Speaker
Description
Since 1970, the Arctic Winter Games have been bringing together young people from across the circumpolar north. This sporting and cultural gathering prioritises sharing and exchange between young people and promotes indigenous cultural and sporting practices (Dene Games, Arctic sports). As such, the Games’ purpose is to contribute to building an Arctic community. Furthermore, via their educational objectives and social aims, their organizers intend to give them a role as an actor in the development of the territories.
We will first briefly present our research (theoretical framework, methodology and main results). This will allow us to think about the idea of “thinking about major sports events differently” (Gouguet, 2015). We will thus discuss the dimensions of heritage and legacy, environmental responsibility or local development issues, that certainly seems imperative nowadays for the major sports events (and officially integrated in the Arctic Winter Games) but difficult to put into practice. Finally, the study of this case will give us the opportunity to understand the interest of the institutional partners of the project and the interest it has for civil society stakeholders. We will conclude with some reflections about the way in which the reflections based on this research can be used to train social science students interested in sport.
