On 19 September there will be a combined Graduate School / ERMeCC Event in Mandeville T19-01 from 12:00 to 13:00. In this joint seminar, David Rowe, Emeritus Professor of Cultural Research, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University, wil be presenting his research. The session will be moderated by Dr. Jacco van Sterkenburg.
Contemporary media sport is positioned at the intersection, in Bourdieusian terms, of two fields. It is here that sport is presented, represented and infused with a range of contested socio-cultural meanings. Australia’s Indigenous peoples’ relationship to sport and media, as in the wider society, is multi-faceted and historically conditioned by the malign legacy of invasion and expropriation.
Sport is represented in the media and political fields as a space of reconciliation in a settler-colonial nation, and one in which Indigenous success can be claimed as a sign of progress in ‘race’ relations. But this celebration of Indigeneity in sport is heavily restricted by the demand that it be depoliticised. When Indigenous sportspeople go beyond the boundaries of sporting assimilation, they encounter a vigorous right-wing authoritarian populist backlash that treats the assertion of Indigenous difference and rights as divisive and even scandalous.
This presentation, which draws on case studies and research data from two Australian Research Council-funded projects, Australian Cultural Fields: National and Transnational Dynamics and A Nation of ‘Good Sports’? Cultural Citizenship and Sport in Contemporary Australia, will examine the role of the converged media and sport fields in debates about Indigeneity and racism in Australia.
More information can be found here.