ABSTRACT
One of the main issues that has exercised the minds of sport social scientists in recent years has been the relationship between sport and social division and how that relationship interacts with relations of power in the wider society. This has led to a vast academic output concerned with such topics as race, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. When the phrase 'divided society' is used, however, it is to slightly different sources of cleavage that discussion tends to turn. Thus, the study of sport in divided societies is likely to focus on themes that include national identity, ethnicity and religious belief (Sugden and Bairner 1999a). A relatively early contribution to that particular debate came in the form of a book written by John Sugden and myself and published in 1993 — Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland. The aim of this chapter is to examine how sport in Northern Ireland and also the study of Northern Irish sport have developed since the publication of that work. This involves more than simply bringing the story (or the two partially related stories) up to date. The chapter also contains an element of self-criticism to the extent that I propose to interrogate aspects of the analysis which John Sugden and I developed in the 1993 publication. In particular, there will be more discussion than has been previously attempted of the ways in which developments in the world of sport both reflect and impact upon the power relations that currently operate within the Northern Irish context.
