Megan Chawansky

The ‘Girl Effect’ in Action Sports for Development: The Case of the Female Practitioners of Skateistan

In this chapter we critically contextualize the rise in Action Sports for Development and Peace (ASDP) programs targeted at girls and young women within the ‘Girl Effect’. Despite our concerns about this trend, we offer the case of Skateistan to highlight the efforts employed by this award-winning organization to provide Afghan girls and young women with opportunities to participate in sport, education and employment, and particularly to consider the motivations, struggles and strategies being employed by international female staff of this organization. By creating space for the lived experiences and reflections of the international female staff who serve as practitioners in Afghanistan, we see that there are valuable lessons to be learned from those who reflexively work behind the scenes of Skateistan and navigate space between critique and hope. Ultimately, however, this chapter is a call for deeper critical considerations of the ‘girl effect’ in action sports, and the rise of ‘missionary feminism’ among female enthusiasts from the One Third World.

The politics of pleasure in girl-centred sport for development programming

Abstract Examinations of pleasure are absent from much of the work that explores sport. This is surprising because of the frequent assertion that watching and playing sport is fun, enjoyable, or pleasurable. Similarly, a lack of discussion about pleasure exists in Sport for Development (SfD) programming. This article explores the presence and absence of pleasure in SfD projects that focus on girls’ empowerment through interviews with five SfD practitioners. The findings suggest that the importance of pleasure within individual programmes varies according to the larger political/social context for girls’ everyday pleasures, the necessity of measuring pleasure for donors, and the differing interpretations of what made sports fun for girls. Through this exploration of pleasure, notions of evidence, impact, and M&E (monitoring and evaluation) within SfD are critically interrogated.

Letters to a young baller: exploring epistolary criticism

This article explores the possibilities of epistolary criticism within the realm of sport studies and aspires to encourage scholars to consider the use of non-traditional sport memorabilia and source materials when telling emotive stories about sport and sport practices. The use of letters and the letter-writing format to tell a personal narrative of recruitment and to examine larger issues within athletic recruitment allows readers to intimately engage with the varied feelings and emotions that are a part of the athletic recruiting process. By using personal recruiting letters as source material and to structure the paper, readers examine recruiting on an intimate level and are called into the text in unique and unfamiliar ways.

The Girl Effect and “Positive” Representations of Sporting Girls of the Global South: Social Media Portrayals of Afghan Girls on Skateboards

In this chapter we draw upon recent feminist and postfeminist literature on the “Girl Effect” and changing humanitarian communication styles to critically discuss the politics of so-called “positive” representations of girls from the Global South in Sport for Development campaigns. In particular, we examine the case of the skateboarding-focused NGO, Skateistan and their social media portrayals of Afghan girls. In so doing, we identify how postfeminist discourses of agency and empowerment—as well as neoliberal and colonial assumptions—are reproduced in the production of such imagery. Ultimately, we argue that the move towards more “positive” representations of sporting girls and young women from the Global South can still be problematic as such campaigns tend to overlook ongoing structural inequalities, and can inadvertently work to reiterate and reinforce postfeminist discourses that assume that gender equality has been achieved in the Global North.

Innovations in sport for development and peace research

Abstract This collection emerged from the Innovations in Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) Research Symposium held in Atlanta, GA, in 2016. The contributors explore new terrain in seeking to further an innovative agenda on SDP within development discourses and practices. The authors provide insights from plural empirical and theoretical domains, including critical, feminist, post-colonial, and cultural studies perspectives. A central goal of this collection is to anticipate, inspire, and shape the next phase of research in, on, and about SDP. A further goal is to connect SDP and development scholarship.