Thinking ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in (Dutch) Sports Policy and Research

Abstract

This chapter will be about how race and ethnicity are considered social constructs in scholarly discourses about sport, but are often treated as essentialist categories in popular and governmental discourses about sport, with consequences for racial and ethnic inequalities in society at large. A cultural studies perspective, along with social cognition theory, provides the theoretical framework within which to highlight the centrality of classification and categorisation in the popular use of the concepts of race and ethnicity and emphasise the constructive character of race and ethnicity in scholarly discourse. I will review dominant racial and ethnic categories which work in sport research as well as popular and governmental discourses about sport to construct and normalise racial/ethnic hierarchies. New ways of using race and ethnicity in sports policy and research that are more open to the temporal and situational character of race and ethnicity will be suggested.