Speaker
Description
The existence and promotion of youth sport has often been based on various assumptions about its value and role in society. A dominant societal discourse assumes that sport participation contributes to the development of young people, because sport participation is fun and healthy and therefore an essential part of life. According to many, participation in sports and physical activity helps young people to grow in a context in which they are able to learn important positive values. However, scholars argue that it’s important to avoid naive and unrealistic generalizations about the capacity of youth sport. Rather than seeing youth sport as an entity or an all-encompassing phenomenon, I explore its fragmentation in both policy and practice and criticize common ways of researching it. I use six different research studies to illustrate and argue why youth sport as a research and policy area should be seen as a complex assemblage that involves youth as participants and adults as leaders and as researchers. In this presentation I explore how current research and policy making about youth sport work to maintain and support existing power relations and structures of power. I argue for the need for critical theoretically informed explanations of how sports and sport participation can be organized for the purpose of the wellbeing of young people.
