Disability in the Global Sport Arena

This book explores organizational and individual transformations for the inclusion of persons with disabilities in sport. It helps us understand how this small event involving only sixteen disabled British veterans led to the globalized 136-member 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing.

This book was published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Auteur

Jill M. Le Clair is a Professor of Anthropology, in the School of Liberal Arts & Sciences at Humber College Institute, Toronto, Canada, and the Founding Chair of the Global Disability Research in Sport and Health Network.

Résumé
Sport is often at the centre of battles for rights to inclusion linked to class, race and gender, and this book explores struggles centred on disability in different cultural settings in Europe, North America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It challenges oversights and assumptions about the 'normal' body, and describes how individual and organizational transformations can occur through sport. The abilities of a person are recognised and placed centre stage - instead of the individual being forgotten, excluded, or placed at the margins simply because they have a disability. National, regional and global change is part of the shift to the rights based approach reflected in the 2006 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Making sport inclusive affects the accessibility of facilities, funding, the media, policies, programs, organisations, sponsors and spectators, and at the same time changes the cultural values of the wider society. It also raises issues about competition access and eligibility for 'different' and technologically enhanced 'cyborg' bodies, and for those most socially disadvantaged. Addressing these questions which ultimately touch on the real meaning of sport can lead to profound changes in people's attitudes, and how sport is organized locally and globally.Growth in the influential global organisations of the Paralympic Games, Special Olympics and Deaflympics is examined, as is the approach to disability in sport in both advantaged and resource poor countries. The embodied lives of persons with disabilities are explored utilizing new theoretical models, perspectives and approaches.This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

Contenu

Preface Bruce Kidd 1. Introduction: Global organizational change in sport and the shifting meaning of disability Jill M. Le Clair 2. Disability rights and change in a global perspective Marcia H. Rioux 3. The Paralympic Games and 60 years of change (1948 - 2008): unification and restructuring from a disability and medical model to sport-based competition David Legg and Robert Steadward 4. Transformed identity: from disabled person to global Paralympian Jill M. Le Clair 5. Promoting social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities through sport: Special Olympics International, global sport initiatives and strategies Coreen M. Harada, Gary N. Siperstein, Robin C. Parker and David Lenox 6. Deaflympics and the Paralympics: eradicating misconceptions Donalda Ammons and Jordan Eickman 7. South Africa, apartheid and the Paralympic Games Ian Brittain 8. Contested issues in research on the media coverage of female Paralympic athletes Athanasios (Sakis) Pappous, Anne Marcellini and Eric de Léséleuc 9. China and the development of sport for persons with a disability, 1978 - 2008: a review Sun Shuhan, Yan Rui, Mao Ailin, Chao Liu and Jing Tang 10. Living disability and restructuring International Paralympic Committee sport in Oceania: the challenge of perceptions, spatial dispersal and limited resources Jagdish C. Maharaj 11. Physical activity and sport as a tool to include disabled children in Kenyan schools José Frantz, Julie S. Phillips, Joseph M. Matheri and Joanne J. Kibet 12. Contested perspectives of 'marvel' and 'mockery' in disability and sport: Accra, Ghana Anne-Marie Bourgeois 13. The use of sport by a Health Promoting School to address community conflict Patricia Struthers 14. 'Bladerunner or boundary runner'?: Oscar Pistorius, cyborg transgressions and strategies of containment Moss E. Norman and Fiona Moola 15. Participation rates of developing countries in international disability sport: a summary and the importance of statistics for understanding and planning Jackie Lauff 16. New direction: disability sport in Malaysia Selina Khoo 17. Risk of catastrophic injury in sports and recreation Charles H. Tator 18. Reflections on the participation of Muslim women in disability sport: hijab, Burkiniw, modesty and changing strategies Sima Limoochi with Jill M. Le Clair