Child and youth sport developed rapidly in Sweden during the post-war period, and when sport science emerged in the country beginning in the 1970s, youth sport became a priority research area. Based on the analytical perspective of Science and Technology Studies, this enquiry examines the processes that shaped research on child and youth sport during the 1970s and 1980s. The study shows that when it came to the competitive aspect of youth sport, dominant institutions in sport, politics and education decisively influenced the direction and content of the research. Indeed, the influence of these external institutions was more important for the validation of research findings and perspectives than the open debate over and testing of them by researchers. Based on a limited historical Swedish context, the study highlights general questions about what shapes sport research and what effect it has on sport.

This book presents a history of Swedish sport, highlighting in particular the relationship between sport politics and people’s changing attitudes towards sport from the eighteenth century until today. It scrutinizes the interaction between sport politics and people’s different approaches to sport in everyday life. By investigating how different ways of pursuing and conceptualizing sport have progressed and interacted, and how they have influenced as well been influenced by sport politics, this book discerns the role of both governmental and municipal politics in the development of sport in Sweden.

In the 1970s and 1980s, influential researchers argued that competition made children feel bad and that this caused them to quit sport. This soon became the dominant perspective among educational and behavioural researchers in Sweden, and this study examines why this narrative developed. This was not because different perspectives were systematically tested against each other and debated scientifically. Instead, to understand the dominance of the competition criticism, this study scrutinises how researchers interacted with other actors in sport and society. In terms of source material, the analysis is based on two conferences on child and youth sport held at Bosön in 1982 and 1989.