Annual conference 2008
liverpool hope university
‘If they can do it in Barcelona, then why can’t they do it in Liverpool?’ This was one of the questions posed at the 2nd Political Studies Association Sport and Politics Group Annual Conference, held at Liverpool Hope University on 15 February 2008. Sean Hamil and Geoff Walters from Birkbeck College discussed the tensions involved in balancing member democracy, commercial strategy and corporate social responsibility with the need for sporting performance in their paper on the model of governance at Barcelona FC.
This was just one of a series of highly topical research-led papers presented on the day in what was the first ever conference held by Liverpool Hope University’s Politics Department. Four panels were convened that covered cultural identity, public policy, sport development and racism and imperialism in sport. The conference was expertly organised by Dr Michael Holmes and attended by approximately 30 delegates.
The setting for the conference provided a strong theme to the first paper, ‘‘We’re not English we are Scouse’: The focus of ‘national’ identity amongst Liverpool Football Club supporters’, by Joel Rookwood (Liverpool Hope University), an ex-Gillingham FC player, but a seasoned Liverpool FC supporter. The paper explored the social identity of Liverpool, and the place of the city in constructions of Englishness. Rookwood argued for studies of sport and national identity to take into account unique regional identities that create complex forms of attachment and belonging and some political tensions. He suggested that these tensions can be witnessed in the attachment of fans to club heroes. This is seen particularly in the case of Liverpool FC players representing the England national team: those who have held the England captaincy (Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard) are held in lower esteem than players who prioritise their sense of belonging to the city and its leading club (e.g. Jamie Carragher).
The second paper, by David Storey (University of Worcester), ‘Ireland’s Call? Allegiances, anthems and acrimony’ explored the overt intersections between sport and politics through a series of sporting controversies that brought to the fore the tensions in managing different types of Irish identity and allegiance. The paper discussed the impact of ‘foreign games’ being played at the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Croke Park stadium, the selection (or defection) of northern-born soccer players to the Republic and the playing of anthems and flying of flags at Ireland games staged in Belfast as part of the 6 Nations Rugby Union Tournament. Storey suggested that we need to attune ourselves to a politics of sport that is sensitive to complex articulations of territory and belonging within a contested Irish politics.
The third paper, ‘The (sub)politics of sport: space hijacking and culture jamming’ by Paul Gilchrist and Neil Ravenscroft (University of Brighton) retained the geographical theme with a foray into innovative forms of sport protest that challenge uses of urban space. Gilchrist argued for a politics of sport that moves beyond structuralist approaches to take into account forms of micro-political agency, an analytical project which is suggested in the writings of critical sociologists of Anthony Giddens in his notion of ‘lifepolitics’ and Ulrich Beck’s ‘subpolitics’. This argument was rooted in research into the sport-based ‘culture jams’ of the London-based Space Hijackers, Situationalist inspired forms of sport protest that included ‘midnight cricket’ and ‘urban golf’ in challenging hegemonic political and corporate constructions of public space.
Rob Lake (St Mary’s University College) further highlighted the importance of theorisations of the empirical to academic work within sport politics. Adopting an Eliasian perspective (from the work of sociologist Norbert Elias), Lake critiqued the culture of tennis and the reason for tennis clubs in not delivering New Labour’s social priorities in his paper ‘Lawn Tennis Association governance from the 1960s: a critique of its functionalist values’. The paper informed the conference how the delivery of social exclusion – a priority measure in sports development – is hampered in tennis through continuing forms of class-based privilege retained in the culture of autonomous tennis club. This renders the clubs, he argued, less effective as agents for (local) social change. Lake humorously led with a quote from Stephen Wells in The Guardian newspaper (2 July 2003), who reflected on this same problem through perennial (now retired) English hope ‘Tiger’ Tim Henman.
“So IF Tim Henman wins Wimbledon – what sort of message would that send to those who want to keep tennis nice, middle class and white? It would mean that the pressure for tennis to change – to become both multi-cultural and truly inclusive – would slacken. Inertia, smugness and unexamined privilege would do the rest. And British tennis would slumber on – monocultural, mimsy and mediocre.”
Lake showed how these aspects of English tennis culture still persist; a product of its history, the continued renewal of class-based forms of hierarchy, and complex power relations between clubs, members, coaches and the national governing body, making social change through the sport difficult.
This was just one of a series of highly topical research-led papers presented on the day in what was the first ever conference held by Liverpool Hope University’s Politics Department. Four panels were convened that covered cultural identity, public policy, sport development and racism and imperialism in sport. The conference was expertly organised by Dr Michael Holmes and attended by approximately 30 delegates.
The setting for the conference provided a strong theme to the first paper, ‘‘We’re not English we are Scouse’: The focus of ‘national’ identity amongst Liverpool Football Club supporters’, by Joel Rookwood (Liverpool Hope University), an ex-Gillingham FC player, but a seasoned Liverpool FC supporter. The paper explored the social identity of Liverpool, and the place of the city in constructions of Englishness. Rookwood argued for studies of sport and national identity to take into account unique regional identities that create complex forms of attachment and belonging and some political tensions. He suggested that these tensions can be witnessed in the attachment of fans to club heroes. This is seen particularly in the case of Liverpool FC players representing the England national team: those who have held the England captaincy (Michael Owen and Steven Gerrard) are held in lower esteem than players who prioritise their sense of belonging to the city and its leading club (e.g. Jamie Carragher).
The second paper, by David Storey (University of Worcester), ‘Ireland’s Call? Allegiances, anthems and acrimony’ explored the overt intersections between sport and politics through a series of sporting controversies that brought to the fore the tensions in managing different types of Irish identity and allegiance. The paper discussed the impact of ‘foreign games’ being played at the Gaelic Athletic Association’s Croke Park stadium, the selection (or defection) of northern-born soccer players to the Republic and the playing of anthems and flying of flags at Ireland games staged in Belfast as part of the 6 Nations Rugby Union Tournament. Storey suggested that we need to attune ourselves to a politics of sport that is sensitive to complex articulations of territory and belonging within a contested Irish politics.
The third paper, ‘The (sub)politics of sport: space hijacking and culture jamming’ by Paul Gilchrist and Neil Ravenscroft (University of Brighton) retained the geographical theme with a foray into innovative forms of sport protest that challenge uses of urban space. Gilchrist argued for a politics of sport that moves beyond structuralist approaches to take into account forms of micro-political agency, an analytical project which is suggested in the writings of critical sociologists of Anthony Giddens in his notion of ‘lifepolitics’ and Ulrich Beck’s ‘subpolitics’. This argument was rooted in research into the sport-based ‘culture jams’ of the London-based Space Hijackers, Situationalist inspired forms of sport protest that included ‘midnight cricket’ and ‘urban golf’ in challenging hegemonic political and corporate constructions of public space.
Rob Lake (St Mary’s University College) further highlighted the importance of theorisations of the empirical to academic work within sport politics. Adopting an Eliasian perspective (from the work of sociologist Norbert Elias), Lake critiqued the culture of tennis and the reason for tennis clubs in not delivering New Labour’s social priorities in his paper ‘Lawn Tennis Association governance from the 1960s: a critique of its functionalist values’. The paper informed the conference how the delivery of social exclusion – a priority measure in sports development – is hampered in tennis through continuing forms of class-based privilege retained in the culture of autonomous tennis club. This renders the clubs, he argued, less effective as agents for (local) social change. Lake humorously led with a quote from Stephen Wells in The Guardian newspaper (2 July 2003), who reflected on this same problem through perennial (now retired) English hope ‘Tiger’ Tim Henman.
“So IF Tim Henman wins Wimbledon – what sort of message would that send to those who want to keep tennis nice, middle class and white? It would mean that the pressure for tennis to change – to become both multi-cultural and truly inclusive – would slacken. Inertia, smugness and unexamined privilege would do the rest. And British tennis would slumber on – monocultural, mimsy and mediocre.”
Lake showed how these aspects of English tennis culture still persist; a product of its history, the continued renewal of class-based forms of hierarchy, and complex power relations between clubs, members, coaches and the national governing body, making social change through the sport difficult.
Peter Millward and Rob Steen exchanging views on racism in sport
Daniel Bloyce (University of Chester) delivered a similarly policy-focused paper written with his colleagues Andy Smith, Rebecca Mead and Jenna Morris. In 'Partnerships, partnerships, partnerships: the growing political bureaucracy of sports development in England’, Bloyce unveiled the findings of research into the priorities and attitudes of sports development officers (SDOs) as they make the transition from tracksuits to suits. They found that SDOs have difficulty in managing change and find a disparity between their emotional attachment to sport and the professional demands on their roles required by a wider policy community. This disparity was strengthened by perceptions of increased bureaucracy and pressure to develop and sustain partnerships with sporting and non-sporting organisations to deliver policy priorities. Sympathetic to the plight of the modern SDO, Bloyce et al highlighted how cultures of policy-making (including meeting targets and developing evidence-based programmes/policies) increased forms of alienation and detachment from their original love of the game, requiring the SDO to stay on top of (and in control of) complex and shifting priorities by a range of policy actors.
These findings were supported in the subsequent paper, ‘New modes of governance in local PE, school and community sport? Findings from case studies of three local authority areas’ by Iain Lindsey (University of Southampton). Lindsey contextualised changes in the governance of sport through a review of political science approaches to policy networks and governance. Highlighting some analytical tensions between ‘differentiated power models’ of governance (which focus on a hollowed-out state and evolving policy networks) and ‘asymmetric power models’ (Iwhich retain a sense of hierarchy and power dependence in relations between policy actors), Lindsey drew upon three cases studies of sport governance in the UK to highlight the patchwork of partnerships in distinct local authority areas. He found that the experience of policy actors is not uniform and differs according to practices of co-ordination, personal relationships between actors, and understandings of strategic priorities in various partnerships. These mapped experiences of modes of governance are particularly pertinent to PE and sport given its current salience to government and the resulting impetus to develop new partnerships and inter-agency collaboration.
The focus for the first afternoon session was ‘sport, race and empire’. Dean Allen (Ulster University) gave us a political history of cricket in South Africa in his paper ‘South African politics and cricket, 1890-1910’. He revealed how the Anglo-Boer war affected sport and society by focusing on the development of the game in this period, teasing out imperial relations, colonial politics and opportunistic commercialism in early cricket tours to South Africa. The theme dovetailed nicely with the presentation given by sport journalist Rob Steen (University of Brighton) who provided a revisionist take upon ‘The Basil D’Oliveira conspiracy’ in a paper that included a number of primary interviews with key protagonists of the affair. Steen’s in-depth analysis of the boardroom politics of the England cricket team selectors unveiled the fraught moral decisions placed upon the shoulders of the ‘blazer brigade’, as he concluded: “when moral fibre was called for the masters of Lord’s cricket gave a masterclass in self-preservation”.
These findings were supported in the subsequent paper, ‘New modes of governance in local PE, school and community sport? Findings from case studies of three local authority areas’ by Iain Lindsey (University of Southampton). Lindsey contextualised changes in the governance of sport through a review of political science approaches to policy networks and governance. Highlighting some analytical tensions between ‘differentiated power models’ of governance (which focus on a hollowed-out state and evolving policy networks) and ‘asymmetric power models’ (Iwhich retain a sense of hierarchy and power dependence in relations between policy actors), Lindsey drew upon three cases studies of sport governance in the UK to highlight the patchwork of partnerships in distinct local authority areas. He found that the experience of policy actors is not uniform and differs according to practices of co-ordination, personal relationships between actors, and understandings of strategic priorities in various partnerships. These mapped experiences of modes of governance are particularly pertinent to PE and sport given its current salience to government and the resulting impetus to develop new partnerships and inter-agency collaboration.
The focus for the first afternoon session was ‘sport, race and empire’. Dean Allen (Ulster University) gave us a political history of cricket in South Africa in his paper ‘South African politics and cricket, 1890-1910’. He revealed how the Anglo-Boer war affected sport and society by focusing on the development of the game in this period, teasing out imperial relations, colonial politics and opportunistic commercialism in early cricket tours to South Africa. The theme dovetailed nicely with the presentation given by sport journalist Rob Steen (University of Brighton) who provided a revisionist take upon ‘The Basil D’Oliveira conspiracy’ in a paper that included a number of primary interviews with key protagonists of the affair. Steen’s in-depth analysis of the boardroom politics of the England cricket team selectors unveiled the fraught moral decisions placed upon the shoulders of the ‘blazer brigade’, as he concluded: “when moral fibre was called for the masters of Lord’s cricket gave a masterclass in self-preservation”.
Peter Millward (Liverpool University) provided a more contemporary account of racism in sport in Britain with ‘The BNP and ‘commonsense’ values: using football to consider the emergence of ‘everyday’ racism’. Millward used research into e-zine message boards of Oldham Athletic FC fans to study different constructions of fan responses to ‘foreign’ interests in football, using a frame analysis technique. He contended that the fan’s discussions of the international transfer market mirrored the discourses the British National Party use to describe the ‘problem’ of immigration. In this way, ‘everyday’ racist discourses form a prevalent threat to the sport as it attempts to clean up its image, and perhaps offer a platform through which far-right organisations can penetrate into white working class communities as they come to terms with an increasingly multi-cultural society.
The final session was on ‘sport and public policy’. Carolyn Downs (Manchester Metropolitan University) provided an historical sweep of gambling in sport in ‘Sport, betting and public policy: the development of an uneasy truce’. She explored the ways in which gambling has garnered both social acceptability and moral anxiety. This was illustrated through a range of specific examples, from cheating in horse racing to concerns over the impact of football pools on working class communities. Her thesis concluded that despite previous hostilities to gambling there is now a settled consensus: administrators have set aside their moral qualms and concerns about the potential for gambling to corrupt ‘pure’ sporting contest, by accepting betting as a cornerstone to the financing of modern sport. Dino Numerato (Universita Bocconi, Milan) reflected on the ‘Institutionalisation of the regional public policies on sport in the Czech Republic’. The paper investigated the idea of regional public policy which is pertinent to the Czech case as in 2001 Czech government pased a law which institutionalised sport as a statuary responsibility for regional government. Numerato explored the process of institutionalisation, drawing upon an empirical study of 14 regional administrations, to see how policies were being prepared and implemented to guarantee funding opportunities for sport. He found that there are a series of constraints in terms of the effective governance of sport, including a lack of interaction between the sport voluntary sector and public administrators, leading to investment decisions and priorities being made without sufficient evidence. The road to a better sporting offer in the Czech Republic is thus pathed with the need to socialise and educate public administators about the culture and poltics of sport.
The final paper was delivered by Tien-Chin Tan (Loughborough University): ‘Globalisation and Chinese sport policy: the case of elite football in the People’s Republic of China’. The state of Chinese sports policy in the context of globalisation was discussed with a focus upon China’s ability to manage the tensions and currents of globalising forces within elite football. The paper reported on findings from doctoral research and Tien-Chin found that the Chinese government has attempted, with reasonable success, to manage the impact of commercial interest on Chinese domestic football practices, elite footballers and professional football clubs. However, a number of tensions exist: first, between the priorities of commercial clubs and national team development; and second, between the highly paid and internationally mobile sports ‘stars’ and the centrally controlled elite development system.
As with the previous year, the conference was a well-attended, informative and sociable affair, and discussions carried on well into the night in the best pubs (and kebab bar) Liverpool city centre could offer. Special thanks should go to Michael Holmes for organising the event and providing such a delicious lunch and to the panel chairs from Liverpool Hope University - Prof Ernst Hossner (Head of Sport) and Prof Bill Chambers (Pro Vice-Chancellor) for their comments, warm welcome and expert time-keeping.
Full programme
The final session was on ‘sport and public policy’. Carolyn Downs (Manchester Metropolitan University) provided an historical sweep of gambling in sport in ‘Sport, betting and public policy: the development of an uneasy truce’. She explored the ways in which gambling has garnered both social acceptability and moral anxiety. This was illustrated through a range of specific examples, from cheating in horse racing to concerns over the impact of football pools on working class communities. Her thesis concluded that despite previous hostilities to gambling there is now a settled consensus: administrators have set aside their moral qualms and concerns about the potential for gambling to corrupt ‘pure’ sporting contest, by accepting betting as a cornerstone to the financing of modern sport. Dino Numerato (Universita Bocconi, Milan) reflected on the ‘Institutionalisation of the regional public policies on sport in the Czech Republic’. The paper investigated the idea of regional public policy which is pertinent to the Czech case as in 2001 Czech government pased a law which institutionalised sport as a statuary responsibility for regional government. Numerato explored the process of institutionalisation, drawing upon an empirical study of 14 regional administrations, to see how policies were being prepared and implemented to guarantee funding opportunities for sport. He found that there are a series of constraints in terms of the effective governance of sport, including a lack of interaction between the sport voluntary sector and public administrators, leading to investment decisions and priorities being made without sufficient evidence. The road to a better sporting offer in the Czech Republic is thus pathed with the need to socialise and educate public administators about the culture and poltics of sport.
The final paper was delivered by Tien-Chin Tan (Loughborough University): ‘Globalisation and Chinese sport policy: the case of elite football in the People’s Republic of China’. The state of Chinese sports policy in the context of globalisation was discussed with a focus upon China’s ability to manage the tensions and currents of globalising forces within elite football. The paper reported on findings from doctoral research and Tien-Chin found that the Chinese government has attempted, with reasonable success, to manage the impact of commercial interest on Chinese domestic football practices, elite footballers and professional football clubs. However, a number of tensions exist: first, between the priorities of commercial clubs and national team development; and second, between the highly paid and internationally mobile sports ‘stars’ and the centrally controlled elite development system.
As with the previous year, the conference was a well-attended, informative and sociable affair, and discussions carried on well into the night in the best pubs (and kebab bar) Liverpool city centre could offer. Special thanks should go to Michael Holmes for organising the event and providing such a delicious lunch and to the panel chairs from Liverpool Hope University - Prof Ernst Hossner (Head of Sport) and Prof Bill Chambers (Pro Vice-Chancellor) for their comments, warm welcome and expert time-keeping.
Full programme
Photo (left to right): Paul Gilchrist, Michael Holmes, Russell Holden
