SPORT FOR DEVELOPMENT AND THE POST/ANTI-COLONIAL GLOBAL SOUTH STATE: Insights from Vietnam

Publication Date

1-1-2024

Document Type

Contribution to a Book

Publication Title

Routledge Handbook of the Global South in Sport for Development and Peace

DOI

10.4324/9781032667805-16

First Page

204

Last Page

217

Abstract

In this chapter, we suggest that given the institutionalization of the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector in recent years, Vietnam offers an important and informative case study through which to examine the ways that SDP is conceptualized, implemented and, in some cases, challenged within the post-and anti-colonial spaces of the Global South. Informed by the history of communism and colonialism, we show that Vietnam remains influenced by, but also actively complicates, the hegemonic norms and flows of international SDP activity. Drawing from an extended ethnographic study of a foreign-created and locally operated SDP programme in Vietnam, we argue that SDP, as it is conceptualized and practised in Vietnam, cannot be separated from the country’s anti-colonial history. Citing observations, semi-structured interviews and focus groups, we show how the agents, structures and practices of SDP in Vietnam draw upon, and are filtered through, the political and cultural legacy of anti-colonialism and contemporary national pride. Vietnam is, in this way, both an important case study in its own right but also a model from which to draw insights for SDP research into global south voices and practices. In discussing this, we advocate for a hybrid approach to understanding SDP in Vietnam, one that acknowledges the influence of foreign ideas, structures and resources but also Vietnamese systems, history and culture.

Department

Kinesiology

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