This proposal links up with a comparative research project that is conducted in context of an Erasmus+ Small Collaborative Partnership involving academic and inclusive sport practice institutions in six European countries (France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain/Catalonia). ‘Baskin’ is a game, invented in Italy in 2003, that is considered a modified sports activity that is both inclusive and competitive. ‘Inclusive’ can be understood here as encompassing all the levels of “access, participation and achievement” (Slee 2006; Kiuppis 2018, p. 11), and the rules of the game outline — in comparison to regular Basketball — specific adaptations to space, tasks, equipment and people’s teaching (Associazione Baskin 2016).
    Special features of ‘Baskin’ are the following (see Kiuppis forthcoming): Space and equipment adaptations related to the set-up of the court are two additional baskets on each side of the court, halfway from the regular ones, hanging above each other. The ball used is a mini-basketball. Other balls with different dimensions and weights can be used by certain players. Further equipment adaptations are jerseys with two-digit numbers. Every player has a role, from 1 to 5. The first digit indicates the role of the player, the second shows the number of the players with the same role in each team. Adaptations to people’s teaching of different roles: Nr. 5 players are capable of performing all the fundamental skills of basketball; nr. 4 players can walk and run, but not as fast as a nr. 5 players; nr. 3 players have the complete or the partial use of their hands and may therefore throw into the traditional basket, as well as into the higher of the additional baskets; nr. 2 players are categorised as with the complete or the partial use of their hands for the shot at the high side basket, and the ability to move around the side area; nr. 1 players are not able to move without personal assistance. The main task adaptations are that nr. 5 players cannot defend on nr. 4 players. Nr. 5 and nr. 4 players principally cannot defend on nr. 3 players.    
    While the rules of ‘Baskin’ are built on a dual distinction between disabled and non-disabled players, the part of the research project that the talk focuses on is the processes of the implementation of ‘Baskin’ in weekly physical education lessons at an inclusive secondary school in Germany. Only here, the practices are organised around a non-categorical approach to inclusive physical education, characterised by “ensuring a basic minimum standard of education for all” (Ainscow, 2012, p. 290) and dealing with heterogeneous groups of learners in which individual differences are not classified in advance, according to categories such as race, religion, gender, or disability (Kiuppis 2016, p. 30).

Main aim of this particular part of the study is to understand what the German Cultural Sociologist Stefan Hirschauer calls ‘the creation, overlap, and invalidation of cultural distinctions drawn between members of society — in other words, for the “doing” and “undoing” of social belonging’ (Hirschauer 2014, p. 170). The research question focuses on the processes of categorisations between the children involved in ‘Baskin’, without that the concept of disability is introduced by the adults (teachers, instructors of Baskin, researchers). Connected objectives are to find out how ‘human differentiation’ and ‘boundary making’ are carried out in this particular (initially non-categorical) inclusive physical educational and sport context; how competition and temporality of social categories like e.g. disability, gender, and ethnicity are taking place; and how categorisation in the involved heterogenous groups (sixth graders) is socially constructed and attributed with relevance. The presented part of the research project is an ethnography involving participant observations of the processes of categorisations made in the context of human differentiation in the course of the weekly physical education lessons at an inclusive secondary school in Germany. Sources used are videos of the inclusive practice, as well as observation protocols, photos, (electronically) drawn diagrams from the planning of the ‘Baskin’ sessions, and memos. The methodological approach taken is connected with the notion of “theoretical empiricism” (Kalthoff, Hirschauer & Lindemann 2008) that is derived from intersections of the sociology of culture and sociology of the body. That is associated with the argument that ‘knowledge can only be gained from empirical material with a theoretically informed perspective’ (Brümmer & Alkemeyer 2017), that is in the presented case embedded in the research program called ‘(Un)Doing Differences’ (Hirschauer 2020). The research project is currently heavily affected by the ongoing pandemic of coronavirus disease. Since the first meeting of the Small Collaborative Partnership (that got cancelled as all partners gathered in Cremona, Italy, on Februar 22, 2020), we experienced a stagnation of both most of the inclusive physical education and sport activities in the six countries and the research connected with them. For more than half a year, we could not capture what Hirschauer calls ‘the ‘‘silent’’ dimension of the social’ encompassing ‘the voiceless […] the unspeakable, the pre-linguistic, and the indescribable’ (1994, p. 413), but needed to analytically make use of data we had gathered in the years before — independent from each other, without shared theoretical framework and methodological approach.

For now, until field research will be possible again, we put only already existing knowledge into words, which did exist in language before. What we are currently waiting for is that we will soon be able again to generate new data and to turn our descriptions ‘away from the logic of recording and develop into a theory-oriented research practice’ (Hirschauer 1994, p. 413). The presentation form 'Ignite Talks (20 slides in 5 minutes)’ has been chosen because it potentially allows for both presenting outcomes and findings, or the comparative research project and its rationale, including expected outcomes.

Ainscow, M. 2012. “Moving Knowledge around: Strategies for Fostering Equity within Educational Systems.” Journal of Educational Change 13 (3): 289–310. doi:10.1007/s10833-012-9182-5 Associazione Baskin (2016), Baskin Rules (12th Revision), accessed 31 January 2021 at https://internationalbaskin.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/rules-2016-rev12-new-en.pdf Brümmer, K., & Alkemeyer, T. (2017). Practice as a shared accomplishment. Moving Bodies in Interaction–Interacting Bodies in Motion: Intercorporeality, interkinesthesia, and enaction in sports, 8, 27 FIBA [International Basketball Federation] (2021). Basketball — Official Rules of the Game_Basic Rules, accessed 31 January 2021 at https://www.fiba.basketball/basic-rules Hirschauer, S. (2020). Undoing Differences Revisited: Unterscheidungsnegation und Indifferenz in der Humandifferenzierung. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 49(5-6), 318-334 Hirschauer, S. (2014). Un/doing Differences. The Contingency of Social Belonging. Zeitschrift für Soziologie, 43(3), 170-191 Kalthoff, H., Hirschauer, S., & Lindemann, G. (2019). Theoretische Empirie: Zur Relevanz qualitativer Forschung. Suhrkamp Kiuppis, F. (forthcoming). Disability Inclusion in Sport for All: ‘Baskin’ as a Best Practice Model. In: E. C. J. Pike (Ed.) Research Handbook on Sports and Society. Edward Elgar Kiuppis, F. (2018) Inclusion in sport: disability and participation. Sport in Society, 21(1), 4-21 Kiuppis, F. (2016): From special education, via integration, to inclusion: continuity and change in UNESCO’s agenda setting. ZEP: Zeitschrift für internationale Bildungsforschung und Entwicklungspädagogik, 39(3), 28-33 Slee, R. 2006. “Teacher Education, Government and Inclusive Schooling: The Politics of the Faustian Waltz.” In Inclusion, Participation and Democracy: What is the Purpose?, edited by J. Allen, 207–223. New York: Kluwer Academic