Ethnographies of the imagined, the imaginary and the critically real: blackness, whiteness, the north of England and rugby league

Rugby league is part of the white, working‐class (male) culture of the north of England, and is a sport that is used by its supporters to (re)produce both an imagined community of nostalgic northernness and an imaginary community of locally situated hegemonically masculine belonging. The invented traditions of its origins link the game to a white, working‐class twentieth‐century culture of mills, pits, terraced houses and pubs; a culture increasingly marginalised, re‐shaped and challenged in this century. In this paper we use two medium‐term, ethnographic research projects on rugby league (one from Spracklen; the other an on‐going project by Timmins) to explore northernness, blackness, whiteness and our own roles in the ethnographies as ‘black’ and ‘white’ researchers researching ‘race’ and identity in a community that remains (but not exclusively) a place for a working‐class whiteness to be articulated. We argue that our own histories and identities are pivotal in how we are accepted as legitimate ethnographers and insiders, but those histories and identities also pose a critically real challenge to us and to those in the community of rugby league with whom we interact.