Abstracts Vol. 5 (No.1 / 2008)

Henning Eichberg
From sport export to politics of recognition:
Experiences from the cooperation between Denmark and Tanzania

The development of sport is not a global movement into one direction only, going from traditional games to modern sport. The contribution of sport to the development of society as a whole does not just follow “functional” lines of instrumental modernization. Moreover, the development cooperation is, if it really works, not a one-way support from the “rich” to the “poor”. Experiences from Scandinavian development cooperation show a much more complex picture of exchanges between popular sports in Denmark and ngoma dance in Tanzanian. Inside the Nordic countries, too, traditional games have been rediscovered in the context of educational and socio-cultural development. In contrast to the established theory of developmental functionalism, which is arguing top-down, sport development means exchange and empowerment of the people, bottom-up. The bottom-up perspective is not harmless, as the ethnic and indigenous question shows. But it is worth the effort, as it is a prerequisite for bodily democracy. Development is developments in plural. “Old” games reappearing as new games challenge the established categories of “forward” and “backward”, of “wealth” and “poverty” in history. Global poverty is an unbalance of power – it results from non-recog-nition. The popular games are an indicator of recognition. To the Western observer, the games say: “We talk – you listen.”

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