Il ruolo sociale dello sport e l’educazione dei giovani: note introduttive

The social role of sport and the education of young people: a brief introduction · Policy makers consider sport capable of producing positive social effects. Therefore welfare innovation policies define sport as a useful tool to implement new social inclusion policies. At the same time, social research on the social effects of sport shows ambivalent results, both of social inclusion and social exclusion. The articles in this issue present the results of research on the relationship between sport and education of young people. The results validate the thesis of the ambivalence of the social effects of sport. This ambivalence also concerns the sociology of sport. The discipline, in fact, is divided between approaches focused on the social power of sport to reduce social inequalities and other approaches that show that sport creates and strengthens social inequalities.