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To outline strategies for balancing a critical approach to sport for development and peace (SDP) interventions with approaches that highlight the potentially positive outcomes of SDP. Two examples of attempts to balance these approaches are highlighted. One is a critical analysis of responses to sport-related environmental problems. The other is a study of how a sport-related reconciliation event led by celebrity athletes was successfully organized.

In the first part of the chapter, the complexity of the SDP concept (and the terms sport, peace, and development) is discussed along with the challenges of negotiating critical and more optimistic stances on SDP. In the second part, two approaches to navigating between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” stances on SDP are outlined through two case studies.

The two case studies are described along with preliminary findings from studies that were conducted. Each case study is accompanied by a discussion of how the author “middle-walked” between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” positions on SDP. A focus in this section is on how theory, methods, and strategies for reporting findings were accounted for in the process of balancing these distinct positions.

The difficulties attempting to balance critical and optimistic positions are discussed. The difficulties connecting critical analysis with practical suggestions for improving SDP-related work were also outlined.

To discuss our experiences producing a short documentary film focused on a sport-related environmental issue – and reflect on our attempts throughout production to “do” what we are calling “Environmental Sports Journalism” (ESJ).

Following ESJ principles, and in collaboration with Vancouver-based filmmakers, we produced a short documentary entitled, Mount Gariwang: An Olympic Casualty, about the destruction of an ancient forest for a sport mega-event (i.e., the PyeongChang Olympics). We discuss and reflect on our approach and methods for producing the documentary, and identify key issues faced throughout the process – as we attempted to negotiate the intricacies of documentary work and collaboration between academics and media producers, while attending to a set of principles for producing “Environmental Sports Journalism.”

We reflect on strategies used and challenges faced when attempting to produce a short film on a sport-related environmental issue. We note our attempt to: (1) include interview segments with definitions of key concepts and how they are relevant to power relations around sport mega-events; (2) value the lives and voices of local and marginalized people – while noting problems we faced providing adequate context; (3) focus on problems of nonhumans as well as humans – and the challenges we faced including nonhuman issues and perspectives, challenges that reflected the limits of our chosen data collection and reporting techniques; (4) offer some form of hope and identify alternatives around an event that we were critical of; and (5) highlight the complexities of prioritizing social and environmental justice (i.e., taking a side) while attempting to offer what we might think of as “balanced” coverage.

This chapter illuminated barriers we faced in our attempts to produce “excellent” coverage, and in going from media critics to critical media producers. Our hope is to inspire reflection on what is possible around the production of “excellent” sport-related environmental journalism, and to contribute to thinking about the pursuit of public sociology through media.

Although involvement in documentary-making as academics is not new, our attempt to apply principles associated with environmental journalism to the study of sport-related environmental and social problems is in some ways novel, and therefore our reflections on our experiences are also in some ways novel.

Laboratory studies of social interaction have revealed a wide range of phenomena that are difficult to explain using standard economic models. For example, people will often sacrifice their own earnings in order to be generous, cooperative, punitive, and retributive in interactions with anonymous strangers. “Behavioral” models that redefine agents’ preferences attempt to provide an account of these phenomena as reflecting a “taste for fairness” or altruism, aversion to inequality, concern about others’ beliefs, and so on. Such models either fail to account for the rich sensitivity of actions to context or in allowing for rich context-dependence, these models ultimately substitute description for explanation. Hayek’s work provides a foundation for thinking about how to explain these phenomena, by conceiving of people as both purpose-seeking (as in economic models) and rule-following. Decisions are shaped both by material interests and by a normative framework that is evoked by context and helps people decide what one ought to do in a particular situation. The implication of this approach is that rather than trying to understand heterogeneity across individuals in terms of preferences, experimenters should instead try to understand heterogeneity across contexts in terms of the rules and norms that operate in the background and guide or constrain people’s purpose-seeking tendencies. What economics needs, then, is a theory of how and why these rules and norms vary with context as they do.

To explore the connections between sport, sustainability and international development through critical understandings of the place of the environment within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector. The chapter explores both the forces (historical, social, political, economic) and actors (the UN, IOC) that help to explain the current and increasing connections between sport and sustainable development, before assessing the current state of SDP through three themes: the place of environmentalism in development, sustainable development in/through sport and the trend towards ecological modernization in the sporting sector and beyond.

The chapter synthesizes existing literature from sport, sustainability and international development to provide historical, contemporary and future-oriented assessments of sport and sustainable development.

By framing the sustainability of sport and SDP in terms of the contestability of its political formations, such as ecological modernization, the chapter considers and discusses (potentially) sustainable futures, particularly those informed by the implications of recognizing a New Climatic Regime.

The chapter argues for a number of future areas of study that may push the boundaries of existing research in the area.

The chapter provides one of the first introductions of the idea of a New Climatic Regime within the context of sport and the SDP sector, and argues that within such a political frame, sport cannot exist separately from the environment. As a result, the chapter advances the argument that the SDP sector should now consider itself to be part of the environment, rather than steward of or over it.

The reason that I am here opening the forum this evening is that in October 1969 at a Joint Seminar on the Training of Teachers and Librarians, held at the London University Research Unit for Student Problems, I broke, after fifteen years in the information world, my rule of keeping silent! I was then silly enough to write something as well, and hence here I am. What is more, I am now here under false pretences because, since my invitation to speak on this forum, I have left information work as such and am now an administrator full time. However, I still have a considerable responsibility for, and interest in, the recruitment of library staff.

Purpose – To discuss the history and relevance of audience research as it pertains to sport and physical culture and to demonstrate an approach to doing audience research.

Design/methodology/approach – A step-by-step overview of a study conducted by the authors is provided. The study examined ways that groups of young males in a Vancouver, Canada, high school interpreted images of masculinity in popular media, and ways these same youth performed masculinity in physical education classes. We reflect on how studying interpretations (using focus groups) and lived experiences (using participant observation and in-depth interviews) in an integrated fashion was helpful for understanding the role of media in the everyday lives of these youth. We also describe how the hegemony concept guided our data interpretation.

Findings – We highlight how, on the one hand, the young males were critical of media portrayals of hegemonic forms of masculinity and, on the other hand, how these same males attempted to conform to norms associated with hegemonic masculinity in physical education classes. We emphasise that our multi-method approach was essential in allowing us to detect the incongruity between youth ‘interpretations’ and ‘performances’.

Research limitations/implications – Limitations of audience research are discussed, and the epistemological underpinnings of our study are highlighted.

Originality/value – The need for audience research in physical cultural studies is emphasised. We suggest that researchers too often make claims about media impacts without actually talking to audiences, or looking at what audiences ‘do’ with information they glean from media.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.