Dreams of Social Inclusion: True Experiences of Street Soccer through Fictional Representation

While sport has potential to be both divisive and exclusionary, at its best, sport offers vital benefits, including improved mental health, self-esteem, physical wellbeing, and positive community development and integration (Skinner, Zakus & Cowell, 2008). Recently, numerous sport for developmen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Creative approaches to research 2017-01, Vol.10 (1), p.52
Main Authors: Macnaughton, Julian F P, Meldrum, John
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Community development
Crime prevention
Empowerment
Ethnography
Homeless people
Leisure
Mental health
Participation
Qualitative research
Self esteem
Soccer
Social change
Social exclusion
Social interaction
Studies
Tournaments & championships
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Summary:While sport has potential to be both divisive and exclusionary, at its best, sport offers vital benefits, including improved mental health, self-esteem, physical wellbeing, and positive community development and integration (Skinner, Zakus & Cowell, 2008). Recently, numerous sport for development opportunities serving marginalized people have emerged, with street soccer making a prominent global rise. Only a handful of studies have been conducted on street soccer, focusing almost exclusively on outcome benefits. Our study provides a rich, ethnographic look into the lived experience of a local, grassroots street soccer team in Victoria, BC, Canada. Drawing on nineteen months of participant observation, and thirty interviews, our original fictional representation highlights both tensions and positive contributions of street soccer, in contributing to the positive dialogue on sport, social inclusion, and creative approaches to qualitative research. Ultimately, our study will be deemed successful based on its catalytic validity and ability to move people to action (Sparkes, 2002).
ISSN:1835-9434
1835-9434