Sport as a vehicle for social change: A case study from Zambia

Abstract: Today’s presence of sport in the everyday lives of the majority of the world population has recently led development actors to promote sport as a potential vehicle for social change. At the forefront of this new discourse is the notion of sport as a universal language that unites people across the globe. Whereas sport organizations in the Global South apply participation in sports as a tool for individual and community development, this study seeks to elaborate on the difficulty to adopt the universal value of sport onto a local context. As a result, I ask the question whether and how the definition and the organization of sports in the Zambian context serve the interest of various groups within society. In order to answer this question, this thesis draws on critical theory and recognizes two main approaches. Hartmann and Kwauk’s framework provides a dominant vision, in which sport essentially reproduces established social relations and on the other hand, there is an interventionist approach, in which sport contributes to social change and transformation. Using qualitative data collected during my internship with Sport in Action in Kabwata, Zambia, this thesis reveals that the impact of any sport intervention relies heavily on the context in which it is employed.