Doping in sport: Whose problem is it?

In the last few years there has been a significant increase in the number and scope of social science research into doping in sport. However, despite this apparent progress, the field remains a disparate body of work and lacks both direction and leadership. Whilst sport management is a discipline that is well suited to provide such leadership, scholarly research into this controversial topic has not been published widely in sport management journals. This special issue redresses this gap by bringing together a range of scholarly articles that represent a variety of perspectives by authors from North America, Europe and Australia. The issues and challenges covered are varied, but each paper brings a common theme: the implications for the management of doping in sport. The six papers in this Special Issue of Sport Management Review are a significant addition to the slowly growing body of sport management scholarly work on doping in sport. It is hoped that future research will be prompted with this Special Issue and the discipline of sport management will recognize and respond to the challenges presented by doping.     

Parents in youth sport: what happens after the game?

Characteristic issues surrounding parents in youth sport include examples of negative verbal and non-verbal behaviour demonstrated during competition. Numerous studies have done well to highlight while parents possess a great potential for positively influencing the sport experience, they can also exert a considerable negative influence by engaging in a range of non-preferred and inappropriate behaviours. There is certainly a need to further understand the nature of the sport-parenting paradigm given that encouraging and supportive parental involvement is a critical factor in promoting enjoyment and intrinsic motivation among participants. This is particularly important given that children's preferred parental behaviours are temporally dependent. That is, different types of parental involvement are preferred before, during and after competitive sport. However, one aspect of parental involvement in youth sport which has been largely overlooked is the post-game setting. Drawing on qualitative data derived from focus groups and individual interviews with 86 parents and children involved in junior Australian football, this paper reveals an aspect of the sport-parenting role which can further enhance or undermine the youth sport experience. Specifically, it reveals an intriguing insight into the way that parents engage in ‘debriefing’ children's performances—representing a challenge for parents who strive to engender a positive and supportive influence in youth sport. While the concept of sport-parenting receives much attention within the competitive setting, this paper argues that in order to enhance the quality of parental involvement in youth sport, much can be learnt from exploring ‘what happens after the game’.     

The ‘uptake’ of a sport-for-development programme in South Africa

This article reports on the ‘uptake’ dynamics and resultant manifestations of a school-based, incentive-driven, sport-for-development programme in the South African context of poverty. The ecological systems theory of Brofenbrenner, the theory of complexity and a neo-liberal framework underpin the social constructions of local meanings associated with programme participation and involvement. Thirty-nine primary schools in the Western Cape Province and four schools in the Eastern Cape Province deliver the programme in partnership with a local foundation. A representative sample of 15 schools, from rural and urban (township) impoverished communities, were selected for a baseline study. A mixed-method approach of the Sport-in Development Impact Assessment Tool was adapted to collect comparative data through 57 interviews, 35 focus group sessions (with 75 teachers and 176 learners) and 159 questionnaires completed by learners and 29 by school and cluster coordinators. Various models of implementation render nuanced findings at meso-, exo- and micro-levels, where interrelated systems, demographic and developmental influences translate into culturally informed sense-making, pro- and anti-social associative behaviours, praxis, institutional empowerment and status-conferring identity constructions. All partners promote a neoliberal approach that limits changes to the underlying social systems, and mostly promote individual and group attributes within the institutional and social world settings of participants.     

‘Getting more comfortable in an uncomfortable space’: learning to become an activist researcher in a socially vulnerable sport context

Activist research engages all participants as co-researchers in order to challenge the status quo in hopes of creating spaces in which they will actively participate in their education and feel responsible for their own and others’ learning. There are a number of challenges that researchers might face when engaging in activist research with co-researchers. In that sense, researchers must be open to multiple perspectives and critical attitudes in order to negotiate the challenges that arise in the process. This paper describes the challenges that the lead author faced in learning to become an activist researcher in a socially vulnerable sport context and how these challenges were negotiated. The lead author, supervised by the second author, conducted a six month activist research study in a soccer program in a socially and economically disadvantaged neighborhood in Brazil. Participants included two researchers (lead and second authors), 17 young people, four coaches, a pedagogic coordinator and a social worker as co-researchers. Multiple sources of data were collected, including 38 field journal/observations and audio records of: 18 youth work sessions, 16 coaches’ work sessions, three combined coaches and youth work sessions, and 37 meetings between the lead author and the second author. By using an activist approach four challenges were identified and negotiated: learning to become more comfortable with an activist approach, helping young people to articulate what they know and the researcher to see what they say, valuing co-researchers’ knowledge, and negotiating the culture of sport. We argue that challenges are essential, necessary and significant in an activist research project in order to transform ourselves as researchers and our relationship with others.     

High-performance sport,learning and culture: new horizons for sport pedagogues?

Background: Research in sport coaching and sport pedagogy including studies published in this special issue bring to the fore the relationship between learning and culture in contexts of high-performance sport. This paper acknowledged that how learning, culture and their relationship are conceptualised is a crucial issue for researchers and professionals in high-performance sport.

Purpose and approach: This paper arises from a theoretical analysis of the research studies presented in this special issue. The analysis undertaken focused on the understanding and representation of the concepts of learning and culture and critically examined the methodological application of particular conceptualisations. The intention was to extend insight into both theoretical and methodological issues associated with understanding and researching athlete and coach learning, and high-performance sport settings.

Findings and discussion: This paper identifies tendencies for separatist and reductionist thinking about learning and culture in high-performance sport settings. A relational perspective is identified as critical to extending research and professional practice that is directed towards learning and/or culture. Researchers are urged to avoid identifying either athlete or coach learning (only) with specific events or experiences, and similarly avoid positioning culture as something that sits apart from athletes’ and coaches’ participation and learning in elite sport settings. The dual notions of ‘learning practices as cultural practice’ and ‘cultural practice as pedagogical practice’ are proposed as a basis for holistic thinking about learning and culture in high-performance sport settings. The extent to which such thinking is reflected in the various contributions to the special issue is considered. Attention is then directed to the methodological challenges that researchers face if they are to reflect a conceptualisation of learning as both embedded and embodied in cultural practices. Challenging and extending the underlying vision of learning that researchers, coaches and athletes have is revealed as a critical consideration in regard to research design, data collection and ways in which participants are variously positioned, represented and ‘involved’ in research. Embodied perspectives are identified as particularly worthy of greater attention in contemporary research that seeks to extend understanding of athlete and/or coaches’ learning and lived experiences within and amidst elite sporting cultures. Recent scholarship focusing on the body and lived experience is identified as providing theoretical and methodological insights that can extend future research and practice.

Conclusions: Foregrounding a relational perspective is fundamental to extending the understanding of learning and culture in high-performance sport. Future research also needs to clearly embrace the methodological challenges presented by new conceptualisations.     

Tours of Reconciliation: Rugby,War and Reconstruction in South Africa, 1891–1907

Former South African Rugby Board President A.J. (‘Sport’) Pienaar once reflected that rugby football was the ‘greatest cementing influence between the Afrikaans and English-speaking sections in the country’. 1 1. Quoted in A.C. Parker, The Springboks 1891–1970 (London, 1970), p. 5. Pienaar was president of the South African Rugby Board between 1927 and 1953. Indeed, when Mark Morrison brought the British Isles team to South Africa in 1903, it was, according to rugby historian Paul Dobson, as ‘a tour of reconciliation’. This was, he added, ‘rugby's contribution to healing the sad and painful wounds of the Anglo-Boer War’. 2 2. P. Dobson, Bishops rugby. A history (Cape Town, 1990), p. 44. This article will explore the significance of the early pioneering tours as well as the nature of Anglo-Boer relations leading up to the South African War of 1899–1902. Significantly, the post-war tours of 1903 and 1906, the year of the first oversees rugby Springboks, will be examined as early examples of sport being used in South Africa to reconcile a divided society.     

Teachers in school sports: between the fields of education and sport?

According to the cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, gaining access to a social space or a position within a social space requires a specific capital. For teachers, this is normally indicated by a valid teaching certificate with relevant subject knowledge. However, when no qualified teachers are available, which is the case for the subject of school sports in Sweden, other assets gain recognition. Drawing on Bourdieu's conceptual framework, this paper examined the conditions for school sports in Sweden, and based on questionnaires answered by 109 teachers, explored the competencies, education and backgrounds teachers in upper secondary school sports possess. The paper address the question: what valuable resources are required to become a teacher of school sports and gain recognition as symbolic capital? The results show that while school sports in Sweden are carried out through a school subject and thus regulated by the government, it is influenced by both the fields of education and sport. Furthermore, the questionnaire results show that a majority of the teachers are employed as coaches instead of teachers and that less than half of them (45%) have a teacher education background, while 95% have a coaching education background. However, the results also show that teachers assessed their competencies for teaching school sports as high, especially with regard to competencies in specific sport skills. In conclusion, this paper shows how coaching education and experience in competitive sports are an important resource required to become a teacher in school sports and is thus recognized as symbolic capital. Therefore, school sports cannot be viewed as a legitimate part of the field of education but can be viewed as a part of the field of sport.     

Revisiting (and Revising?) Sports Boycotts: From Rugby against South Africa to Soccer in Israel

For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 saw increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an ‘entrenched system of racial discrimination’. The call to boycott South African sport emerged in the 1950s as the apartheid state was developing and refining its comprehensive and systematic legal form amid growing international pressure for decolonisation. This is a different social and political context than the call 50 years later by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This paper draws on analyses of international anti-apartheid movements' campaigns against sporting contact with South Africa and the BDS call for the isolation of the Israeli state to propose a theory of sports boycotts. It looks at the anti-apartheid campaigns to consider ways in which the BDS campaign has an impact on existing historical understandings of cultural boycotts as a tactical and strategic campaign tool.     

‘Tours of Imperialism’: Cricket and Cultural Transfer in South Africa, 1880–1910

Abstract

Few can deny the significance of sport in today’s South Africa. The sporting structures upon which this is based were first introduced to the country by the British in the late nineteenth century. In line with policies of cultural imperialism, sports such as cricket were promoted at this time as part of a wider political agenda that encouraged the adoption of an ‘English’ way of life in the region. Sports tours, most notably cricket, were a fundamental part of this cultural transfer between the ‘Mother Country’ and her colonies in Southern Africa. To underpin the study of transnational linkages and transfer in African sports, this paper will offer an historical overview of how ‘British-styled’ sport arrived in South Africa and how the early cricket tours between England and South Africa were constructed to promote distinct political and cultural connections. This paper will explore the early development of cricket in South Africa and investigate its symbiotic link to British imperialism and colonialism via the first tours and sporting exchanges that took place. The origins of the game in South Africa will be examined as well as its development up to 1910 (the date of Union in South Africa) as the site of a constructed transnational 'brotherhood' between Britain and its most coveted African colonies.     

Psychosocial development through Masters sport: What can be gained from youth sport models?

Although sport participation is encouraged throughout the lifespan, little research has been conducted on the role of sport in development later in life. This qualitative study explored adults’ experiences of development within the context of Masters sport. We interviewed 14 adults (nine men and five women) aged 46–61 years involved in Masters sport. Data was interpreted drawing upon frameworks from youth sport (i.e., Personal Assets Framework for Sport; Côté, J., Bruner, M., Strachan, L., Erickson, K., & Fraser-Thomas, J. (2010). Athletes’ development and coaching. In J. Lyle & C. Cushion (Eds.), Sport coaching: Professionalism and practice (pp. 63–83). Oxford, UK: Elsevier, Côté, J., Turnnidge, J., & Evans, M. B. (2014). The dynamic process of development through sport. Kinesiologia Slovenica, 20(3), 14–26, Côté, J., Turnnidge, J., & Vieerima, M. (2016). A personal assets approach to youth sport. In K. Green & A. Smith (Eds.), Routledge handbook of youth sport (pp. 243–255). New York, NY: Routledge; 4/5Cs of positive youth development; Lerner, R. M., Fisher, C. B., & Weinberg, R. A. (2000). Toward a science for and of the people: Promoting civil society through the application of developmental science. Child Development, 71(1), 11–20. doi:10.1111/1467-8624.00113; Vierimaa, M., Erickson, K., Côté, J., & Gilbert, W. (2012). Positive youth development: A measurement framework for sport. International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching, 7(3), 601–614. doi:10.1260/1747-9541.7.3.601), combined with past research on mid-life and older athletes. Six key themes emerged as contributing to adults’ personal development through sport: competence and confidence, character, commitment, connection, cognition, and challenge. Masters sport contexts appeared to facilitate changes in assets (i.e., 6Cs) similar to those within youth sport, but assets often held different meanings within the context of later life. Applying frameworks from youth sport and developmental psychology to Masters sport contexts appears useful. The current findings support the modification of existing models and highlight their potential in identifying lifelong developmental outcomes of sport participation.     

Physical activity levels during youth sport practice: does coach training or experience have an influence?

This study examined moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) levels in youth during flag football practice and compared youth MVPA in practices led by trained or untrained, and by experienced or inexperienced, coaches. Boys (n = 111, mean age = 7.9 ± 1.2 years) from 14 recreation-level flag football teams wore an accelerometer during two practices. Each team’s volunteer head coach reported prior training and coaching experience. Mixed-model team-adjusted means showed the proportion of practice time spent in sedentary (13 ± 1%), MVPA (34 ± 2%) and vigorous (12 ± 1%) activity. Practice contributed ~20 min of MVPA towards public health guidelines. There was no significant difference in percentage time spent in MVPA between teams with trained (mean = 33.3%, 95% CI = 29.4%, 37.2%) and untrained coaches (mean = 35.9%, 95% CI = 25.5%, 42.4%) or between experienced (mean = 34.1%, 95% CI = 30.2%, 38.0%) and inexperienced coaches (mean = 33.8, 95% CI = 27.9%, 39.7%). Although sport provides a setting for youth to accrue MVPA, two-thirds of practice was spent sedentarily or in light activity. Participation in a coach training programme was not associated with higher MVPA. Further research is needed to inform volunteer coach training programmes that provide coaches with skills necessary to increase the percentage of practice time spent in MVPA.     

‘Last Zulu Warrior Standing’: Cultural Legacies of Racial Stereotyping and Embodied Ethno-Branding in South Africa

This paper explores the legacies of white South African cricketer Lance ‘Zulu’ Klusener. His childhood immersion in ‘Shakan culture’ on a Natal farm was said to imbue him with warrior prowess on the field. In Klusener's newly democratic country even township veterans of the People's War against apartheid, who associated cricket with racial tyranny, followed his World Cup exploits. So too did his rural Zulu fans in KwaZulu–Natal chiefdoms. Klusener's ‘Zulu’ persona not only represented deeper cultural histories, but also pervasive colonial markers. In the post-apartheid era, Klusener's fame revealed a different minority at play. His sporting identity impressed the ‘rainbow nation’, especially the promoters of reconciliation selling the evocatively familiar with a new twist: the warrior inspiring unity, not with tribal spear, but with colonial bat. With international sanctions against South Africa lifted in 1994, boosters of cricket wanted to change negative perceptions of their racially exclusive sport. Klusener appealed to the historically oppressed at home and opened sources of global revenue formerly closed by a four-decade-old sport boycott. Indeed, his ‘warrior’ reputation was ripe for exploitation in a ‘neoliberal’ tourism-oriented economy called ‘Ethnicity Inc.’, the title of a book by John and Jean Comaroff on the ‘marketing [of] vernacular lifeways’ of ‘ethno-nations’.     

Are sports club members big spenders?: Findings from sport specific analyses in Germany

This paper analyses the sport expenditures of people who are members of non-profit sports clubs (N = 10,013) in Germany. Adult members, active in 21 sports, were asked about their sport expenditure relating to several defined categories. The results show that members spend an average of €1610 per year on their chosen sport. Sport specific analyses reveal big differences in expenditure between sports, ranging from badminton (€338) to equestrian (€7902). According to sport-specific regression analyses, personal income, level of performance, and weekly time of participation are the main predictors of sport-specific expenditures. Compared to other studies, these results show that the financial status of members of non-profit sports clubs is very strong.     

Professional Football in Apartheid South Africa: Leisure,Consumption and Identity in the National Football League, 1959–1977

A growing body of academic and popular literature considers the history of South African football. These and existing publications pay little or no attention to the emergence of white professional football in apartheid South Africa. The National Football League (NFL) challenged the amateur game and introduced professional football to the country. During its 17-year existence, the NFL grew each season with large attendances until its demise in 1977. In addition, the NFL imported a range of international players, invited foreign teams and actively engaged in the political debates in South African sport at the time. The NFL was instrumental in popularising the game across the country for all South Africans. The NFL became the most popular sports entertainment of choice for South Africans during this period. Finally, the NFL actively engaged in a campaign of destroying rival non-racial anti-apartheid leagues while simultaneously co-opting less progressive organisations.     

Tinkering through transition: on ‘doctoring’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy

This article addresses the notion of ‘making it’ as an early-career academic in physical education and sport pedagogy. In it, we draw on the tradition of material semiotics to reflect on our shared journeys from doctoral student to beginning scholar and beyond. By attuning ourselves to the relationality, materiality and precariousness of our experiences, we offer an answer to the question of what it takes to ‘make it’ as an early-career academic by advocating the practice of ‘making do’ or ‘doctoring.’ We develop this argument, first, by describing the narrative methods we used to conduct our inquiry and by explaining the material-semiotic ideas we used to explore the stories it generated. Then, we tell tales of our transitions from higher degree research student to early-career academic, focusing specifically on our ongoing, collective efforts to make do. In our discussion, we explore these narratives and attend to three features of our actions and activities as early-career academics; namely semiotic relationality, material heterogeneity and the precarious processes of heterogeneous engineering through which we sought to make a career in our field. We conclude by encouraging beginning scholars in physical education and sport pedagogy to become sensitive to these aspects of their own agency, and to experiment, experience and tinker together in ways that are attentive, inventive, caring and persistent.     

The Coming of Nelson and the Ending of Apartheid Cricket? Gatting’s Rebels in South Africa, 1990

Abstract

The year 1990 is pivotal in South African history. The liberation movements were unbanned, and Nelson Mandela was freed in the midst of a tour by Mike Gatting’s English rebel cricket team. The newly constituted National Sports Congress, which had the support of the African National Congress, was at the forefront of protests against the tour. For once, Ali Bacher and apartheid cricket were on the back foot. However, the NSC did a sudden volte-face by calling off protests and negotiating the end of the tour. One reason for this decision was that the NSC was made aware of Mandela’s imminent release and that sport would play a key role in creating a ‘stable’ environment. These moves and countermoves accelerated cricket “unity” and saw South African return to international cricket before the formal end of apartheid. This paper interrogates the consequences of cricket returning to the international fold in such haste. It is entitled ‘Nelson’ because in some cricket countries, the score of 111 is called Nelson, and there is a superstitious belief that a wicket would fall. With Mandela’s release, 1990 was the year in which apartheid’s wicket fell, though victory celebrations appear to have been premature.