Social Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Sport for Development and Peace

This book examines the ways in which sport for development and peace (SDP) offers an opportunity for entrepreneurship to take place through and within sport, and how innovation in the context of SDP contributes to social and economic value for underrepresented and marginalised groups and individuals.

Written by a team of leading international SDP researchers, and featuring the voices of active SDP practitioners, the book examines the ways in which entrepreneurs seek to use sport and/or social innovation in and through sport to achieve their goals of social and economic development. It explores the strategies that SDP organizations and practitioners are utilizing in the current neoliberal moment to not only survive during economic hardship - particularly during the COVID 19 crisis - but also to thrive, drawing on important concepts such as innovation, risk taking, proactiveness and opportunity seeking. It also considers how nongovernmental organizations, companies, governments, and communities are working to tackle development issues in SDP using non-traditional forms of organization and management, such as social enterprise models.

Combining cutting-edge research with reflections on best practice in the field, this book is important reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in the sociology of sport, sport for development, sport management, development studies, social enterprise or innovation.

Mitchell McSweeney is Assistant Professor of Sport Management in Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, USA. His research focuses on social entrepreneurship, innovation, sport for development and peace (SDP), and livelihoods, and he often utilizes postcolonial theory, institutional theory, and diaspora to critically investigate these areas. He has worked with various SDP organizations in Uganda, Canada, India, Eswatini, and a number of international organizations.

Per G. Svensson is Associate Professor in Sport Management within the School of Kinesiology at Louisiana State University, USA. His research examines organizational capacity and innovation in Sport for Development and Peace and explores the challenges of operating community-based SDP organizations within broader social, political, historical, and economic contexts. Dr. Svensson is also a Research Fellow with the North American Society for Sport Management and Co-Editor for the Journal of Sport for Development.

Lyndsay M.C. Hayhurst is a York Research Chair (Tier 2) in Sport, Gender & Development and Digital Participatory Research, and Assistant Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University, Canada. Her research focuses on gender issues in/through sport for development and peace (SDP), gender-based violence prevention and sexual and reproductive health rights promotion, bicycle justice, gender and mobility studies, cultural studies of ‘girlhood’, postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory, global governance, international relations and corporate social responsibility.

Parissa Safai is Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health at York University, Canada. Her research interests focus on the critical study of sport at the intersection of risk, health and healthcare. This includes research on sports’ “culture of risk”, the development and social organization of sport and exercise medicine, as well as the social determinants of athletes’ health. Her research and teaching interests also centre on sport and social inequality with a focus on the impact of gender, socio-economic, and ethnocultural inequities on accessible physical activity for all. She is also Special Advisor to the President for Academic Continuity Planning and COVID-19 Response, as well as General Secretary to the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA).