Modernization of Athletics in Oman: Between Global Pressures and Local Dynamics

The International Journal of the History of Sport

ISSN: 0952-3367 (Print) 1743-9035 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fhsp20

Abdul Rahim AL DROUSHI & Ian HENRY

To cite this article: Abdul Rahim AL DROUSHI & Ian HENRY (2020) Modernization of Athletics in Oman: Between Global Pressures and Local Dynamics, The International Journal of the History of Sport, 37:sup1, 3-25, DOI: 10.1080/09523367.2020.1734565 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2020.1734565

Published online: 15 Apr 2020.

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fhsp20 THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 2020, VOL. 37, NO. S1, 3–25 https://doi.org/10.1080/09523367.2020.1734565

ASIAN JOURNAL OF SPORT HISTORY & CULTURE Modernization of Athletics in Oman: Between Global Pressures and Local Dynamics

Abdul Rahim AL DROUSHIa and Ian HENRYb aDepartment of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman; bSchool of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences, Loughborough University, Loughborough, UK

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS This paper addresses the question of how the development of Modernization theory; the sport of athletics in Oman has been constructed in the dis- Oman; athletics; discourse course of six key actors drawn from five different stakeholder analysis; life history analysis groups engaged in the development process, and of key documents published by related governmental and sporting bodies. In methodological terms the study employs life history interviews conducted with the stakeholders, critically evaluating the nature of discourse in the career history accounts of the six interviewees and of the content of related documentation. The research uses the vehicle of the interviewees’ construction of career histories, and the documents, to analyse their explanations of the nature of, and rationale for, policy change, perceptions of the significance of these changes, and the agents and structures which assisted or impeded them. The analysis highlights three principal discourses, namely a discourse of tradition, a religious discourse, and a discourse of modernization with sub-discourses under this third category of equity, professionalization, and nation building. The modernization of sport in Oman, while sharing features with modernization processes elsewhere also takes on features which are unique to the context of Omani culture in line with the characterisation of the development of multiple or plural modernities.

This paper investigates discourses on the development of track and field athletics in the Sultanate of Oman since 1970, a period which has witnessed the ostensibly rapid and profound modernization of Omani society. In doing so the paper pursues three main objectives. The first is to trace accounts of the emergence, development and current status of athletics in Oman from the perspective of six key stakeholders centrally involved in these processes and from key documents relating to athletics and the emerging governance of the sport. The second is to examine the process of the modernization of athletics itself and its relationship with debates concerning modernity and the authenticity of Omani culture, in other words in discourses concerning local and global dynamics. The third objective is to uncover how discourses on modernity and authenticity, globalism, localism and glocalism, have

CONTACT Abdul Rahim Al Droushi [email protected] Department of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O.Box: 494, Al Khoudh, 123 Oman This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article. ß 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 4 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY shaped/constructed/legitimized the modernization of athletics in Oman in different phases of contemporary Omani history. Oman as a country has been subject to remarkable processes of economic, social and technological modernization in the period since 1970 when the current Sultan, Qaboos Bin Said Al Said, came to power ousting his father Said Bin Taimur. Sultan Qaboos inherited a nation which was relatively closed to the external world and had been subject to internal struggles. The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman, as it had previously been named, had effectively consisted of two contrasting cultural and political traditions: the coastal tradition of Muscat, which had been directly ruled by the sultan, was engaged in international trade and thus was more outward looking, cosmopolitan and, in relative terms, more ‘secular’, than the insular tradition of the interior (traditionally known as ‘Oman proper’), which had been under the political and religious control of the Ibadi imamate.1 The struggle with the conservative imamate which had, from the late nineteenth century, exercised de facto control over the northern interior of the country (where oil was discovered in the early 1950s) ended when the imamate was defeated by Omani forces (with British backing) in 1955, though resistance in exile by the imamate continued with support from Saudi Arabia.2 On coming to power Sultan Qaboos renamed the country the Sultanate of Oman emphasizing the integration of the territories of the coast and the interior, and this was further reinforced by the defeat of a communist-led rebellion in Dhofar, supported by the government of Yemen, in the early stages of the new sultan’s rule in 1976.3 The emergence of sport in Oman took place in this initially turbulent period and is bound up with modernization processes, though modernization, we shall argue, took on specifically Omani forms and characteristics. In tracing the development of modern sport, specifically track and field athletics, within the context of Omani modernization, this paper will address the extent to which sport is shaped by locally specific and global modernizing factors.

Theoretical Background Modernization and Modernity

The concepts of modernity and modernization have been a continuing focus of analysis of western social science. Modernity, characterized by the hegemony of notions of science forged in the European Enlightenment (with its twin vectors of rationalism and empiricism), and by the growth of industrial capitalism in western nation-states, has been deemed to be a western phenomenon.4 Indeed so successful had been the advancement of modernization in the west, that forms of modernization theory have tended to associate modernizing trends with the onward march of specifically western models of ‘progress’.5 Modernization is defined by scholars such as Giddens6 in part in terms of key characteristics, including scientific advances in industrial production; capitalism - the development of an economic system by which privately invested capital can generate profits; the state and the political system, which provides the organizational and ideological framework by which economic and industrial systems can operate, in the THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 5 form of elected government (national and local), a judiciary, police, and armed forces, an education system, and health and social services. Wucherpfenning & Deutsch (2009) identify the key features of modernity as those of industrial production, industrially produced wealth, an educated and urbanized population, an open society and an emerging social structure with a developing middle class, with these social conditions being seen as conducive to the development of political forms of liberal democracy. The core argument of modernization theories, that there is, or has been, an inevitable convergence of modern societies around these key characteristics, and a growing and inevitable direction of travel of countries as a product of modernization, has however been subjected to fundamental critique. Fourie, for example, argues that ‘traditional theories of modernization … are criticized for two fundamental teleological assumptions, namely that modernity is a single, unified homogenizing process, and that the West is the yardstick by which success is measured … and furthermore that such theories promote the view that ‘the growth of institutions such as liberal democracy, capitalism and the bureaucratic state are inevitable in “modernizing” societies throughout the world and will naturally be accompanied by individualism, a secular world-view and other cultural dimensions’.7 The rejection of those teleological assumptions has led some authors (in particular Eisenstadt and his colleagues) to argue that modernity does not take a single form, but will vary in nature from one context to another, and thus that it is more appropriate to refer to ‘multiple modernities’ in which modernizing tendencies take on culturally specific forms in different societies.8

The ‘Modernization’ of Oman

This paper considers the nature of the development of the sport of track and field athletics in Oman, a phenomenon which is concurrent with (and intrinsically bound up with) modernization processes in the Omani context, a context which is markedly different to the circumstances prevailing in other ‘modern’ societies. The beginnings of the modernization of Oman are relatively easy to pinpoint, according to most western observers, as expressed in the discourse of government, and evident in the common sense understandings of contemporary Omanis,9 since many of the features of modernity have been brought into play in the period since 1970 and have, in large part, been enabled by the emerging oil economy.10 This period is commonly referred to as the period of the ‘Omani Renaissance’. The succession of Sultan Qaboos in 1970 to the role of Sultan is described as the beginning of the Omani Renaissance by government sources and social commentators. The new Sultan from the point of his accession in 1970 set about a programme of economic and social development. The achievement of the visible and common sense modernity so evident in Oman today has indeed been quite remarkable. The familiar story of a country that was considered ‘medieval’ in its social arrangements and lack of infrastructure (paved roads, schools, hospitals and so on) in the mid-twentieth century, but which was transformed through the investment of oil revenues after 1970 into the self-evidently ‘developed’ nation of 2015, is, in many respects, entirely true.11 6 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY

However, this ‘common sense’ notion of modernity is one which is accompanied by features of Omani modernity with greater longevity. The existence, for example, of a hereditary monarchy, though clearly predating the period of the Omani Renaissance is nevertheless a relatively recent phenomenon, dating back to the eighteenth century, at a point in time when Oman was developing its trading role in an increasingly globalizing capitalist economy. These features are, Jones and Ridout argue, characteristics of distinctively Omani modernity in which contradictions and tensions are lived through. Modernity in Oman is … . living with tensions between urban and rural patterns of life (and in the case of many Omanis, moving on a weekly basis between them) or negotiating the place of religious observance and practice in relation to a dominant global secularism.12 While modernity in Oman has shared certain features with other Gulf states, in particular the economic impact of the petrochemical industries, the case of modernization in each of those states is somewhat different. Aspects of industrialization, politics, culture and religion have been played out differently in different Arab, Gulf, and Muslim societies. Aghacy characterizes modernity (Al Hadatha)as‘a totalising ideology grounded in Western cultural norms and beliefs’), but one which leaves space for what Aghacy refers to as ‘selective indigenous opposition’ to challenge modernity.13 This indigenous opposition varies from one state to another, and thus the form of modernity emerging in each state varies significantly.

The Omani Renaissance and its Impact on Omani Society

Oman has been viewed as a unique state in the Arabian Peninsula.14 Historically, the tribal basis of social structure, the imamate and Ibadi religious tradition, and the struggle between Omanis and foreigners for the control of its coastal provinces, have been major themes of Oman as a state.15 When Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said came to the throne, he faced numerous challenges, including, in particular, from the imamate forces (defeated prior to his succession but still offered shelter in neighbouring Saudi Arabia), and an insurrection in the south of Oman in the province of Dhofar. However, the strategy of opening up to the wider political world adopted by Qaboos (with Oman gaining membership of the United Nations in 1971 and the Arab League in 1973) fostered the international legitimacy of Omani control of its border.16 Peterson17 argues that the subsequent political and economic development in the sultanate was even more significant than such development in the other GCC states. The country’s infrastructure and social services began to take on a very modern shape. A plethora of new jobs were created, and many Omanis who had left the country during the previous Sultan’s era, returned to work in Oman. Over the following two decades, Oman achieved an unprecedented level of economic and social development, reflected especially in the raising of the standard of living of its people.18 Many projects in various regions in Oman have contributed to the development of the modern Omani state. In 1983, the first industrial estate was established in Rusayil THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 7

(Muscat). Today, there are industrial estates in the city of Sur in the east of Oman as well as Sohar in the north. The capital, Muscat, has expanded. The Special Economic Zone in Duqm (SEZAD), the biggest special economic zone in the Middle East region, was established by Royal Decree No 119/2011 in 2011. The SEZAD vision is to serve as ‘a regional hub for maritime transportation and logistics services; a safe haven for investment in export processing industries based on petrochemicals, mineral resources and fisheries; and an attractive tourism destination on the Arab Sea’.19 The first airport was built in Al Seeb in Muscat in 1974 while the new international airport was opened in 2018. Several tourist projects, such as the Wave, an integrated tourism complex, are planned to promote the sultanate to the world. The Muscat Festival was initiated in 1998 and is held annually in January. The Royal Opera House, Muscat was established by a royal decree and the vision is for the Opera House to serve as a centre of cultural excellence. While the Sultanate has pushed forward with modernization, it has taken considerable care to preserve the Omani image and identity, for example through its sustainable tourism strategy.20 Archaeological and cultural monuments have been carefully preserved.21 In addition, Omani laws and regulations have sought to protect tradition, requiring, for example, male students at public schools as well as male employees of governmental organizations to wear the Omani traditional dress (dishdasha) and requiring women to wear appropriate clothing consistent with the Islamic Shari’a. Nevertheless, while the country’s Basic Law declares Islam to be the state religion, it protects the right of individuals to practice a number of other religions as long as doing so does not ‘disrupt public order or contradict morals’.22 In terms of Oman’s foreign policy, it represents a special case among GCC states. It can be argued that the core principles of Omani foreign policy are moderation, the balance between opposing viewpoints, and a rejection of any conflict.23 Oman has, for example, had good relations with Iraq since 1976, even though it has also maintained diplomatic relations with Iran since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran and managed to sustain these relations during the Iran-Iraq war.24 The country continues to maintain very strong diplomatic and economic relations with Iran despite the tensions between the GCC states and Iran. Oman also has played a crucial role in moderating relations between Iran, the Gulf states, and the US. Moreover, despite the pressures of recent conflicts in the region, Oman has retained this ‘unique regional foreign policy characterized by independence, pragmatism and moderation’.25

Sport, the State and Modernity in Contemporary Oman

Modern sports began to emerge in Oman only after the 1970s. However, state planning of sport in Oman has taken a different approach from that in the other Gulf States, which have invested heavily in hosting major and mega sports events.26 A review of the types of major sports events that the Sultanate has hosted recently reveals an approach aimed at raising the profile of Omani history and culture. For example, the largest international sporting event to be hosted in Oman was the 8 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY second Asian Beach Games in 2010. In the context of staging this event, Omanis celebrated their rich maritime history, making use of Oman’s long and attractive coastline (about 3,165 km). The Handball World Beach competition hosted in July 2012 and the opening leg of the 2012 Extreme Sailing Series (the global tour in Muscat) with the participation of two Omani teams27 provides further illustration of the strategy of the Ministry of Sport Affairs to use Omani maritime history to promote Oman’s heritage, and its tourism potential. There is no clear evidence of the exact date of the introduction of athletics to Oman. Several sources indicate that there was an initiative to establish an athletics federation in the early 1980s. The Oman Athletic Association (OAA) was established in 1982, and Sheikh Saud Al Rawahi, a prominent figure in Omani sports history, was appointed as the chairman of the association.28 The OAA joined the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in 1982. In the same year, the first reported Omani participation in an international athletics event took place in the Asian Athletics Championship in New Delhi. On 14th December 1985, the Ministerial Decree 62/85 ‘re-announced’ the founding of the association.29 Two years later, the OAA joined the Asian Athletics Association (AAA) and the Arab Athletics Association. Currently, the sport of athletics represents one of the strongest contenders for Omani success in international sports competition. Oman’s medal tally from the Asian Games has to date been one gold and three bronze medals. All of these medals were gained by athletes in track and field athletics, a sport which had first appeared in Oman only in the 1970s, and thus Omani athletes had begun to make an international impact in less than a decade. The development of Athletics in Oman is summarized in Table 1.

Methodology This paper addresses the question of how the development of the sport of athletics in Oman has been constructed in the discourse of key actors drawn from different stakeholder groups which have been engaged in the development process, and in key documents published by governmental and sporting bodies. The overall approach adopted is consistent with what Booth30 terms a deconstructive approach to historiography which fosters insight into the power relations promoted in historical accounts, and the nature of the interests promoted in such accounts. In terms of methods, the study principally employs a life history perspective, accessing historical accounts via the career history narratives of six interviewees drawn from six different stakeholder groups, together with analysis of the discourses evident in official documents of relevant governmental and sporting bodies. According to Miller,31 the life history perspective is about the interplay between the actor and social structure and provides evidence (or accounts of) how the individual has negotiated her/his path through a changing social structure (and how they perceive other individuals as having done so). In this study, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with a small number of interviewees who have had significant experience in the development of athletics in the Omani context. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 9

Table 1. Key moments in the chronology of the development of athletics in Oman cited by interviewees. Participation in international Performance milestones of Dates Policy initiatives competition Omani athletes 1977–1981 The first reported Omani participation at the Gulf level, which was in cross-country events in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi 1982 The Omani Athletics The first reported Omani Association (OAA) participation in an joined the International international athletics event Association of Athletics took place in the Asian Federations (IAAF) Athletics Championship in New Delhi 1984 The Athletics national team was part of the first participation by Oman in the Olympics in Los Angeles 1985 The Ministerial Decree 62/ Mohammed Al Malki, the 400 m 85 ‘re-announced’ the sprinter, wins Oman’s first ever founding of the OAA international medal at the Asian Athletics Championship in Indonesia. 1986 An English coach Al Malki wins 400 m bronze medal appointed to coach the in Seoul at the Asian Athletics national athletics team. Championships. 1987 The OAA joined the Asian Al Malki wins 400 m gold medal at Athletics Association an IAAF international meeting (AAA) and the Arab in Hungary. Athletics Association 1992 Omani Athletics national team participates in the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona 1996 Omani Athletics national team participates in the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta 1998 The men’s4Â 100 m relay team wins bronze medal at the Asian Athletics Championship in Bangkok 2000 The emergence of Oman’s youth and women’s athletic teams and their participation at the regional (Gulf) level 2004 Omani Athletics national team participates in the 2004 Olympics in Athens 2005 Omani women’s athletics team’s first international participation at the West Asian Athletic Championship in Qatar. Wins the 4 Â 100 m relay bronze medal 2006 Omani youth cross-country team wins the Gulf championships 2007 Omani Womens’ Athletics national team wins five medals in the Gulf Women’s Championships in Bahrain 2007 The 4 Â 100 m men’s relay team silver medal in the Arab Athletics Championship in Egypt (continued) 10 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY

Table 1. Continued. Participation in international Performance milestones of Dates Policy initiatives competition Omani athletes 2008 The Omani youth team won bronze medal for the 4 Â 100 m relay in the Arab Athletics Championship in Tunisia 2008 Buthaina Al Yaqoobi, a 100 m sprinter, becomes first Omani female athlete to participate in the Olympics in Beijing 2009 The Omani youth cross-country team wins silver and bronze medals in the Gulf Athletics Championship in Qatar. 2010 Barakat Al Harthi, the fastest Omani man, wins bronze medal in 100 m at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou 2010 The Oman mens’ 4 Â 100 m relay team wins silver at the Asian Grand Prix 2010 Barakat Al Harthi wins 100 m silver at the Asian Grand Prix 2012 Oman Athletics national team participates in London Olympic Games with 100m sprinter, Shinoona Al Habsi, becoming the Oman’s second female Olympic athlete. 2016 Oman Athletics national team participates in Rio Olympic Games with the participation of Mazoun Al Alawi becoming the third 100m female sprinter to represent Oman at the Olympics

Document analysis was also employed in this study to reveal discourses promoted in such sources. A document can be defined as ‘any symbolic representation that can be recorded or retrieved for analysis’.32 While it is generally argued in qualitative research that the value and strength of document analysis lies in its reinforcement of evidence generated from other methods,33 our concern is to identify and evaluate the development or reinforcement of particular discursively produced perspectives within key documents which complement or counter the perspectives of our interviewees. The focus of the interviews is guided by the life experience of the interviewees, more specifically insights gained through the course of their careers about the development of athletics in the Omani context, the emergence and impact of structures and the nature of individual agency. Thus although the key themes discussed with interviewees are a reflection of their biographies and specifically their work careers, these careers are a vehicle for the discussion rather than the object of the analysis. This research is not about the biographies of the individuals concerned but it uses the vehicle of the interviewees’ construction of their career histories, their experience of policy change, their perceptions of the significance of these changes, of the actors involved, and the structures which assisted or impeded them, and of the rationales for such policy change. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 11

There are several approaches that fall under the heading of biographical research and life histories.34 Miller35 identifies three key approaches: realist, neo-positivist, and narrative. The realist approach assumes that actors’ viewpoints represent an aspect of ‘objective reality’. On the other hand, a neo-positivist approach focuses on areas of theoretical concern that require testing hypothetical predictions for reported or observed phenomena. Neither of these reflects the approach adopted in this research. We are more concerned with the actor’s perception as a subjective view which represents a mediation between perception and structure which Miller characterizes as the narrative approach to life histories.36 The narrative account depends on the respondents’ development of their viewpoints during the telling of their life story and thus is not a matter of truth as correspondence (to externally verifiable facts or observations) nor a matter of establishing coherence with features of other accepted accounts, but is rather more a matter of identifying the extent to which an account is coherent (or incoherent) internally or with the accounts of others, and to what extent accounts promote certain interests. Smaller numbers of respondents are selected in life story/history research than for most other kinds of interview-based investigation.37 The present study requires an examination of selected actors’ work history in the sports sector in Oman since the 1970s. These interviewees were thus selected to reflect the perspectives and insights of those with longer-term work experiences, covering significant periods in the development of Omani sport, and reflecting different roles within the sports system. Specifically, six interviewees were selected who had worked in one or more of the following five stakeholder roles of sports expert, senior administrator, coaching staff, academic analyst, and athlete, across the period since the 1970s (Table 2). Interviews with stakeholders lasted between one and two hours, and took the approach of asking respondents to recount their involvement in the world of Omani athletics, and how the domain of athletics in Oman had been formed, shaped and changed, including how the development of athletics affected (and was affected by) change in wider Omani society. Thus it was not the interviewees’ biographies per se that the questions asked were seeking to reveal, but the nature of the discourses employed in developing the narratives themselves. Given the nature of the study, its goals and the manner in which data is collected, a form of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) provided an appropriate approach to data analysis. According to Wodak and Meyer,38 the paradigm of CDA is characterized by the following: first, the approach is problem-oriented, which requires an interdisciplinary and eclectic orientation; second, demystifying power and ideologies is a common interest that CDA seeks to achieve through ‘systematic and retroductable investigation of semiotic data’; third, CDA researchers try to make their own positions explicit while ‘retaining their respective scientific methodologies and while remaining self-reflective of their own research process’. Moreover, Fairclough and Wodak39 have illustrated how CDA characteristically intervenes on the side of dominated groups and against the dominating groups and is thus emancipatory as an approach. There are many versions of CDA, however, they all share certain elements such as their concern with social power, which is what makes their analysis ‘critical’. 12 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY

Table 2. Life/career history interviewees and their background. Interviewee No. Gender Position Experience/years 1 F Sport Administrator 15 2 M Athletics coach/former athlete 20 3 M Sport expert/former athlete 24 4 F Former athlete 8 5 M Academic personnel (sports science/coaching studies) 20 6 M Senior staff government department/former administrator 18

They also promote ‘looking outside of the text or talk to critically examine the social and political context of discourse’.40 Discourse analysis as field incorporates a wide range of methodological approaches.41 The protocol adopted in our case in developing analysis of the data from interviews with the stakeholders and the policy documents reviewed, involved four principal stages: careful and repeated readings of the transcripts and documents; identification and coding of significant vocabulary and statements; the grouping together of related (similar/contrasting) codes into themes relating to the development of athletics in terms of what each of the actors described as having happened, when, why, and how, and involving who; and explication of the ideological commonalities and contrasts in each of the themes, and their implications for the nature of development and its implications for relations of power between the various stakeholder groups.

Stakeholder and Document-Based Accounts of the Development of Athletics in Oman The Development of Early International Success

The first reported Omani international participation in athletics took place in the Asian Athletics Championship in New Delhi in 1982.42 However, there are also claims that conflict with this date. Al Kindi43 provides detailed information about participation in three earlier international competitions at the Gulf level, which were cross-country events in Kuwait, Bahrain, and Abu Dhabi in 1977, 1979 and 1981 respectively. Such participation suggests that there may have been a body that was responsible for athletics and that managed Omani participation in competitions before the recognized establishment date. The Athletics national teams was part of the first participation by Oman in the Olympics, which took place in Los Angeles in 1984. One year later, Mohammed Al Malki, the 400 m sprinter, won the first Omani international medal in the Asian Athletics Championship in Indonesia. However, it was the bronze medal that Al Malki secured in Seoul at the Asian Athletics Championships in 1986 that really began to attract public attention to athletics.44 These achievements contributed to the development of a successful approach to athlete training and support by the OAA. Interviewee 1 (Sports Administrator) narrates the story as follows: In 1986, due to the bronze medal that Mohammed Al Malki won at Asian level, an English coach was appointed to coach him and this coach started to organize and establish a system that has been used in general to manage other athletics teams, and THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 13 that resulted in a larger number of athletes who wanted to be part of the national team. On the one hand, Al Malki’s achievement brought investment which benefited other national athletes and provided a more ‘scientific’ and ‘effective’ (thus modern) system for organizing national track and field athletes through the external coach (note the reporting of the interviewee that this was an English coach, involving the importation of western expertise), with the prospect of success on the international stage attracting more athletes to join the Oman athletics national team. Training of local athletics coaching staff as well as administrators was among OAA’s priorities especially for former athletes. Most Omanis interested in sport coaching and administration are interested in training courses and workshops for football due to the increase of football sport clubs. Overall, the development of Omani personnel as sports administrators is apparent in the Omani sport sector. However, it is not the same for Omani coaching staff. Interviewee 5 (Academic personnel) observed that ‘Coaching as a profession for Omanis has not reached an acceptable level. It is very important to look at sport coaching as a career instead of only a part time job in Oman’. In 1988, Al Malki maintained his outstanding level of performance and won a gold medal in the 400 m in one of the IAAF’s international championships in Hungary.45 Not only did he gain the gold but also his record in these championships (44.56 seconds) remained unbroken in Asia for 27 years. In the same year, the Oman Athletics team participated in its second Olympic Games in Seoul. Mohammed Al Malki made history again and recorded the best performance to date of an Omani athlete in the Olympics when he qualified for the 400 m final, ranking him among the eight best sprinters in the world in this event. The 1980s witnessed the emergence of domestic athletics championships, and by the late 1980s, there was already a recognized system for domestic athletic championships that involved sprint and distance running events, cross-country running, discus, javelin, shot put, long jump, triple jump, and high jump. The Ministry of Education’s contribution in this period was the integrating of track and field competitions into the annual school sports tournaments. This step helped to spread exposure to, and participation in, the sport across Oman. Athletics continued to develop during the 1990s. At the domestic level, athletics championships took place in three different forms. The first was between sports clubs that had athletics as part of their sporting programmes. These championships were organized at the regional level, with the champions in each region qualifying for the finals in Muscat. Interviewee 5 (Academic personnel) reported a second type of athletic championship was between special institutions and involved participation by four teams; the Royal Police of Oman, the Royal Army of Oman, the Royal Defence, and a Schools team. The third form of athletic championships at this point was an open championship competition that was organized on a monthly basis. The aim of this format was to create opportunities for athletes who could not participate in the other championships. In addition, it provided opportunities for the OAA to identify new talent to feed into the national athletics team. 14 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY

Al Malki’s impressive records in the 1980s were sealed with one of the most important achievements in Oman athletics history when he won the 400 m gold medal in the 11th Asian Games in Beijing.46 However, despite the earlier introduction of an English coach, and of his (western) system of athlete preparation, Al Malki and his teammates did not receive the higher level of support required to compete effectively at international level. In particular, the team could not organize external training camps that would help them attain a higher level of performance in international championships, and to enhance their abilities to achieve better results in, for example, the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympic Games (Almalki, 2012). Successful participation in the Asian, Arabian and Gulf Athletics Championships was an essential part of the OAA’s annual plan. In 1998, the 4 Â 100 m relay team won the bronze medal in the Asian Athletics Championship in Bangkok. As a result of the sustained performance by Omani athletes over these first two decades, athletics won better recognition in Oman. Members of the media and officials also saw it as the only sport that could bring significant success to the Sultanate in regional competitions. Interviewee 3 explains the development in these two decades as follows: Given the achievements we had attained so far, our team was the only team that was expected to win medals for Oman in any international competition … so there was always a kind of assumption that the Omanis would win medals in athletics. (Sports expert) Omani athletics continued its progress in regional competition during the 2000s. What differentiates this decade, however, is the emergence of Oman’s youth and women’s athletic teams and their participation at the regional level. The women’s athletics team secured respectable results in its first international participation in the West Asian Athletic Championship in Qatar in 2005 when the 4 Â 100 m relay team won a bronze medal. In addition, the team earned a number of medals at the Women’s Athletics Championships in Bahrain in 2007 as well as in the first Gulf Women’s Tournament in Kuwait in 2008.47 The Omani youth cross-country team also won the Gulf championships in 2006, gained silver and bronze medals in the same competition in 2009, and won a bronze medal for the 4 Â 100 m relay team in the Arabian Athletics Championship in Tunisia in 2008.48 Although the focus of this article is principally on men’s track and field because this is the area in which most ‘progress’ is reported by our stakeholders, nevertheless some progress in the ‘modernizing’ of women’s sport in Oman is very evident in the narratives of our male and female stakeholders’. Analysis with a primary focus on the impact of traditional cultural, and religious, values on the development of women’s participation in community level sport and recreation in both the conservative rural communities, and in the more middle class population of the coastal region, and of women’s participation in elite sport, is provided in a separate publication.49 Sprint teams also continued their success during this period. The Oman relay team for the 4 Â 100 m won a silver medal in the Asian Grand Prix in 2010 with a team consisting of Barakat Al Harthi, Abdullah Al Souli, Fahad Al Jabri and Yahya Al Nawfali. Moreover, Barakat Al Harthi, the fastest Omani man, also won a silver medal in the 100m-sprint.50 Thus by the beginning of the current decade, Oman had begun to consolidate its position as a competitive entity in male and female, and in THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 15 male youth athletics with the development also of state support for training, preparation, and participation in international competition. There is no single specific model that Oman followed or borrowed in its progress towards the modernizing of sport. However, it can be assumed that there were lessons drawn in different sports from various other sporting cultures such as the Russian school in athletics, and the British school in football (especially in the first decades of Omani Renaissance). In addition, some of the interviewees observed that many of the experts appointed in the Ministry of Sporting Affairs (and its predecessor GOSYA) were from the Maghreb countries. The Egyptian school, though, has probably had the biggest influence. Interviewee 6 explains: ‘It is possible that the Egyptian model has been greatly affecting us since the first [PE] teachers in our schools [were Egyptians] and at the university … the Physical Education Department was run by Egyptian lecturers’. The Gulf-states sport systems, on the other hand, were mentioned by some respondents as influential in shaping the modernization of sport in Oman. Interviewee 1, for instance, believes that ‘we are more affected by Gulf versions of sport, and we compare ourselves to the Gulf states always even though that comparison is unfair sometimes, but we are strongly influenced by the Gulf’ (Female sport administrator). It is worth noting that the Gulf states were used by the majority of interviewees as a point of reference against which to compare Oman’s progress and level of engagement with the global arena of sport. In particular, Qatar, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi were the most regularly cited comparators in terms of ‘progress’ in sport.

Omani Society’s Response to the Introduction of Athletics – for Both Genders

Each of the respondents described athletics as having been accepted with little resistance in the coastal regions of Oman but with considerable resistance evident in the interior regions. There are a number of factors which they cite for this state of affairs. One of these reasons is that immigrants entering the country in recent decades introduced athletics into Oman from neighbouring countries. Modern sports adopted within Oman in the 1970s (the beginning of the period of the Omani Renaissance) were few in number so the level of competition for participation and support was not great. According to Interviewee 5 (Academic personnel), development was concentrated in the early stages in three main sports, namely football, field hockey, and shooting (which was largely confined to the military), which meant that athletics, as a new sport, had little competition and it was welcomed within the liberalizing climate established with the reign of the new Sultan. In particular, the introduction and organization of competitions attracted support, and school competitions played a significant role in encouraging students to participate in athletics. Indeed, schools encouraged students by giving student-athletes additional marks in their overall grades for different subjects.51 Thus, there was always a large number of athletes seeking such benefits. Moreover, the role of individual community leaders such as Sheikh Saud Al Rawahi and Mohammed Al Malki promoted the positive perception of athletics in Oman. However, some 16 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY respondents (Interviewee 2, athletics coach; and Interviewee 3, sports expert) suggested that athletics had been accepted more enthusiastically in the early days after its introduction than it had been subsequently in contemporary Oman. When considering the clothing requirements for athletics, it is perhaps surprising that the sport flourished during the 1970s and 1980s given the traditional Omani view of people wearing sports clothing of the type evident in the West. According to one of the respondents, there was resistance to the sport due to the fact that such clothing was not acceptable in Oman, most prominently in the interior regions in which the conservative influence of tribal communities, and of the imamate, continued to be evident. Athletics was [initially] not accepted very much. Even today, athletics is not accepted in some communities in the interior areas. I remember that there was an incident which occurred in Al Jabal Al Akhdar, the Green Mountain, where the athletes were participating in a tournament [cross-country running] and stones were thrown at them as people there were not used to seeing people running in shorts. They considered this offensive and therefore they didn’t accept it. Now the situation is different with the openness and the presence of the media. (Interviewee 2, Athletics coach) This event had offended members of the Al Jabal Al Akhdar community because the male participants were not respecting tradition in terms of men’s accepted dress code. Such traditions, which are promoted by Islamic teachings, initially influenced people’s perspectives on athletics as well as providing a disincentive to participation in the sport. However, this respondent argues that this view had subsequently evolved beyond the initial reaction of opposition and that this was due to the role of the media and the openness that Oman now enjoys in comparison to the early days of the Omani Renaissance. In addition, according to Al Kindi,52 women’s teams were being established in Oman as early as the 1980s, indicating a growing level of acceptance of western sporting dress and practices among women as well as men.

Contributions to the Development of Athletics: Individuals versus the State

The role of individuals in contributing to the diffusion and development of the athletics in Oman might be said in some instances to have outweighed the impact of the role of the state. Each of the interviewees suggested that particular individuals had played a major role in the development of Omani athletics. In particular, Interviewees 2, 3, and 5 (Athletics coach, sports expert and academic personnel, respectively) highlighted the contribution of Sheikh Saud Al Rawahi. Most of the best-known athletes in Oman’s athletic history were members of the national athletic teams of the 1980s and early 1990s, including, for example, Al Malki, Abdullah Al Anbari, Ahmed Hadeeb, Mohammed Al Hooti and Jihad Al-Sheikh. It is worth mentioning that many of those former athletes had continued to be involved with the sport up to the present day and played a crucial role in modernizing it. (For example, Mohammed Al Malki and Abdullah Al Anbari have subsequently coached different athletics teams, Jihad Al Sheikh is the current general secretary of OAA.) However, three of the respondents (the Athletics coach, the sport expert and the academic THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 17 respectively) emphasized the role of Sheikh Saud Al Rawahi (a wealthy businessman who had been linked to several successes on the part of athletes representing OAA and OFA during the 1980s and 1990s), and who made great efforts to promote the sport not only in his role as chairman of the OAA but also by his personal support for, and close ties with, the athletes. It is evident that Sheikh Al Rawahi, in his role as chairman of the OAA focussed on increasing international participation during the early years of the establishment of the sport. This is evident in his promotion of the national team’s participation in its first Olympics as well as in the Asian championships. At the domestic level, the popularity of athletics was beyond the OAA’s expectations, with performances such as Al Malki’s record-breaking efforts capturing the imagination of the Omani public. In the same vein, all the interviewees argued that Mohammed Al Malki had made an exceptional contribution to the promotion of the sport. His commitment, talent and impressive records inspired Omani youngsters to have faith in their own abilities and motivated them to enter different athletics competitions. Interviewee 3 (sports expert) commented that ‘Al Malki achieved the first Omani success in an international sport which made us believe that everyone would be capable of achieving and becoming a great athlete’ (Interviewee 3, Sports expert). Furthermore, Interviewee 4, an Omani national team athlete argued, ‘It is the athletes who added a lot to people valuing athletics in Oman. Mohammad Al Maliki, Ahmed Al Marjabi, Abdullah Al Souli and Barakat Al Harthi’. The contribution of the state to developing athletics in Oman has taken several forms. Media coverage through the state’s main TV and newspapers, especially when the athletics team secured an international trophy, is one such form. For instance, Omani television promoted the image of athletics by highlighting any records set or results achieved. It is worth reiterating that the national athletics team was the only Omani sports team to achieve regional and international success during the 1980s, and this continued during the 1990s, and thus media coverage increased awareness of, and enthusiasm for, the sport. As respondents indicated, there was also a gradual increase in financial and administrative support from the government through the Ministry of Sports Affairs (MOSA) to athletics due to the scale of the sport’s success, and this assisted in the semi-professionalization of athletics as a sport.

‘Professionalization’ of Athletics in Oman

According to the OAA strategy report, there were four dimensions on which it would focus on the 2012-2016 quadrennial.53 The first was sports administration and supervision. The report cited the OAA as seeking to achieve six goals, the first being to make role allocation explicit, seeking to allocate appropriate job responsibilities and assuring the rights of all employees in the OAA itself. This formalization of roles and bureaucratization of organizations represents a classic (Weberian) feature of the modernization of organizations and organizational life. Other organizationally focussed goals included the implementation of e-administration principles, increasing the level of cooperation with local stakeholders, increasing self-financing 18 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY opportunities for the association, and creating a marketing and investment committee.54 Promoting elite sports performance was the second dimension of the OAA strategic plan and was divided into three categories of goals. The initial category focussed on the care of athletes.55 The second category focussed on developing a better training environment. The OAA aimed to improve training facilities through the provision of modern equipment, development of sports nutrition and a rehabilitation system, and an increase in coaching resources (each of these being features of the ‘scientization’ of athlete preparation). Training camps represented the third category of the elite sports dimension in the OAA’s plan. Al Harthi was the only athlete who had a special training camp under the supervision of a coach in Bahrain and a programmed annual plan. The third dimension was concerned with the development of a system of tournaments and activities. This dimension aimed first, to make changes to the tournament system and to improve its quality; second, to hire marketing companies to promote the OAA’s activities; third, to try to host tournaments at GCC and regional level; and fourth, to encourage and support sports clubs in Oman to promote athletics.56 These initiatives represent aspects of the marketization of sport, making it more marketable as a product. Athletics subsequently proved able to achieve its own goals in this dimension despite the very competitive environment that gives better recognition to football and other team sports. The development and sustainability of athletics was the fourth dimension that the OAA strategy identified. This incorporated four important sections that focussed on: administrative and technical staff; sport for all and athletics for children; women’s athletics; and public awareness of the sport of athletics. The association integrated the IAAF Athletics Programme for Schoolchildren in Oman in association with the IAAF in 2015. According to Sheikh Saif Al Hosni, the former chairman of the OAA, the project also aimed via an agreement with the Ministry of Education to provide every school in Oman with an ‘athletics for pupils’ bag of equipment and to incorporate the project’s initiatives into the school sport curriculum.57 Women’s athletics was the focus of the third section, promoting better opportunities for women to participate in athletics by creating special tournaments for women as well as continuing to build the technical and administrative staff to support the women’s athletics team. The last section concentrated on increasing people’s awareness of athletics. Different strategies were proposed to reach this aim, such as organizing special symposia on athletics and creating quiz competitions about the sport, starting with a campaign that focussed on athletics and its range of events.58 Athletics’ level of development cannot be compared with that of other sports such as football in terms of participation or commercial value. However, the OAA did take crucial steps that reflected its vision for modernizing the sport. First, the commercialization of athletics probably started earlier even than for football, especially at the national team level. The OAA’s attempt to create partnership deals for national team athletes during the first two decades of the establishment of the sport is indicative. Interviewee 2 recounted attempts to establish some sponsorship deals with sport global brands. THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 19

We tried to inform the officials that we could get those athletes who have records that are close to global standards, a private sponsorship deal. The officials tried to do this with Adidas, Nike and other companies. That couldn’t be achieved, unfortunately. Externally, Barakat Al Harthi could manage it for a short period but the partnership ended because he could not continue at the required level … Yes, Mohammed Al Malki also could make one with Mizuno. (Interviewee 2, Athletics coach) Not only were sponsorship deals with international companies difficult to come by, but local companies prefer to sponsor the Omani football league. Athletics did not attract local companies except for sponsorship deals for the athletics championships in Oman. Interviewee 5 (Academic personnel) stated ‘There are companies that have sponsored championships and tournaments for the OAA. However, they are not sponsoring Omani athletes except for some small advertisements such as the one that featured Barakat Al Harthi with Ooredoo’. Athletics’ current status in Oman can still be labelled as ‘amateur’, or at best ‘semi-professionalized’ for some individuals or elements of the system, despite the progress made in the past three decades. Several challenges stand in the way of the sport moving forward towards establishing a professional elite system. As with any other sport in Oman, there is a financial challenge that involves commercialization issues within sports clubs and the OAA. This is also linked to the lack of equitable distribution of income by the clubs providing various sports. The inability to establish a strong athletics league between the clubs has been another challenge. There is a lack of interest in prioritizing athletics on the part of most Omani sporting clubs, which prefer to prioritize their investment in football. Thus the availability and quality of facilities is a significant issue related to the conditions under which athletes compete and train, since track and field athletes do not receive the same administrative support accorded to players of other major sports. All these challenges clearly militate against any project for establishing a professional athletics system in Oman. However, despite the lack of commercial opportunities, the OAA has adopted different strategies and generated benefits from other stakeholders in Oman. Its cooperation with the armed forces is a good example. Most of the Oman national team athletes work in the military sector. Thus, the interviewees agree that the state in the form of the military plays a fundamental role in the sustainability of national team athletes. Another approach is the OAA’s acceptance of elite athletes’ participation in the Qatar and UAE sports clubs athletic league. Talented Omani athletes receive offers of financial and other forms of support from foreign clubs, mainly from Qatar and, to a lesser extent, the Emirates, to represent the club teams. This is internationalization (or perhaps regionalization) of athletics, rather than globalization. The OAA welcomes such an approach because it has helped Omani athletes to maintain a better level of competition. It is also an approach that provides a partial solution to the lack of budget available to finance the participation of an increased number of athletes’ serious competition. In addition, it extends the opportunities for lower-level athletes to gain exposure to better and stronger tournaments. Such an approach 20 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY might be said to be developing a level of semi-professionalism rather than a full professionalization of the Omani system of athletics.

Concluding Remarks It is clear that many of the features of change evident in Omani society, particularly over the period since 1970 which marks the beginning of the period of Omani Renaissance under Sultan Qaboos, are consistent with accounts of the central features of modernity by commentators such as Wucherpfenning and Deutsch.59 Oman has developed industrially and its economy has grown with the discovery and exploitation of oil and gas. Education, social services, wealth, the material standard of living, and the level of urbanization, have all grown considerably in the last five decades in line with the profile of modernization. However, even before the recent rapid growth of the oil and gas industry the coastal zone had engaged in international trade through its ports, and participation in the earlier stages of the globalizing economy was therefore evident. Nevertheless, despite these proto-modern features, Omani society has also retained important elements of its ‘pre-modern’, traditional character. In political terms, it remains an absolute monarchy, and the conservative nature of kinship/tribal relations, predominantly in the interior of the country, together with the strength of Muslim religious identity, and in particular attachment to the Ibadi sect (75% of the Omani population are Ibadis), continue to be important features of political and social life. Ibadism predates and contrasts with both Sunni and Shiah in doctrinal and other terms. However Ibadism, though conservative in nature, incorporates what might be regarded as modernist traits. Ibadis for example elect their religious leaders, and prefer to rely on argument and reason rather than conflict to resolve disputes. Oman also tolerates the presence of places of worship of some other religious groupings.60 In assessing the nature of the relationship between the modernization of Omani society and the emergence of athletics as a sport, we can consider the extent to which the story(ies) of athletics in Oman in both interviewees’ accounts and in documents analysed, conform to the model of ‘modern’ sport promoted by Guttman61 in his seminal text From Ritual to Record, comparing the nature of sport in the modern and ancient worlds. Guttman cites six factors which characterize modern sport, namely secularism, equality, specialization, rationalization, bureaucratization, quantification and records. Our interviewees’ accounts of the initial objections to athletic attire ascribe them to traditional values in relation to issues of modesty on the part of members of local traditional communities, and in their accounts, they described religious objections on the part of the rural conservative Ibadi communities as emerging subsequently. Thus in relation to Guttman’s characterisation of modern sport as secular, we see the discourses of traditional values, and of religious values emerging in opposition to the secular adoption of modern sport. A discourse of equality emerges in the accounts of the development of women’s athletics, though this reflects a philosophy of ‘equal but separate’ provision, with the national and Gulf championships for women being staged separately from the championships for men. Community and religious opposition to female participation in THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 21 athletics is relatively absent from the interviewee accounts, however, interviewees 2 and 3 (athletics coach and sports expert) did refer to opposition in other sporting contexts most notably the successful attempt of traditional leaders, and local members of the Council of Oman to oppose the establishment of the first female cycling team in Oman.62 Evidence of specialization and rationalization is provided in the second dimension of the OAA strategic plan which focussed on elite sports performance. This cites delivery of improved training facilities, incorporating modern equipment, sports nutrition and athlete rehabilitation systems, and increased coaching resources. The provision of training camps, however, was limited with only one athlete being provided with an agreed annual plan. The bureaucratization of the organization of athletics in Oman is also evidenced by the establishment of national governing body and membership of international organizations cited in interviewees’ accounts of the early stages of international participation. In addition, the 2012-16 OAA strategy incorporates the bureaucratization of roles with the making explicit of job roles and specifications within the organization being a key target for this quadrennial. The nature of the principal discourses in this case study can be categorized under three main headings. The first emerges from the interviewees’ accounts of the influence of the traditional background that appears mainly in the rural and conservative communities of the interior. An example is their reactions to cross- country runners passing on nearby roads, which members of such communities saw as incompatible with Omani traditions. These communities not only refused to participate in athletics initially but also opposed hosting athletics events. In this respect, aspects of tradition associated with regional differences played a significant role in shaping discourse surrounding the development of athletics in Oman. Similarly, objection to the immodest nature of the athletic dress, but on the grounds that this did not conform to the requirements of Islam (rather than to local tradition), constituted a second form of discourse of resistance, the religious discourse, which posited its resistance on religious principles. The third major form of discourse in the domain of the development of athletics was that of modernization itself, with sub-themes on equity, professionalization, commercialization and nation-building. Equity features in relation to gender in the promotion of women’s athletics, and more broadly in the adoption of goals to promote wider participation in athletics both in the education system and in the OAA strategy. We use the term equity here, in the sense that greater equity of outcome is pursued rather than equality of provision, with access to the international competition being provided for women but through the provision of gender-specific competitions. Interviewees’ recounted the failure of the strategy of commercialization through sponsorship. Here the hope had been that income from sponsorship would permit the development of income streams to athletes to permit professionalization. However the lack of an appreciable market within Oman for athletic goods and services, and the lack of appeal of individual athletes in a global market, meant that sponsorship funding could not be attracted. The role of sport, and of Oman’s performance in an international context, was perhaps particularly consistent with the discourse concerning the state project of the 22 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY

‘Omani Renaissance’ under the leadership of Sultan Qaboos. This sub-discourse took two major forms. The first was that successful performance by Omani athletes provided some cultural validation for claims that Oman was taking its place in the global sphere of international relations. The ability to perform on the international stage might be said to constitute evidence of soft power.63 The second type of role which sport played in this respect was the hosting and promotion, not of sport mega- events per se, as has been the case in other Gulf states,64 but of the natural environment and traditional culture through international events such as the Asian Beach Games in 2010 and the World Beach Handball Championships in 2012. Power over discourse is apparent when different individuals and groups have different chances of influencing what is or can be said about (in this case) sport policy; yet some of them can accomplish change in the long run.65 Thus power over discourse is about whose voice prevails in any given discourse. In the Omani sporting context, we have examined the traditional, religious, and modernization discourses evident in stakeholder accounts and document analysis. For the first two discourses, the voice that counts most is that of the religious modernists who accept participation but at the same time seek impose certain conditions. For example, they accept women’s athletics teams but insist on competitions within Oman taking place in a gender-segregated environment. This is the view that has to date prevailed. As a result, traditional discourse as a discourse theme in its own right in the sporting context seems to be no longer visible. It is worth mentioning that such a trend is not evident in other spheres such as education and health, where traditional discourse persists in spite of modernization agendas. For the latter, the power over discourse in the modernization account is demonstrated by modernists’ views as well as the adoption of modernists’ approaches to contemporary athletics by ministries such as the Ministry of Education and sports organizations such as the OAA. Modernization discourse, with its positive statements about athletics development, remains the most powerful in this domain. The power of modernization discourse has become dominant as the objections that were based on traditional and religious account are no longer manifest even from conservative rural communities. Respondents attribute this in part to the effect of media promotion, and also to the increased level of openness that Oman has come to enjoy under the Omani Renaissance approach of Sultan Qaboos’s rule. OAA’s strategic plan demonstrates a respectful balance between the four dimensions it identifies. The strategy incorporates important values such as involving the community and enhancing athletics for young people and women. In reality, however, it is hard for the OAA to achieve its vision in the Omani context given its predominant focus on elite performance. This reality persists even though the OAA is taking steps that show commitment to building better awareness of the sport and increasing the number of participants. A primary focus for us as discourse analysts in this regard is the strategic plan itself. In other words, the strategic planning presents the OAA’s officials in a positive light since it includes modernity and rational planning. It involves the rhetoric of equity, whereby OAA training and participation opportunities are provided to athletes at the elite level and to participants at the community level. However, interviewees’ accounts of the OAA’s practice suggest a focus on the elite only. In this study, we have thus traced and characterized the modernization of sport in a traditional Muslim society, Oman, in the period since the start of the country’s THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 23

Renaissance. Our account has been consistent with a ‘glocalist’ perspective,66 in that accounts of change suggest a product of real global forces, such as the growth and significance of the global support system, but also acknowledge the significance of local agency. The modernization of sport in our account has not simply been a matter of the dominance of global forces acting on local scenarios. Instead, we argue for a different model of modernization in which local structures and processes are partly a function of global or at least non-local forces, as well as being shaped by local actors and structures. In effect, the study frames an account of glocalisation, one which is consistent with Eisenstadt’s67 claims that modernization processes and forms of modernity need not simply emulate Western or European templates, but will be culturally specific. There are in effect multiple modernities, sharing many common features but nevertheless maintaining aspects of cultural specificity, and Omani modernization is one of a range of multiple modernities which need to be understood in terms of both common but also culturally specific characteristics. Modernization in Omani sport is thus neither structurally determined (locally or globally) nor a product of free agency (local or global).

Notes 1. P. Risso, Oman and Muscat : An Early Modern History (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 2. D. Eickelman, ‘From Theocracy to Monarchy: Authority and Legitimacy in Inner Oman , 1935 – 1957’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 1 (1985): 3–24. 3. M. Valeri, ‘Nation-Building and Communities in Oman since 1970: The Swahili-Speaking Omani in Search of Identity’, African Affairs 106(424), no. 479–496 (2007). 4. Stuart H. Hall, David Held, and Tony McGrew, eds., Modernity and Its Futures (Frome,GB: Butler & Tanner Ltd., 1992). 5. A.D. King, Global Modernities; the Times and Spaces of Modernity (or Who Needs Post- Modernism?) (London: Sage, 1995). 6. A. Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990). 7. E. Fourie, ‘A Future for the Theory of Multiple Modernities: Insights from the New Modernization Theory’, Social Science Information 51, no. 1 (2012): 52–69. 8. S. Eisenstadt, ed., Multiple Modernities (London: Routledge, 2017). 9. J.C.H. Jones and N. Ridout, A History of Modern Oman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 10. M.M. Al Yousef, Oil and the Transformation of Oman (London: Stacey International, 1996). 11. Jones and Ridout, A History of Modern Oman,2. 12. Ibid. 13. S. Aghacy, ‘Contemporary Lebanese Fiction: Modernization without Modernity’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 38, no. 4 (2006): 561–80. 14. J.E. Peterson, ‘Oman’s Diverse Society: Northern Oman’, The Middle East Journal 58, no. 1 (2004): 32–51. 15. J.E. Peterson, ‘Succession in the State of Gulf Cooperation Council’, The Washington Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2009): 172–86. 16. J. Kechichian, ‘Oman: A Unique Foreign Policy Produces a Key Player in Middle Eastern and Global Diplomacy’,inResearch Briefs (Cambridge: Rand Corporation, 1995). 17. Peterson, ‘Succession in the State of Gulf Cooperation Council’. 18. Peterson, ‘Oman’s Diverse Society’. 19. DUQM Special Economic Zone Authority, ‘Mission and Vision’, http://www.duqm.gov. om/sezad/about-us/mission-and-vision (accessed 1 April 2018). 24 A. R. AL DROUSHI AND I. HENRY

20. N. Ray, ‘Oman Focuses on Sustainable Tourism’, https://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/ tourism/oman-focuses-on-sustainable-tourism-1.2181562). (accessed 1 April 2018). 21. Peterson, ‘Oman’s Diverse Society’; D. Held and K. Ulrichsen, eds., The Transformation of the Gulf: Politics, Economics and the Global Order (London: Routledge, 2013). 22. United States Department of State, International Religious Freedom Report for 2016 (Washington: Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor, 2016), 2. 23. Peterson, ‘Oman’s Diverse Society’; J. Lefebvre, ‘Oman’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty- First Century’, Middle East Policy XVII, no. 1 (2009); M. Al Khalili, Oman’s Foreign Policy : Foundation and Practice (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009). 24. Lefebvre, ‘Oman’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century’. 25. Ibid. 26. M. Amara, Sport, Politics and Society in the Arab World (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2012). 27. Oman Sail, ‘About Oman Sail’, http://www.omansail.com/about-oman-sail/ (accessed July 22, 2018, 2018). 28. Oman Athletic Association, ‘Oman’s Athletics Association’s Achievements’, https://mosa. gov.om/mosa/?page_id=1048 (accessed 7 July 2019, 2019). 29. Ibid. 30. D. Booth, ‘Post-Olympism? Questioning Olympic Historiography’,inPost Olympism? Questioning Sport in the Twenty-First Century, ed. J. Bale and M.K. Christensen (Oxford: Berg, 2004). 31. R. Miller, Researching Life Stories and Family Histories (London: Sage, 1999). 32. David. L. Altheide, Qualitative Media Analysis (London: Sage, 1996), 2. 33. R. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Method, vol. 5, Applied Social Resaearch Methods Series. 5th ed. (London: Sage, 2014). 34. D. Bertaux and M. Kohli, ‘The Life Story Approach: A Continental View’, Annual Review of Sociology 10(1984): 215–37. 35. Miller, Researching Life Stories and Family Histories. 36. Ibid., 12. 37. Miller, Researching Life Stories and Family Histories. 38. R. Wodak and M. Meyer, eds., Methods of Critical Discouse Analysis (London: Sage, 2001), 3. 39. N. Fairclough and R. Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’,inDiscourse as Social Interaction, ed. T. A. Dijk (London: Sage, 1997), 259. 40. A. Sparkes and B. Smith, Qualitative Research Methods in Sport, Exercise and Health: From Process to Product (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2014). 41. Norman Fairclough, Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2003); Siegfried J€ager and Michael Meyer, eds., Method of Critical Discourse Analysis, Theoretical and Methodological Aspects of Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis (SAGE Publications Ltd, 2009); L.A. Wood and R.O. Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text (Sage Publications, Inc, 2000); M. Bloor and T. Bloor, The Practice of Critical Discourse Analysis: An Introduction (London: Hodder Education, 2007); N. Fairclough, Analysing Disdcourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research (London: Routledge, 2003); S. Titscher et al., eds., Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis (London: Sage, 2000). 42. Oman Athletic Association, ‘Oman’s Athletics Association’s Achievements’. 43. R. Al Kindi, ‘Personal Communication to the First Author’, (2016). 44. Oman Athletic Association, ‘Oman’s Athletics Association’s Achievements’. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. A. Al Droushi, ‘Discourses on the Modernisation Agenda in Sport Policy in Oman; between the Global and Local and Modernity and Authenticity’,inSchool of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences (Loughborough: Loughborough University, 2017). THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF SPORT 25

50. Oman Athletic Association, ‘Oman’s Athletics Association’s Achievements’. 51. Al Kindi, ‘Personal Communication to the First Author’. 52. Ibid. 53. Oman Athletic Association, Oman Athletic Strategy 2012-2016 (Muscat: Oman Athletic Association, 2012). 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Al Watan, ‘Good Participation in Athletics for Kids’, Al Watan, January 5, 2015, http:// alwatan.com/details/44629 (accessed 1 April 2018). 58. Oman Athletic Association, ‘Oman Athletic Strategy 2012-2016’. 59. J. Wucherpfenning and F. Deutsch, ‘Modernization and Democracy: Theories and Evidence Revisited’, Living Reviews in Democracy 1 (2009). 60. Times of Oman, ‘Tradition of Tolerance in Oman Endures’, Times of Oman, July 25, 2014; M. Valeri, Oman: Politics and Society in the Qaboos State (London: Hurst Publishers, 2009). 61. A. Guttmann, From Ritual to Record. The Nature of Modern Sports (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978). 62. Al Droushi, ‘Discourses on the Modernisation Agenda in Sport Policy in Oman’, 121. 63. J.S. Nye, ‘Public Diplomacy and Soft Power’, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 616, no. 1 (2008): 94–109. 64. S. Cornelissen, ‘The Geopolitics of Global Aspiration: Sport Mega-Events and Emerging Powers’, International Journal of the History of Sport 27, no. 16-18 (2010): 3008–25. 65. S. J€ager and F. Maier, ‘Theoretical and Methdological Spects of Foucauldian Critical Discourse Analysis and Dispositive Analysis’,inMethods of Critical Discourse Analysis, ed. R. Wodak and M. Meyer (London: Sage, 2009). 66. Richard Giulianotti and Roland Robertson, ‘Glocalization and Sport in Asia: Diverse Perspectives and Future Possibilities’, Sociology of Sport Journal 29, no. 4 (2012): 433–54. 67. Eisenstadt, Multiple Modernities.

Disclosure Statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on Contributors Abdul Rahim Al Droushi was appointed Assistant Professor in Sport Policy and Management at Sultan Qaboos University in 2017 having completed his doctorate at Loughborough University. His principal research area is focussed on issues related to sport policy and management, sport governance, sport and modernization in the Gulf region and the Muslim world, sport culture and society, sport marketing, sport development and development through sport. Ian Henry is Emeritus Professor of Leisure Policy and Management, and was formerly Director of the Centre for Olympic Studies and Research, at Loughborough University. His principal research interests are focussed on issues relating to sport and leisure policies: sport and inter-culturalism; comparative sport policy and governance at the transnational, national, urban and regional levels; and Olympism and Olympic policy.

ORCID Abdul Rahim Al Droushi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5454-9192 Ian Henry http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2765-1984