Abstract
More research on sport for development and peace (SDP) organizations is needed to better understand their actual contributions to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, the unstable, restricted, or even risky contexts in which many non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and SDP agencies sometimes operate often leave researchers to face important challenges to develop effective or feasible methods to work with such organizations. This study aimed to address the ontological and epistemological questions about what should be known about a given context in an organization before setting off on fieldwork. We propose a methodology, based on an actantial model (AM), as a method to analyze the nature and context of a project, to assess the actors involved in the project, and to establish if the global cost (i.e., material, temporal, financial, and physical) for conducting fieldwork is realistic and feasible of all the parties involved in the potential project. To illustrate this process, we analyzed the nature and context of an SDP project in Madagascar as the first step for potential collaborative research. As researchers, we do not want to invest time and energy to build up a fully developed field research project with an NGO in a context where it would not be realistic or feasible to conduct such research. Actually in this context, developing a research protocol without an implementation strategy might not only be detrimental to the researchers, but also to the NGO itself, where resources are often limited. Accordingly, the results from this preliminary field research demonstrate that an AM is a relevant analytical tool for obtaining insights about the context, the actors, and their relationships within an NGO. In conclusion, this model might be a useful instrument for conducting an initial analysis for the preliminary identification of the necessary conditions for the construction of a sustainable empirical research partnership with a given SDP project.
Highlights
The sport for development and peace (SDP) initiatives are currently flourishing in various contexts and in different areas of the world (Svensson and Woods, 2017)
In an effort to prepare for fieldwork, we described and analyzed the Bel Avenir (BA) non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from a distance
This NGO works in a context characterized by frequent crisis, as many SDP projects that are established in the regions of the world have unstable contexts due to climate catastrophes, civil wars, socio-economic or political crises, and so on
Summary
The sport for development and peace (SDP) initiatives are currently flourishing in various contexts and in different areas of the world (Svensson and Woods, 2017). It remains important to better understand the issues facing a given SDP project, such as the energy, time, and cost that will be necessary for the research project. In this context, it is effective for the researchers to analyze if it is pertinent to do fieldwork with a given organization before they would start a formal project with them. It is effective for the researchers to analyze if it is pertinent to do fieldwork with a given organization before they would start a formal project with them This modus operandi is fruitful in the academic context where limits and constraints are numerous, including the tenure and promotion systems in higher education institutions that encourage quick and regular publications (Welty Peachey and Cohen, 2015)
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