Tuning in: diasporas at the BBC World Service

This article looks at diaspora through the transformations of an established public service broadcaster, the BBC World Service in a fast changing landscape of global broadcasting, by considering some of the findings of the AHRC-funded Tuning In: Contact Zones at the BBC World Service, which is part of the Diasporas, Migration and Identities program. Tuning In has six themes, each of which focuses upon the role of the BBC WS: The Politics of Translation, Diasporic Nationhood, Religious Transnationalism, Sport across Diasporas, Migrating Music and Drama for Developmen

On and Off the Pitch: Diversity policies and transforming identities?

This article examines the operation of diversity policies and practices in the sport of football using textual material from Government initiatives, club websites and interviews with club community based workers to suggest that new identity positions are being put into discourse. Sport and in particular football has become a site at which, rather than being classified as dangerous territory where fans have to be controlled, new, responsible, self-regulating citizen selves might be created. However, identity positions that I suggest are emerging both conform to and resist the apparatuses of governmentality which generate them and my research indicates that while there is some transformation taking place, the possibilities of new identity positions cannot be simply read off from the policy statements. Transforming identities are accommodated through discourses of charity, utilitarianism, and human rights, ranging from more paternalistic understandings of community within charity discourses to the political activism and equality based practices of human rights

Globalizing Boxing

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Boxing is a traditional sport in many ways, characterized by continuities in the form of practices and regulations and heavy with legends and heroes reflecting its traditional/historical values. Associations with class, hegemonic masculinity and racialized inclusions/exclusions, however, sit alongside developments such as women's boxing and involvement in Mixed Martial Arts. This book will be the first to use boxing as a vehicle for exploring social, cultural and political change in a global context. It will consider to what degree and in what ways boxing reflects social transformations, and whether and how it contributes to those transformations. In exploring the relationship it will provide new ways of thinking critically about the everyday

Rumbles in the jungle: Boxing, racialization and the performance of masculinity

Men's boxing is a sport with successful, high profile and affluent participants and one that includes many of the very much less well off. It has traditionally involved high participation by men from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. The sport is beset by contradictions, between racism and opportunity, discipline and excess, beautiful bodies and those that are fractured and damaged, and between traditional and alternative presentations of masculinity. The negotiation and presentation of raced and gendered identities have a strong presence, especially in terms of the ways in which hegemonic masculinity might be enacted. This paper is about racialized masculinities in boxing and links ethnography at a Sheffield gym that has produced some very well-known boxers, with an exploration of popular, media narratives about this particular performance of masculinities and the discursive location of boxing as a sport. It looks at the enactment of masculinities at a site that might appear to offer particularly essentialized and polarized versions of masculinity, race and class. It examines the ways in which men participate in boxing at a variety of levels and the interconnections between the public and the private stories that are told about men and boxing

Boxing, Masculinity and Identity

Boxing is infused with ideas about masculinity, power, race and social class, and as such is an ideal lens through which social scientists can examine key modern themes. In addition, its inherent contradictions of extreme violence and beauty and of discipline and excess have long been a source of inspiration for writers and film makers. Essential reading for anyone interested in the sociology of sport and cultural representations of gender, Boxing, Masculinity and Identity brings together ethnographic research with material from film, literature and journalism. Through this combination of theoretical insight and cultural awareness, Woodward explores the social constructs around boxing and our experience and understanding of central issues including: masculinity mind, body and the construction of identity spectacle and performance: tensions between the public and private person boxing on film: the role of cultural representations in building identities methodologies: issues of authenticity and ‘truth’ in social science

Introduction

The introduction explains the rationale for this special edition by stressing the capacities of football to generate affects through objects and sounds. The sensory experiences, in particular those affects of sound and music, are multifaceted and diverse, but are also specific to football and the flows and intensities of the game. This special edition seeks to capture some of these affects and those of fans and supporters through a collection of different pieces of writing