Breaking the mould? Whiteness, masculinity, Welshness, working-classness and rugby league in Wales

Traditionally, rugby in Wales has meant rugby union, the once-amateur, fifteen-a-side code that has a long history of working-class, male involvement in the Valleys of South Wales (Williams, G., 1985). In recent years, however, rugby union has been joined in South Wales by the non-traditionally Welsh sport of rugby league. Once upon a time, rugby league was the sport that “bought” Welsh rugby players who went north (Collins, 2006). Rugby league has now expanded into Wales, developing its version of the rugby code. After a series of (historical) false starts, Welsh rugby league emerged in the 1990s as a sustainable participation sport. Two professional rugby league clubs have been established in Wales (Crusaders in Wrexham and the South Wales Scorpions), and a number of amateur rugby league clubs are now playing in the summer-based Rugby League Conference. But why would anyone in Wales watch, and actively support, rugby league? What does it say about contemporary leisure choices, social identity and nationalism? In this paper, we explore the ways in which rugby league has penetrated the rugby union heartlands of Wales, and how the individuals who support Welsh rugby league (the players, the fans, the administrators) see their own Welshness in relation to their support of the ‘other’ rugby. We have interviewed Welsh rugby league enthusiasts at two periods in Welsh rugby league’s recent history: the high point of the Crusaders move to North Wales in the Super League, and the low point of the club’s resignation from the elite league and its resurrection in the lowest division of professional rugby league. For many rugby league fans the desire on the part of Welsh people to develop rugby league in Wales – supported by the Rugby Football League, the national governing body of rugby league in England, which works closely with the Wales Rugby League – is dismissed as an expensive nonsense by northern English fans on on-line forums and in the letters pages of rugby league newspapers. Yet those letters pages also show evidence of Welsh pride in their rugby league clubs, and Welsh pride in being part of rugby league’s ‘imaginary community’ (Spracklen, Timmins and Long, 2010): I read with incredulity the letter by Phil Taylor in last week’s League Express. Mister Taylor stated that ‘the most important criterion for a Super league licence should be the proximity of the M62’ [to the club]… Perhaps Mister Taylor should venture a little further from his ‘shoe box in the middle of the M62’. I live in rural Carmarthenshire… A few friends and I decided to follow the Celtic Crusaders, which involved a 100 mile round trip for home matches down another motorway, the M4.” (Nic Day, letter to League Express, 2765, 27 June 2011, p. 35) The following section is a literature review on Welshness, community, masculinity and rugby union. After that, we briefly discuss our methods and then introduce some important history and policy context around rugby league in the north of England and Wales. The rest of the chapter is built around the issues raised by our respondents and our critical analysis and discussion. We will show that the adoption of rugby league is associated with two separate trends: an awareness of and identification with its northern, working-class roots, its anti-London rhetoric and its ideology of toughness and resistance; and a rationalisation that league is just another form of rugby, in which traditional Welsh maleness can be protected. Both of these trends allow the whiteness of Welsh rugby union and of Welshness itself (like the whiteness of northern English rugby league and traditional northern identity – see Spracklen, Long and Timmins, 2010) to go un-noticed and unchallenged

Pagans and Satan and Goths, Oh My: Dark Leisure as Communicative Agency and Communal Identity on the Fringes of the Modern Goth Scene

Goth music's cultural terrain has been extensively mapped in the first decade of this century. Through a dark leisure framework, the present article examines the way in which parts of the Goth scene embraced paganism and, latterly, Satanism, as actual practices and ontologies of belief. Ethnographic research and case studies on paganism and Satanism in Goth subcultures are used. This paper argues that being a pagan or Satanist in the fringes of the Goth scene is a way of using dark leisure to resist, usefully and meaningfully, the fashionable but instrumental globalised choice of mainstream popular culture

The Construction of Heavy Metal Identity through Heritage Narratives: A Case Study of Extreme Metal Bands in the North of England

Extreme and black metal is a music genre infused with ideologies of elitism, nationalism and exaggerated masculinity. In this paper, we explore the ways in which four bands from the north of England – Winterfylleth, Wodensthrone, Old Corpse Road and Oakenshield – construct mythologies, heritage narratives and identity through their own reflections on their music, metal and myths. These extreme metal bands in the North of England work inside the symbolic boundaries of their scene and exist within the imagined communities of their region. That is, the bands construct mythologies based around masculinity and around elitism, but also about “northernness.

Ethnographies of the imagined, the imaginary and the critically real: Blackness, whiteness, the north of England and rugby league

Rugby league is part of the white, working-class (male) culture of the north of England, and is a sport that is used by its supporters to (re)produce both an imagined community of nostalgic northernness and an imaginary community of locally situated hegemonically masculine belonging. The invented traditions of its origins link the game to a white, working-class twentieth-century culture of mills, pits, terraced houses and pubs; a culture increasingly marginalised, reshaped and challenged in this century. In this paper we use two medium-term, ethnographic research projects on rugby league (one from Spracklen; the other an on-going project by Timmins) to explore northernness, blackness, whiteness and our own roles in the ethnographies as 'black' and 'white' researchers researching 'race' and identity in a community that remains (but not exclusively) a place for a working-class whiteness to be articulated. We argue that our own histories and identities are pivotal in how we are accepted as legitimate ethnographers and insiders, but those histories and identities also posea critically real challenge to us and to those in the community of rugby league with whom we interact. © 2010 Taylor & Francis

‘Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, and—which is more—you’ll be a man, my son’: Myths of British masculinity and Britishness in the Construction and Reception of Iron Maiden

In the years following the end of the Second World War, the British Empire declined as a global, hegemonic power. In the years of this decline, British children were still taught stirring tales and myths of British military might and British fair-play. In this article, I argue that this mythic milieu served as source of inspiration for Iron Maiden’s songs from Iron Maiden (1980) to Somewhere in Time (1986). I show that themes on these albums deliberately reflect and construct this mythic version of Imperial British masculinity. I then explore how the band has continued to play with Britishness globally. I argue that Iron Maiden’s members and creators have constructed their creative art around imagined white, British imperial identities. They have been raised in the ways of the mythic milieu, and serve its hegemonic interest, whether they are conscious of that fact or not

Theorising northernness and northern culture: the north of England, northern Englishness, and sympathetic magic

Northernness is something that is simultaneously as real as the millstone grit of the Pennines, and as inauthentic as the simulacra Roman texts that gave the hills their name. Drawing on the work of Baudrillard, Anderson and Frazer, this paper offers a strong critique of the ‘common-sense’ idea of northernness expressed in culture by and about the north. The paper begins by attempting to understand this construct historically and from the inside, anthropologically and sociologically. A discussion of the ways in which northernness is claimed to be constructed and performed through shared myths will allow for a wider analysis of how the north is still constructed hegemonically by outsiders: as an essential place of Othering and wilderness. I argue that previous scholarship about northern culture and northern England has also contributed to this essentialism. It will then be shown how northernness has become a form of Frazerian sympathetic magic, performed and invoked to account for cultural practices and beliefs that have been invoked elsewhere for the purposes of hegemonic power

"To Holmgard… and Beyond": Folk Metal Fantasies and Hegemonic White Masculinities

On first inspection, the metal music sub-genre of folk metal might be arguably residual white, masculine spaces. The sub-genres are not fashionable within the metal music scene. Folk metal bands are ridiculed by fans of black metal for being too mainstream and crowd-pleasing, constructing fantasies of drinking and fighting that have no authentic connection to Vikings, Saxons or other (supposed) nationalist patriarchs. But folk metal bands are not part of the mainstream of modern heavy metal, judged by sales of records and numbers of fans on social media. This paper draws on new research on folk metal and its reputation within heavy metal, using a range of internet sources and semiotic analysis of folk metal bands’ songs and images. The bands at the focus of the case study research are bands that have been deliberately selected because they are well-established in the industry, and generally known to fans of heavy metal: Turisas (Finland), Týr (Faroe Islands), Eluveitie (Switzerland), In Extremo (Germany) and Cruachan (Ireland). In this paper, I argue that folk metal is not easily dismissed as a fantasy space for young, white European men left behind by postmodernity, post-colonialism and a rearrangement of the gender order. Rather, folk metal remains central to the on-going construction of heavy metal as a form of commodified leisure that makes the power of Western, instrumental whiteness and hegemonic masculinity invisible, while ironically being in plain sight

What’s the Difference: A Study of the Nature and Extent of Racism in Rugby League

At the start of the 1993/4 season the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) and the Professional Footballers' Association launched the 'Let's Kick Racism Out of Football' campaign which subsequently gained the support of the Football Association, the FA Premier, the Endsleigh League and the Football Trust (CRE/PFA, 1994). That campaign led to discussions between the Rugby Football League (RFL), Leeds City Council and the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) with a view to taking action to address racism in rugby league. Some sports though have become renowned as being sites for racialist confrontations, most notably football, as recorded in Hill's (1989) account of John Barnes' experiences and Holland's (1994) work on the terraces at Newcastle, Leeds and Bolton. General impressions suggested that the position in rugby league was not as bad as in football, but racist abuse and occasional incidents of banana throwing and monkey chants have all been recorded at rugby league matches. Concern about racism at matches has also been expressed recently in the letters pages of the rugby league press and players have talked about their own experiences on television. Since we live in a racist society it would be remarkable if there was no evidence of racism in sport. Nonetheless, as the National Governing Body of the sport, the RFL recognised that this was not a reason for taking no action if it were demonstrated that there are cases of racism in rugby league. However, before embarking on direct action it was decided that information was needed on the nature and extent of racism within the game. To that end Leeds Metropolitan University was asked to survey attitudes and it was agreed that this investigation should have three main components: a) the attitudes of the clubs b) the attitudes of (black and white) players c) the attitudes of spectators At this stage we have been concerned only with the professional game, thou