A resonant Doughnut for sustainable youth elite sport: Compass to navigate between growth and well-being logic in the 21st century
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Traditionally, youth elite sport has been created to help elite sport systems achieve growth in terms of performance results. After repeated concerns about well-being , it is now often seen as socially unsustainable . But what would a sustainable youth elite sport look like? To explore it, we draw on two perspectives beyond sport science: Kate Raworth's sustainability science Doughnut and Hartmut Rosa's relational sociology of the good life. Both address the same underlying problem as is found in sport: the pursuit of endless growth in finite systems. As will be analysed in this article, the escalatory logics of late modern Western societies produce an ecological crisis at the planetary level, an alienation crisis at the societal level and an ethical crisis in youth elite sport. The Doughnut framework is described as a compass to guide humanity out of the ecological crisis, while the concept of resonance offers a way to address the crisis of cultural and social alienation. Assuming that similar problems can inspire similar solutions, we combine these perspectives and develop the ‘resonant Doughnut’ for sustainable youth elite sport. Our model proposes resonance as a new normative ideal. It also opens three analytical spaces – resonance, critical degradation of youth elite sport and critical human deprivation – to define what sustainable youth elite sport is, and what it is not.
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,650
OpenAlex ID: W7222648895