Karl Spracklen

Throughout history sports cultures and alcohol have been intimately linked. Being able to drink huge amounts of alcohol is a celebrated male athletic virtue. Ridicule and often exclusion is reserved for those who are unable to conform to this. Ritualised drinking is not, and cannot, be enjoyed by all. British Muslims (the majority of whom are of South Asian descent) for instance, are restricted from drinking alcohol due to the demands of Islam. This paper uses data collected from ethnographic research conducted with white British and British Pakistani Muslim cricketers to locate the significance of drinking alcohol in both the inclusion and exclusion of British Pakistani Muslims. We demonstrate that, in negotiating their inclusion, British Pakistani Muslims have to accommodate, negotiate and challenge various forms of inequality and discrimination in their leisure lives. We argue that consuming alcohol calls attention to the challenges of being ‘normal’ within this cultural context.

Despite greater attention to racial equality in sport in recent years, the progress of national sports organizations toward creating equality of outcomes has been limited in the United Kingdom. The collaboration of the national sports agencies, equity organi- zations and national sports organizations (including national governing bodies of sport) has focused on Equality Standards. The authors revisit an earlier impact study of the Racial Equality Standard in sport and supplement it with another round of interview material to assess changing strategies to manage diversity in British sport. In particu- lar, it tracks the impact on organizational commitment to diversity through the period of the establishment of the Racial Equality Standard and its replacement by an Equality Standard that deals with other diversity issues alongside race and ethnicity. As a result, the authors question whether the new, generic Equality Standard is capable of address- ing racial diversity and promoting equality of outcomes.

This paper offers a critique of the much-vaunted claims of sports ability to integrate new migrants by generating social capital. By examining a growing literature base alongside new empirical evidence, we explore whether the experiences of new migrants actually reflect the hypothetical claims made by some policymakers
and scholars about the role of sport in tackling exclusion, promoting
inclusion and constructing interculturalism. We demonstrate that the claims made about the value of sport are not found in the experiences of most of our respondents from new migrant communities living in Leeds, UK. We question whether sport truly is communicative in the Habermasian sense, contributing to identity
projects, and so counsel caution in using it as a panacea to promote belonging and cohesion. This was a purpose for which leisure opportunities seemed more suited (at least for participants) in our research.

... of equality and diversity in UK sport policy, process, and practice during the past 30 years has been elucidated at length in the work of Green ... Certainly, the rhetoric of Labour's policies on sport in the late 1990s sug-gests social inclusion, equality, and diversity are central to ...

In an attempt to promote racial equality policies in national sports organiza-tions in England, the Racial Equality Charter for Sport was introduced in 2000. This article reports on progress in achieving the associated Standard in different sports and different levels of sport. ...

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, re‐shaped 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 pose a critically real challenge to us and to those in the community of rugby league with whom we interact.

Given its popularity, visibility and complexity, the scholarly study of heavy metal needs no justification. Like other popular music cultures, heavy metal is a contested and controversial marker of both cultural resistance and subcultural conformity, offering a resource that enables individualised identity formation and collective practices of association, consumption and commodification that are now global in character and complexity. At the same time, when compared to research on punk, hip hop and other scenes, the study of ...

At times of economic uncertainty the position of new migrants is subject to ever closer scrutiny. While the main focus of attention tends to be on the world of employment the research on which this paper is based started from the proposition that leisure and sport spaces can support processes of social inclusion yet may also serve to exclude certain groups. As such, these spaces may be seen as contested and racialised places that shape behaviour. The paper draws on interviews with White migrants from Poland and Black migrants from Africa to examine the normalising of whiteness. We use this paper not just to explore how leisure and sport spaces are encoded by new migrants, but how struggles over those spaces and the use of social and cultural capital are racialised.

This paper offers a critique of the much-vaunted claims of sports ability to integrate new migrants by generating social capital. By examining a growing literature base alongside new empirical evidence, we explore whether the experiences of new migrants actually reflect the hypothetical claims made by some policy-makers and scholars about the role of sport in tackling exclusion, promoting inclusion and constructing interculturalism. We demonstrate that the claims made about the value of sport are not found in the experiences of most of our respondents from new migrant communities living in Leeds, UK. We question whether sport truly is communicative in the Habermasian sense, contributing to identity projects, and so counsel caution in using it as a panacea to promote belonging and cohesion. This was a purpose for which leisure opportunities seemed more suited (at least for participants) in our research.

The UK’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 2010, outlined £81 billion of cuts across government departments by 2014/2015. The Conservative–Liberal Democrat reform was premised on the ‘Big Society’ making up for their austere cuts to the state. In this piece, we debate the impact of this on sports development, taking the case study of inner city Liverpool. This example is marked because, on the one hand, it presents cuts to municipal sports facilities which are threatened with closure as a result of shrinking local authority budgets, and on the other, this role is partially taken on by an offshoot of Everton Football Club (EFC). The points we debate are: (1) is the change in responsibility from the local authority to a private enterprise, staffed by volunteers, a new turn in sport policy? and (2) what are the consequences of this on grassroots sport participation?

The UK’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in 2010, outlined £81 billion of cuts across government departments by 2014/2015. The Conservative–Liberal Democrat reform was premised on the ‘Big Society’ making up for their austere cuts to the state. In this piece, we debate the impact of this on sports development, taking the case study of inner city Liverpool. This example is marked because, on the one hand, it presents cuts to municipal sports facilities which are threatened with closure as a result of shrinking local authority budgets, and on the other, this role is partially taken on by an offshoot of Everton Football Club (EFC). The points we debate are: (1) is the change in responsibility from the local authority to a private enterprise, staffed by volunteers, a new turn in sport policy? and (2) what are the consequences of this on grassroots sport participation?

The austerity measures ushered across Europe and Worldwide are not just worthless news headlines, meaningless figures on balance sheets, pointless social media notifications, or cuts to abstract places that exist ‘somewhere’. Rather cuts on public spending imposed by such measures have unintended consequences on real people and places.  The long-term interaction between sport and politics is well documented. An example of this is the United Kingdom (UK).
An example of this is the United Kingdom (UK): The UK was governed for 13 years by the Labour Party. ‘New’ Labour, champions of the ‘third way’, ‘governance’ and ‘partnership’, who invested heavily in public services and reforms. By 2010, the British and global economy was in disarray, arising from a financial crisis that first emerged in 2008. Since May 2010, the UK has had a Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government, which has made significant attempts to tackle the economic downturn. Ultimately, via the Comprehensive Spending Review 2010, an outlined £81 billion worth of cuts across government departments by 2014/15 was delivered. Interestingly, a quarter of this was targeted at the welfare budget (which has been expanded further). Ultimately, an era has come to an end where sport has been supported and applauded, partly because of the financial crisis and partly because of a change in ideology.  The consequences of this include wide-scale closure of leisure services, the transferal of physical resources to private or voluntary sectors, reorganization and reduction of local authority sport development units.
The purpose of this short UK example and insight is to pick out some of the pertinent (but not exhaustive) issues to the special issue: Sport management issues in an era of austerity. The aim of the special issue is to explore the consequence of these types of changes for sport, in doing so, we hope to (a) highlight the current state-of-play within sport development across European and International contexts, (b) to highlight some of theoretical, practical and policy implications related to sport management and (c) highlight future considerations for policy makers, applied researchers and practitioners.
Possible topics include (but are not limited to):
• Changes in responsibility shifting from local authority to private enterprise,
• Staffing changes towards the use of volunteers,
• The role and servicing needs of volunteers and coaching staff,
• Reduced funding for elite sport and impacts on sport policy,
• National Governing Body strategies to deal with funding reductions,
• Reduced funding for grassroots sport and its impact on lifelong participation,
• The current state of school sport,
• The emergence of social enterprise.

Please contact Dr. Dan Parnell via email if you have any questions: d.parnell@leedsbeckett.ac.uk