Kyle S. Bunds

An integrative review of sport-based youth development literature

Abstract Sport is frequently regarded as an effectual mechanism for promoting positive youth development (PYD). However, this connection is not inherent, and depends upon a variety of programmatic and contextual factors. To help elucidate these linkages, scholars have called for more process-based approaches to programme evaluation and research. This paper contributes to that agenda by presenting the results of a systematic integrative review of the empirical sport-based PYD literature. Using a theory of change to guide coding and analysis, these findings demonstrate how various aspects of the change process (i.e. resources/inputs, outcomes, impacts) have been integrated into empirical research. In addition to identifying trends and gaps in the literature, the authors use this information to provide informed recommendations for future research in the area of sport-based PYD.

Celebrate Humanity: Cultural Citizenship and the Global Branding of ‘Multiculturalism’

In 2000, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) launched Celebrate Humanity, its first-ever global branding campaign. Created by world-renowned advertising agency TBWA\Chiat\Day with the explicit goal of communicating ‘the extraordinary and inspiring values embodied within the Olympic Movement’, the campaign aired worldwide in more than 200 countries during the lead-up to that year’s Summer Games in Sydney, Australia, and would later be reworked for use during the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah, the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, Greece, the 2006 Winter Games in Turin, Italy, and so on.2 During its unveiling at the 2000 Sport Summit in New York, Michael R. Payne, then-Director of Marketing for the IOC, characterised the

A structural perspective of cross-sector partnerships involving youth sport nonprofit organizations

150 million campaign as communicating to viewers ‘traditional Olympic ideals the athletes exhibit when they compete in the Olympic venues: excellence in oneself, respect for one another, balance between body and mind, fair play, and, of course, joy in effort’.3

The Biopolitics of Privilege Negotiating Class, Masculinity, and Relationships

ABSTRACT Research question: Reductions in public funding for sport and recreation programs have created a vacuum in services that has increasingly been filled by nonprofit organizations. However, nonprofits often lack the organizational capacity to efficiently and sustainably deliver sport and recreation programs to the public. Cross-sector partnerships have been highlighted as an effective strategy to build organizational capacity, yet are currently underutilized by youth sport nonprofit organizations. While previous research has focused on functional characteristics of these partnerships, very few studies have examined their broader structural characteristics. Research methods: This study utilized structured interviews to collect quantitative network data from youth sport nonprofits registered in a large Southeastern US city (n = 32) to understand how cross-sector partnerships have been used to build organizational capacity. Using social network analysis, the study uncovers the size and composition of the network, identifies key external actors and industry sectors, and examines the network’s underlying balance and stability. Results and findings: Results indicate wide variation in the utilization and composition of partnerships, and an unbalanced structure that may influence their functional characteristics. Implications: The discussion provides empirically grounded recommendations to improve these structural characteristics and help youth sport managers effectively utilize cross-sector partnerships.

Navigating the Corporate University Reflections on the Politics of Research in Neoliberal Times

In this autoethnography, I negotiate my middle-class Whiteness in attempting to come to terms with my own (mis)understanding of, and role in, familial, socio-economic, and cultural hegemony. Through a series of vignettes, I seek to question my relationship with my father’s shadow—a relationship founded upon an invented “daddy” co-created by a collection of coaches, friends, cousins, teachers, researchers, my father, his father, and the present-day media. Specifically, I reflexively evaluate my privilege as a middle-class White male struggling to deal with the expectations of those around me, especially in childhood. By connecting stories of my Thanksgivings as child, undergraduate student, outsider, and married man, I provide a critical perspective into and interrogation of my at-times messy maturation into a particular gendered and classed subject position.

The Spectacle of Disposability: Bumfights, Commodity Abjection, and the Politics of Homelessness

In this article, the authors highlight numerous encounters with and critiques of academic life in the corporate university. From disagreements with colleagues and anxiousness over the job market to internal compromises over epistemological and ontological moorings and the overall messiness of the research act, they highlight the increasing market demands and orientations governing academic performance if not survival. They also self-reflexively engage in critique of their own location to and position within their current field(s) of inquiry, and how to chart a way forward toward a more egalitarian end.

Framing democracy: stadium financing and civic paternalism in Test Market, USA

This article offers a critical analysis of the mediation and commercialization of “bum fighting” (videotaping two or more poverty stricken individuals engaged in low-dollar bloodsport). In recent years, the production of pugilism has emerged in the US as popular—and indeed highly lucrative—features of the media-sport landscape. This paper looks into what we can learn from these 1) deeply corporeal mediations and 2) radically political public pedagogies. Regarding the corporeal dimension, we deconstruct the ways in which bodies—and particularly bodies of the street—are framed within these popular discursive formations. We also explore the ways in which these media representations valorize, and are articulated within, broader political mediations on the underprivileged and “living welfarism”—which largely portray individuals living with homelessness as social welfare “parasites,” drug addicts, or nuisances to a nations economic growth. We consider how these popular media constructs locate certain bodies as abject and thereby disposable. We conclude by discussing what these public pedagogies tell us not only about public space but most importantly about bodies that inhabit them.

Sport Management Internship Quality and the Development of Political Skill: A Conceptual Model

Abstract The vast majority of North America’s professional sport arenas, ballparks and stadiums are publicly subsidized without direct approval from voters. In this article, we examine the discursive constitution of ‘no-vote subsidies’ within the public sphere, and in particular problematize the twinned production(s) of citizenship and democratic process in framing public subsidization of these sites of private accumulation. To do this, we examine the recent no-vote subsidy occurring in Columbus, Ohio – thereby providing a context-specific interrogation of the mediations of participatory citizenship, political decision-making and the institution of democracy as related to sport stadium funding. As part of this analysis, we discuss the public production of civic paternalism – a political ideology focused on urban growth and unconcerned with future electoral consequences – in the Columbus arena financing case. We conclude the article with a call for increasing scholarly engagement in, and intervention into, the political processes that result in the public subsidization of professional sport venues.

An inductive investigation of participants’ attachment to charity sports events: the case of team water charity

Internships are a key component of sport organizations and the sport management curriculum. Due to the vastness of internships both in academia and the sport profession, it is imperative to understand the effectiveness of internships for both the organization and the intern. While previous research has focused on quality control, the agency’s perspective of internships, the student’s perspective, and how to link the theory to practice, scholars have yet to examine the effects of sport management internships on the development of essential professional skills and/or attributes. Given the political nature of obtaining and keeping a job in the sport business, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that allows the effectiveness of a sport management internship to be evaluated according to its effect on the political skill of interns. Understanding the internship as one component of the sport management curricula, the conceptual model links sport management students’ developmental experiences, and internship quality to the development of political skill, and three secondary outcomes (i.e., domain-specific self-efficacy, sport industry identification, and future employment intentions). In doing so a comprehensive method for evaluating the effectiveness of internships that prioritizes the student’s growth is offered.

Collaborative Advantages: The Role of Interorganizational Partnerships for Youth Sport Nonprofit Organizations

ABSTRACT Research question: Charities have begun utilizing sport events as a vehicle for obtaining contributions toward a designated cause and to differentiate themselves in the charity market. Although scholarship has focused on how people attach to a charitable organization, there is a lack of research investigating religiously based international charities. Therefore, this paper examines the attachment of participants in a running event fundraiser for a North American based Christian water charity implementing clean water systems in the developing world. Research methods: Part of a larger ethnography, this study focuses upon semi-structured interviews conducted with charity fundraisers, race participants and charity organizers, before, during, and after the Miami Marathon. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded both individually and communally by the authors. Results and Findings: Three distinct themes emerged: (1) embodied philanthropy; (2) embodied internalization of the cause; and (3) religiosity and international philanthropy. Theme three was divided into two sub-themes concerning (3a) religious systems of consumer ethics and global citizenship and (3b) participants as conduits for their religion. These themes developed as distinct responses for how individuals connect to an international cause unrelated to their everyday lives and show how a Christian water charity connects water poverty with the values of current and potential fundraisers. Implications: Findings of this study show the important role of embodied action and religiosity in philanthropy. Results contribute to the existing literature on psychological attachment within the sport management literature, while extending the field to include religiously based international charities.