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Jim Lusted University of Leicester JL145@le.ac.uk

Playing Games with ‘Race’: Legitimizing power in local football networks through the plurality of ‘race’. Jim Lusted University of Leicester JL145@le.ac.uk. Overview Background Setting Agenda Theory Findings Implications. Overview. Background: ‘Race’, racism and sport

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Jim Lusted University of Leicester JL145@le.ac.uk

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  1. Playing Games with ‘Race’:Legitimizing power in local football networks through the plurality of ‘race’ Jim Lusted University of Leicester JL145@le.ac.uk

  2. Overview Background Setting Agenda Theory Findings Implications Overview • Background: ‘Race’, racism and sport • The setting: ‘Local’ football governance • The agenda: Sports equity policy • The theory: Identity and power • The findings: legitimizing power through ‘race’ • Conclusions/Implications…

  3. Overview Background Setting Agenda Theory Findings Implications ‘Race’, racism, sport • ‘Race’ identity and sport • Fair play, meritocratic, colour-blind approach • Football’s anti-racist consensus • Recent research focus: • on professional sport • on ‘victims’ of racism • neglects sources/structures of racism (whiteness?)

  4. Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications The Setting: The traditional power structures of local football • County Football Associations • Governance role • Development since 2000 • Council members • ‘Elected’, voluntary role • Decision making power • 99.6% white, 97% male • Local prestige; long service rewarded • Representation on National FA Council

  5. Overview Background SettingAgendaTheoryFindings Implications

  6. National FA Professionalism Development Reform Expansionist External regulation Public service County FA Volunteerism Governance Tradition Protectionist Semi-autonomous Private club Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications The wider struggle for local control EQUITY?

  7. Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications Sports Equity policy • New Labour’s inclusion agenda: Sport England • Holistic approach • Acknowledging inequalities exist • From equal opportunities → positive action • Transfer of power, resources • FA Ethics and Sports Equity Strategy (2002) • “Football For All”

  8. Overview Background Setting Agenda Theory Findings Implications The theory: identity and power • 3 forms of identity construction (Castells 2004): • Legitimizingcurrent power relations and structures • Resistance based: challenging power holders • Project based: change power structures

  9. Overview Background Setting Agenda Theory Findings Implications Castells as a local footballer THE NATIONAL FA Project identity: ‘Football For All’ THE COUNTY FA Legitimizing identity: Maintain status quo LOCAL CLUBS/PARTICIPANTS Resistance identity: Challenge status quo

  10. Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications Legitimizing Identity I: ‘Race’ denial “I don’t care if they’re black or white, Asian or whatever, get somebody on there who does a job, and helps run the league” Senior Administrator, County FA 1 “Its just straight rivalry, one trying to beat the other, irrespective of whether they’re black, white, yellow, green or whatever” Council Member, County FA 2

  11. Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications Legitimizing Identity IIa: Racialised domination “We do get problems of misbehaviour. Some of them seem to be on a very short fuse and some of them seem to have to learn how they can and can’t behave on a football field. It could be that they are deprived anyway, the Eastern Europeans, it could just be the way they go on in their own environment, I don’t know” Council Member, County FA 1

  12. Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications Legitimizing Identity IIb: Cultural unsuitability “If you’ve got a team of blokes playing hockey, 10 of them were Asian, because that’s the game they played over there cos they’ve got no bloody grass over there when they come over here, so why play soccer?” Club Secretary, County FA 2

  13. Overview Background Setting Agenda Theory Findings Implications Legitimizing Identity III: Deriding ‘race’ based resistance “It seems that there are people jumping on the bandwagon … I want them to play football, but why people are emphasising the ethnic minority side of it, I think that in my considered opinion, is causing a barrier. If they just let it flow, we didn’t have it in the past” Senior Council Member, County FA 1 “if you’re not careful, any that do come forward are the more outspoken that don’t want to go through the system, but want to break into having a platform for themselves” Council Member, County FA 2

  14. Overview Background Setting AgendaTheory Findings Implications Conclusions/Implications • Equity policy part of wider power struggle • Failure to recognise existence of inequalities • Positive action seen as unnecessary • Colour-blind rhetoric masks exclusionary practice • Using ‘race’ as resistance remains problematic Towards a project identity? Football for All requires cultural AND structural changes

  15. Playing Games with ‘Race’:Legitimizing power in local football networks through the plurality of ‘race’ Jim Lusted University of Leicester JL145@le.ac.uk

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