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In the Zone: Female Athletes and Intercultural Contact in Iraq

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Intercultural Communication with Arabs

Abstract

This chapter examines sports as an intercultural contact zone, and the role of athletics in alleviating existing conflicts between groups within the Arab world. Based on ethnographic and interview-based data, I explore communicative practices in the context of a female sports team at an American-style university in Iraq. A combination of global, political, and cultural forces led to the formation of the American University of Iraq Sulaimani, located in Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. The displacement of more than a million Iraqis during the 2003 US military invasion resulted in a university campus populated by various Iraqi ethnic groups, including Arabs and Kurds. There are long-standing tensions between these groups, and the campus is rife with ethnic tension. Quantitative studies have described the symbolic divisions between these groups, but reveal little about the communicative processes that foster and maintain them. Using qualitative fieldwork, I analyze discursive practices used by Kurd and Arab female athletes to invoke categories of difference and similarity. In doing so, I demonstrate how the basketball court and soccer pitch functioned as intercultural contact zones that led to a degree of accord between different ethnic groups. The social processes described here illustrate how ethnic tensions were moderated through a combination of communicative practices, intercultural contact zones, and athletics.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Grinnell College, Iowa, USA

    Geoff Harkness PhD

  2. 1501 Morninside Drive, Sioux City, IA, 51106, USA

    Geoff Harkness PhD

Authors
  1. Geoff Harkness PhD
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Correspondence to Geoff Harkness PhD .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. American University of Sharjah, Sharjah, Utd.Arab.Emir.

    Rana Raddawi

Conclusion

Conclusion

For decades, scholars have documented the tensions between the various ethnic groups in Iraq. These tensions, which have persisted for centuries, were exacerbated by the 2003 US military invasion of Iraq and the subsequent displacement of Iraqi Arabs. This chapter is an attempt to explore how ethnic tensions , even those deeply engrained within populations, may be alleviated through communicative exchanges that take place in intercultural contact zones. At the AUIS, a location rife with ethnic tension, sports served as a site for such exchanges. Although playing sports together did not eliminate all ethnic discord between every member of the team, the personal transformations described by many of the players render athletics worthy of consideration in future attempts to reduce existing ethnic tensions.

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Harkness, G. (2015). In the Zone: Female Athletes and Intercultural Contact in Iraq. In: Raddawi, R. (eds) Intercultural Communication with Arabs. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-254-8_17

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