Umer Hussain’s sporting expertise continues in the spotlight during World Cup competition

As the 2022 FIFA World Cup continues in Qatar, it is becoming a point of global debate in global media and sporting bodies, says Assistant Professor of Business and Sports Management Umer Hussain.

He is quoted in a new article published at the Play the Game: “Umer Hussain, a sports scholar at Ripon College, argues that much of the media coverage of the Qatar World Cup in the English-speaking world ripples with an ‘epistemic violence’ that conflates the Qatari government and everyday people while transmogrifying them into an unseemly Other.

“He told me that all too often, ‘former colonial subjects’ identities are homogenized, and their behaviors are oversimplified without acknowledging the historical, socio-cultural, and economic realities.’ As an example, he pointed to ‘numerous barbaric laws in the Arab world, like homosexuality laws, that are the direct products of British colonialism.’”

Hussain noted in the article that because of immense global pressure, “Qatar ‘made meaningful changes in its human rights laws as compared to many Muslim countries in the region. However, those changes are sidelined in the popular media.’”

Also, two research papers to which Hussain contributed were presented by his co-authors last week at the Sport Management Association of Australia and New Zealand (SMAANZ) annual conference held in Melbourne and hosted by the Swinburne University of Technology: “Understanding the diffusion of cricket in Qatar through the experiences of South Asian expats,” written with Sheranne Fairley of the University of Queensland; and Scoping Review of Meta-Analyses in Sport Management: The Way Forward,” written with Yiran Su of the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

(Photo: Umer Hussain is referenced onscreen at a talk in Australia)

Posted December 8, 2022 in Faculty, Research.

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