Speaker
Description
"Our paper will discuss the posture of the researcher working in the field of Sport for Development (SFD) with local communities. This work is part of a larger scientific study, which aims to analyze the socio-educational effects of a SFD program implemented by the French NGO PLAY International in Burundi, Kosovo and Senegal. We will base our paper on a series of 140 biographical interviews with beneficiaries of the program (children and educational actors) and 7 months of ethnographic observation in the three intervention countries.
The local communities tell their life stories and express their needs in different ways depending on the countries and localities we visited, but also according to the distance they perceive - or not - and maintain with the doctoral student (a young French and white woman). A variety of asymmetries between the interviewer and the interviewees characterize the investigation relationship, which affect the data gathered. While generational and language differences hinder the collection of data from children, it is rather cultural, social and gender asymmetries that take precedence over others with adults, particularly in a non-western context. However, these barriers should not prevent the researcher from accessing and recognizing local knowledge, which is essential for understanding the concept of SFD (Nicholls & al., 2011). In this paper, we will present the methodological and epistemological challenges we encountered in the field and the solutions we envisaged, while critically reflecting on the posture of the Western interviewer, working on complex phenomena in non-Western cultural contexts (Kay, 2009)."
