Sports clubs’ role in community capacity development—illustrations from the Swedish sports movement

Abstract

Strong political neoliberal currents in Sweden are directing attention toward communities’ responsibility to address local issues, particularly in disadvantaged areas. In parallel, community sports clubs in Sweden have gained strong traction as being sites where social issues can be addressed. In Swedish disadvantaged areas, where infrastructure is of poor quality, these clubs can be an important addition to statutory interventions, but they need to be further explored in terms of strategic pathways and conditions. Community sports have only recently been conceptualized with Chaskin’s capacity-building concept. In this paper, I seek to further stimulate this line of inquiry. By using material from two interrelated projects with informants in the sports movement, I show how sports clubs use multiple strategies according to three of Chaskin’s proposed strategies: leadership development, organizational development, and inter-organizational collaboration. By outlining an empirically dense illustration, this paper contributes to the research on sports clubs and their role in the community and provides suggestions on how strategical assessments must include how associations develop strategies online.