Salma Mousa on contact theory (and football).
About this podcast: Can a group with a shared religion become accepting and welcoming of another minority group? Contact theory rests on the premise that if we spend time with a person from a different group we will come to appreciate the other person and perhaps even their group. Salma Mousa questi...
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| Format: | Audio Book |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
London :
SAGE Publications, Ltd.,
2020.
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| Series: | Social science bites
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Connect to this podcast |
| Summary: | About this podcast: Can a group with a shared religion become accepting and welcoming of another minority group? Contact theory rests on the premise that if we spend time with a person from a different group we will come to appreciate the other person and perhaps even their group. Salma Mousa questions whether we can "unlock tolerance on both sides and reduce prejudice" when differing groups come together. Using the football pitch as a field site, Mousa addresses the need for experimental tests of contact in social science. Mousa has previously investigated the incidence of hate crimes in Merseyside following the signing of Egyptian soccer star Mohamed "Mo" Salah to Liverpool Football Club. Following the incident there was an encouraging decline in the number of hate crimes in the area and in anti-Muslim tweets from Liverpool FC fans. This podcast explores Mousa's experiment of football and otherness, aiming to determine whether "positive social contact across social lines can reduce prejudice, can build friendships, [and] can overall improve relationships between groups even in postwar settings, like Iraq." The experiment was conducted in partnership with a Christian community organization who were helping Christians and Muslims displaced by ISIS. They formed a team of Christian football players and randomly introduced three or four new players who were either all Muslim or Christian. They monitored the behaviors and attitudes of the original players both on and off the pitch for 6 months after the season had ended. The research takes place in the difficult context of postwar Iraq and the subjects have suffered from their experiences fleeing ISIS. The promising findings support contact theory because, as Mousa explains, "to find some evidence that these guys actually became friends and we changed something in these communities, I think is positive, especially given that these communities are persecuted and highly distrustful.". |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (18 min., 51 sec.). |
| ISBN: | 9781529776973 152977697X |