National bonding and meanings given to race and ethnicity: watching the football World Cup on Dutch TV

Abstract

In this article, the author examines how the FIFA World Cup broadcast on Dutch television informs its viewers around understandings of race/ethnicity and nation. International sport contests may provide a sense of national belonging that overrides other markers of difference such as ‘race’, ethnicity or gender. As such, the football World Cup can be considered a tool for constructing a collective national identity among viewers of various racial or ethnic origins. The project provides a unique opportunity to explore this further. One of the aims is to explore if and how race and ethnicity as markers of difference may be overridden by feelings of connectivity with the Dutch national team and to what extent this differs for various ethnic audience groups. A total of 36 persons, 12 European-Dutch, 13 Surinamese-Dutch and 11 Moroccan-Dutch, were interviewed. Findings from the study suggest that various ethnic audiences experience a feeling of national bonding but at the same time engage in everyday processes of racialization/ethization. These results will be situated in an international comparative perspective during the substantive element of this article.

Acknowledgments

The research project was financially supported by the João Havelange Scholarship that the world football association FIFA and the CIES –International Centre for Sport Studies – award to several scholars worldwide every year. I appreciate FIFA’s contribution to this research.

Notes

1. Billings and Tambosi, Portraying the United States.

2. Cho, Unfolding Nationalism.

3. Van Hilvoorde, Elling, and Stokvis, How to influence National Pride.

4. Hylton, ‘Race and Sport’; Rada and Wulfemeyer, Color coded.

5. Sabo and Jansen, ‘Prometheus unbound’.

6. Gilroy, Multiculture.

7. Buffington and Fraley, Skill in Black and White.

8. McCarthy, Jones, and Potrac, Constructing Images.

9. Hermes, Burnt Orange.

10. Hall, Representations.

11. Ibid., 6.

12. Claringbould, Knoppers, and Elling, Exclusionary Practices.

13. Coakley, and Pike (2009) Sports in Society.

14. Fiske, ‘British cultural studies’.

15. Hall, ‘The Whites of their Eyes’; Long and Spracklen, ‘Positioning Anti-Racism’.

16. Essed, Understanding everyday racism; Costera Meijer and De Bruin, The value of Entertainment’.

17. d’Haenens and Bink, Islam in the Dutch press; Essed & Nimako, Designs and co-incidents.

18. Captain and Ghorashi, ‘Tot Behoud van mijn Identiteit’.

19. Wekker, Gender, Identiteitsvorming en Multiculturalisme.

20. Glaser, Theoretical Sensitivity; Moghaddam, Coding Issues.

21. Ironically, this respondent referred to Afellay as a ‘Turkish player’. It reflects the everyday Dutch discourse in which the Turkish-Dutch and Moroccan-Dutch are relatively often grouped together under one label (Muslims).0

22. Lines, Media Sport Audiences, 675.

23. Van Hilvoorde, Elling, and Stokvis, How to influence National Pride.

24. Ibid.

25. Hermes, Burnt Orange.

26. Grillo, Cultural Essentialism, 166.

27. Ibid.

28. Elling and Luijt, ‘Differential Shades of orange’.

29. Van Sterkenburg, Knoppers, and De Leeuw, Constructing racial/ethnic Difference.

30. Sabo and Jansen, ‘Promotheus Unbound’; Müller, Van Zoonen, and De Roode, Accidental Racists.

31. Morning, Towards a Sociology of racial Conceptualization.

32. Hermes, Burnt Orange; Knoppers and Elling, Gender, Etniciteit en de Sportmedia. Een Inventarisatie.

33. Knoppers and Elling, Gender, Etniciteit en de Sportmedia. Productieprocessen; Van Sterkenburg and Knoppers, Dominant Discourses.

34. Hall, The Whites of their Eyes.