Youth and Sport for Development

Processes of development concerning reconciliation,
rehabilitation and peace-building have become a central theme for global
organizations tasked with intervening in broken and divided societies after
violent conflicts. What can reunite populations divided by war and violence
whilst attempting to build a peaceful civil society? This book considers the
impact and value of sport, notably football, towards achieving this goal.

Using extensive fieldwork
from Liberia, Collison highlights the multiple and diverse stakeholders and
actors aligning themselves with ‘Sport for Development and Peace’
interventions. By unpacking and conceptualising the ambiguous terminology,
complex social effects and the lived experience of SDP, this book draw upon
participant voices and the author’s own lived experience within SDP to gain
symbolic understandings of culture, identity and the formal and informal social
structures in which participants and interventions
operate.         

Collison identifies that SDP has become fashionable within
development agendas but it remains an aspirational image, a notion of
seduction, rather than a tested method of reintegration and youth development
in post-conflict environments. Youth and Sport for Development questions
the assumptions of SDP rhetoric and programs, and traces the effects of
football - the favoured vehicle of SDP- on youth in post-conflict Liberia.
Examining three core themes: post-conflict development, youth and community,
this book centralises the narratives of young football players in Liberia and
will appeal to scholars across Anthropology, Sociology, Sports Studies,
Politics and Development.