Strangers of the north: South Asians, cricket and the culture of ‘Yorkshireness’

Abstract

As a county, Yorkshire is a ‘cultural region’: an imagined space, where culture is constructed, refined and articulated by a set of discursive relationships between local populations and a whole range of cultural forms. In this context however, culture is conceived as something which belongs to, and is only accessible by, certain groups of people. Our focus in this article is on the culture of Yorkshire cricket. Historically, Yorkshire cricket has been linked with White male privilege and some studies have shown that people within Yorkshire take a degree of pride in this. Consequently, the county and its cricket club have faced frequent accusations from minority ethnic communities of inveterate and institutionalised racism. Drawing upon Bauman’s notion of ‘liquid modernity’, we argue that the processes of deregulation and individualisation championed by New Right policies have led to a divorce between power and politics, a cornerstone of the old solid modern world. This in turn has led to an erosion of the state, causing individuals to navigate turbulent life projects which are consistently haunted by the spectres of fear and insecurity. Such an environment has caused cricket to be pushed further behind gated social spaces, in an attempt to maintain a semblance of ‘community’.

Keywords:

• British Asian
• cricket
• liquid modernity
• northernness
• stranger
• Yorkshire

Notes on contributors

Thomas Fletcher is a Senior Lecturer in Carnegie Faculty at Leeds Beckett University. He specialises in the areas of social and cultural aspects of sport and leisure, with a particular focus on ‘race’ and ethnicity, families and equality and diversity. Thomas has published his work in a number of peer review journals, including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Identities, Sociological Research Online and International Review for the Sociology of Sport. Thomas is on the Editorial Boards for Sociological Research Online and Sport in Society.

Spencer Swain PhD Researcher and Associate Lecturer in Carnegie Faculty at Leeds Beckett University. Research interests include social theory, identity, social space and resistance.

Notes

1. We employ the term South Asian to describe individuals and communities with roots on the Indian subcontinent. The term British Asian is used to refer to those British citizens who trace their ancestry back to, or who themselves migrated from, the Indian subcontinent. It is employed as a dynamic category and its application has no firm boundaries.

2. For further discussion on the development and significance of Asian-specific leagues and teams see Fletcher and Walle (2015).