C Darnell
Biographic Data
| ID | 56391 |
|---|---|
| NAME | C Darnell |
| GIVEN NAMES | C |
| FAMILY NAME | Darnell |
| SIGNATURE | DARNELL C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2742-0737 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 245 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
The post-colonial challenges of climate change and sport for development and peace in the Anthropocene
In the context of the contemporary sport for development and peace (SDP) sector, the environment and climate change have proven difficult to address in both policy and practice. In this paper, by drawing on interviews with policy-makers in the sector and practitioners who design and implement programming, we attempt to tease apart the tensions shaping sport for development and peace in the Anthropocene. Reading interview data through the lens of …
Policy vs. practice in sport and climate change
Despite widespread, scientifically supported recognition of the scope of the climate crisis, and policies in place connecting sport to sustainable development, there remain concerns that the environment and climate change are rarely acknowledged within SDP activity and that even when they are, it is unclear how such policies are implemented, and to what effect. This raises the question of how and why the climate crisis and the attendant relations…
Global sport and the challenges of political life
Chief among the issues to be examined in this section is the ongoing use of sport by states and other various polities in support of political aspirations, both domestically and in the international sphere. The view that sport is attractive to governments and states in advancing their own agendas is not new; indeed, scholars like Lincoln Allison called critical attention to such politics of sport nearly 40 years ago (Alison, 1986). In turn, this …
Building Back Better”
The COVID-19 pandemic affected sport programming by restricting in-person activities. Concurrently, global outcry for racial justice for Black and racialized communities promoted calls to action to assess equitable practices in sport, including sport for development (SFD). This study critically examined SFD “return to play” programming to include perspectives from racialized persons’ lived experiences. We present findings based on data collected …
A Critical Examination of Race and Antiracism in the Sport for Development Field
We welcome you to this special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal which was envisioned as an opportunity to reimagine and recreate sporting spaces for true racial inclusion and equity.We developed the special issue because of what we saw as an absence of a specific and sustained focus on race and racism in Sport for Development (SfD) as well as an antiracist approach to research and analysis of SfD.This was driven, in part, by the ways in wh…
Bringing the Community to the Uni-Critical Reflections on Youth Recreation Partnerships in Toronto
The focus of this paper is an evaluation of a recreation project partnership between a co-curricular university department and various youth community programs in downtown Toronto, Canada. The goal of the Hart House Youth Community Recreation Project (YCRP) is to build a bridge between the university and its neighboring communities through recreation, arts, and dialogue-based programming that responds to the needs and interests of community partn…
‘Like, what even is a podcast?’ Approaching sport-for-development youth participatory action research through digital methodologies
This paper reports findings from a participatory-based study with racialised newcomer youth in Toronto that utilised digital methodologies – specifically the act of podcasting – to explore connections between sport and social development. The paper examines the complex, and sometimes contradictory, relationships between participatory research and digital technologies when examining the social meanings of sport and physical activity for youth. The…
Volunteers in the sport for development and peace sector
In this paper, we seek to advance understandings of the contemporary global ‘sport for development and peace’ (SDP) sector, with respect to volunteers and volunteering in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Volunteers play a critical role in organizing and delivering SDP social intervention programmes across the world; most SDP volunteer work is undertaken by local young people who are often presented as a current peer or future community l…
Sport, Development and Environmental Sustainability
This is the first book to consider the intersections of sport, international development and environmental sustainability. It explores the tensions between sport's potential contribution to the environment and its rather poor record to date. Bringing together a diverse group of scholars who approach the topic from various disciplinary and theoretical perspectives, the book provides both critical and optimistic perspectives on the place of sport i…
The History and Politics of Sport-for-Development
This book focuses on the major social and political forces that have shaped the ways in which sport has been understood, organized, and contested in an effort to engender social change, including both archival research and extensive interviews with more than 15 central figures
Rethinking Sportland
Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) has grown into a huge global field of sport-related activity and intervention and is a heavily researched subject in the social scientific study of sport. In this article, we advance the case for a new research agenda in SDP, in part to contribute more fully to sustainable development through substantial societal change. We argue that SDP research should engage with wider literatures and theories, notably on …
Routledge Handbook of Sport for Development and Peace
During the last two decades, there has been a concerted effort to remobilize sport as a vehicle for sustainable social development, especially in the most disadvantaged communities in the world. It is suggested that sport is a versatile and flexible developmental tool commonly associated with having the capacity to contribute to positive social capital in communities. This chapter debates the role of sport as an enabler for development, and the k…
The State of Play
The maturation of the field of 'Sport for Development and Peace' (SDP) is reflected in the growing number of research publications on the topic. This article focuses on a recent review of English-language research publications on SDP from 2000-2014 conducted by Schulenkorf et al. (2016. Sport for development: an integrated literature review. Journal of Sport Management 30: 22-39). We attempt to extend the analysis of current SDP research offered …
The Inclusion Conundrum
The sport for development and peace (SDP) sector is made up of various development-focused policies and programs that seek to engage, stabilise, empower and create social and economic change. SDP projects, most often run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), have been implemented in regions enduring physical conflicts, health pandemics, major gender divisions and other social crises that have a great impact on youth. In this context, sport ha…
Re-Assembling Sport for Development and Peace Through Actor Network Theory
Some recent appraisals of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) research have found it to be deterministic and ideological, and lacking sophistication and specificity with regards to theory and method. Notably, such criticisms dovetail with the foundations of Actor Network Theory (ANT). Based on fieldwork in Kingston, Jamaica, we draw on ANT to ‘re-assemble’ the understanding of SDP programs by examining their constitutive elements. The results i…
Considering sport for development and peace through the capabilities approach
Heeding calls to integrate international development studies with Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), we approach SDP using the Capabilities Approach as articulated by Martha Nussbaum. Applying such a framework to the study and practice of SDP offers a politically engaged yet practical approach, and serves to theorise ways in which sport programmes might be conceptualised and organised as part of holistic approaches to development and not simp…
The methodological dance
Social scientific research requires engagement with individuals, groups and or organisations embedded within specific sectors and locations. The ‘Sport for a Better World?’ project aimed to examine the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector within multiple international locations through fieldwork conducted by a four-person research team. This paper discusses the methodological benefits and challenges of this methodological approach, with a…
Changing methods and methods of change
This collection of papers is made up of diverse, contemporary, and thought-provoking examples of qualitative methods in the study of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). In this conclusion, we reflect on some of the key themes that cut across the contributions. Four main topics are discussed: Interpretation (the subjects and voices at the centre of SDP research), Outcomes (the variety of results that are likely to emerge from SDP research), Cre…
Sport in under-resourced, underdeveloped, and conflict regions
More than 600 Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) programmes are currently registered on the International Platform on Sport and Development (sportanddev.org) and over the past two decades, schol
Sport for Social Change and Development
Local Non-Governmental Organisations and sports organizations have been recognized as important and well positioned strategic implementing bodies by the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) sector. Whilst they may be experienced and knowledgeable of the historical and local sociocultural landscape, many seek to form transnational partnerships, for the purpose of expanding their capacity, sustainability, and expertise. Rwanda’s history of genoc…
Ecological Modernization and the Olympics
Ecological modernization refers to the idea that capitalist-driven scientific and technological advancements can not only attend to the world’s pending environmental crises, but even lead to ecological improvement, thus allowing sustainability and consumption to continue in concert. In this paper, we examine ecological modernization at the confluence of environmentalism, international development and global sport. Through an analysis of golf and …
Learning through South–South development
Since the 1990s, Cuba has offered scholarships to students from low-resource countries to attend the Escuela Internacional de Educación Física y Deporte (EIEFD) for a six-year degree in sport, physical education, and coaching. Drawing on the experiences of EIEFD graduates from four Southern African countries (Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, and Lesotho) the authors discuss the meanings that this South–South cooperation through education holds f…
Sport, International Development and Peace
This chapter provides an overview of the history and emergence of the sport for development and peace (SDP) sector is offered. It illustrates some of the positive aspects of SDP activity, and also some of the cautions and limitations that deserve consideration. The chapter discusses future directions in the sociological analysis of SDP. According to the United Nations inter-agency task force, sport-for-development programmes fall into three categ…
Driving to the 'Net
On October 24, 2012, the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League announced a plan to move from their current stadium in Nassau County to the recently opened Barclays Center in the borough of Brooklyn, marking the end of a decades-long political saga about whether and where to build a new home arena for the club. During this time, the Islanders franchise strove to mobilize support for the ostensible benefits of the stadium development and…
Sport and Social Movements
Sport and Social Movements: From the Local to the Global is the first book-length treatment of the way social movements have intersected and continue to intersect with sport. It traces the history of various social movements associated with labour, women, rights (civil, racial, disability and sexual), peace and the environment and their relationship to sport and sports mega-events such as the Olympic Games. Based on research conducted by a multin…
Power, Politics and “Sport for Development and Peace”
Sport is currently mobilized as a tool of international development within the “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) movement. Framed by Gramscian hegemony theory and sport and development studies respectively, this article offers an analysis of the conceptualization of sport’s social and political utility within SDP programs. Drawing on the perspectives of young Canadians ( n = 27) who served as volunteer interns within Commonwealth Games Cana…
Rethinking Sportland
Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) has grown into a huge global field of sport-related activity and intervention and is a heavily researched subject in the social scientific study of sport. In this article, we advance the case for a new research agenda in SDP, in part to contribute more fully to sustainable development through substantial societal change. We argue that SDP research should engage with wider literatures and theories, notably on …
Sport for decolonization
Sport is now mobilized as a novel and effective means of achieving international development goals, leading to an increasingly institutionalized relationship between sport and development. While there is recent evidence of the effectiveness of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) programmes and policies, research has also drawn attention to the relations of power that underpin the movement and, in particular, to colonizing tendencies in SDP init…
Sport, Race, and Bio-Politics
This article analyzes young Canadian volunteer interns' encounters with sociocultural difference within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) movement. Using Foucauldian bio-power, Third Wave, or transnational feminism and Hardt and Negri's Empire, it examines how interns interpreted difference as markers of underdevelopment which secured the focus of the SDP movement on the underdevelopment of others. Following the Empire framework, this bio…
Mainstreaming Sport into International Development Studies
The State of Play
The maturation of the field of 'Sport for Development and Peace' (SDP) is reflected in the growing number of research publications on the topic. This article focuses on a recent review of English-language research publications on SDP from 2000-2014 conducted by Schulenkorf et al. (2016. Sport for development: an integrated literature review. Journal of Sport Management 30: 22-39). We attempt to extend the analysis of current SDP research offered …
Ecological Modernization and the Olympics
Ecological modernization refers to the idea that capitalist-driven scientific and technological advancements can not only attend to the world’s pending environmental crises, but even lead to ecological improvement, thus allowing sustainability and consumption to continue in concert. In this paper, we examine ecological modernization at the confluence of environmentalism, international development and global sport. Through an analysis of golf and …
Re-Assembling Sport for Development and Peace Through Actor Network Theory
Some recent appraisals of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) research have found it to be deterministic and ideological, and lacking sophistication and specificity with regards to theory and method. Notably, such criticisms dovetail with the foundations of Actor Network Theory (ANT). Based on fieldwork in Kingston, Jamaica, we draw on ANT to ‘re-assemble’ the understanding of SDP programs by examining their constitutive elements. The results i…
Inside the Promotional Vortex
When Canadian Simon Whitfield won the gold medal in the first ever Olympic Men's Triathlon at the 2000 Sydney Games, the Canadian media labeled him an 'Olympic champion' and 'golden boy' and constructed his victory as 'heroic' and emblematic of Canadian character. Positive media attention led to several sponsorship contracts which in turn led to more media coverage about his success, with the result that Whitfield became a media celebrity and pro…
Identity and learning in international volunteerism
Young sportspersons now serve abroad within the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) movement. Drawing on interviews with former interns from Commonwealth Games Canada's Canadian Sports Leadership Corps programme, this study explored what interns brought to, and learnt from, international SDP service. Interns confronted notions of expertise and privilege and, in some cases, considered the limits of Northern development stewardship. Interns als…
Considering sport for development and peace through the capabilities approach
Heeding calls to integrate international development studies with Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), we approach SDP using the Capabilities Approach as articulated by Martha Nussbaum. Applying such a framework to the study and practice of SDP offers a politically engaged yet practical approach, and serves to theorise ways in which sport programmes might be conceptualised and organised as part of holistic approaches to development and not simp…
Constructing and contesting the Olympics online
The awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil continues the trend of international sports mega-events being hosted in the global South and constructed and promoted as part of long-term development plans and policies. Rio 2016 also connects with the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) current commitment to international development and global humanitarianism. In this paper, we examine the proliferation of this …
Caster Semenya, Gender Verification and the Politics of Fairness in an Online Track & Field Community
The sex testing of South African runner Caster Semenya in 2009 was widely discussed in media, but the most serious and significant sites of debate may have been within the cultures and institutions of track & field itself. In this article, we report findings from an analysis of an online track & field community—TrackNet Listserv—through which the Semenya case, and the politics and ethics of sex testing, were discussed. The results suggest that li…
Volunteers in the sport for development and peace sector
In this paper, we seek to advance understandings of the contemporary global ‘sport for development and peace’ (SDP) sector, with respect to volunteers and volunteering in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Volunteers play a critical role in organizing and delivering SDP social intervention programmes across the world; most SDP volunteer work is undertaken by local young people who are often presented as a current peer or future community l…
The Inclusion Conundrum
The sport for development and peace (SDP) sector is made up of various development-focused policies and programs that seek to engage, stabilise, empower and create social and economic change. SDP projects, most often run by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), have been implemented in regions enduring physical conflicts, health pandemics, major gender divisions and other social crises that have a great impact on youth. In this context, sport ha…
A Critical Examination of Race and Antiracism in the Sport for Development Field
We welcome you to this special issue of the Sociology of Sport Journal which was envisioned as an opportunity to reimagine and recreate sporting spaces for true racial inclusion and equity.We developed the special issue because of what we saw as an absence of a specific and sustained focus on race and racism in Sport for Development (SfD) as well as an antiracist approach to research and analysis of SfD.This was driven, in part, by the ways in wh…
Driving to the 'Net
On October 24, 2012, the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League announced a plan to move from their current stadium in Nassau County to the recently opened Barclays Center in the borough of Brooklyn, marking the end of a decades-long political saga about whether and where to build a new home arena for the club. During this time, the Islanders franchise strove to mobilize support for the ostensible benefits of the stadium development and…
Sport and Social Mobility
Bringing the Community to the Uni-Critical Reflections on Youth Recreation Partnerships in Toronto
The focus of this paper is an evaluation of a recreation project partnership between a co-curricular university department and various youth community programs in downtown Toronto, Canada. The goal of the Hart House Youth Community Recreation Project (YCRP) is to build a bridge between the university and its neighboring communities through recreation, arts, and dialogue-based programming that responds to the needs and interests of community partn…
Political celebrity and the Olympic movement
In this paper, we explore the modernization of the role of President of the \nInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) by analyzing the actions of three men who \nheld the position during the 20th century: Pierre de Coubertin, Avery Brundage, and \nJuan Antonio Samaranch. Employing Weber’s concept of charismatic authority, and \nconsidering its connections to, and congruence with, contemporary understandings \nof political celebrity, we examine how …
Inside the Promotional Vortex
When Canadian Simon Whitfield won the gold medal in the first ever Olympic Men's Triathlon at the 2000 Sydney Games, the Canadian media labeled him an 'Olympic champion' and 'golden boy' and constructed his victory as 'heroic' and emblematic of Canadian character. Positive media attention led to several sponsorship contracts which in turn led to more media coverage about his success, with the result that Whitfield became a media celebrity and pro…
Convergence, Corporate Restructuring, and Canadian Online News, 2000-2003
This paper critically examines the corporate restructurings that took place in the Canadian news industry in 2000, using findings from website analyses in 2001 and 2003 that assessed the impact of the changes on the provision of online news. The paper shows that despite their stated commitment to convergence, the restructured companies only selectively exploited the interactive potential of the Web, and that they tended to operate under tradition…
Playing with Race
‘Development through sport’ organizations use sport, physical activity and play as tools to facilitate social improvement in nations and communities targeted for development. The international movement supporting development through sport operates within two overlapping, yet distinct discursive frameworks: that of sport and play as universal and integrative social practices, and that of international development as the benevolent deliverance of a…
Power, Politics and “Sport for Development and Peace”
Sport is currently mobilized as a tool of international development within the “Sport for Development and Peace” (SDP) movement. Framed by Gramscian hegemony theory and sport and development studies respectively, this article offers an analysis of the conceptualization of sport’s social and political utility within SDP programs. Drawing on the perspectives of young Canadians ( n = 27) who served as volunteer interns within Commonwealth Games Cana…
Black and Green
Sport, Race, and Bio-Politics
This article analyzes young Canadian volunteer interns' encounters with sociocultural difference within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) movement. Using Foucauldian bio-power, Third Wave, or transnational feminism and Hardt and Negri's Empire, it examines how interns interpreted difference as markers of underdevelopment which secured the focus of the SDP movement on the underdevelopment of others. Following the Empire framework, this bio…
Sport for decolonization
Sport is now mobilized as a novel and effective means of achieving international development goals, leading to an increasingly institutionalized relationship between sport and development. While there is recent evidence of the effectiveness of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) programmes and policies, research has also drawn attention to the relations of power that underpin the movement and, in particular, to colonizing tendencies in SDP init…
The U
Book Review| April 01 2011 The U The U, (2009). Directed by Billy Corben. Distributed by ESPN Films. 106 mins. Simon C. Darnell Simon C. Darnell Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Sport History (2011) 38 (1): 128–130. https://doi.org/10.5406/jsporthistory.38.1.128 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Sea…
Mainstreaming Sport into International Development Studies
Solidarity, Counter-Hegemony, and Development
Cuban internationalism has been recognized as a unique foreign policy approach that merges "soft power" with comprehensive development. While much has been written about the country's programs of cooperation, outreach, and solidarity, notably within the health sector, little has been mentioned to date about the extensive cooperation Cuba seeks with other nations in the global South through sport and physical education. This is a significant gap g…
Identity and learning in international volunteerism
Young sportspersons now serve abroad within the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) movement. Drawing on interviews with former interns from Commonwealth Games Canada's Canadian Sports Leadership Corps programme, this study explored what interns brought to, and learnt from, international SDP service. Interns confronted notions of expertise and privilege and, in some cases, considered the limits of Northern development stewardship. Interns als…
Sport for Development and Peace
The role of sport in development initiatives has grown dramatically over the last five years, now finding a place in the UN's millennium development goals. In FONT-STYLE: italic Sport and Development for Peace, Simon Darnell outlines the most recent sociological research on the role of sport in development initiatives. The book analyses the relationship between sport and international development and looks at what this reveals about socio-politic…
Sport and Social Mobility
Political celebrity and the Olympic movement
In this paper, we explore the modernization of the role of President of the \nInternational Olympic Committee (IOC) by analyzing the actions of three men who \nheld the position during the 20th century: Pierre de Coubertin, Avery Brundage, and \nJuan Antonio Samaranch. Employing Weber’s concept of charismatic authority, and \nconsidering its connections to, and congruence with, contemporary understandings \nof political celebrity, we examine how …
The (Soft) Power of Sport
The Cuban government creates and seeks opportunities to engage in collaboration, diplomacy, commerce, and trade in order to pursue its own concepts of progressive international development, which involves garnering much needed hard currency and political benefits for its national interests. Such strategies include the organisation and deployment of sport and physical activity programmes. Based on our analysis of, and interactions with, Cuba's Min…
Sport and Social Movements
Sport and Social Movements: From the Local to the Global is the first book-length treatment of the way social movements have intersected and continue to intersect with sport. It traces the history of various social movements associated with labour, women, rights (civil, racial, disability and sexual), peace and the environment and their relationship to sport and sports mega-events such as the Olympic Games. Based on research conducted by a multin…
Sport and Neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is nothing if not resilient. Despite financial crises, environmental disasters, rising inequality and reduced qualities of life for the planet’s majority – all of which have increased
Caster Semenya, Gender Verification and the Politics of Fairness in an Online Track & Field Community
The sex testing of South African runner Caster Semenya in 2009 was widely discussed in media, but the most serious and significant sites of debate may have been within the cultures and institutions of track & field itself. In this article, we report findings from an analysis of an online track & field community—TrackNet Listserv—through which the Semenya case, and the politics and ethics of sex testing, were discussed. The results suggest that li…
Constructing and contesting the Olympics online
The awarding of the 2016 Summer Olympics to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil continues the trend of international sports mega-events being hosted in the global South and constructed and promoted as part of long-term development plans and policies. Rio 2016 also connects with the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) current commitment to international development and global humanitarianism. In this paper, we examine the proliferation of this …
Sport, International Development and Peace
This chapter provides an overview of the history and emergence of the sport for development and peace (SDP) sector is offered. It illustrates some of the positive aspects of SDP activity, and also some of the cautions and limitations that deserve consideration. The chapter discusses future directions in the sociological analysis of SDP. According to the United Nations inter-agency task force, sport-for-development programmes fall into three categ…
Driving to the 'Net
On October 24, 2012, the New York Islanders of the National Hockey League announced a plan to move from their current stadium in Nassau County to the recently opened Barclays Center in the borough of Brooklyn, marking the end of a decades-long political saga about whether and where to build a new home arena for the club. During this time, the Islanders franchise strove to mobilize support for the ostensible benefits of the stadium development and…
The methodological dance
Social scientific research requires engagement with individuals, groups and or organisations embedded within specific sectors and locations. The ‘Sport for a Better World?’ project aimed to examine the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector within multiple international locations through fieldwork conducted by a four-person research team. This paper discusses the methodological benefits and challenges of this methodological approach, with a…
Changing methods and methods of change
This collection of papers is made up of diverse, contemporary, and thought-provoking examples of qualitative methods in the study of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP). In this conclusion, we reflect on some of the key themes that cut across the contributions. Four main topics are discussed: Interpretation (the subjects and voices at the centre of SDP research), Outcomes (the variety of results that are likely to emerge from SDP research), Cre…
Sport in under-resourced, underdeveloped, and conflict regions
More than 600 Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) programmes are currently registered on the International Platform on Sport and Development (sportanddev.org) and over the past two decades, schol
Sport for Social Change and Development
Local Non-Governmental Organisations and sports organizations have been recognized as important and well positioned strategic implementing bodies by the ‘Sport for Development and Peace’ (SDP) sector. Whilst they may be experienced and knowledgeable of the historical and local sociocultural landscape, many seek to form transnational partnerships, for the purpose of expanding their capacity, sustainability, and expertise. Rwanda’s history of genoc…
Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (41 works) · Political science (36 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (35 works) · Sociology (31 works) · Law (22 works) · Politics (21 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Physical Education and Pedagogy (13 works) · Social science (13 works)