Education academic contributes to book on sport and Covid-19
PROFESSOR Sadhana Manik of the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s School of Education has edited a book titled: From High-risk Sports to Sports as High-Risk: Crisis, Capitulation and Creativity during Covid-19.
The book is part of the Alternation African Scholarship Book series, launched by Professor Jannie Smit of the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics.
It is also a labour of love for Manik as she is a highly ranked karateka and has experienced the impacts of the pandemic on her training and club participation in the sport. She captures this in a chapter written from an auto-ethnographic perspective.
The book is a response to Covid-19 and its impact on sport in society. It offers socio-cultural, political and economic insights into the role of sport at several levels in society in South Africa and Zimbabwe - from the micro perspective of the individual to the meso level of a group (club and community) and the macro level of a nation during the pandemic.
It also provides a critique of selected sport codes, with their pandemic afflictions providing creative avenues, physical and digital options in sport participation and consumption, with a view to mitigating the effects of the virus and facilitating a return to some semblance of “safe” and transformed sports.
“This fear (due to the pandemic) has forced sports organisations and associated sports stakeholders to reinvent the nature of sports, to breathe new life into pandemic participation and consumption,” said Manik.
“Planning for a future which includes creativity in sport, rather than excludes it, has become a common narrative. This indicates a positive trajectory in the scholarship, with sports stakeholders aiming to find innovative ways to resume sport and to re-think participation and consumption in meaningful productive ways for a greater diversity of participants and consumers,” she said.
To access the book, see http://alternation.ukzn.ac.za/