ABSTRACT The spread of rights‐based approaches to child safety in safe sport, which frequently rely on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, calls for analytical reflection about the compatibility of rights and sport. The four principles of the UNCRC may suit Coakley's Great Sport Myth, but when critically reconsidered, problems arise. This article investigates incompatibilities and ambiguities in a rights‐based approach to safe sport by exploring (1) how sporting competitions are necessarily discriminatory, (2) conflicts between cultural and sporting norms on what is in the child's ‘best interest’, (3) the harmful paternalism of even ‘holistic’ development and (4) how the voice of the child is invariably coloured by how long it has steeped in its sociocultural norms. Then, rights‐based safe sport efforts are evaluated as one of Elias and Dunning's civilising processes. This model emphasises the monopolistic use of legitimate violence by safe sport advocates and the challenge of broadening functional bonds through human rights while remaining instrumentally violent towards interdependent insiders and in competition with segmented outsiders. Lastly, possible future evolutions of civilising processes to reducing violence for safer sport are proposed.
Benjamin Carr (Tue,) studied this question.