‘Sports has to be accessible to everyone. Everyone must have the possibility to enjoy sports regardless of age, physical or mental health, ethnicity, sexual orientation or social position. […] Therefore, we let go of pigeonholing. We will stop exclusion. This situation becomes self-evident because we are aiming at creating ‘inclusive sports’ (Bruins et al. 2018: 11-14).
In 2018, The Dutch government wrote and adopted an accord; the Dutch National Sports-accord’. The minister of ‘Public Health, Well-Being and Sports’ argues that sports, and in the Netherlands mostly football, is a suitable site to create ‘inclusion’. As stated in the quote above, the Dutch current sports world sometimes obstructs participating based on several social categories. In this blog, I will outline a case-study about the Dutch football club ‘Onder Ons’ (Among Us) in Utrecht (the fourth biggest city in the Netherlands) conducted by Dutch government and organization scholars and anthropologists. This study shows that forced integration policy does not create bridges or resolve ‘ethnic’ differences in the club’s culture.
Football club ‘Among Us’
‘Among Us’ is an amateur football club in Utrecht, established in 1948 in a mostly ‘white Dutch’ area. Because of urban development reasons in the 1960s, the club had to move to the other side of the city, Overvecht, where most residents were from Moroccan descents (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1360). Due to these spacial and demographic changes, more ‘Moroccan Dutch’ residents signed up, while more ‘white Dutch members’ left. The club ended up in financial troubles and asked the municipality for support. The municipality wanted to financially support the club on the condition that ‘Among Us’ would ‘develop towards a club of mixed ethnicity with a membership that would mirror the neighbourhood’s increasingly diverse population’ (ibid). In order to meet these requirements partly, the club merged with a ‘Moroccan Dutch’ football club. To create an ‘ethnic mosaic’ in the club, the municipality also demanded more representation of the Moroccan Dutch members in the management in order to give them a voice in the policies of the club (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1360).
Analyzing sports clubs
In order to understand how the two groups (white Dutch members and Moroccan-Dutch members) experienced and perceived this transition, we need to analyze the concept of a sports club. ‘Sports clubs are voluntary associations characterized by bonding relationships between like-minded people [..] and are symbolically constructed communities of people who share common understandings’ (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1363). Members of a sports club share the capacity to make use of shared symbols, but also interpret and understand them. According to Cohen (1985), we can understand a sports club as a ‘community of meaning’. In such communities, people become aware of their symbols and meanings when ‘others’ come too close or penetrate the symbolic boundaries of their community. As a result, the encounter between a member of the community and an ‘other’ creates dynamics of emphasizing the ‘cultural content’ and at the same time emphasizing the boundaries between the community and ‘the others’ (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1363). In other words, dynamics and relations between groups tend to define or reinforce differences.
‘Among Us’ can be analyzed as a community and a site of identity formations. If we take a historical perspective, sports clubs were founded by people of the same village, church or social community in the Netherlands (Van Bottenburg 2007: 2). This gather of people with the same ‘lifestyle’ is still present and defines the sports club. Sports clubs in the Netherlands are thus building upon a feeling of a cohesive (but always negotiated) system of symbolic understandings and attempts to teach those understandings to newcomers (ibid).
Established-outsiders’ theory
Slobbe et al. make use of the ‘established-outsiders’ theory by Norbert Elias and John Scotson to understand the dynamics between the members of the ‘Among Us’ community/football club and ‘the others’. Important aspects in their relations are ‘power balance’ and ‘mutual dependency’, what they term a figuration (Slobbe et al, 2013: 1365). The interdependences are constructed by power which is relational and reciprocal; the group who claims to have power (the established) is dependent on the group without or with less claims on power (the outsiders) and the vice versa. The duration of the existence of the figuration ‘enabled the ‘established’ to develop greater cohesion relative to the outsiders and this, in turn, enabled them to monopolize key positions in local associations. Consequently, the ‘established’ were able to define the local rules of the game and reproduce a historically grown position of power’ (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1366).
According to the authors, we can understand the white, Dutch members of ‘Among Us’ as ‘the established’ and the Moroccan Dutch members as ‘the outsiders’. So the organizational culture and thus the symbols and understandings of ‘Among Us’ are constructed based on the figuration of the ‘powerful, white Dutch, established’ and the ‘less powerful Moroccan Dutch outsiders’. Their figuration changed when the municipality demanded a transition towards a more ‘ethnic diverse’ club. Instead of creating an ethnic mosaic, the new policies caused tensions regarding the cultural meaning and reinforced notions of ‘us-them’ relationships. I like to illustrate this with an example of serving beer and tea in the club’s canteen.
Beer and tea in the canteen
In the canteen of ‘Among Us’, there is a prominent spot for two beer taps and signs of beer brands. Drinking beer, labelled as ‘the third half of the football match’ is an important aspect of ‘football culture’ and is, furthermore, highly important as an income source for the club (Slobbe et al. 2013: 1367). It is also a marker of the atmosphere at the club; having a beer afterwards is considered as a pillar of ‘Among Us’. However, the beer tap and beer brands signs caused tension between the ‘established’, who foster those particular practices and artefacts, and the ‘outsiders’, who are Islamic and therefore don’t drink alcohol, but tea (ibid). At the time, one Moroccan Dutch member, Fatima, asked the bar committee why they did not sell tea. The ‘established’ bar chief, Ari, responded: “We will not sell tea […] in our canteen. Over my dead body! “(Slobbe et al. 2013: 1367). Despite Ari’s objections, Moroccan tea was sold in the canteen. By raising this question, Fatima pointed out feelings of inequality and uneven power dynamics, which is shared by more members of the club.
This incident shows struggles regarding understandings and meaning-making processes of cultural practices in the club. We can understand that the canteen’s space and the artefacts are not neutral, but it is an ‘established’ embodied space which ‘symbolize the ‘oldness of association’ of the white Dutch members (Slobbe et al, 2013: 1367). If we apply the established-outsiders’ theory, we can understand that the ‘established’ have had power for a long time to decide what beverages were sold in the canteen and thus had the power to shape the space of the canteen. The ‘established’ bar chief became more aware of his own share meaning and practices regarding drinking beer, because of the penetration of the Moroccan Dutch who refuse to drink alcohol and preferred drinking tea. In other words, ‘the white Dutch members, feeling that their community was undermined, started to symbolically reinforce the (exclusionary) boundaries of their community’ (Slobbe et al.2013: 1367).
Performance of ‘Among Us’
I think this case-study is really interesting because I live in the Netherlands and I am familiar with the neighbourhood in Utrecht. However, I feel like there is some theoretical analysis lacking in this study. The authors examine ‘the Dutch’, ‘the Dutch-Moroccan’ and ‘the club-culture’ as something that exists and is identifiable. In my opinion, it disregards social dynamics and fluidity. I think that the notion of ‘performance’ could help to give those notion theoretical saturation. Performance, according to Bettie, ‘refers to agency and a conscious attempt at passing’ (2014:52). In this case, we can understand performance when we look at the tea-example. On the one hand, the ‘established’ perform their notion of ‘Among Us’ by foregrounding and emphasizing the beer tap and beer brand signs. On the other hand, the ‘outsiders’ perform their notion of ‘Among Us’ by foregrounding and emphasizing the tea. The authors assume that there is a bounded and fixed identity regarding the ‘established’ and the ‘outsiders’ but Bettie (2014) shows that identities are more complex. She states that performance is the identity. However, people do have the feeling that their identity is fixed and static. Thus, in this case, the ‘established’ feel like they have an ‘established’ identity and the ‘outsiders’ feel like they have an ‘outsiders’ identity. Betties explains by stating that constructed identities are institutionalized; there is a fixed element of identity what makes people think they have a fixed ‘identity’ (Bettie 2014: 53).
In other words, I believe that we cannot talk about ‘the Dutch’ and ‘the Dutch-Moroccan’ because the performance is the identity and is thus shifting and always negotiated (Bettie 2014). In my opinion, the authors should provide some sort of theoretical analysis because ‘there is no such thing as ‘an identity’ or ‘a self’; the self or identity is not natural, it is always constructed and performed’ (Bettie 2014: 52).
Conclusion
In the Netherlands, sports are seen as an instrument to create social integration for ‘ethnic minorities’ and in this view, sports thus functions as a bridge between ethnic groups. Ethnic separate clubs are considered ‘disintegrated’ and therefore the Dutch government and municipalities work together to create ‘inclusive and open’ sports clubs. However, as Slobbe et al. argue, ‘the transition towards a mixed management led to a conflict over understandings about the symbolic practices and artefacts within the club’s organizational culture’ (2013: 1371). As a result, the boundaries between the ‘established’ and ‘outsiders’ intensify and the ‘us-them’ dynamics become more clear. Although I am very interested in this topic and those dynamics, I believe that more theoretical analysis is necessary to understand the notion of ‘the established’ and ‘the outsider’. Those notions miss, in my opinion, a theoretical layer in this article. Therefore, I pointed out the notion of ‘performances’ to understand the dynamics between ‘us’ and ‘them’ but also within those categories. This is important to challenge because groups, symbols, understandings and meanings are never static, but are always negotiated and challenged.
References:
– Bettie, J. (2014) Women without Class- Girls, Race, Identity Oakland, University of California Press.
– Bruins, B., L. Bolsius, J. van Zanen, & A. Bolhuis (2018) Nationaal Sportakkoord- ‘Sport verenigt Nederland’ Den Haag, Rijksoverheid.
– Slobbe, van. M, J. Vermeulen & M. Koster (2013) ‘The making of an ethnically diverse management: contested cultural meanings in a Dutch amateur football club’ Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics 16-10: 1360-1374.
– Van Bottenburg, M. (2007). Om de sport verenigd: instituties in de sportwereld.
Performances of sport identities 