Race And Ethnicity In Sports Essay
Introduction
National identity is a debatable issue in most modern countries since there is no single ethnic country but more than four fifth countries all over the world consist of multi-ethnic groups, as Jiang (1997) argued. Therefore it is rather difficult to define a common point of a modern country. The multi-ethnic communities also cause conflicts within a society. However sports events often provide a channel to solidify citizens in a country, like the World Cup fever. At times sports affiliation also becomes a symbol of the country, such as football in the UK. Yet sometimes it leads debate on race and ethnicity. For example, the Tebbitt speaking, “A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?” Taiwan is experiencing the ethnic conflict and sports affiliations and fandom provide a platform for consolidation and sometimes these become problems as …show more content…
well. This essay will start from the meaning of personal identity in order to establish a base for the discussion of national identity, and then introduce functions of sporting affiliations and fandom and how these functions contribute to the identity. Lastly it will draw attention to Taiwan for the purpose of evaluating the importance of sporting affiliation and fandom in Taiwan.
1. Identity
It is worth to take a deep view of the meaning of identity in order to discover the relation between national identity and sporting affiliation. Identity in general terms means the collective aspect of the set of traits by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known. As Perry (2002) argued, “there are two methods to identify the identity of one thing. One is the notion of a statement of identity (absolute identity) as opposed to a resemblance or common property statement (relative identity.).......... On the one hand, it is a universal notion; any entity, of any kind, of any category, a snail or a number, is identical with itself. On the other hand, there seems to be a family of empirical relations that we call ‘identity,’ the determination of which may take careful and painstaking investigation.” The statement demonstrates a frame of an identity requires not only the meaning of the entity oneself but also requires understanding the content of others for constructing a character in terms of relation. Simultaneously, different stratum of identities influences mutually due to the need of relative identity. Therefore it is necessary to treat the notion of the identity from personal prior to national for a clearer understanding of the importance of national identity to citizens.
1.1 Personal identity
There are a variety of theories regarding personal identity as Perry (2002) argued. To begin with, there is a classical question: ‘Who I am.’ As Mathews (2000) demonstrated, ‘identity is as the ongoing sense the self has of who it is, as conditioned through its ongoing interactions with others. Identity is how the self conceives of itself and labels itself.’ It can be assumed that people identify personal entities from variety of instruments i.e. name, appearance, behaviour etc. These instruments are labels on people for others to memorize and recall easily. Yet without the relationship these instruments are only phrases. For example, anyone can name as Rose or Jack, however in the film ‘Titanic’ the romantic story gave these two characters a unique image to the audience. This image was constructed through the two-hour experience. According to Perry (2002) cited Locke (1694) defined personal identity in terms of memory. Therefore even though they were virtual roles, the personal identity of Rose and Jack were formed.
1.2 Social and national identity
The notion of how to construct personal identity depends on the relation with others significantly. It is called collective identity, as Mathews (2000) announced, who one senses oneself to be in common with others. The collective identity contributes to a social identity. For example, the notion of the ethnic identity is to generalize the similarities regarding place, blood and religion in order to distinguish with other ethnic groups. On one hand, individuals seek intercommunity between people. On the other, they also discover one’s sense of oneself apart from others – one’s sense of who one uniquely is as an individual. The process of how to form a social identity follows the same strategy and there will be no social identity without the pursuit of personal identity. So does the form of national identity, a critical ideology in contemporary world.
As Billig (1995) announced, national identity embraces diversity of forgotten reminders like the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building. In contemporary society the nationality is a basic identity for citizen. People may not state their nationality consciously, but having a national identity implicates being located physically, legally, socially as well as emotionally. The concrete contents of national identity are as James (2006) proposed, formed by diversity of categories including history (temporality), common territoriality (spatiality), and genealogy-ethnicity (embodiment), language and address (communication), economic interest (production), institutional heritage and civic culture (organization). The sharing categories provide citizens a group memory. As explained, memories assist the construction of personal as well as national identity.
Nevertheless, to build a national identity requires more than a memory. Billig (1995) held the view that the stereotypes of nations demand stereotypes of those other nations to compare with. However, one of problems of the socialization is that all concepts adapted by members, such as values, norms and culture of their society are all universal terms: it is presumed that all societies have norms and values. Thus, the society is not unique, but is an instance of something which is universal. The image of their society, however, is a nation-state. This is one reason why people need symbols to express their national identity. Also there are other problems as Biles and Spoonley (2007) demonstrates, immigrants and internationalism bring variety of values into a nation. The former comes from different ethnic group with varied culture leads structural inequalities (economic, social and political inequalities), cultural inequalities (majorities and minorities) and cultural diversity (Bader 2007) while the latter on the contrary advocates to an integrated world through economic and politic system. Therefore it is rather difficult to acquire a general community within a country.
2. Functions of sporting affiliations and fandom
According to Coakley (2001), the sports serve a variety of social purposes such as religious rituals. One of the functions of sports is to assist to establish social values. The influential groups in wealth or politic power etc utilized sports due to their interest since sports formed. Then popular types of sports activities and organization changed with time. During the progress of industrial revolution, the opportunities for organized competitive sports and popular involvement were truly obtained by people. Albeit until recently people finally could participate in organized sports activities voluntarily, the dominant category of sports: power and performance sports, is still controlled by the powerful sphere due to their sponsorship. These sports emphasize rewards of winners and ranking. Therefore, the powerful sphere, normal consist of winners in a society, establishes values through these sports.
2.1 Toward different level of identity
These promoted powerful and performance sports dominate the contemporary society.
They involve in people’s daily life through variety of pipelines. Two of the most influential mediums are the broadcast of global mega sports events and national education system. (Coakley 2001) The former boost in people‘s life through mass media such as the live broadcast of the football world cup. Through the media, audiences acquire mutual information, interpretation and entertainment. The latter embed sports participation to people since primary school. The influence of sports on the participants then continues with their life development. It may also affect to their relationship, activities and careers. General, both of the pipelines above contribute to participant’s memories since they affect people’s experience and feeling. As explained, memories occupy a considerable character in personal identity. As a result, sports influence people’s personal identity
significantly.
Since the sports help to develop personal identity for most citizens, it also affects the identity of a society. However, as King (2003) pointed out, ‘for many, football is entertainment and therefore unworthy of serious consideration.’ The implication of sports is often neglected because of the difficulties of assuming an analytical attitude toward sports. Nevertheless, sports affiliations can be recognised as a ritual and it is necessary to critically evaluate functions of these affiliations. For instance, the social relationship between the fandom, the players, the owners of the clubs and the media among European football leagues can only be understood with these wider historic transformations. Before 1990, when football was not as commercialized as now, the sport fandom worked as an actively supportive participant toward clubs. Now the situation has changed. The fans have become more and more like customers for clubs, but the fans still need the same connection with the clubs and footballers. Therefore independent supporters associations and masculine fan culture have been developed in order to express new identities and new solidarities, which are the product of changes in relationship of society.
As to national level, the sporting affiliations are also sophisticated rituals and alter with time. Two of the most dramatic and high profile sporting affiliations are Olympic Games and football World Cup. Tomlinson and Young (2006) offered explanations concerning reasons of the considerable growth of these events. First of all, the economic and cultural globalization encouraged the diffusion of mainstream sports. The worldwide spread of certain sports established a stage for international sports competition for national pride and prestige. Secondly, the development of international sports organizations such as International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) provides a base to rule standards among countries to ensure a fair platform for competition. For example, the number of FIFA membership has increased from seven in 1904 to more than 200 now. This increase demonstrates almost every nation can participate in the competition and small nations hold more opportunities to promote themselves. Thirdly, the wide spread of the mass media promote these mega sports events, especially TV broadcast and internet all over the world, which influence people’s perception considerably. All above explanations also suggest sporting affiliations connect with identity of a nation.
As Jarvie (2006) claimed, sporting affiliations provide a symbol for a nation to cultivate national identity and sentiment. First of all, unlike the invisible geographical border, national sports teams represent a clear image of a nation during the television broadcast. With national flags and songs, uniformed players have become representatives of a nation. They are offset to the lack of community within a multicultural nation. The fandom, which consists of massive citizens, therefore discovers a mutual symbol to discuss, to pledge loyalty and to glorify their nation. Furthermore, their rivalries, especially those with historic source, provide contrast between countries and stimulate national cohesion. (Andrews, 2004) The stereotype of the performance and their fandom thus transform into images of different countries. Like personal identity, every fan seeks unique to emerge and construct their national team as well as national identity. (Appadurai, 1996 cited in Andrews, 2004) The process is so called glocalisation. (Robertson, 1992 cited in Andrews, 2004) Moreover, the participation of mega sports events provides diversity of functions. The hosting nations, normally with stronger economy, may utilize this opportunity to assert particular national ideologies, demonstrate rehabilitation and regeneration, overturn international stereotypes etc (Tomlinson and Young 2006) while participants, especially those who are struggling, may have the chance to cohere a common consensus to overcome difficulties.
2.2 The limitations
Despite of the benefits for national identity from mega events, there are still conflicts within sporting affiliations in a nation. As Burdsey (2006) accounted for, at times different sports categories bring opposite reaction between ethnicities in a country. For example, as English national team dominates British Asians in football, they prefer the national cricket team of the countries where their ancients came from to English team, as the ‘Tebbit test’ indicated. This situation caused certain questions of identity to British citizens, especially for young British Asian generation. They may feel confused with their multifaceted, fragmented nature of diasporic identities. Simultaneously, certain young white English also use national football team and matches to express overt racism and xenophobia. In fact it is a phenomenon resulted from multicultural society. In this circumstance sporting affiliation is more like a mirror, which reflects problems and conflicts of national identity.
3. Do sports contribute to national identity in Taiwan?
There are still other sporting affiliations which help to encourage fandom and to promote national identity, such as baseball in Taiwan. After Taiwan was taken over by Republic of China (ROC) which was originally supported by US, the government confronted a series of difficulties regarding diplomacy and nationalism including standing down from United Nations in 1971. Even worse, unlike most nations on earth, the tension between Taiwan and China leads Taiwan to be labelled as a ‘political entity’ instead of a nation or a state. (Hughes 2000) Also the national identity is a controversial issue regarding tracing for an independent country or for unification with PRC in this island. As a result, for Taiwanese it is rather difficult to develop national identity without being recognized by other countries. Yet through international sports events with less political stance, Taiwanese discovered cohesion to speak out. Baseball, which was transferred to Taiwan through the colonization by Japan since 1895, deeply roots in Taiwanese culture. Government therefore utilized it since Taiwanese children won the champion of the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport in 1969. These games, which were supposed to be friendly matches among children worldwide, became an instrument appropriated by authority to encourage citizens from those international failures through paper media. These junior players were seen as inhabitants in Taiwan Island and competitions were treated as all the challenges Taiwan faced. This illusory baseball nationalism became a critical power to consolidate the legitimacy of government during the difficult time till 1980. (Chen 2007)
As time goes by, the circumstance Taiwanese confront is far more complicated than 20 years ago. Threats from the growth of China and the lack of community in national identity together with those unsolved questions of national identity reinforce the anxiety in agonizing Taiwanese. Also the globalisation and modernisation, which promote the pursuit of personal identity, distance people from each other in Taiwan. Yet since 2005 a successful Taiwanese pitcher in New York Yankees in American Major Baseball League, whose name is Wang Chien Ming, becomes a cohesion in Taiwan and contributes to a new concept of nationalism. Through watching Wang’s pitch on satellite broadcast, Taiwanese form a new fandom and ritual within the whole nation. In this fandom, Wang’s pitch movement with Yankees uniform provides the image of Taiwan in America with the flying national flag and fan’s poster in the stadium. (Chen 2007) Therefore fans finally have discovered a symbol with rivals for mutual memories in the international media and have developed personal identity with various perceptions. All these together contribute to a collective identity in a weekly ritual followed by Wang’s entry.
Yet nowadays it is more difficult for the authority to maneuver people’s perception. One of the most crucial reasons is mass media and the Internet, which also contribute significantly to the fandom and identity. It can be assumed that without the help of mass media, sporting affiliations will not influence people’s perception like the way now. Besides, the fandom will require more time to be organized due to the difficulties of exchanging information. The other crucial factor is how and which sports are rooted in people’s life. Like baseball would not be so attractive without the historic background in Taiwan. As a byproduct of Japanese colony, baseball attracts the eye of Taiwanese by the connection with America, a critical supporter for Taiwan’s national identity. In order to achieve a sustainable development, sports need to be connected with a nation profoundly and age long.
Conclusion
In summary, national identity is constructed by absolute identity, such as name, border and flag as well as relative identity. When facing phenomenon of globalisation, which lead a unified world, nations require an instrument to differentiate from other nations and to cooperate their people. Owing to the significant influence from sporting affiliation and fandom on people’s life, they express a way to demonstrate national identity and also become increasingly important for authorities. Albeit the result is not easy to control, it is worth for every country to scrutinize its sports policy because a correct sports policy can consolidate citizens of the country. In addition, the popularity of sports worldwide helps to promote nationality to other nations.
Reference:
Journal Articles:
Biles, J. and Spoonley, P. (2007) National Identity: What It Can Tell Us about Inclusion and Exclusion [online] Vol. 9, No. 3, September 2007, Available from http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content?content=10.1080/14608940701406146 [Accessed 16th January 2008]
Bader, V. (2007) National Identities: Defending Differentiated Policies of Multiculturalism [online] Vol. 9, No. 3, September 2007, Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14608940701406187 [Accessed 17th January 2008]
Burdsey, D. (2006) Sociology: ‘If I Ever Play Football, Dad, Can I Play for England or India?’ : British Asians, Sport and Diasporic National Identities [online] Volume 40, No. 1, February 2006, Available from http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/11 [Accessed 15th January 2008]
Chen, Z.S. (2007) Culture Studies Monthly: National Sports – Baseball and the Identity of Taiwan [online] Volume 68, No. 5, May 2007, Available from http://hermes.hrc.ntu.edu.tw/csa/journal/68/journal_park681.htm#n1 [Accessed 15th January 2008]
Jiang, Y. (1997) Ethnic Justice and National Identity, Taipei: The memorial foundation of 228
Books:
Andrews, D.L. (2004) Manchester United: A Thematic Study, Abingdon: Routledge
Billig, M. (1995) Banal Nationalism, London: SAGE
Coakley, J. (2001) Sport in Society, Singapore: McGraw-Hill
Hughes, C. (2000) Post-nationalist Taiwan. In Leifer, M. et al. (eds) Asian Nationalism. London: Routledge. pp63-79
James, P. (2006) Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism, London: SAGE
Jarvie, G. (2006) Sport, Culture and Society, Oxon: Routledge
King, A. (2003) The European Ritual, Hants: Ashgate pp. 12
Mathews, G. (2000) Global Culture/ Individual Identity, London: Routledge pp. 17
Perry J. (2002) Identity, Personal Identity, And The Self, Indianapolis: Hackett pp. 9
Tomlinaon, A. and Young, C. (2006) National Identity and Global Sports Events, New York: State University of New York Press
National identity is a debatable issue in most modern countries since there is no single ethnic country but more than four fifth countries all over the world consist of multi-ethnic groups, as Jiang (1997) argued. Therefore it is rather difficult to define a common point of a modern country. The multi-ethnic communities also cause conflicts within a society. However sports events often provide a channel to solidify citizens in a country, like the World Cup fever. At times sports affiliation also becomes a symbol of the country, such as football in the UK. Yet sometimes it leads debate on race and ethnicity. For example, the Tebbitt speaking, “A large proportion of Britain's Asian population fail to pass the cricket test. Which side do they cheer for? It's an interesting test. Are you still harking back to where you came from or where you are?” Taiwan is experiencing the ethnic conflict and sports affiliations and fandom provide a platform for consolidation and sometimes these become problems as …show more content…
well. This essay will start from the meaning of personal identity in order to establish a base for the discussion of national identity, and then introduce functions of sporting affiliations and fandom and how these functions contribute to the identity. Lastly it will draw attention to Taiwan for the purpose of evaluating the importance of sporting affiliation and fandom in Taiwan.
1. Identity
It is worth to take a deep view of the meaning of identity in order to discover the relation between national identity and sporting affiliation. Identity in general terms means the collective aspect of the set of traits by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known. As Perry (2002) argued, “there are two methods to identify the identity of one thing. One is the notion of a statement of identity (absolute identity) as opposed to a resemblance or common property statement (relative identity.).......... On the one hand, it is a universal notion; any entity, of any kind, of any category, a snail or a number, is identical with itself. On the other hand, there seems to be a family of empirical relations that we call ‘identity,’ the determination of which may take careful and painstaking investigation.” The statement demonstrates a frame of an identity requires not only the meaning of the entity oneself but also requires understanding the content of others for constructing a character in terms of relation. Simultaneously, different stratum of identities influences mutually due to the need of relative identity. Therefore it is necessary to treat the notion of the identity from personal prior to national for a clearer understanding of the importance of national identity to citizens.
1.1 Personal identity
There are a variety of theories regarding personal identity as Perry (2002) argued. To begin with, there is a classical question: ‘Who I am.’ As Mathews (2000) demonstrated, ‘identity is as the ongoing sense the self has of who it is, as conditioned through its ongoing interactions with others. Identity is how the self conceives of itself and labels itself.’ It can be assumed that people identify personal entities from variety of instruments i.e. name, appearance, behaviour etc. These instruments are labels on people for others to memorize and recall easily. Yet without the relationship these instruments are only phrases. For example, anyone can name as Rose or Jack, however in the film ‘Titanic’ the romantic story gave these two characters a unique image to the audience. This image was constructed through the two-hour experience. According to Perry (2002) cited Locke (1694) defined personal identity in terms of memory. Therefore even though they were virtual roles, the personal identity of Rose and Jack were formed.
1.2 Social and national identity
The notion of how to construct personal identity depends on the relation with others significantly. It is called collective identity, as Mathews (2000) announced, who one senses oneself to be in common with others. The collective identity contributes to a social identity. For example, the notion of the ethnic identity is to generalize the similarities regarding place, blood and religion in order to distinguish with other ethnic groups. On one hand, individuals seek intercommunity between people. On the other, they also discover one’s sense of oneself apart from others – one’s sense of who one uniquely is as an individual. The process of how to form a social identity follows the same strategy and there will be no social identity without the pursuit of personal identity. So does the form of national identity, a critical ideology in contemporary world.
As Billig (1995) announced, national identity embraces diversity of forgotten reminders like the flag hanging unnoticed on the public building. In contemporary society the nationality is a basic identity for citizen. People may not state their nationality consciously, but having a national identity implicates being located physically, legally, socially as well as emotionally. The concrete contents of national identity are as James (2006) proposed, formed by diversity of categories including history (temporality), common territoriality (spatiality), and genealogy-ethnicity (embodiment), language and address (communication), economic interest (production), institutional heritage and civic culture (organization). The sharing categories provide citizens a group memory. As explained, memories assist the construction of personal as well as national identity.
Nevertheless, to build a national identity requires more than a memory. Billig (1995) held the view that the stereotypes of nations demand stereotypes of those other nations to compare with. However, one of problems of the socialization is that all concepts adapted by members, such as values, norms and culture of their society are all universal terms: it is presumed that all societies have norms and values. Thus, the society is not unique, but is an instance of something which is universal. The image of their society, however, is a nation-state. This is one reason why people need symbols to express their national identity. Also there are other problems as Biles and Spoonley (2007) demonstrates, immigrants and internationalism bring variety of values into a nation. The former comes from different ethnic group with varied culture leads structural inequalities (economic, social and political inequalities), cultural inequalities (majorities and minorities) and cultural diversity (Bader 2007) while the latter on the contrary advocates to an integrated world through economic and politic system. Therefore it is rather difficult to acquire a general community within a country.
2. Functions of sporting affiliations and fandom
According to Coakley (2001), the sports serve a variety of social purposes such as religious rituals. One of the functions of sports is to assist to establish social values. The influential groups in wealth or politic power etc utilized sports due to their interest since sports formed. Then popular types of sports activities and organization changed with time. During the progress of industrial revolution, the opportunities for organized competitive sports and popular involvement were truly obtained by people. Albeit until recently people finally could participate in organized sports activities voluntarily, the dominant category of sports: power and performance sports, is still controlled by the powerful sphere due to their sponsorship. These sports emphasize rewards of winners and ranking. Therefore, the powerful sphere, normal consist of winners in a society, establishes values through these sports.
2.1 Toward different level of identity
These promoted powerful and performance sports dominate the contemporary society.
They involve in people’s daily life through variety of pipelines. Two of the most influential mediums are the broadcast of global mega sports events and national education system. (Coakley 2001) The former boost in people‘s life through mass media such as the live broadcast of the football world cup. Through the media, audiences acquire mutual information, interpretation and entertainment. The latter embed sports participation to people since primary school. The influence of sports on the participants then continues with their life development. It may also affect to their relationship, activities and careers. General, both of the pipelines above contribute to participant’s memories since they affect people’s experience and feeling. As explained, memories occupy a considerable character in personal identity. As a result, sports influence people’s personal identity
significantly.
Since the sports help to develop personal identity for most citizens, it also affects the identity of a society. However, as King (2003) pointed out, ‘for many, football is entertainment and therefore unworthy of serious consideration.’ The implication of sports is often neglected because of the difficulties of assuming an analytical attitude toward sports. Nevertheless, sports affiliations can be recognised as a ritual and it is necessary to critically evaluate functions of these affiliations. For instance, the social relationship between the fandom, the players, the owners of the clubs and the media among European football leagues can only be understood with these wider historic transformations. Before 1990, when football was not as commercialized as now, the sport fandom worked as an actively supportive participant toward clubs. Now the situation has changed. The fans have become more and more like customers for clubs, but the fans still need the same connection with the clubs and footballers. Therefore independent supporters associations and masculine fan culture have been developed in order to express new identities and new solidarities, which are the product of changes in relationship of society.
As to national level, the sporting affiliations are also sophisticated rituals and alter with time. Two of the most dramatic and high profile sporting affiliations are Olympic Games and football World Cup. Tomlinson and Young (2006) offered explanations concerning reasons of the considerable growth of these events. First of all, the economic and cultural globalization encouraged the diffusion of mainstream sports. The worldwide spread of certain sports established a stage for international sports competition for national pride and prestige. Secondly, the development of international sports organizations such as International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) provides a base to rule standards among countries to ensure a fair platform for competition. For example, the number of FIFA membership has increased from seven in 1904 to more than 200 now. This increase demonstrates almost every nation can participate in the competition and small nations hold more opportunities to promote themselves. Thirdly, the wide spread of the mass media promote these mega sports events, especially TV broadcast and internet all over the world, which influence people’s perception considerably. All above explanations also suggest sporting affiliations connect with identity of a nation.
As Jarvie (2006) claimed, sporting affiliations provide a symbol for a nation to cultivate national identity and sentiment. First of all, unlike the invisible geographical border, national sports teams represent a clear image of a nation during the television broadcast. With national flags and songs, uniformed players have become representatives of a nation. They are offset to the lack of community within a multicultural nation. The fandom, which consists of massive citizens, therefore discovers a mutual symbol to discuss, to pledge loyalty and to glorify their nation. Furthermore, their rivalries, especially those with historic source, provide contrast between countries and stimulate national cohesion. (Andrews, 2004) The stereotype of the performance and their fandom thus transform into images of different countries. Like personal identity, every fan seeks unique to emerge and construct their national team as well as national identity. (Appadurai, 1996 cited in Andrews, 2004) The process is so called glocalisation. (Robertson, 1992 cited in Andrews, 2004) Moreover, the participation of mega sports events provides diversity of functions. The hosting nations, normally with stronger economy, may utilize this opportunity to assert particular national ideologies, demonstrate rehabilitation and regeneration, overturn international stereotypes etc (Tomlinson and Young 2006) while participants, especially those who are struggling, may have the chance to cohere a common consensus to overcome difficulties.
2.2 The limitations
Despite of the benefits for national identity from mega events, there are still conflicts within sporting affiliations in a nation. As Burdsey (2006) accounted for, at times different sports categories bring opposite reaction between ethnicities in a country. For example, as English national team dominates British Asians in football, they prefer the national cricket team of the countries where their ancients came from to English team, as the ‘Tebbit test’ indicated. This situation caused certain questions of identity to British citizens, especially for young British Asian generation. They may feel confused with their multifaceted, fragmented nature of diasporic identities. Simultaneously, certain young white English also use national football team and matches to express overt racism and xenophobia. In fact it is a phenomenon resulted from multicultural society. In this circumstance sporting affiliation is more like a mirror, which reflects problems and conflicts of national identity.
3. Do sports contribute to national identity in Taiwan?
There are still other sporting affiliations which help to encourage fandom and to promote national identity, such as baseball in Taiwan. After Taiwan was taken over by Republic of China (ROC) which was originally supported by US, the government confronted a series of difficulties regarding diplomacy and nationalism including standing down from United Nations in 1971. Even worse, unlike most nations on earth, the tension between Taiwan and China leads Taiwan to be labelled as a ‘political entity’ instead of a nation or a state. (Hughes 2000) Also the national identity is a controversial issue regarding tracing for an independent country or for unification with PRC in this island. As a result, for Taiwanese it is rather difficult to develop national identity without being recognized by other countries. Yet through international sports events with less political stance, Taiwanese discovered cohesion to speak out. Baseball, which was transferred to Taiwan through the colonization by Japan since 1895, deeply roots in Taiwanese culture. Government therefore utilized it since Taiwanese children won the champion of the Little League Baseball World Series in Williamsport in 1969. These games, which were supposed to be friendly matches among children worldwide, became an instrument appropriated by authority to encourage citizens from those international failures through paper media. These junior players were seen as inhabitants in Taiwan Island and competitions were treated as all the challenges Taiwan faced. This illusory baseball nationalism became a critical power to consolidate the legitimacy of government during the difficult time till 1980. (Chen 2007)
As time goes by, the circumstance Taiwanese confront is far more complicated than 20 years ago. Threats from the growth of China and the lack of community in national identity together with those unsolved questions of national identity reinforce the anxiety in agonizing Taiwanese. Also the globalisation and modernisation, which promote the pursuit of personal identity, distance people from each other in Taiwan. Yet since 2005 a successful Taiwanese pitcher in New York Yankees in American Major Baseball League, whose name is Wang Chien Ming, becomes a cohesion in Taiwan and contributes to a new concept of nationalism. Through watching Wang’s pitch on satellite broadcast, Taiwanese form a new fandom and ritual within the whole nation. In this fandom, Wang’s pitch movement with Yankees uniform provides the image of Taiwan in America with the flying national flag and fan’s poster in the stadium. (Chen 2007) Therefore fans finally have discovered a symbol with rivals for mutual memories in the international media and have developed personal identity with various perceptions. All these together contribute to a collective identity in a weekly ritual followed by Wang’s entry.
Yet nowadays it is more difficult for the authority to maneuver people’s perception. One of the most crucial reasons is mass media and the Internet, which also contribute significantly to the fandom and identity. It can be assumed that without the help of mass media, sporting affiliations will not influence people’s perception like the way now. Besides, the fandom will require more time to be organized due to the difficulties of exchanging information. The other crucial factor is how and which sports are rooted in people’s life. Like baseball would not be so attractive without the historic background in Taiwan. As a byproduct of Japanese colony, baseball attracts the eye of Taiwanese by the connection with America, a critical supporter for Taiwan’s national identity. In order to achieve a sustainable development, sports need to be connected with a nation profoundly and age long.
Conclusion
In summary, national identity is constructed by absolute identity, such as name, border and flag as well as relative identity. When facing phenomenon of globalisation, which lead a unified world, nations require an instrument to differentiate from other nations and to cooperate their people. Owing to the significant influence from sporting affiliation and fandom on people’s life, they express a way to demonstrate national identity and also become increasingly important for authorities. Albeit the result is not easy to control, it is worth for every country to scrutinize its sports policy because a correct sports policy can consolidate citizens of the country. In addition, the popularity of sports worldwide helps to promote nationality to other nations.
Reference:
Journal Articles:
Biles, J. and Spoonley, P. (2007) National Identity: What It Can Tell Us about Inclusion and Exclusion [online] Vol. 9, No. 3, September 2007, Available from http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content?content=10.1080/14608940701406146 [Accessed 16th January 2008]
Bader, V. (2007) National Identities: Defending Differentiated Policies of Multiculturalism [online] Vol. 9, No. 3, September 2007, Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14608940701406187 [Accessed 17th January 2008]
Burdsey, D. (2006) Sociology: ‘If I Ever Play Football, Dad, Can I Play for England or India?’ : British Asians, Sport and Diasporic National Identities [online] Volume 40, No. 1, February 2006, Available from http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/11 [Accessed 15th January 2008]
Chen, Z.S. (2007) Culture Studies Monthly: National Sports – Baseball and the Identity of Taiwan [online] Volume 68, No. 5, May 2007, Available from http://hermes.hrc.ntu.edu.tw/csa/journal/68/journal_park681.htm#n1 [Accessed 15th January 2008]
Jiang, Y. (1997) Ethnic Justice and National Identity, Taipei: The memorial foundation of 228
Books:
Andrews, D.L. (2004) Manchester United: A Thematic Study, Abingdon: Routledge
Billig, M. (1995) Banal Nationalism, London: SAGE
Coakley, J. (2001) Sport in Society, Singapore: McGraw-Hill
Hughes, C. (2000) Post-nationalist Taiwan. In Leifer, M. et al. (eds) Asian Nationalism. London: Routledge. pp63-79
James, P. (2006) Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism, London: SAGE
Jarvie, G. (2006) Sport, Culture and Society, Oxon: Routledge
King, A. (2003) The European Ritual, Hants: Ashgate pp. 12
Mathews, G. (2000) Global Culture/ Individual Identity, London: Routledge pp. 17
Perry J. (2002) Identity, Personal Identity, And The Self, Indianapolis: Hackett pp. 9
Tomlinaon, A. and Young, C. (2006) National Identity and Global Sports Events, New York: State University of New York Press