Search results

To outline strategies for balancing a critical approach to sport for development and peace (SDP) interventions with approaches that highlight the potentially positive outcomes of SDP. Two examples of attempts to balance these approaches are highlighted. One is a critical analysis of responses to sport-related environmental problems. The other is a study of how a sport-related reconciliation event led by celebrity athletes was successfully organized.

In the first part of the chapter, the complexity of the SDP concept (and the terms sport, peace, and development) is discussed along with the challenges of negotiating critical and more optimistic stances on SDP. In the second part, two approaches to navigating between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” stances on SDP are outlined through two case studies.

The two case studies are described along with preliminary findings from studies that were conducted. Each case study is accompanied by a discussion of how the author “middle-walked” between “extremely critical” and “unwaveringly optimistic” positions on SDP. A focus in this section is on how theory, methods, and strategies for reporting findings were accounted for in the process of balancing these distinct positions.

The difficulties attempting to balance critical and optimistic positions are discussed. The difficulties connecting critical analysis with practical suggestions for improving SDP-related work were also outlined.

The purpose of this chapter is to cover banking efficiency using the concept of the Meta frontier function and to study group and subgroup differences in the production technology. This study estimates the technical efficiency (TE) and technology gap ratios (TGRs) for banks in Islamic countries. Using the assumption of the convex hull of the Meta frontier production set using the virtual Meta frontier within the nonparametric approach as presented by Battese and Rao (2002), Battese et al. (2004), and O'Donnell et al. (2007, 2008) and after relaxing this assumption, the study investigates if there is a significant difference between these two methods. To overcome the deterministic criterion addressed to nonparametric approach, the bootstrapping technique has been applied. The first part of this chapter covers the analytical framework necessary for the definition of a Meta frontier function and its estimation using nonparametric data envelopment analysis (DEA) in the case where we impose the assumption of the convex production set and follows in the case of relaxation of this assumption. Then we estimated the TE and the TGR in concave and nonconcave Meta frontier cases by applying the Bootstrap-DEA approach. The empirical part will be reserved for highlighting these methods on data bank to study the technical and technological performance level and prove if there is a difference between the two methods. Three groups of banks namely commercial, investment, and Islamic banks in 17 Islamic countries over a period of 16 years between 1996 and 2011 are used.

Laboratory studies of social interaction have revealed a wide range of phenomena that are difficult to explain using standard economic models. For example, people will often sacrifice their own earnings in order to be generous, cooperative, punitive, and retributive in interactions with anonymous strangers. “Behavioral” models that redefine agents’ preferences attempt to provide an account of these phenomena as reflecting a “taste for fairness” or altruism, aversion to inequality, concern about others’ beliefs, and so on. Such models either fail to account for the rich sensitivity of actions to context or in allowing for rich context-dependence, these models ultimately substitute description for explanation. Hayek’s work provides a foundation for thinking about how to explain these phenomena, by conceiving of people as both purpose-seeking (as in economic models) and rule-following. Decisions are shaped both by material interests and by a normative framework that is evoked by context and helps people decide what one ought to do in a particular situation. The implication of this approach is that rather than trying to understand heterogeneity across individuals in terms of preferences, experimenters should instead try to understand heterogeneity across contexts in terms of the rules and norms that operate in the background and guide or constrain people’s purpose-seeking tendencies. What economics needs, then, is a theory of how and why these rules and norms vary with context as they do.

To discuss our experiences producing a short documentary film focused on a sport-related environmental issue – and reflect on our attempts throughout production to “do” what we are calling “Environmental Sports Journalism” (ESJ).

Following ESJ principles, and in collaboration with Vancouver-based filmmakers, we produced a short documentary entitled, Mount Gariwang: An Olympic Casualty, about the destruction of an ancient forest for a sport mega-event (i.e., the PyeongChang Olympics). We discuss and reflect on our approach and methods for producing the documentary, and identify key issues faced throughout the process – as we attempted to negotiate the intricacies of documentary work and collaboration between academics and media producers, while attending to a set of principles for producing “Environmental Sports Journalism.”

We reflect on strategies used and challenges faced when attempting to produce a short film on a sport-related environmental issue. We note our attempt to: (1) include interview segments with definitions of key concepts and how they are relevant to power relations around sport mega-events; (2) value the lives and voices of local and marginalized people – while noting problems we faced providing adequate context; (3) focus on problems of nonhumans as well as humans – and the challenges we faced including nonhuman issues and perspectives, challenges that reflected the limits of our chosen data collection and reporting techniques; (4) offer some form of hope and identify alternatives around an event that we were critical of; and (5) highlight the complexities of prioritizing social and environmental justice (i.e., taking a side) while attempting to offer what we might think of as “balanced” coverage.

This chapter illuminated barriers we faced in our attempts to produce “excellent” coverage, and in going from media critics to critical media producers. Our hope is to inspire reflection on what is possible around the production of “excellent” sport-related environmental journalism, and to contribute to thinking about the pursuit of public sociology through media.

Although involvement in documentary-making as academics is not new, our attempt to apply principles associated with environmental journalism to the study of sport-related environmental and social problems is in some ways novel, and therefore our reflections on our experiences are also in some ways novel.

To explore the connections between sport, sustainability and international development through critical understandings of the place of the environment within the Sport for Development and Peace (SDP) sector. The chapter explores both the forces (historical, social, political, economic) and actors (the UN, IOC) that help to explain the current and increasing connections between sport and sustainable development, before assessing the current state of SDP through three themes: the place of environmentalism in development, sustainable development in/through sport and the trend towards ecological modernization in the sporting sector and beyond.

The chapter synthesizes existing literature from sport, sustainability and international development to provide historical, contemporary and future-oriented assessments of sport and sustainable development.

By framing the sustainability of sport and SDP in terms of the contestability of its political formations, such as ecological modernization, the chapter considers and discusses (potentially) sustainable futures, particularly those informed by the implications of recognizing a New Climatic Regime.

The chapter argues for a number of future areas of study that may push the boundaries of existing research in the area.

The chapter provides one of the first introductions of the idea of a New Climatic Regime within the context of sport and the SDP sector, and argues that within such a political frame, sport cannot exist separately from the environment. As a result, the chapter advances the argument that the SDP sector should now consider itself to be part of the environment, rather than steward of or over it.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the life of the musician Brian Wilson from five different perspectives.

The authors used a mixed method of collaborative autoethnography, psychobiography and digital team ethnography to try and better understand the life and contributions of Brian Wilson.

Each of the five contributors provides different insights into the life and music of Brian Wilson.

While the focus of this paper is on a single individual, a case study, the long and distinguished life of Brian Wilson provides much material for discussion and theorising.

Each individual presenting to mental health services has a complex biography. The five different contributions articulated in this paper could perhaps be taken as similar to the range of professional opinions seen in mental health teams, with each focusing on unique but overlapping aspects of the person’s story.

This account shows the importance of taking a biological-psychological-social-spiritual and cultural perspective on mental illness.

This multi-layered analysis brings a range of perspectives to bear on the life and achievements of Brian Wilson, from developmental, musical, psychological and lived experience standpoints.

The reason that I am here opening the forum this evening is that in October 1969 at a Joint Seminar on the Training of Teachers and Librarians, held at the London University Research Unit for Student Problems, I broke, after fifteen years in the information world, my rule of keeping silent! I was then silly enough to write something as well, and hence here I am. What is more, I am now here under false pretences because, since my invitation to speak on this forum, I have left information work as such and am now an administrator full time. However, I still have a considerable responsibility for, and interest in, the recruitment of library staff.