In the Zone: Female Athletes and Intercultural Contact in Iraq

摘要: This chapter examines sports as an intercultural contact zone, and the role of athletics in alleviating existing conflicts between groups within Arab world. Based on ethnographic interview-based data, I explore communicative practices context a female team at American-style university Iraq. A combination global, political, cultural forces led to formation American University Iraq Sulaimani, located Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. The displacement more than million Iraqis during 2003 US military invasion resulted campus populated by various Iraqi ethnic groups, including Arabs Kurds. There are long-standing tensions these is rife with tension. Quantitative studies have described symbolic divisions but reveal little about processes that foster maintain them. Using qualitative fieldwork, analyze discursive used Kurd athletes invoke categories difference similarity. In doing so, demonstrate how basketball court soccer pitch functioned zones degree accord different groups. social here illustrate were moderated through practices, zones, athletics.