Merely Identity: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Sport

Abstract

Some commentators have suggested that the embrace of “identity politics” has gone too far and that we are now in a putative postidentity moment. Within the academy this argument has been articulated from two divergent positions. The first derides identity politics as a move away from materialist concerns. The second, more conservative, position argues that identity politics is at fault for being over-political, for reading politics into every aspect of knowledge production. I argue that identity is in fact a necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for any effective oppositional politics. I further suggest that these arguments are themselves evidence of the articulation of (white, male, and heterosexual) institutional power within the academic field of (sport) sociology. As an alternative, I argue for the renewal of a critical public sport sociology that draws upon and extends the cultural studies tradition of committed and engaged scholarship.