SOCIOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT THROUGH SPORTS - A CASE OF TWO STATES OF INDIA
Author: Tewari, Sanjay , sanjay.tewari@yahoo.co.in
Department: University Department of Sociology
University: LN Mithila University, Darbhanga, Bihar, India
Supervisor: Prof. BN Mishra
Year of completion: In progress
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Sports
, Social
, Development
, Youth
Areas of Research:
Sport
, Social Movements, Collective Action and Social Change
, Youth
Abstract
For some time, the United Nations, international sport federations (e.g. the IOC and FIFA), and Non-Governmental Organizations (e.g, India’s Panchayat Yuva Krida Aur Khel Abhiyan [PYKKA] rural organization) have used sport as a tool for social development. Sport development programs, including those in India, are frequently founded on the assumption that, under appropriate conditions, sport can positively influence social cohesion, integration, inclusion, and mobility. The PYKKA project, for instance, provides youth with community activities and educational opportunities to nurture social cohesion and individual responsibility. With their emphasis on alleviating social ills, fostering progress, generating allusions of local, national and international accord, and, demonstrating the altruism of sport governing bodies, sport development initiatives are worthy of sociological analysis (Burawoy, 2005; Darnell, 2012; Wilson, 2012). Despite the potential of sport development to highlight broader social complexities, sociologists in India remain disinterested in the area (and sport generally) as avenues of legitimate study. Yet, sport development programs, invariably, provide sociologists useful opportunities to know and engage with body politics, questions of structure and agency, and emancipation and social transformation. Accordingly, in this study I draw on Bourdieu (1992; 1993) and Giddens (1990; 2009) to understand the construction of, and consequences thereof, sport development projects and the broader processes to which they are a part. I discuss my ongoing research with youth in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and, I consider how sport development agendas are often confounded by tensions, negotiations, and resistances contours of the local context.
