ABSTRACT

Over recent years, the field of sport for development (SFD) has seen a substantial growth in the number of initiatives leveraging sport as a means of promoting social development outcomes. Despite advances in this field, the extent to which social cohesion has been researched in SFD is contested. While past research suggests that a substantial amount of SFD literature focuses on social cohesion, a closer look at the definition and conceptualisation of social cohesion in this context indicates that the term is often used as a catch-all to describe research and programming that focuses on a broad range of sociological concepts. In this paper, we explore how social cohesion is defined in the context of a SFD initiative, the complexities of defining social cohesion, and how this shapes management practices. Adopting an ethnographic approach over two years, we collected data via research observations, reflexive journal entries, organisational documents, and semi-structured interviews. Overall, findings indicated that the initiative struggled to define social cohesion, and this had ramifications upon managerial practices and strategy. Further, this had a flow-on effect upon programs, contributing to deteriorations in social networks and issues with socio-cultural assumptions.

摘要

近年来，体育促进发展 (SFD) 领域利用体育作为促进社会发展成果的手段的举措数量大幅增长。尽管在这一领域取得了进展，但在 SFD 中研究社会凝聚力的程度仍存在争议。虽然过去的研究表明，大量的 SFD 文献都关注社会凝聚力，但在这种情况下仔细研究社会凝聚力的定义和概念化表明，该术语通常被用作描述研究和规划的总称广泛的社会学概念。在本文中，我们探讨了如何在 SFD 倡议的背景下定义社会凝聚力，定义社会凝聚力的复杂性，以及这如何塑造管理实践。两年多来采用民族志方法，我们通过研究观察、反思性日记条目、组织文件和半结构化访谈收集数据。总体而言，调查结果表明，该倡议难以定义社会凝聚力，这对管理实践和战略产生了影响。此外，这对项目产生了持续影响，导致社交网络恶化和社会文化假设问题。