Speaker
Description
Recurrent abuse scandals and cases in sport have led (inter)national governments and sports organisations to develop Safe Sport policies and guidelines. However, the rate of spreading and settling of the safeguarding movement differs considerably because every national/regional context is unique and different. Drawing from a case study of South Korea’s elite sport pathway where tightened regulations on violence/abuse in sport challenge the long-lasting relational hierarchy based on Confucianism, this paper examines how coaches and athletes manoeuvre in the new social order created by the new horizontal relational ethics. Analysing data from semi-structured interviews with 20 participants (safeguarding policy providers and the beneficiaries of the policies), the paper shows that the new safeguarding policies question old coaching practices, leaving coaches ‘disarmed’ to be re-equipped with new knowledge and practices. Also, coaches and athletes develop the old relational hierarchy into a more harmonious form of hierarchy at best, rather than a fully horizontal partnership, due to the deeply ingrained vertical norm in the society. That is, a Rights-based, Western-born relational norm that underlies the notion of Safe Sport is diluted with the Confucian hierarchy and localised into this gentler form of paternalistic care. The findings suggest that the Safe Sport movement is not simply about introducing new regulations, but it can potentially shake the very socio-cultural norms running deep across the society. The tensions observed in this study can inform other non-western cultural contexts by opening discussions on potential (in)compatibility of local cultural norms and the global standard of Safe Sport.
