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Volume 37 (2020): Issue 3 (Sep 2020): Special Issue: Hip-Hop Culture(s) and Sport
“The Club Management Ignores Us”: Gender-Power Relations in Women’s Football in Turkey
Pınar Öztürk and Canan Koca
This research aims to explore the gender–power relations and gendered experiences of the players in a women’s football team in Turkey. An ethnographic method and a feminist perspective were used to allow a deeper understanding of their experiences. Based on participant observation and interviews conducted with 14 players, three coaches, and one staff member, the data were analyzed via thematic analysis. The identified themes are (a) institutionalized gender discrimination and (b) compulsory femininity: being ladylike. The findings indicate that unequal gender relations in the club, influenced by institutionalized gender discrimination, determine the position of the women’s team within the club. Accordingly, compulsory femininity is continuously generated in the field. Consequently, the women’s football team remained at the periphery (and finally outside) of the men’s club.
Jay-Z and O.J.: Sport and the Performance of Race in Hip-Hop Music
Kellen Jamil Northcutt, Kayla Henderson, and Kaylee Chicoski
The purpose of this study was to understand the symbolic messaging in hip-hop music as it relates to the lived experiences and realities of Black Americans in the United States. The study examined the song and music video titled “The Story of O.J.,” by hip-hop artist Jay-Z to gain a better understanding of how Jay-Z interpreted the impact of Black Americans’ lived experiences in the United States on their identity and ability to progress economically and socially, regardless of social standing, within subcultures such as sport. Employing a content analysis method, data were collected and analyzed using critical race theory. The results of the analysis of lyrical and video data identified three major themes: (a) battle with Blackness, (b) economic enslavement and financial freedom, and (c) systematic subjugation.
Foreword: 2Pac’s Legacy From the Hip-Hop Platform
Michael Eric Dyson
Hip-Hop and Sport—An Introduction: Reflections on Culture, Language, and Identity
C. Keith Harrison and Jay J. Coakley
Male High School Sport Participation and Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration in Adulthood
David Eitle, Steven Swinford, and Abagail Klonsinski
Using data from the Add Health, the authors consider whether male high school sport participation had an association with intimate partner violence perpetration into adulthood, controlling for other known predictors. Results show that sport participation is associated with a reduced risk of perpetrating intimate partner violence in adulthood, which the authors interpret as generally supportive of the deterrence hypothesis, the notion that playing sport promotes prosocial values, increases supervision, and increases bonding to conventional institutions that lower the risk of engaging in violent behavior against women. However, the inclusion of measures representing this hypothesis failed to attenuate the sport participation–intimate partner violence association, raising questions about whether the deterrence hypothesis is the appropriate explanation.
“People Still Believe a Bicycle Is for a Poor Person”: Features of “Bicycles for Development” Organizations in Uganda and Perspectives of Practitioners
Madison Ardizzi, Brian Wilson, Lyndsay Hayhurst, and Janet Otte
Bicycles have been hailed by the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations for use in social and economic development. However, there is a lacuna of research exploring the value of bicycles for development (BFD) outside of Europe and America. Specifically, there is a lack of research on the structure and perspectives of BFD organizations. This study draws on 19 semistructured interviews with BFD organizations in various regions of Uganda. We found that (a) BFD organizations exist along a spectrum from community-based to international, (b) the meanings ascribed to the bicycle are unstable and context dependent, and (c) that there were a range of ways that bicycles were seen to lead to positive outcomes—although barriers to attaining these outcomes were identified too. The authors conclude by suggesting that while bicycles are considered useful for a range of development purposes, perspectives on their usefulness vary—as inequalities commonly associated with sport for development are evident in the BFD movement too.
Rugby, Nationalism, and Deaf Athlete Counterhegemony: Insights From the Case of Fiji
Yoko Kanemasu
This article explores the nexus between power, sport, and disability with a focus on Deaf rugby in Fiji. Based on semistructured interviews with players, officials, and stakeholders, this article outlines their pursuit of rugby and participation in a recent international tournament under Fiji’s specific postcolonial social conditions. It examines what this experience means to the players and officials, and the sociopolitical significance it holds in the multiple relations of power that the game is embedded in. This article shows Deaf rugby as a significant counterhegemonic force that reconfigures Fiji’s rugby discourse by appropriating its key constitutive element: anti-imperialist modern nationalism. This article further explores Deaf rugby’s implication in prevailing gender/ethnoracial/corporeal politics with a view to offering nuanced insights into the question of resistance in/through disability sport in a Global South context.
Ice Dancing to Arirang in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games: The Intersection of Music, Identity, and Sport
Doo Jae Park, Na Ri Shin, Synthia Sydnor, and Caitlin Clarke
This cultural-interpretive essay offers critical commentary on Koreanness, racial ideology, hegemonic racial power, and racialized cultural taste with the aim of interpreting the sport–music nexus by examining a case of the interface between music and sport: The authors focus on the case of the Olympic ice dance that the South Korean team performed for the Korean traditional folk song Arirang at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games. The authors argue that music and sport can be understood as a semiological system that shapes non-Whites’ ideological belief system. In addition, this essay engages with a discussion of cultural classification that often racializes skaters of color as the aforementioned are informed by Orientalism.
One Step Forward, Two Tweets Back: Exploring Cultural Backlash and Hockey Masculinity on Twitter
Daniel Sailofsky and Madeleine Orr
Between 2000 and 2018, the number of fights in professional hockey decreased by more than half, reflecting rule changes intended to preserve player health. A 2019 playoff fight ignited debate on social media over the place of fighting in hockey. This research involved a content analysis of an incendiary tweet and the 920 replies it solicited. Content analysis confirmed that cultural backlash exists in sport and provided insight into manifestations of backlash. Comments exhibiting backlash varied by subject (i.e., what or who is being discussed in the tweet) and attitude (i.e., positive approval for fighting and negative attitude toward change), with many defending hockey masculinity. Connections are drawn to manifestations of backlash in the political realm, the extant hockey masculinity literature, and implications for sociological theory and the sport of hockey are discussed.