Sport, Race and Ethnicity ― The Scope of Belonging?

Analyses of racialisation processes within and beyond sport would be incomplete without a consideration of ethnicity and ethnic identities. Why? Because ethnicity, as a concept and as a focus for research, captures better the diverse experiences of social groups and the scope of belonging. Ethnic identities contribute to the way race and racism is constructed and experienced in sport, and to the ways in which racial ideologies are created, recreated and contested. Readers will find here a stimulating array of papers that capture varied aspects of the sport, race and ethnicity nexus around the world. The journey stretches as far afield as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Ghana and the USA and, in so doing, it draws on a range of disciplinary approaches that converge or diverge by degrees. Such diversity is to be welcomed in an academic field characterized increasingly by the potential richness of people's experiences of sport, race and ethnicity within various cultural contexts. Included here are papers from a range of disciplines and approaches including sociology, politics, sports feminisms, critical race theory, a strengths perspective, Kaupapa Maori Theory, history and sports development.

This book was published as a special issue of Sport and Society.

Katie Liston has published extensively on the sociology of sport, including topics such as gender, migration, national identity, feminisms and sports policy. She is currently engaged in research on sport and the Empire, sport-for-development and women’s sports migration.

Paddy Dolan examines consumer culture and subjectivity and has published on this and research methods. More recently he has extended his focus to the study of sport and Gaelic games, their organisation and development, and to sports spectatorship. Other research interests include the development of childhood subjectivities and identities, cosmopolitanism and the sociology of emotions.