Simon C. Darnell

Playing with Race: Right to Play and the Production of Whiteness in ‘Development through Sport’

‘Development through sport’ organizations use sport, physical activity and play as tools to facilitate social improvement in nations and communities targeted for development. The international movement supporting development through sport operates within two overlapping, yet distinct discursive frameworks: that of sport and play as universal and integrative social practices, and that of international development as the benevolent deliverance of aid, goods and expertise from the northern, ‘First World’ to the southern, ‘Third World’. This essay offers a critical analysis of the implications of development through sport with respect to the construction of racial knowledge, particularly ‘Whiteness’ as a standpoint of privilege and respectability. Foucaults notion of discourse, and critical race theory, are used to investigate published testimonials from volunteers of Right to Play, an internationally recognized development through sport organization, and to illustrate the ways in which overlapping discourses of sport and development provide a grid of intelligibility that produces and constrains racial subjectivity. The results suggest that encounters and experiences within development through sport serve in the (re)construction of particular knowledge: Whiteness as a subject position of benevolence, rationality and expertise, confirmed in opposition to marginalized, unsophisticated and appreciative bodies of colour.

Sport for decolonization Exploring a new praxis of sport for development

Sport is now mobilized as a novel and effective means of achieving international development goals, leading to an increasingly institutionalized relationship between sport and development. While there is recent evidence of the effectiveness of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) programmes and policies, research has also drawn attention to the relations of power that underpin the movement and, in particular, to colonizing tendencies in SDP initiatives. This article explores this critical research and considers it against the insights and importance of a development praxis concerned with decolonization. We argue that SDP scholars and activists would be well served to consider the main tenets of a decolonizing framework and we put forth some theoretical and methodological imperatives for decolonizing sport for development.

Sport, Race, and Bio-Politics: Encounters With Difference in “Sport for Development and Peace” Internships:

This article analyzes young Canadian volunteer interns’ encounters with sociocultural difference within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) movement. Using Foucauldian bio-power, Third Wave, or transnational feminism and Hardt and Negri’s Empire, it examines how interns interpreted difference as markers of underdevelopment which secured the focus of the SDP movement on the underdevelopment of others. Following the Empire framework, this bio-political regulation centered on the corporeal and the somatic, key elements of the sporting experience, and drew on social interpretations of race and its intersections with gender and class. While interns offered some critical perspectives, the results corroborate recent analyses of international development in which neoliberal logic sustains the focus of development on the “conduct of conduct” and largely at the expense of attending to broader issues of inequality.

Hegemony, postcolonialism and sport-for-development: a response to Lindsey and Grattan

In their article in this volume, entitled ‘An “international movement”? Decentering sport for development within Zambian communities”, Iain Lindsey and Alan Grattan (2012) highlight important issues of agency, locality, diversity and culture within the current mobilization of sport to meet international development goals. Drawing on valuable fieldwork in Zambia, the authors suggest that prior research may have overstated the solidity and boundaries of an ‘international’ movement towards sport-for-development and exaggerated the influence of northern initiatives in the Global South and the hegemony of neoliberal development policy. As two of the authors whose work is evaluated, we offer a rejoinder in which we suggest that Lindsey and Grattans analyses are important and insightful but best viewed as complementary to the critical analyses of northern-led development and neoliberalism. Drawing on Gramscian hegemony and postcolonial theory, we make the case for a renewed commitment to the issues of power and resistance in the mobilization of sport to meet international development goals.

Mainstreaming Sport into International Development Studies

In the introduction to their 2009 anthology Sport and International Development, editors Roger Levermore and Aaron Beacom argued that the emerging connection and interrelations between sport and international development could be understood, at least in part, as the mobilising of sport in response to the failings of traditional development orthodoxy. Whereas theories and practices of development had proved largely unsuccessful, both materially and discursively, in producing significant changes for the benefit of the world’s poorest and most marginalised, sport and physical activity, they argued, was now being conceptualised and utilised as an opportunity to approach the challenges and practices of development differently. In particular, Levermore and Beacom suggested that the increased attention paid by development stakeholders to issues of culture, and the amplified interest in international development within civil society and by transnational corporations, had paved the way for a more organised and institutionalised relationship between sport, sport organisations, sport-focused NGOs and the broader development community. The institutionalisation of these connections between sport and international development, as well as related issues of peace building and conflict resolution, is now commonly referred to as ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP), a title recognised in a variety of cultural and political spheres and inclusive of the multiplicity of organisations and programmes that now employ sport to meet development goals. Notably sport now enjoys official recognition and growing emphasis within the United Nations system. The

Inside the Promotional Vortex Canadian Media Construction of Sydney Olympic Triathlete Simon Whitfield

When Canadian Simon Whitfield won the gold medal in the first ever Olympic Men’s Triathlon at the 2000 Sydney Games, the Canadian media labeled him an ‘Olympic champion’ and ‘golden boy’ and constructed his victory as ‘heroic’ and emblematic of Canadian character. Positive media attention led to several sponsorship contracts which in turn led to more media coverage about his success, with the result that Whitfield became a media celebrity and product endorser in Canada. In this article we examine the media production processes that led to the construction of Whitfield’s positive media image and the impact of this coverage on his marketability. Through interviews with five national and regional newspaper journalists who wrote stories about Whitfield and four national marketers who worked on his sponsorship campaigns, as well as with Whitfield himself, we demonstrate how media and marketing production are linked as part of a promotional chain. In the case of Whitfield, this promotional chain resulted in media coverage that was similar across various newspapers, and which served in the construction of media and marketing coverage of Whitfield that affirmed dominant meanings of sport culture in Canada.

Orientalism through sport: towards a Said-ian analysis of imperialism and ‘Sport for Development and Peace’

Much attention has been paid in recent years to the mobilization of sport to meet international development goals through the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) sector. Research has not only documented important contributions made by and through SDP, but also drawn attention to important limitations of such programmes and policies. In this paper, I aim to contribute to this literature by investigating the construction of cultural knowledge of SDP within the popular magazine Sports Illustrated and the political implications thereof. Employing the theoretical tradition of Edward Said, I suggest that popular representations of sport in SDP can serve to secure the innocence and benevolence of global sport for western audiences while insulating them from, and therefore solidifying, the political economy of unequal development. As a result, SDP remains amenable to the politics of Empire in the new millennium.

Constructing and contesting the Olympics online: The internet, Rio 2016 and the politics of Brazilian development

The awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil continues the trend of international sports mega-events being hosted in the global South and constructed and promoted as part of long-term development plans and policies. Rio 2016 also connects with the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) current commitment to international development and global humanitarianism. In this paper, we examine the proliferation of this agenda through official online Olympic communication and compare it against critical perspectives from activist bloggers concerned with development issues specific to Rio 2016. The results support the notions that the internet can be used both to serve and challenge processes of capitalist accumulation and that political debates and contestations, such as those regarding development policy, are increasingly ‘amplified’ online. We argue, therefore, that while the IOC and Olympic stakeholders use the internet in support of neoliberal and modernist notions of development, online communications also offer important avenues for disseminating current critiques of, and resistance to, Olympic hosting.

The State of Play: Critical sociological insights into recent 'Sport for Development and Peace research

The maturation of the field of ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) is reflected in the growing number of research publications on the topic. This article focuses on a recent review of English-language research publications on SDP from 2000–2014 conducted by Schulenkorf et al. (2016. Sport for development: an integrated literature review. Journal of Sport Management 30: 22–39). We attempt to extend the analysis of current SDP research offered by Schulenkorf et al. through an exploration of the sociological implications of their key findings. In particular, we offer critical sociological commentary on key insights regarding the conceptualization of SDP; the dominant theoretical perspectives used in SDP research; the methodology and dissemination of SDP research and the demographics of researchers and research teams. In so doing, we seek to encourage critical reflection and practical considerations for scholars interested in the critical sociological analysis of SDP.

Olympism in Action, Olympic hosting and the politics of ‘Sport for Development and Peace’: investigating the development discourses of Rio 2016

This paper offers an overview, and critical, comparative reading, of the discourses of international development championed by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) versus those ascribed through media and corporate communications to the 2016 Summer Olympics, awarded in 2009 to the city of Rio de Janeiro. The first Olympics bestowed to a South American host, the Rio 2016 Games continue the trend of (a) sports mega-events moving to the Global South and (b) the positioning of such events within a broader development policy agenda that advocates for a focus on sport and physical culture. Based on the data analysed, although the IOC now champions ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) in ways that ostensibly and progressively challenge traditional development orthodoxy, there remains a tension between this vision of SDP on the one hand, and, on the other, the hegemony of new-liberal development philosophy as it underpins the hosting of global sports mega-events. These competing discourses of development suggest the need for the ongoing critical analyses into the ability, or the likelihood, of the Rio 2016 Games to contribute to sustainable and equitable change for the people of Rio, and cautious consideration of the extent to which the IOCs ethos of SDP has made inroads within the broader cultural and political economy.