Suchergebnisse

This piece, first delivered as a keynote address, examines the role of honour and shame in understanding the many stories of women's involvement in sport in Ireland from the eighteenth century onwards, and especially in the modern era. While women's sporting involvement was regarded as shameful, especially in those sports imbued with traditional associated masculine norms, the prospect for women's sports is different today than in the past. Yet the struggle for honour is ongoing, seen in topical debates concerning gender quotas and the recommendations made by the Citizens Assembly on gender equality. Bringing the analysis up to date, the piece outlines ad hoc policy initiatives around gender equality in sport from the mid-2000s (in which the author was centrally involved) to the publication of the first formal statutory policy on women in sport, in 2019. Here it is argued that the guilt and shame of previous generations has influenced the public debate on gender quotas and it is as if, in the desire for perceived equality, the current generation of sportswomen do not wish to be associated with quotas. In this way, honour is conflated with merit. The piece concludes by suggesting that merit is honourable, personally, but equally, quotas are by no means shameful in public struggles.

This paper will introduce readers to the field of sports in the Republic of Ireland with specific reference to changing power relations between the sexes. It will situate a present-day social phenomenon, that is, Irish females' increasing involvement in what are seen traditionally as male-associated sports such as Gaelic football, rugby and soccer, within the context of social processes in which more or less independent groups of people (that is, male and female sportspeople) are becoming more interdependent. Qualitative data including 12 in-depth interviews with high performance (elite) female athletes (conducted between 1999 and 2002), three in-depth interviews with leading Irish sports officials (1999–2003) and participant observation notes (from the author's involvement in the field of sports since the early 1990s) will be used to examine aspects of the sport-gender nexus in Ireland. These will be situated within a sociological analysis of the emergence and development of sports for women since the 1970s, and they will be used to argue that the relatively slight shift in the balance of power in favour of females since the 1970s has led to feelings of emancipation amongst females and resistance amongst some males, though this resistance is gradually becoming weaker. Elias's theory of 'established–outsider' relations will be applied to suggest that females who participate in sports such as rugby, soccer and Gaelic football to a lesser extent, can be described as an 'outsider' group – that is, as one that has lacked the organisational resources and networks of mutual assistance to shift significantly the uneven balance of power between the sexes. Moreover, typical of outsiders in their relations with the established, dominant stereotypical views of females remain embedded in the personality structures of 'outsiders'.

This paper is closed access. ; International sport, as Geoffrey Pigman has correctly observed, emerged "as a quintessential case study demonstrating the part that public diplomacy plays in contemporary diplomacy." The British Empire Games/Commonwealth Games [BEG/CG] are one such example, being the second largest multi-national multi-sport event today. Their origins lie in the interwar era when members of sporting organisations, many of whom were active in other formal aspects of public life, considered the organisation of specific Imperial events through international networking. Described as lacking a "thoroughly analytical and interpretive account of their history," questions of identity politics, public diplomacy and statecraft are at their core because the BEG, inaugurated in 1930, represented qualities and values that appealed to governments, civil society, and sportspeople alike. In the waning of the British Empire, the BEG was one attempt to maintain Imperial prestige and cement cultural bonds. Yet, not only is there an absence of analytical accounts of their history, but the inter-relationships between the BEG and diplomacy, and among global sport and diplomacy more broadly, have been similarly under-investigated. This absence is striking, representing a missed opportunity in understanding the development of global sport and international relations more generally.

In recent years, Sir Jack Goody has published a series of essays (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006: 154—79) criticizing Norbert Elias's theory of 'civilizing processes'. In all of them, Goody — himself a West African specialist — makes clear that his disagreement with Elias dates back to their acquaintance in Ghana. The date is highly significant for it is unlikely that Goody's opinions of Elias's ideas were initially formed by his reading of Elias's publications. There were also important differences between them in their approaches to theories of long-term social development. Despite appearances to the contrary, Elias and Goody have in fact much in common intellectually. Goody is one of the most historically orientated of anthropologists, and many points of contact with Elias are evident in his work on literacy (1968, 1987), food (1982), or The Domestication of the Savage Mind (1977). Both swam against the ahistorical current of their respective disciplines and both rejected the old notion of 'progress'. Elias's fault is that occasionally his formulations may appear to give the opposite impression. Goody's fault, perhaps, is that — in spite of his own historical perspective — under any model of a structured process he suspects there lurks a vision of progress and of European superiority.