Purity and Danger – researching child protection and welfare in youth sport

Abstract

Drawing on Mary Douglas’ classic social analysis in ‘Purity and Danger’ (1966) I argue that youth sport is a purity system and that pollution of it, through child abuse, breaches the belief system that still attaches to sport. I explore research attitudes and practices in conventional sport science and, in particular, examine the politics of researching a topic that has low perceived performance value. I suggest that the notion of ‘pollution’ has potential for understanding not only the denial of child abuse in sport but also its marginal status as a sport science research topic. One solution to this state of affairs is to recast children and young people in sport as ‘human beings’ first and ‘humans doing’ second. Some implications of such an approach for a youth sport research agenda are drawn out.