strategic alliance formation and development agendas of major stakeholders.

School Violence in an Impoverished South African Community.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this anthropological study was to create an understanding of school-related violence experienced by adolescents in the context of chronic poverty in a South African community. METHOD Qualitative methods of data collection such as participant observation, interviews, and group discussions were utilized for data collection. Sixteen children and three adults in turn kept diaries and wrote reports during the research period of three and one-half years (June 1992-December 1995). All the Standard seven pupils (N = 76) of the local school completed a self-concept questionnaire and wrote two essays about themselves and their lives, respectively. RESULTS The ideology and structures of apartheid created a context of impoverishment and structural violence to which children were exposed. The school was one of the social institutions where children were subjected to structural, psychological, and physical violence on a daily basis. Violent behavior or discipline was justified as being just and an effective teaching practice by authoritarian parents and teachers. The manifestations of poverty included emotional erosion, a negative self-concept, and reactive violence. CONCLUSIONS School-related violence was structurally interwoven with the very fabric of the social hierarchy of the school set-up and was sanctioned as an effective strategy to gain social control and discipline children. Poverty in itself provided the breeding-ground for violence at home and in the school. Children were caught up in a vicious circle of pro- and reactive violence and socialized to accept violence as an instrument of empowerment. Recommendations for possible intervention and further research are offered.

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.

The ‘uptake’ of a sport-for-development programme in South Africa

This article reports on the ‘uptake’ dynamics and resultant manifestations of a school-based, incentive-driven, sport-for-development programme in the South African context of poverty. The ecological systems theory of Brofenbrenner, the theory of complexity and a neo-liberal framework underpin the social constructions of local meanings associated with programme participation and involvement. Thirty-nine primary schools in the Western Cape Province and four schools in the Eastern Cape Province deliver the programme in partnership with a local foundation. A representative sample of 15 schools, from rural and urban (township) impoverished communities, were selected for a baseline study. A mixed-method approach of the Sport-in Development Impact Assessment Tool was adapted to collect comparative data through 57 interviews, 35 focus group sessions (with 75 teachers and 176 learners) and 159 questionnaires completed by learners and 29 by school and cluster coordinators. Various models of implementation render nuanced findings at meso-, exo- and micro-levels, where interrelated systems, demographic and developmental influences translate into culturally informed sense-making, pro- and anti-social associative behaviours, praxis, institutional empowerment and status-conferring identity constructions. All partners promote a neoliberal approach that limits changes to the underlying social systems, and mostly promote individual and group attributes within the institutional and social world settings of participants.

Whose game is it anyway? Power, play and sport

Masculinity has so dominated the rules of the game, who plays and who wins, that male sports like soccer and rugby have not only taken over the playing field but become national symbols of unity. CORA BURNETT argues that a unified challenge is necessary if ideological control of sport is to be wrested away and the arena opened to all

Gang violence as survival strategy in the context of poverty in Davidsonville

Gang violence is discussed as a survival strategy in the deprived Coloured community of Davidsonville on the West Rand of Johannesburg. Ethnographic data was generated through a variety of qualitative methods over a period of three years (from 1991 to 1994) to contextualise gang violence at microlevel. An in-depth study was undertaken of literature exploring poverty and violence as Interrelated social phenomena. The operationallsation of the experiences of boys and youth gangs was established and ‘mediated’ through ethnographical descriptions. The conclusion was reached that violence, in its capacity as a cyclical process, constituted a complex and multifaceted phenomenon and that it manifested itself in various forms. Violence is one of humanitys universal traits that poses an ‘effective’ survival option for young men and boys living in the context of poverty to satisfy their needs, to use as a strategy, to solve problems and to assert themselves

The impact of a sport-for-education programme in the South African context of poverty

This article reports on a baseline study of a school-based, incentive-driven, sport-for-development programme (Mighty Metres) in the South African context of poverty. It is underpinned by multiple theoretical frameworks (the interpretative phenomenological approach). The baseline study entailed retrospective social impact collected from 15 schools where the Mighty Metres programme was implemented. A mixed-method approach was used for conducting 57 interviews and 35 focus group sessions, and 159 questionnaires were completed by learners and 29 by school and cluster coordinators. Various models of implementation render nuanced findings at meso- and micro-levels. At the meso-level findings relate to associative branding, improved image and recruitment capacity for schools, regular physical activity, inclusivity and a decrease in absenteeism. Parents obtained ‘bragging rights’, and teachers and learners improved their physical and health profiles, reported improved inter-personal relations, recognition and psychological benefits.

Building ubuntu through community clubs

No Abstract. African Journal for Physical, Health Education, Recreation and Dance Vol. 12(2) 2006: 123-137

Taking South African sport seriously

Twenty years on, the image of Nelson Mandela, wearing the number six jersey of the white Springbok captain, Francois Pienaar, remains a poignant moment in South African and global sport. The 1995 Rugby World Cup victory by the overwhelmingly all-white Springboks remains a powerful symbol in post-apartheid South Africa. Clint Eastwood’s (2009) Hollywood film, Invictus, based on John Carlin’s Playing the enemy: Nelson Mandela and the game that made a nation (2008), has dramatised the significance of Mandela wearing the jersey and the South African victory. The formerly exclusive symbol was seemingly appropriated and made socially inclusive and became part of the lexicon and rhetoric of nation building post-1994. For Ashwin Desai (2010: 1), rugby had become ‘the sport that would help to catalyse the building of a “rainbow nation” predicated on a common identity, a common sense of “South Africanness”’. Jay Coakley (1994: 5) noted that ‘sports cannot be ignored because they are such a pervasive part of life in contemporary society’, and the same holds true for South Africa. Douglas Booth (1998: 93) warned that ‘that sport can integrate society and eliminate racial prejudice is a speculative proposition which ignores the origins, functions, and practices of racism and fails to explain the precise properties of sport that make it the medium of integration’. Despite the overtures to a common identity,