ABSTRACT
Discourses on the development of contemporary sport as well as sports development practices are shaped by history, including the history of nation-state formation, and by culture (or ideology), including traditions and religious beliefs. ‘Development’ is in itself a historically contested concept. For some, development means a break with the past. Past here is usually associated with decadence, irrationality and metaphysical beliefs. For others, particularly in ex-colonised societies, development is conditioned by a reconciliation with the past. Past here is synonymous with authenticity. In the Arab world, the concept of development in the sense of modernisation and progress or in
the sense of reclaiming an authentic past is yet to be studied (deconstructed) in relation to sports phenomenon in general, and in relation to the field of sports policy (or politics) in particular. Therefore, this chapter discusses the model of the nation state, as a form of socio-historical development (Amin and El Kenz 2003), in the Arab world. It analyses the ways in which sport was mobilised in the assertion of populist nationalism and national unity beyond class/ethnic divides as well as around Pan Arab and Pan Islamic ideologies. Sport has been recently organised as a means for integrating the new world system characterised by the end of a bipolar system, replaced by the American hegemony, liberation of financial movement and multiplication of multinationals. As a consequence, the declining discourse on Pan Arab solidarity and secular state’s development ideologies such as Ba’athism in Syria and Iraq or socialism in Algeria has been replaced by the dominant discourse of economic (neo)liberalism (infitah) and regional economic cooperation, excluding (or at least delaying) discussion of principals of democratisation, individual emancipation and citizenship rights.1 This shift in discourse explains, according to El-Kenz (2009), the manipulation of ‘history’ and ‘tradition’ as sources of ‘authenticity’ in the legitimisation of oneparty-states and monarchy-states rules (in fusion with religious institutions and business interests) in the region. Moreover, accepting the values of free movement of capital and products has not involved either the free movement of people between Arab borders or between the Arab region and other regions. In the same vein Beker and Aarts (1993: 93) contended that:
the limits of liberalization are the result of the weak position not only of the state, but also of national non-state actors vis-d-vis their counterparts in the world market. This weakness
is in turn the corollary of underdevelopment. It was precisely the failure of statist economic policy (socialist or otherwise) to bring about development that led to its rejection.
