LAUSR

ABSTRACT In the Northwest Territories (NWT), Canada, the political landscape has created opportunities for mining, oil, and gas (‘extractives’) industries to ‘replace’ some of the federal and territorial governments’ provision of social programmes. With the ‘boom’ or ‘bust’ uncertainty of the resource economy in Canada, questions arise concerning the long-term stability of extractives industry-funded provision of services, including sport for development (SFD) initiatives. In this study of SFD in the NWT, we use a Foucauldian approach to examine historical and present-day discourses to identify the conditions of possibility – that is, those conditions that have facilitated an apparent need and funding for SFD in the NWT. The format of our paper is as follows: First, we provide an overview of Foucauldian theory and our methodology, archaeology. Through an archaeological examination of discourse related to sport and the NWT, we argue that there are four conditions of possibility that have created the need for SFD in the NWT: the history of settlement, the rise of SFD, corporate social responsibility, and NWT socio-economic agreements signed at the territorial and community levels. We conclude this paper by raising important implications that these conditions may have for sport and the provision of services and social and political issues in the NWT.