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This chapter utilizes a feminist lens to review the academic literature within the new and growing “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) movement. It explores the ways in which issues pertaining to gender and social change are taken up by SDP programmes and initiatives to argue that the movement seemingly understands gender in one of two ways. The literature reveals that SDP programming seeks to either allow for girls' sporting access in mixed-gender settings or aspires to “empower” females in girls-only contexts. I suggest that the SDP movement's understanding of gender reflects the current historical moment with respect to contrasting third-wave and post-feminist sensibilities. In both instances, girls are positioned to have gendered identities/experiences that need to be assisted, altered, or enhanced, and thus the SDP movement obscures an understanding of gender as a relational identity. I contend that increased research and attention to the possibilities of re-imagining gender relationships within the sporting context will enhance the SDP movement.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the utility of a postcolonial feminist girlhood studies approach to investigate, and better understand, how corporate-funded sport, gender and development (SGD) programs that adhere to the “Girl Effect” mantra take up: (1) the alleged benefits of SGD programming; (2) its (embodied) neoliberal tendencies; and (3) issues around gender and cultural difference in North-South aid relations.

This study uses qualitative methods, including 35 semi-structured interviews with staff members and young women, in order to investigate how a SGD program in Eastern Uganda that is funded by a Sport Transnational Corporation (STNC) and an International NGO used martial arts to build girls’ self-defense skills and address gender-based, sexual, and domestic violence.

Three major findings are revealed, including: (1) the martial arts program improved young women’s confidence levels, physical fitness, leadership capabilities, and social networks; (2) Western donors tended to use and frame sport (i.e., martial arts) as paramount for educating and training Ugandan young women to be (neoliberal) global “girl” citizens; and (3) issues of representation, racialized subjectivity, and cultural difference in SGD adversely influenced aid relations.

Evidence from this chapter suggests that it is crucial to question how global neoliberal development, as promoted via SGD practices, is not only racialized and classed, but also distinctly gendered. Infusing girlhood studies with a postcolonial feminist perspective enables a deconstruction, and attendance to, the ways in which colonial legacies, neoliberal processes, and the political resistance of development practices are taken up, and impelled by, SGD programs.

In this chapter we examine cross-cultural mentorship within Alberta’s Future Leaders (AFL) program, an initiative in which mainly non-Aboriginal youth workers and arts mentors mentor Aboriginal youth in Aboriginal communities in Alberta through the use of sport, recreation, and arts for development.

We use an exploratory case study methodology in concert with semi-structured interviews, focus groups, participant observation, and archival research. We use Foucauldian discourse analysis to analyze our results.

We identified two dominant discourses that shape AFL: first, mentorship can help Aboriginal youth to avoid negative life trajectories and, second, youth leadership development is universal. We argue that sport, recreation, and arts for youth development that does not prioritize cultural relevancy and does not attend to issues pertaining to colonialism’s legacy risks, in a Foucauldian sense, disciplining Aboriginal youths in ways that reaffirm colonial relations of power between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people.

This chapter focuses on sport, recreation, and arts for youth development within a marginalized segment of the Canadian population: Aboriginal youth.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the historical and political broadcasting conditions that hindered the success of British professional wrestling and allowed the rise to dominance of the American World Wrestling Federation.

Because of the nature of professional wrestling, the paper utilises a range of secondary sources (audience research conducted by the Independent Broadcasting Authority, and interviews with retired wrestlers) and primary research (government papers, magazines, newspapers).

The paper finds that the World Wrestling Federation benefited from neo‐liberal television policies, but also created a product that attracted a new generation of fans.

The paper examines an under‐researched area of study (British professional wrestling) to explore and complicate existing debates about sports marketing and British media institutions in the 1980s and 1990s.

This paper examines recent Canadian public policies intended to create a window for domestic entertainment programming on television in the face of a series of economic and technological factors which favour greater cultural integration with the American television market. These factors include the limited revenues available to the conventional public and private TV sectors, audience fragmentation through cable, and both the readily availability, and audience acceptance in English Canada, of inexpensive shows from the USA. Recent policies have focussed upon increasing the number of Canadian cable channels in a country where most people subscribe to cable; but paradoxically, public funding for the mainstay of domestic entertainment programming, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, is being drastically cut. The impacts of these cuts on the Corporation’s mandate, and proposed remedies, are outlined. It is concluded that public broadcasting policies are now being determined by economic rather than cultural goals, and that the Corporation is a victim of this trend.

This research reports on work related to integrating new immigrants into their local communities. The purpose of this paper is to explore community sport and the newcomer experience in communities through an acculturation framework.

The role of community sport organizations in the acculturation process is explored empirically via a three-stage research study of a small Canadian city that includes interviews with local newcomers, interviews with managers of local community sport organizations, and a website content analysis of community sport organizations in the region.

Results outline a number of important constraints, practices and realities facing newcomers and community sport organizations in improving participation rates and integration. In addition, the use of the acculturation frame provides insight on the perceived value of community sport yet low participation rates among newcomers.

There is a need for community sport providers to adopt an acculturation perspective to newcomers rather than the current assimilationist perspective. This change will lead to improvements in sport offerings and newcomer supports.

There is an increasing desire to have migrants locate in smaller urban centers rather than the large metropolises of their new home country. However, smaller communities may be perceived by newcomers as less desirable places to live and the communities can face significant integration challenges. Further, there is a dearth of research on newcomers and smaller communities particularly in the area of community sport. This study explores the role of sport as a means to overcome these challenges by assessing the capacity of a smaller city and the needs of immigrants and their families using a lens of acculturation.

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce critical issues of power, social reproduction, and agency in the practice and institutionalization of sport-for-development and the burgeoning “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) sector. To this end, the chapter draws on a host of recent academic contributions to the critical study of sport-for-development.

Key findings of several research projects are organized and presented in four thematic categories: terms of development, voice and agency, social reproduction, and privilege and dominance. In turn, the conclusion examines recent theoretical applications of participatory methods and critical pedagogy to the research and practice of sport-for-development.

The chapter provides a succinct introduction to critical issues in sport-for-development work and will be of value to researchers, students, and practitioners interested in progressive approaches to international development and the role of sport therein.

While discourse abounds regarding the potential impacts of sports mega events on host cities, existing ideologies about, strategies for, and systematic examinations of “legacy” effects are poorly understood. This chapter presents a sociological examination of the sport mega-event legacy measurement process.

In this chapter, we reflect on our own involvement in legacy evaluation in the context of the 2015 Pan/Parapan Am Games in Toronto to examine existing legacy measurement strategies, review their findings, and present a theoretical detour via the past for consideration in future sociological contributions to the legacy measurement process.

Data discussed in this chapter suggest a need for the creation of a more sociologically informed, methodologically robust and piecemeal rather than Utopian-oriented “report card” measurement device for legacy evaluation.

Based on the review of evidence, we contend that if sociologists of sport remain committed to keeping their roles, as public intellectuals, applied researchers or participatory activists in the sport for development/legacy nexus, those involved might do so with a greater attention to focusing on what Karl Popper (1961) refers to as piecemeal social engineering strategies and measurements, and attending to those legacies both on and off the event organizing committee radar screen.