Cultural sport psychology research: conceptions, evolutions, and forecasts

Abstract

Cultural sport psychology (CSP) is a relatively new research genre that challenges mainstream sport psychology's assumptions to facilitate contextualized understandings of marginalized topics and cultural identities. Conceptual writings on CSP have grown in the past 10 years, and with that, empirical literature explicitly positioned within CSP. In this article, the landscape of CSP is outlined to more clearly explicate and contextualize the goals and tenets of this mode of inquiry, with the overarching intent of making further recommendations for CSP research. As CSP is broad, a small body of sport research conducted on race and ethnicity (two facets of cultural identity) is reviewed. Suggestions are made to extend the limited body of research on marginalized cultural identities via a CSP approach, focusing on reflexive processes and participant engagement. Through these strategies, CSP research is put forward as a way to further open the possibility of advancing social change and social justice.

Keywords:

• cultural sport psychology
• race
• ethnicity
• praxis
• reflexivity
• participant engagement

Notes

1. We use the term ‘sport psychology’ broadly, to encompass sport and exercise psychology, or more inclusively, the psychology of physical activity.

2. Traditionally, the sport psychology domain has been taken up ethnocentrically, rooted in white, Euro-American, male ways of thinking and doing (Gill & Kamphoff, 2010; Ryba & Schinke, 2009; Ryba & Wright, 2005). For instance, research and professional practice have predominantly focused on elite, white, male athletes in high-performance contexts, with little attention given to diverse participants in non-elite contexts. In addition, an over-reliance on post-positivist research paradigms and practices has privileged ‘scientific’ and objective knowledges that are congruent with white, Euro-American, male worldviews, but subverting of others. The assumptions and practices underpinning the domain have thus largely excluded the identities and ways of knowing of culturally diverse participants, such as racial and ethnic minorities, women, those with physical disabilities, and people who identify as LGBT (Gill & Kamphoff, 2010).

3. Given the vast social categories that comprise cultural identities (e.g., nationality, sexuality, gender, socioeconomic status, physicality, etc.), we have chosen to narrow our review to cultural research that explicitly explores race and ethnicity. Herein, race and ethnicity are focalized as two facets of culture, though we recognize that there are multiple other dimensions of culture that are inextricably intersected in people's identities and experiences. We do not equate culture to race and ethnicity alone.

4. It is important to note that ‘whiteness’ does not refer simply to skin colour or any fixed set of physical attributes, but to the power dynamics related to what we consider to be ‘white’ in a particular social space (Butryn, 2010). As the meaning of whiteness is constantly shifting, contingent upon socio-historical and political contexts, it can be viewed as an organizing principle in social and cultural relations (Butryn, 2010; McDonald, 2005; McIntosh, 1988). Similarly, the term ‘white’ is contingent upon socio-historical and political contexts, but is used in this article to refer to North Americans of European ancestry who carry with them the privileges of whiteness.

5. The interpretive turn can be understood as an epistemological and ontological shift away from positivism, wherein it is recognized that there is no singular reality or meaning that is objectively ‘out there’ to be discovered. Interpretivism posits that there are multiple realities and meanings that are contextually contingent and socially constructed. Thus, knowledge must be brought forward in ways that centralize local contexts of meaning making and draw attention to the subjective and socially constructed nature of meaning. In relation, the cultural turn can be understood as a shift towards the centring of culture in knowledge production. Moving away from traditional research approaches that present people and their knowledges as independent and autonomous, the cultural turn emphasizes their cultural embeddedness (Ryba et al., 2010). The cultural turn thus links to the interpretive in demanding culturally contextualized meaning-making processes, where the aim is to facilitate meaningful understandings of diverse (often marginalized) identities and experiences.