On Friday, March 10, at 10 AM, Magnus Kilger will present and defend his dissertation “Talking talent: Narratives of youth sports selection” at the Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University. The defense will take place in DeGeer-salen, plan 2, Geovetenskapens hus/Y, Svante Arrhenius väg 14, Frescati, Tube station Universitetet.
The external reviewer is Professor Mikael Quennerstedt, Örebro University, and the examining committee is made up of Professor Susanna Hedenborg, Malmö University, Professor Håkan Larsson, The Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, GIH, and Professor Anne-Li Lindgren, Department of Child and Youth Studies, Stockholm University.
Magnus Kilger’s supervisors have been Professor Mats Börjesson, and Professor Rickard Jonsson.
The thesis is in English, but the public defense language will be Swedish.
The thesis is available here in full text, open access.
English abstract (see below for Swedish summary)
In sports, there seems to be an eternal interest in discovering young talents and refining them into elite adult athletes. The dilemma of selecting talent, while at the same time ensuring every child´s right to participate, needs to be addressed and have consequences in social practice. This dissertation elucidates the discourse of selection and the process of selecting young sporting talents during final selection camps for youth national teams in football, hockey and floorball in Sweden. More specifically, the aim is to analyze how talent selection is organizationally legitimized, how “selectability” is produced in interaction and how specific narratives are used in success-stories. The empirical material includes research interviews, performance appraisal interviews (between district or national team coaches and the player) and field studies during ongoing final selection camp. Drawing on a discursive-narrative approach, the aim is to investigate how selection is discursively legitimized and, by using narrative analysis, how positioning in talk-in-interaction functions.
The first article investigates the construction of legitimate selection within the Swedish Sports Confederation by analyzing their organizational documents, sport journals and literature for coach education. The findings show how a specific set of narratives are used to legitimize selection and how legitimacy works both individually to those within the selection system and on a wider arena of welfare politics. The second article investigates the co-construction of selectability in small story-interaction during interviews between the coach and a player in the final selection camp. The analyses highlight how this narrative genre produces certain stories and preferred positions. The third article analyzes how the young participants, in research interviews during final selection camp, uses discursively shared narratives to produce personal stories of success. The findings illustrate how the personal stories of success are balancing the dilemmatic space, positioning yourself as outstanding and at the same time appear a humble team player.
The principal contribution of this dissertation is to show how talent is organizationally legitimized and how selectability is produced in interaction, as well as illustrate how specific stories are used in stories of success. This work investigates the discursive framework for selection and how rationalities for talent selection are produced (and reproduced) and co-constructed in narrative interaction. In this apparatus of selection it takes more than physical talent to be chosen; it takes talking talent.
Svensk sammanfattning
Intresset för att identifiera, selektera och utveckla unga talanger inom idrotten verkar vara oändligt. Samtidigt som vissa talanger väljs ut för särskilda satsningar, ska idrottsrörelsen möjliggöra för alla barn och ungdomar att delta i idrotten. Detta potentiella dilemma måste hanteras och får konsekvenser för den sociala praktiken. I denna sammanläggningsavhandling riktas intresset mot den avslutande uttagningen till ungdoms- eller distriktslagen i fotboll, innebandy och hockey. Med utgångspunkt i en diskursanalytisk ansats, inriktar sig den första artikeln på hur urval legitimeras i Riksidrottsförbundets skriftliga material, såsom i policydokument, verksamhetsplaner och utbildningsmaterial. Den andra artikeln analyserar, utifrån en narrativ ansats, samproduktionen av “valbarhet” i utvecklingssamtal mellan spelare och förbundskapten/tränare. Den tredje artikeln studerar de unga talangernas berättelser i forskarintervjuer och på vilka sätt de, i sina personliga berättelser om framgång, rekryterar välkända och diskursivt delade berättelser. Avhandlingen har för avsikt att bidra till att dekonstruera de normer, värderingar och uttalanden som ligger till grund för att legitimera urval inom idrotten och påvisa hur talanger produceras (och reproduceras) i diskursiv praktik.
