Interventionist sport as mediatized utopia : a practice informed critique of Football 4 Peace

Football 4 Peace (F4P) is a sports-based coexistence initiative that operates between divided communities in Israel. The project has nurtured a number of high-profile partnerships with various local, national and international agencies and organisations. The F4P programme utilises an innovative methodology that foregrounds a 'values-based' approach to coaching. Like many sports interventions, the project is highly mediatized and has been the subject of a number of documentary film projects. The originality of the approach to this study is primarily through an appropriation of Ernst Bloch's long neglected 'sociology of hope' into the specific socio-cultural milieu of Sport, Development and Peace interventions. Bloch's work provides an interpretive framework for a critique of Football 4 Peace and its utopian potential. The primary methods of research are a range of visual research methodologies. These practice-informed methodologies are supported by a range of text-based analytical approaches to the critique of the documentary artefacts of F4P. The originality of this approach is extended by the synthesis of Bloch's interpretative framework with visual research practices to provide a practice-informed exploration of the utopian interventionism of Football 4 Peace. The thesis reviews sports interventions through the lens of the utopian Marxism of Ernst Bloch, focusing on the sports cultures of Israel and Football 4 Peace in particular. It also tracks the reach of mediatization into sports initiatives such F4P and interrogates the codes, conventions and culture of sports documentary interventions. These themes build towards a critical analysis of Football 4 Peace and a research film that provide an interpretation of the utopianism of F4P that draws on Bloch's philosophy. The researcher's field experiences are also assessed in a critical reflection on visual research practice. The thesis concludes with an assessment of the anticipatory elements of the F4P project, discusses how the media representations of the project can be situated as utopian and reflects on the continuing relevance of Bloch's utopianism for visual research.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo