Facilitating conditions for establishing social cohesion through structural approaches in community sport

Abstract

Social cohesion is believed to be a desirable objective for community sport practices as it provides a lever to tackle the social vulnerability of young people, pointing at their structural exclusion from society. However, in the context of the post-welfare state, social cohesion has been given form as a notion of private obligations first and foremost. Therefore, it has been argued that the objective of social cohesion within community sport has become detached from its original intention, i.e. tackling social vulnerability, due to the dominance of instrumental and individualised approaches. As a result, several scholars ask for more structural approaches within community sport, which critically take into account the collective responsibilities of societal structures. In an attempt to answer this call, this chapter sheds light upon the facilitating conditions on an organisational level, network level and policy level in order to enact such structural approaches. We conclude by putting up front the idea of community sport as a forum for public debate as a way to foster these facilitating conditions. 1