Sport is a cultural institution that stands at the interface between political and civil society. In divided communities, sport has been an agent of separation, sectarian hatred and violence, but also a highly effective tool for conflict resolution, reconciliation and peace-building.
In this keynote study, John Sugden draws on a lifetime’s experience of working in sport in divided communities, as both researcher and organiser/activist, to develop a definitive and distinctive methodological and theoretical model for peace-building in sport. The book is centred on three regions of the world in which sport has been a prominent element of social deconstruction and reconstruction: Northern Ireland, and the author’s experiences of using football as an anti-sectarian intervention for young Protestants and Catholics; Israel/Palestine and the ‘Football for Peace’ project, a grassroots, sport based, co-existence programme that focuses on improving intergroup relations between disparate communities; and South Africa, where sport has played a central role for decades in maintaining and also repairing social division.
Drawing on first hand experiences, as well as a wealth of primary and secondary data, the author charts the rise of the contemporary ‘Sport for International Development and Peace’ (SIDP) movement and outlines an important new theoretical and practice-based framework for understanding, researching, and doing effective work in, the SIDP sector.Sport, Peace and Conflict Resolution is essential reading for any student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in the sociology of sport, sport development, international development, peace studies or conflict resolution.
