Race and the politics of knowledge in sports science
Date
2020
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
AFRICAN SUN MeDIA
Abstract
No abstract available.
Sports science in South Africa was initially a neglected backwater in academic studies, undertaken by an eccentric group of tenacious dissidents.1 Previously the term “physical education” had been used, but in 1985 the discipline’s name was changed to “human movement studies”.2 The sports science curriculum, to this day, concerns itself narrowly with the technologies of sport performance, giving little consideration to the role of ideology and politics in the field. Two exceptions are the recent book Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies, Ecologies,3 edited by Joshua I. Newman, Holly Thorpe, and David Andrews, and Malcolm MacLean's article challenging the hegemonic practices of sports science, “(Re)Occupying a Cultural Commons: Reclaiming the Labour Process in Critical Sports Studies”.4 While there has been some attention paid to the politics of knowledge in physical education at school level,5 this is not the case in the university discipline known as “sports science”. As a consequence, most sports science students have not engaged critically with “racial science”, which, as this chapter will show, remains a powerful legacy of colonial and apartheid sport into the present. The vexed article6 emerged from the Department of Sport Science of Stellenbosch University that had only recently, in 2018, been reassigned from the Faculty of Education to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. It is a study that makes the coloured body central to the discipline’s fixation on measurement; so, for example, the study cites theories that ascribe “the accelerated and unfavourable [cognitive] decline of women” to factors including “smaller head size … [and] lower cardiorespiratory fitness levels”.7 The cardiovascular health of the coloured women subjects was a factor in sampling decisions8 and their coloured bodies were lined up – as in the anthropometric studies of the past – for measurement purposes, this time for standard calculations of body mass index.9 All of this raises the critical question posed by Ronald Jackson: “How did black bodies become a problem in the first place?”10 The main purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to examine at close range the policies and practices that reinforced racism in the history of sports science in South Africa and their continuing legacy in university curricula.
Sports science in South Africa was initially a neglected backwater in academic studies, undertaken by an eccentric group of tenacious dissidents.1 Previously the term “physical education” had been used, but in 1985 the discipline’s name was changed to “human movement studies”.2 The sports science curriculum, to this day, concerns itself narrowly with the technologies of sport performance, giving little consideration to the role of ideology and politics in the field. Two exceptions are the recent book Sport, Physical Culture, and the Moving Body: Materialisms, Technologies, Ecologies,3 edited by Joshua I. Newman, Holly Thorpe, and David Andrews, and Malcolm MacLean's article challenging the hegemonic practices of sports science, “(Re)Occupying a Cultural Commons: Reclaiming the Labour Process in Critical Sports Studies”.4 While there has been some attention paid to the politics of knowledge in physical education at school level,5 this is not the case in the university discipline known as “sports science”. As a consequence, most sports science students have not engaged critically with “racial science”, which, as this chapter will show, remains a powerful legacy of colonial and apartheid sport into the present. The vexed article6 emerged from the Department of Sport Science of Stellenbosch University that had only recently, in 2018, been reassigned from the Faculty of Education to the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. It is a study that makes the coloured body central to the discipline’s fixation on measurement; so, for example, the study cites theories that ascribe “the accelerated and unfavourable [cognitive] decline of women” to factors including “smaller head size … [and] lower cardiorespiratory fitness levels”.7 The cardiovascular health of the coloured women subjects was a factor in sampling decisions8 and their coloured bodies were lined up – as in the anthropometric studies of the past – for measurement purposes, this time for standard calculations of body mass index.9 All of this raises the critical question posed by Ronald Jackson: “How did black bodies become a problem in the first place?”10 The main purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to examine at close range the policies and practices that reinforced racism in the history of sports science in South Africa and their continuing legacy in university curricula.
Description
CITATION: Cleophas, F. 2020. Race and the politics of knowledge in sports science. In: Jonathan Jansen & Cyrill Walters (eds). Fault Lines: A primer on race, science and society. Stellenbosch: SUN MeDIA. 191-202. doi:10.18820/9781928480495/12.
Keywords
Sports sciences -- South Africa, Sports history -- South Africa, Discrimination in sports -- South Africa, Race relations -- South Africa, Racism in sports -- South Africa, Sports -- Social aspects -- South Africa, Sports -- Political aspects -- South Africa, Discrimination in sports -- South Africa
Citation
Cleophas, F. 2020. Race and the politics of knowledge in sports science. In: Jonathan Jansen & Cyrill Walters (eds). Fault Lines: A primer on race, science and society. Stellenbosch: SUN MeDIA. 191-202. doi:10.18820/9781928480495/12