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Globlization, sport and corporate nationalism: The new cultural economy of the New Zealand all blacks
Abstract
Although New Zealand exists as a small (pop. 4.3 million), peripheral nation in the global economy, it offers a unique site through which to examine the complex, but uneven, interplay between global forces and long-standing national traditions and cultural identities. This book examines the profound impact of globalization on the national sport of rugby and New Zealand's iconic team, the All Blacks. Since 1995, the national sport of rugby has undergone significant change, most notably due to the New Zealand Rugby Union's lucrative and ongoing corporate partnerships with Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and global sportswear giant Adidas. The authors explore these significant developments and pressures alongside the resulting tensions and contradictions that have emerged as the All Blacks, and other aspects of national heritage and indigenous identity, have been steadily incorporated into a global promotional culture. Following recent research in cultural studies, they highlight the intensive, but contested, commodification of the All Blacks to illuminate the ongoing transformation of rugby in New Zealand by corporate imperatives and the imaginations of marketers, most notably through the production of a complex discourse of corporate nationalism within Adidas's evolving local and global advertising campaigns. © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2010. All rights reserved.
... New Zealand, which has won the RWC a record three times (1987, 2011, and 2015), is a nation whose very identity is often implicitly tied to the performances of the men's national XV, known as the All Blacks, and rugby serves an important function as a means of symbolically uniting the nation (Scherer and Jackson, 2010). Hobsbawm (1991: 142) noted that 'the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people' to explain the hegemonic positioning of association football across the globe, but in New Zealand it is undoubtedly rugby union that provides the site upon which discourses of the nation are most keenly discussed. ...
... Reflecting its status as the national sport, many scholars in New Zealand have written on aspects of the game focusing in large part on identity politics and the branding of the All Blacks (e.g. Falcous and West, 2009;Scherer and Jackson, 2010). The All Blacks are perhaps the most iconic brand in all of rugby and the sport is arguably the main means by which New Zealand is recognized by the rest of the world (Scherer and Jackson, 2010). ...
... Falcous and West, 2009;Scherer and Jackson, 2010). The All Blacks are perhaps the most iconic brand in all of rugby and the sport is arguably the main means by which New Zealand is recognized by the rest of the world (Scherer and Jackson, 2010). ...
Research into the framing of sporting events has been extensively studied to uncover newspaper bias in the coverage of global sporting events. Through discourse, the media attempt to capture, build, and maintain audiences for the duration of sporting events through the use of multiple narratives and/or storylines. Little research has looked at the ways in which the same event is reported across different nations, and media representations of the Rugby World Cup have rarely featured in discussions of the framing of sport events. The present study highlights the different ways in which rugby union is portrayed across the three leading Southern Hemisphere nations in the sport. It also shows the prominence of nationalistic discourse across those nations and importance of self-categorizations in newspaper narratives.
Full article available here: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/metrics/10.1177/1012690217697476
... I have been truly blessed that such a diverse group of gifted individuals chose to work with me as a Supervisor. While undoubtedly modest in comparison to some scholars located in larger institutions, the diversity and extent of work by, and collaborative publications with, postgrad students is truly humbling (Anderson & Jackson, 2013;Beissel, 2015;Chang, Sam & Jackson, 2015;Cody & Jackson, 2016;Gee & Jackson 2010, 2011a, 2011bGrainger & Jackson, 2000John & Jackson, 2011;Kobayashi, 2012aKobayashi, , 2012bLeBlanc & Jackson, 2007;Piggin, Jackson & Lewis, 2007, 2009a, 2009bSam & Jackson, 2004, 2006Scherer & Jackson, 2007;2008a, 2008b, 2010Silk & Jackson, 2000). ...
... The circuit provides a useful framework and system for exploring the production, representation, consumption and regulation of media commodities. Through a range of collaborative projects we have used the model to explore projects on Sport, Culture and Advertising (Jackson & Andrews, 2005), Corporate Nationalism (Jackson, 2001(Jackson, , 2004Jackson, Batty & Scherer, 2001;Jackson & Hokowhitu, 2002;John & Jackson, 2011;Scherer & Jackson, 2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2010, media violence (Grainger and Jackson, 2000;Jackson and Andrews, 2004), and the sport-alcohol-nexus (Cody & Jackson, 2016;Gee & Jackson, 2010, 2011Gee, Jackson & Sam, 2013;Jackson, 2014;Wenner & Jackson, 2009). Beyond this research, largely by coincidence and good fortune, I have been able to collaborate on a range of other topics including sport mega-events, sport diplomacy and foreign policy (Esherick, Baker, Jackson & Sam;Jackson & Haigh, 2008; 2009) sport policy (Piggin, Jackson & Lewis, 2007;2009a;2009b;Sam & Jackson, 2004;2006;) sport migration and citizenship (Chang, Jackson & Sam, 2015;Chiba & Jackson, 2006;Lee, Jackson & Lee, 2007) and match-fixing (Tak, Sam & Jackson, 2017). ...
... This reproduces the interests of capital and extends the power and influence of those who control it. Over time, this blurs the line between the interests of the nation and the interests of capital in the popular consciousness (Scherer; Jackson, 2010). The potential connection between sports and power was anticipated by the Italian political theorist, Antonio Gramsci (1947/1971) who explained that ruling elites can maintain control over people by sponsoring popular sources of pleasure and excitement. ...
... This reproduces the interests of capital and extends the power and influence of those who control it. Over time, this blurs the line between the interests of the nation and the interests of capital in the popular consciousness (Scherer; Jackson, 2010). The potential connection between sports and power was anticipated by the Italian political theorist, Antonio Gramsci (1947/1971) who explained that ruling elites can maintain control over people by sponsoring popular sources of pleasure and excitement. ...
... Bestirred by the anxieties of an island nation at once swimming amidst the sharks of global corporate capitalism, and no longer buoyed by colonialism's political-economic certainties-those very conditions upon which the romanticized settler imagery was grafted-the linkages between the mythologized sporting past and present seem to offer the comforts of [an imaginary] unity and prodigious achievement in times of uncertainty. For example, Jackson et al. (2001) and Scherer and Jackson (2010) identify a series of advertising campaigns, in which adidas employed nostalgic imagery and music, in conjunction with sport heroes of the past and present, to artificially insert themselves within a longstanding national rugby tradition. In doing so, however, adidas eviscerated the contested and divisive nature of rugby, re-entrenching a mythic narrative of rugby's centrality to national unity and harmony. ...
... The place of the past within this shifting sportscape is not uncontested. As Scherer et al. (2008) and Scherer and Jackson (2010) note, some aspects of the appropriation of national sporting and indigenous symbolism, and heightened corporate control in the case of rugby, has been met with "resistance and resentment" (p.100). Yet, such resistance to heightened corporate influence and representations of the past are not necessarily driven by a progressive cultural politics, but may in fact take the form of reactionary and wistful yearning for "simpler times". ...
Andrews (1999) has argued that under conditions of market-based liberalization, the sporting past has increasingly been put to use for the purposes of accumulation. This selectively rendered “sporting historicism,” he argues, results in “a pseudo-authentic historical sensibility, as opposed to a genuinely historically grounded understanding of the past, or indeed the present by rendering history a vast, yet random, archive of events, styles, and icons” (2006). Under such conditions, power-laden and selective “mythscapes” emerge. In this paper, we carry Andrews’ contention forward by arguing that critical sport scholars should further problematize the uses of the sporting mythscape—particularly by calling into question those re-historicizations that emerge in public discourse and excavating whose interests they serve. Here we interrogate the politics of how sporting pasts are mobilized in contemporary Aotearoa/New Zealand; in particular at the conjuncture of a globalized “free-market” economy and fluctuating (post-)colonial identity politics. We point to various cases that help reveal how specters of sporting pasts circulate within national mythologies in selective and politicized ways.
... This reproduces the interests of capital and extends the power and influence of those who control it. Over time, this blurs the line between the interests of the nation and the interests of capital in the popular consciousness (Scherer; Jackson, 2010). The potential connection between sports and power was anticipated by the Italian political theorist, Antonio Gramsci (1947/1971) who explained that ruling elites can maintain control over people by sponsoring popular sources of pleasure and excitement. ...
... This reproduces the interests of capital and extends the power and influence of those who control it. Over time, this blurs the line between the interests of the nation and the interests of capital in the popular consciousness (Scherer; Jackson, 2010). The potential connection between sports and power was anticipated by the Italian political theorist, Antonio Gramsci (1947/1971) who explained that ruling elites can maintain control over people by sponsoring popular sources of pleasure and excitement. ...
Research on sports in society is discouraged by essentialist beliefs that define sport as a fixed, innate expression of human impulses. This has undermined an awareness of sports as cultural practices and forms of social organization that are commonly used to reaffirm national and global processes of neoliberalization. This paper clarifies the contemporary meaning of neoliberalism and suggests that it is closely associated with the emergence and support of elite, organized, competitive, commercial form of sports. In turn, these sports often are promoted and represented to establish, reaffirm, and reproduce neoliberal ideas and beliefs. Despite resistance, neoliberalism continues to gain acceptance among people worldwide because of the wide array of strategies used by its proponents. Although the most visible strategies focus on economic and political policies, the long term success of those policies depends on embedding neoliberal ideas and beliefs in the cultural and social spheres of life. Therefore, effective resistance and the establishment of viable alternatives requires strategies based on a full understanding of the cultural and social as well as the economic and political manifestations of neoliberalism. Part of this strategy involves efforts to reclaim physical activities and sports as part of the public sphere and alter funding priorities to support physical activities in forms other than elite, organized, competitive sports. Strategies for producing such changes are identified.
... We don't want the brand to be different in Europe or Asia…Our goal is to be a global company" (Andrews, 2008, p. 46, as cited from Hatfield, 2003. The bridging between global and local manifests in a glocalized corporate marketing structure focused on establishing a universal brand identity (Andrews, 2008;Scherer & Jackson, 2010;Silk & Andrews, 2001). ...
Nike, a US-headquartered transnational corporation lauded for its putatively empowering women-centered advertisements, frequently releases nationally/regionally focused advertisements depicting women determinedly engaging in physical activity and, in doing so, overcoming gendered barriers and stigmas. Indeed, the global ubiquity of the empowered (Nike-clad) woman illustrates Nike’s role in advancing women’s empowerment, both in the US and globally. Universalizing “just do it” beyond geographical borders, Nike’s form of transnational feminism centers on a carefully manufactured, Western-centered image of empowered female athleticism. However, this notably contradicts transnational feminist efforts to reject the universalization of Western-centered representations of women. Using a critical cultural studies approach in concert with a transnational feminist framework, we analyze six recent Nike advertisements (the United States, Mexico, the Middle East, Turkey, India, and Russia) and critique the corporation’s universalization of neoliberal postfeminist messaging within its global marketing strategies. We find that Nike utilizes three thematics to extend their caricature of the (Nike-powered) female athlete beyond the spatial and symbolic borders of the US market: responsibilitization, competitive individualism, and empowerment. We conclude that Nike normalizes a white, Western-centered neoliberal postfeminism, undermining the structural and sporting realities of the non-white/non-Western women their promotional campaigning seeks to embolden.
... At the same time, considering the multiplicity of agents and the lack of professionalisation, there is a chance of implementing a homogeneous story and a defined positioning for the whole sport; in other words, organising messages via storytelling that underline its unique, ancient identity, taking into account that digital media are currently reinforcing or altering dominant cultural identities and ideologies [72]. ...
Pilota, played using the hands, is a niche sport with origins dating back to Greco-Roman
times. In the Valencian region of Spain, an indigenous version of the sport is played with healthy participation rates despite having to compete with the major global sports. This study is aimed at understanding the current situation of this sport in terms of knowledge, transmission channels, fan experience and media consumption, as well as the brand strategy challenges it faces for building a stable and sustainable fan community. The methodology consists of a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques. Nearly 1500questionnaires completed across three study universes, four focus groups and 33 in-depth interviews with stakeholder representatives have served to check the data obtained and discuss the challenges facing the sport in a process of dialogue. The main finding
lies in the management proposals that can be applied to most of the world’s surviving traditional sports. On a theoretical level, the study presents an analysis of niche sports in Europe from the point of view of branding and sustainability.
... Canadian Steve Jackson (PhD, University of Illinois) arrived in 1991, and over the next five years introduced advanced courses in the sociology of sport and in sport, media and culture as well as a distance taught diploma in sports studies developed by Thomson which continued over the 10 next years. Jackson's early research focused on sport and Canadian identity (Jackson, 1998a(Jackson, , 1998b1998c;2004) but this quickly expanded to a focus on sport and globalisation, corporate nationalism, media and promotional culture (Collins & Jackson, 2007;Jackson & Andrews, 1999;Jackson & Haigh, 2008;Jackson & Hokowhitu, 2002;Scherer & Jackson, 2010;Wenner & Jackson, 2009). In 2004, he was elected General Secretary of the International Sociology of Sport Association and subsequently became President. ...
The subdiscipline of the sociology of sport heralded its arrival on the
international scene with an agreement in Geneva in 1964 to establish an
International Committee for Sport Sociology (ICSS), and the setting up of
this committee took place in Warsaw the following year. Over the past 50
years the subdiscipline has grown significantly and New Zealand has
certainly featured prominently. In this article, we (a) provide a general
overview of some of the early scholarly writing on sport that pre-dated the
subdiscipline, (b) discuss how the field emerged within and between
physical education and sociology, (c) highlight the social significance of
sport in Aotearoa New Zealand, before (d) tracing the past and present
state of the sociology of sport in this country, and finally (e) consider the
future challenges facing the field both globally and locally.
... 497-8). Hence, in Japan, the commercialization and branding of rugby that has been an issue of controversy in other parts of the world (Jackson & Hokowhitu, 2002;Scherer & Jackson, 2010) goes hand in hand with the conservative attitudes of coaches and managers. It is against this backdrop that the status and role of Fijian and other migrant athletes in Japan must be evaluated. ...
Following the professionalization of rugby union football in the 1990s, an increasing number of Fijians have been leaving the South Pacific Island state to play rugby abroad. Attracted by the lucrative contracts offered by Japanese corporations and the educational opportunities provided by those Japanese universities which actively recruit foreigners to strengthen their rugby clubs, Fijians have become a familiar sight in Japanese rugby since 1991. While in the early period the majority of the players were recruited in Fiji, nowadays a significant percentage of athletes make their way to corporate rugby through student scholarships or contracts in Australia, New Zealand and Europe. This paper investigates the backgrounds and migration routes of Fijian players in Japan in relation to the particularities of Japanese university and corporate rugby and discusses Japanese management rationales for contracting Fiji Islanders. The discussion is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Japan with current and former athletes and members of the Fijian migrant community, as well as representatives of the Japanese Rugby Football Union and corporate rugby teams.
... New Zealand has been described as the 'great little sporting nation' and there is no doubt sport is a defining feature of its national identity (Jackson and Andrews 1999). The country's iconic rugby team, the All Blacks, has historically idealized the nation as a classless, egalitarian and racially harmonious society (Scherer and Jackson 2010). Rugby has also featured heavily in the nation's positioning as an independent, prosperous state. ...
Small states are broadly distinguished on economic, political and cultural grounds and more particularly in relation to their vulnerability and resilience. This paper examines how legitimations around a country’s small size can induce compromises to buttress particular sport policies. Drawing from the New Zealand context, it explores how domestic cooperation can be prompted by the discursive frames of smallness itself. It further suggests that New Zealand’s corresponding ambition to ‘punch above its weight’ has enabled policy transformations to make the sport system appear more legitimate but no less vulnerable. Because scale invites consolidation, targeting and rationing, central sport agencies in small states may have to paradoxically invoke strategies to break the very communal bonds that provide them with the ‘fertile’ conditions for growth and competitive advantage. The study of small states may help scholars and policy-makers to better understand the significance of ‘managed intimacy’ as a counterbalance to neoliberal doctrines.
... It is Finland's unique history that resulted in the concept of sisu that relates to staminaa type of endurance born out of a combination of a demanding natural environment, the protestant ethic, the struggle for political independence and the pursuit of a civil and equality-based society. Likewise, rugby's importance to the development of national identity is well documented in New Zealand (Phillips 1996, Scherer andJackson 2010) as well as Fiji (Kanemasu and Molnar 2013). The contemporary use of sport as a means of projecting national identity is also an emerging theme, particularly in relation to the pursuit of events hosting by small (but economically successful) states such as Singapore (Fry and McNeill 2011) and Persian Gulf nations Bahrain, Qatar and United Arab Emirates (cf. Henry et al. 2003, Bromber andKrawietz 2013). ...
... How, then, did Adidas localize within the New Zealand context, and how did they engage in corporate nationalism? Previous work has outlined a range of techniques employed by Adidas to localize their brand, including adapting but retaining the integrity of the All Blacks team jersey and demonstrating their long-term commitment to rugby by establishing a national rugby academy (Jackson et al., 2001;Scherer & Jackson, 2010). More specifically, Adidas unveiled a carefully orchestrated advertising and marketing campaign that articulated the past, present, and future of New Zealand rugby with its new sponsor. ...
This essay highlights the unique and intimately interrelated nature of the relationship between communication and advertising by providing a selective overview of communication about and through sport within the context of promotional culture. While advertising and marketing of sport leagues, teams, celebrity athletes, and commodities are important, this treatment focuses on how the advertising industry has come to dominate contemporary social life, and why “sport” is such an important channel of communication within promotional culture. The article (a) outlines the emergence, nature, and social significance of advertising; (b) offers a framework for analysis based on the circuit of commodification and communication model that emphasizes the context and complex interrelationships between particular moments in commodification processes; (c) discusses a current research example examining sport, globalization, and corporate nationalism; and (d) considers directions for future research.
Son yüz elli yılın politik atmosferi, yaşanan silâhlı çatışmalar dışında, büyük oranda, ulus-devletlerin ekonomik ve kültürel hakimiyet mücadeleleri üzerine kuruludur. Büyük kitleler kazanmayı hedefleyen bu mücadelelerde, en büyük rollerden birini, yapılan propaganda çalışmaları oynamıştır. Müzik, bu propaganda çalışmalarının önemli bir parçası olagelmiştir. Öte yandan, aktarılmak istenen fikirlerin, bu fikirleri aktarmak adına işlevselleştirilen müziklere baskın çıkması; müziğin kendi içinde bir amaç olmaktan çıkıp tamamen fikrin hizmetine verilmesi gibi problemler, müziğin kimliğini seyrelttiği gibi, fikrin aktarılma verimini de düşürmektedir. 20. ve 21. yüzyıl Yeni Müzik grameri, toplumun dinleme, algılama ve düşünme pratiklerini değiştirme potansiyeli içerdiğinden; hem müziğin kendi içindeki amacını muhafaza eder, hem de fikirlerin müzikle taşınması ya da temsil edilmesi için yeni yöntem önerileri sunar.
Bu çalışmada, propaganda-müzik ilişkisi, önce etik ve işlevsellik bağlamlarında ele alınmış; ardından, verilen çeşitli örnekler üzerinden, son yüz elli yıla vurgu yapar biçimde tarihselleştirilmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu aşamadan sonra, geleneksel yöntemleri kullanan propaganda işlevli müziklere değinilerek politik gündeme dair söylemlerinin ne kadar etkili olduğu incelenmiştir. Buradan, Yeni Müzik kategorisindeki yapıt örneklerine geçilerek, önerdikleri yeni yöntemlerin toplumda ne tür paradigma değişimlerine hizmet edebilecekleri çıkarsanmaya çalışılmıştır. Son olarak da, tez kapsamında üretilen propaganda işlevli bir Yeni Müzik yapıtı çeşitli platformlarda çalınarak, müziğin kendisinin ve taşıdığı fikrin dinleyiciye ulaşıp ulaşmadığı gözlemi üzerinden, tezin bir sağlaması yapılmıştır. Dinleyicilerden alınan tepkiler, tez çalışması boyunca yapılan çıkarımlarla uyumlu bir şekilde, Yeni Müzik yapıtlarının, dinleyici zihninin işleyiş biçimiyle bağlantıya geçebildiği çıkarımını destekler niteliktedir. Buradan da, Yeni Müzik gramerinin dönüştürücü etkisinin propaganda alanı adına önemli bir kazanım olabileceği sonucuna varılmıştır.
This article is concerned with the contested nature of nationalism expressed through sport. The 2018 Winter Olympic Games in PyeongChang offers some useful episodes where I can investigate a different type of Korean nationalism represented through sport. At this Winter Olympics, I observed four distinctive discourses on Korean identity being displayed via the winter sporting competition: 1) unified Korean ethnic nationalism, 2) South Korean state patriotic nationalism, 3) postcolonial anti-imperialist nationalism, and 4) cosmopolitan Korean identity. The four variants of nationalism were vying for the dominant position in the hierarchy of South Korean politics, and the Winter Olympics presented a platform on which each nationalist group asserts the legitimacy of their sense of nationhood. Therefore, I conclude that the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang was not simply a physical contest between athletes but more importantly, was a field of the hegemonic struggle between adherents of different nationalistic views.
Alcohol sponsorship of sport in New Zealand, especially rugby, has a long history, but in recent times government-resourced reviews together with public health agencies, activists, and academics have proposed a ban of alcohol sponsorship of sport to help reduce alcohol-related harm. Responses to a proposed ban from a number of diverse sectors, including the alcohol industry and sport organizations, have ranged from ambiguous to resistant. Yet, the conditions for implementing a ban are poorly understood and there has been no change to state-regulated sponsorship policy to date. These widely publicized debates serve as a hotbed for discussions with provincial rugby union managers to consider the economic risks as well as the social connections between rugby clubs and cultural and civic life. In this paper, we address important new questions that query how the alcohol sponsorship debate plays out at a micro-level and the extent to which regional rugby unions may constitute a special case in terms of resistance to and the potential effects of regulation. The discussion expands the debate by drawing attention to the perceived positive effects of alcohol sponsorship as an enabler for addressing other social issues at a micro-level.
New Zealanders were presented with the opportunity to change the national flag and opted to retain the current New Zealand flag, despite arguments that it was unable to reflect national identity adequately. This article unpacks the particular version of national identity constructed in discourse in the infographic, Our Nation. Your Choice. which was released prior to the final referendum that determined the outcome of the Flag Consideration Project. We used Fairclough’s (1992. [Discourse and social change. Cambridge, England: Polity Press]) critical discourse analysis to examine the discursive construction of national identity by the Flag Consideration Panel that oversaw the process. The authoritative assertion of national identity on behalf of New Zealanders emphasised inclusiveness and unity by acknowledging cultural diversity. Biculturalism was confined to an old understanding of New Zealand identity while the ideology of multiculturalism, not yet officially implemented, was positioned as common-sense. There was a focus on situating New Zealand in a global context to distance New Zealand from colonisation and connection to Britain. The positive, cohesive conceptualisation of New Zealand suggested that the Flag Consideration Project was, in fact, an exercise in re-positioning New Zealand in the global context, in which the national flag would represent the national brand rather than contribute to national identity. © 2018
This chapter examines some key links among myths, tourism and nationalism in the context of “liquid modernity”. This is followed by an analysis of how domestic and foreign operators in Turkey try to authenticate their services, products and experiences with blend of traditional and modern codes. Though marketers mythologise Gallipoli as an “extraordinary place” of beauty and history, it’s aura is constantly disturbed by eerily picturesque cemeteries, ghostly trenches and solemn monuments that remind visitors of the gruesome war there in 1915–1916. I show how a transnational network of actors have combined the Gallipoli Campaign, the romantic-tragic, Greek swimming fable of Hero and Leander, and Lord Byron’s famous swim across the Dardanelles in 1810, to market the Dardanelles Strait Swimming Competition at Gallipoli. I outline how I conducted research with Australian and New Zealand tourists who participated in this swimming event by using a flexible research design with qualitative methods.
The paper re-conceptualizes cultural intermediaries as shapers of “emerging cultural capital” (Prieur, A., and M. Savage. 2013. “Emerging Forms of Cultural Capital.” European Societies 15 (2): 246–267; Savage, M., F. Devine, N. Cunningham, M. Taylor, Y. Li, J. Hjellbrekke, and A. Miles. 2013. “A New Model of Social Class? Findings from the BBC’s Great British Class Survey Experiment.” Sociology 47 (2): 219–250) and re-frames their practice of signification and negotiation as informed by “multiple dimensions of mediation.” Drawing on a case study of Nike’s transnational advertising production and interviews with key actors within the context of production, the paper examines how the creative/cultural labour process cuts across global and national fields of cultural production and consumption through which popular culture and middle-brow tastes were mediated, signified and represented. In particular, a television campaign for the Japanese youth market was critically analysed to reveal how specific new tastes, lifestyles and consumption practices were legitimized as emerging forms of cultural capital. Consequently, their taste-making practices are profoundly implicated in symbolic struggles and cultural changes emerging within/from the increasingly “globalizing” field of cultural production.
In 2009, Prime Minister John Key announced that 2011 would be a milestone year for New Zealand, as it hosted one of the world’s biggest sports events, the Rugby World Cup.1 He also stated “the New Zealand Government is proud to be a key partner with Rugby World Cup Ltd in staging Rugby World Cup 2011 here in our Stadium of Four Million”.2 In an era of neoliberal globalization and media spectacle, the hosting of such a sporting mega-event is seen as all positive, as an integral component of a sound national development strategy and as a guarantee of perceived economic benefits, especially in terms of brand building, tourism and place marketing. Reference to ‘perceived economic benefits’ is important here, because the host country pays for the privilege of staging such an event, and it is only through the promise of potential, future benefits that the cost to local and state authorities can be justified.
Sport through its forms of expression and organization, through quantitative and
qualitative features of the participants and spectators, through the fact that it is an inseparable
part of daily life on Earth, by on-going local, regional, national or international area, requires a
geographical analysis, where meet two essential parts: the space and time to which the analysis
focused on the links between sports and place. The literature shows a large number of
specialists in interdisciplinary studies on sport, geography, and other scientific fields as
economics, medicine, sociology, tourism etc. Through this study we aimed to present a series of
conceptual and methodological arguments specific for geography and useful in spatial analysis
of sport, all supported by highlighting some representative papers in this interdisciplinary
research field direction. All arguments converge to Gaffney's definition that "sport is inherently
geographic."
Mediated sport has assumed an extraordinary position in contemporary global culture. It is enormously popular, especially when stimulated by both artful and ‘carpet bomb’ marketing and promotion. It is, correspondingly, in high commercial demand in the transition from scheduled, ‘appointment’ broadcast television to a more flexible, mobile system of on-demand viewing on multiple platforms. The ‘nowness’ of sport means that it is highly effective in assembling massive, real-time audiences in an era of increasing fragmentation both in terms of numbers and viewing rhythms. At the same time, sport routinely insinuates itself into the everyday lives of citizens in ways that are no more uniform than the people who encounter it. Even among enthusiastic participants in, and aficionados of, sport, there is considerable experiential diversity in engagement with it in mediated form. Socio-cultural variables such as age, gender, ethnicity and social class, as well as dispositions of sporting taste, are responsible for considerable differences in the practices associated with mediated sport. This article addresses current research on cultural citizenship and sport in Australia, drawing on qualitative data from Greater Western Sydney, Australia’s most demographically diverse region, in analysing the various ways in which citizens engage with sport as participants and spectators. It explores the research participants’ views concerning their rights to access ‘live’ mediated sport within a broad framework of cultural citizenship, analysing the tension between commercial and citizen relationships in the production of public culture. Finally, the article considers problems associated with such access, including with regard to the so-called ‘gamblification’ of sport.
The biennial Ryder Cup competition, where the best players from the USA face their European counterparts in a three-day match, is often promoted as the third biggest sporting event in the world. Whilst such a claim is a contested one, the event does offer an interesting case to look at the role of the nation in an international sporting competition. Based upon an analysis of media coverage of the 2008 match, together with a survey of recreational golfers, this study considers the significance of the Ryder Cup in relation to national identity in the USA. The research highlights that the Ryder Cup is used as an important site for framing narratives of the nation in media discourse but is not something considered as particularly important for a sample of recreational golfers. This work, on an international sporting event that has received limited attention to date, shows some of the issues involved in framing and understanding sport as a means of national representation.
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a key scholar in developing meshed understandings of sport, media, globalization and nation, Steven Jackson, considers inquiry on media, advertising and the commodification of culture within the sociology of sport. By virtue of focus on the notion of a ‘sport/media complex’, key early works on media and sport posed the ongoing need to understand the relationships, complexities and contradictions in the life of cultural commodities associated with sport. In focusing on the ‘sport media promotional culture nexus’, understandings of advertising as a pivotal link between production and consumption are central to broader questions about sport, including the roles of global media, mega-events and corporate nationalism as they relate to both identity formations and politics. Future research on sport, advertising and commodification will play an important role in understanding how consumer capitalism has transformed citizenship and how effective responses to both sport and media in an increasingly globalized context may be mobilized in the larger struggle for social justice and human rights.
On the 50th anniversary of the ISSA and IRSS, a foundational scholar in the development of the sociology of sport in the Czech Republic and Eastern Europe, Irena Slepičková, reflects on the relationship between sociological understandings and local sport policy. Even with considerable interest in sport across the social sciences, the development of an explicit sociology of sport was hindered by discouraged engagement with Western bourgeois sociology, resulting in stifled theoretical development and bias towards scientific research linked to priorities of administration. Key challenges for the field’s development can be seen in the needs to prioritize theory and scientific method over “linguistic equilibristics” and subjective advocacy. Key areas for development in the future for the sociology of sport center on issues of social stratification and remedying problems of social exclusion in and through sport. Future research on the sociology of sport needs to focus on laying a scientific basis for the implementation of public policies that can make a healthy difference in everyday lived experience.
Within the context of globalization, nations have increasingly become the object of both production and consumption. Consequently, directly or indirectly citizens are being conceptualized, appealed to and transformed into consumers. A key driving force in this transformation is the diverse range of multinational corporations (MNCs) that engage in what is referred to as corporate nationalism – a process that seeks to capitalize upon the nation as a source of collective identification. This paper sets forth to explore (1) the nature and significance of corporate nationalism within the context of globalization; (2) the nature and significance of the ‘holy trinity’ – sport, beer and masculinity; (3) a case study of one specific Molson Canadian beer advertising campaign to illustrate how it serves as a manual of both masculinity and national identity in Canada; (4) the role of cultural intermediaries in reproducing dominant forms of masculinity; and (5) the implications of corporate nationalism and the holy trinity for understanding the reproduction of masculinity in an increasingly global world.
Focussing on corporatized and mediated imaginings of nation – as highly political, public and pedagogic processes – we aim within this paper to address important questions of cultural identification and discursive address. Our focus is on the ubiquity of the year 1966 in popular narratives of Englishness in the immediacy of major football tournaments: connoting far more than football, we argue that the mythopoesis of 1966 – as a somewhat artificial, powerful myth-making mnemonic – is a historically situated toponym that conjures up the supremacy of England on the international stage. Further, through the performance of an aesthetic of selective silence, we propose that the mythopoeia of 1966 reasserts a utopic abstraction of nation, and acceptance and enactment of, and acquiescence to, mythical English ‘values’.
This paper examines the contested terrain of sport mega-events and focuses on some recent examples from Rugby World Cup (RWC) 2011, hosted by New Zealand, a small nation of 4.3 million people. Overall, the analysis illustrates how one particular sporting event offers insights into the role of sport as part of a wider set of relations of globalization, politics, economics and cultural identity. This paper is divided into three main parts: (1) the social and cultural significance of sport mega-events as strategic sites of cultural analysis; (2) the politics and economics of the bid to host RWC 2011 and (3) the multidimensional nature of the contested terrain of RWC 2011 with respect to space, bodies and commodities. This paper concludes by contrasting the political rhetoric associated with sport mega-events with the lived realities and experience of citizens.
This paper explores the ways in which the environment of elite-level and, in particular, commercial sport produces expectations and pressures on sports doctors that may compromise their professional standards. Specifically, this paper addresses the pressures and demands that emerge from varying groups and individuals with whom doctors have relationships within the world of elite sport including: the athlete, coach, management, media (including broadcasters) and sponsors. Using grounded theory and drawing upon qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with 16 sports doctors the study explores the ethical concerns of medical practitioners working with elite athletes and teams in New Zealand. Key emerging themes include: the complex environment within which sports doctors work, including the limited control over their work environment, the pressures arising from the commercial interests of sport, the issue of competing obligations, and emerging threats to medical professionalism.
Sport continues to occupy a rather ambiguous position within the context of politics, foreign policy and diplomatic relations. While one can identify a long list of cases where sport has been credited with diverting conflict, contributing to peace negotiations and helping develop better cultural understanding, there are also many cases where sport has not only fueled conflict but also served as its source. This paper seeks to: (1) highlight the unique features of sport as a cultural site and practice in relation to diplomacy; (2) briefly overview some key dimensions and limitations of sport as an instrument of diplomacy; and (3) offer a preliminary examination of contemporary sport organizations and events in order to understand the implications of the transformational shift occurring between state diplomacy and what might be termed “corporate diplomacy” within an increasingly global context.
This article uses the concept of intertextuality (Kristeva, 1984) to analyze the sport sponsorship strategies of tobacco manufacturers in Canada; it is based on evidence taken from tobacco industry documents that were publicly accessible from Canadian and U.S. court proceedings. Through commissioned research on adolescent male smoking, the industry has endeavored to isolate those groups most likely to start smoking; then, it has sought to reach and influence these groups through sponsored activities that link the sponsoring cigarette brands intertextually to desirable, peer-defined attributes, identities, and personalities. The article focuses on the sponsorship strategies of the following three Canadian cigarette brands: Player's, Export `A,' and Dunhill. They are manufactured by Imperial Tobacco Ltd., JTI-Macdonald Corp., and Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc., respectively.
This study maps the media discourses surrounding Ben Johnson's life "in the fast lane" to further understand one particular aspect of a contemporary crisis of identity (or, more accurately, identities) in Canada. Specifically, this study provides: (a) a context within which to locate Johnson's rise and fall from hero to scapegoat as articulated to the 1988 crisis of Canadian identity; (b) a chronology of the twist of race, or changing racial discourses which serve to define and redefine Ben Johnson's racial and national identities; and (c) a discussion of the politics of identity in relation to multiculturalism and the representation of Ben Johnson as the "other" in Canada. The results reveal that Ben Johnson's identity was the subject of a range of representations including those linked to racist stereotypes. Moreover, the results suggest that the discourses defining Ben Johnson are constituted by, and constitutive of, broader debates about identity in Canada.
This study examines the strategies used, and the challenges faced, by global sport company adidas as it established a major sponsorship deal with the New Zealand Rugby Football Union. In particular the study focuses on how adidas 'localised' into the New Zealand market, how they used the All Blacks as part of their global marketing campaign and, the resistance they encountered based on claims they were exploiting the Maori haka.
This essay identifies an emerging form of pleasure offered to fans of elite football. I name this mode of engagement "vicarious management" and focus on its emergence in National Football League (NFL) related products of fantasy football, media coverage of the NFL draft, and the video game Madden NFL. Through an analysis of sports marketing literature and promotional materials provided for consumers by ESPN and EA Sports, the article posits that the emergence of vicarious management is overdetermined by emerging financial opportunities in media culture and ideological instabilities within race and masculinity. I identify how vicarious management offers new opportunities for integrating and expanding corporate reach while constructing masculine athletic subjectivity in ways that addresses deeply felt anxieties in White masculinity.
This study examines the development and production of the National Hockey League's (NHL) 2005-2006 "Inside the Warrior" advertising campaign. Three aspects of the creative process are explored: (1) the context of the 2004-2005 NHL lockout season that led to the League's ensuing relaunch and rebranding exercise for a new professional ice hockey product within the entertainment industry; (2) the promotional devices used in the campaign that accentuate its explicit hypermasculine "warrior" theme; and (3) interviews with executives from Conductor that offer important insights on their construction of a warrior theme and the existent nature of the crisis of masculinity. Taken collectively, it is argued that the NHL's "Inside the Warrior" campaign is exemplary for exploring the crisis of masculinity inasmuch as it highlights how one major sport-entertainment-media partnership created, produced, and (re)presented a mythical form of hegemonic masculinity, a contemporary hockey warrior hero, for public consumption.
This article examines how the National Basketball Association (NBA), an explicitly American, yet increasingly global media(ted) institution, can be located within the local context of New Zealand. Specifically, the article provides: (a) a brief overview of how and why the NBA transformed itself into a global sport commodity; (b) a contextualization of contemporary New Zealand along with a cursory examination of some empirical examples of the global/local nexus of the NBA; and (c) an analysis of how the NBA and American sporting culture serve as points of difference within what Robertson terms the `hegemonic global'.
This study examines how global forces are shaping local indigenous cultures with a particular focus on the relationship between global capitalism, new media technologies, and transnational advertising. Concentrating on Mäori culture and identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the authors examine a contemporary political debate related to indigenous culture and intellectual property rights. Specifically, the study explores the politics of identity associated with global sports company Adidas and its use of the traditional New Zealand All Blacks haka as part of a global advertising campaign. A key feature of the analysis is the controversy surrounding a lawsuit filed by a Mäori tribe claiming compensation for the commercial use of its culture. Overall, the study highlights the problem of maintaining and protecting cultural spaces where indigenous identities can be constructed and affirmed.
This essay provides an in-depth examination of a contextually-specific case study of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi's production of a recent television commercial for adidas's sponsorship of New Zealand's iconic rugby team, the All Blacks. Through interviews with representatives from adidas, the New Zealand Rugby Union, and Saatchi & Saatchi, and analyses of industry documents, the commercial is located within a range of interrelated cultural, economic, technological and institutional conditions of production. The analysis reveals the complexity of the processes and practices through which the commercial was encoded with dominant cultural meanings and representations employed to communicate a complex televisual discourse of corporate nationalism and spectacle at the global-local nexus.
Transnational corporations and their advertising/marketing divisions face a number of problems as they seek to identify, gain access to and achieve success in the global marketplace. For example, how do transnational corporations ''go global'' and, in turn, how do they use the media and advertising as part of their competitive strategy? Likewise, how do global corporations localise, that is, how do they negotiate local/national cultures that may have different histories, regulations and cultural values? This study provides a cross-cultural analysis of how a selected set of controversial sport advertisements featuring violence were interpreted within three various contexts: Germany, Japan and New Zealand. The findings reveal that there are some shared understandings of the nature of violence but there are also some cultural differences among participants within the three nations in relation to how violence is perceived and interpreted within advertising.
Narratives surrounding the career of former Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson offer a unique site for examining the political and discursive formation of national identity. Focusing on media discourses, this study examines the nature and extent to which a crisis of Canadian identity was constructed, negotiated and, at times, challenged in 1988. More specifically, the analysis (a) locates the discussion of national identity within what Hall identifies as the two dominant ways of conceptualizing identity within contemporary theorizing; (b) provides a context within which to situate the so-called crisis, including the prevailing political, economic and cultural state of the nation; and (c) traces the emerging discourses surrounding the affair to illustrate the various types of `national affective' responses, including oppositional reactions.
This paper examines the impacts of athletic-apparel commercial messages on youth and youth cultures. Sneaker companies routinely use celebrity Black athletes, like Michael Jordan, to help position and market their premium brands. While concerns have been raised over the potential negative impacts of this practice, the processes through which athletic-apparel commercials become interpreted and assimilated into youth cultures have not been well-researched. A study is reported that used focus-group methodology and Radway's (1991) concept of "interpretive communities" to examine how Black and non-Black male adolescents view sneaker commercials and celebrity Black athletes. This paper explores the ways that "cultural power" and "symbolic power" (Lull, 1995) are exercised by both the sneaker companies that feature celebrity Black athlete spokespersons and by the youth "communities" that consume these images. Overall, the youth in the study comprised two distinct interpretive communities defined by cultural differences related to their distinct social locations and racial identities.
The focus of this study is on the organizational dynamics, collective actions, and outcomes of a transnational advocacy network that was formed to protest the labor practices of Nike's sport shoe factories in Asia. Transnational advocacy networks arise and are sustained with the intent of changing social conditions. The Nike transnational network sought to improve the lives of workers in Nike factories in Asia so that they have jobs that pay a living wage, have good working conditions, can organize on their own behalf, and are treated with dignity and respect. A broad theoretical perspective that emphasizes the determinant and interactive effects of the emergence, development, and accomplishments of the Nike transnational network is employed.
Over the last decade, a voluminous debate has evolved around the concept of globalization, prompting Featherstone and Lash (1995) to identify this multifaceted phenomenon as replacing modernity and postmodernity as the central thematic within current cultural theorizing (for example, see Appudurai, 1990; McGrew, 1992; Robertson, 1995; Wallerstein, 1990). In light of this claim, the goal of this paper is to examine the interconnections and disjunctures that distinguish the complex relationship between global media and local meaning within the context of contemporary transnational sport culture. Specifically, the paper uses Michael Jordan - a vivid example of the "export to the entire world" (Kellner, 1995, p. 5) of much of America's commodity-sign culture - as a vehicle for critically exploring the relationship between globally mediated cultural products, and the cultural contingencies of three markedly distinct localized contexts. Such a task will be realized by reconstructing Jordan's location and significance within particular domains of contemporary New Zealand, Polish, and British cultures. In this way, we hope to provide a preliminary analysis of the global-local nexus as it pertains to the transnationally imaged and commodified expressions of American sporting culture.
Numerous media commentators have deemed the sexual harassment locker room incident between Lisa Olson and the New England Patriots to be an embarrassing case of mismanagement. Our analysis challenges this popular assumption; we argue that the event represents an overt manifestation of male power by means of sexual violence against women. The response to Olson suggests that in an era where women’s entry into sport has challenged men’s exclusive hold on that domain, the locker room, like the playing field, must be understood as contested terrain. For men to maintain control over the terrain of the locker room, the female sportswriter must be displaced from her role as authoritative critic of male performance and reassigned to her “appropriate” role of sexual object. In light of the importance of sport, and the status of the locker room as an inner sanctum of male privilege, the incident between Olson and the Patriots was not mismanaged at all but, in fact, handled effectively.
This paper presents an ethnographic study of the Canadian Television Network's (CTV) production of the 1988 Winter Olympic ice-hockey tournament. Interview data and media documents are analyzed to uncover how CTV strategically employed hockey as a spectacle of accumulation to boost ratings, expand market positioning, and to attract sponsors while blocking media competitors. At another level of understanding, ethnographic observations of the televisual labor process provide insights into how Olympic broadcasting constitutes a form of mediated communication or a spectacle of legitimation. Observations illustrate how the crew remade the live sporting event into a series of select cultural images. The manufacturing of Olympic images is revealed to be a social process that reproduces select systems of meaning, reinforces particular modes of media production, and strengthens monopolistic network relationships.
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This paper maps the current ownership patterns of North American major professional sports franchises in order to assess the extent to which they are interconnected with media/entertainment conglomerates. First, the 120 franchises are classified according to owner's industrial sector. Second, five models of linkages between franchises and media/entertainment corporations are followed by case studies representative of each. The paper concludes that indeed emperical evidence supports the alleged increasing control of North American pro sport franchises by large media/entertainment conglomerates. However, the paper also demonstrates that the phenomenon involves much more diversity than the major conglomerates commonly identified in the current literature. Finnally, the paper discusses the impacts of this trend on sport, as well as on fans.
This article examines the political economy of one of Australia's prominent football codes: Rugby League. A Marxist-influenced political economy approach is used to emphasize processes of domination, subordination, and resistance in the production and reproduction of power relations within capitalist sporting relations and structures. Analysis, framed around the concepts of MediaSport and the media sport cultural complex, shows how Rugby League is bound up in both national and global media processes. Key areas under examination include the historical development of the commodification of Rugby League, the growth of the media sport cultural complex, the role of pay television and the control of Rugby League vested in the transnational company News Corporation, and the supporter resistance to corporate media control in the sport.
Through an ethnographically oriented case study at the 1998 Commonwealth Games, the analysis accounts for the complexities and nuances that realignments in political, economic, and social life create for televised sport professionals. The analysis addresses the mediations of, and the interactions between, the host broadcaster (Radio Television Malaysia) and one "client" broadcaster (Television New Zealand). Specifically, the paper focuses on the conditions of production, the production practices, and the meanings embodied within the product that flowed to New Zealand.
Despite the historic and popular alignment of ice hockey with Canadian identity, the public subsidization of National Hockey League (NHL) franchises remains a highly contentious public issue in Canada. In January 2000 the Canadian government announced a proposal to subsidize Canadian-based NHL franchises. The proposal, however, received such a hostile national response that only three days after its release an embarrassed Liberal government was forced to rescind it. This article explores how Canadian anglophone newspapers mediated the NHL subsidy debate and emerged as critical sites through which several interrelated issues were contested: the subsidization of NHL franchises, competing discourses of Canadian national identity, and the broader political-economic and sociocultural impacts of the Canadian government's adherence to a neoliberal agenda.
This article reports findings from an interview-based study focused around the role of the Internet in the development and operations of four nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that use sport as part of their youth engagement efforts. Findings showed, on the one hand, how the emergence of certain NGOs would not have been possible if not for the Internet. On the other hand, it was clear that the Internet contributes to a form of "ironic activism," meaning that the practices that underlie certain forms of Internet-enabled NGO activity also reproduce neoliberal, market-driven approaches to dealing with social problems. The article includes discussion about ways in which the use of communication technologies by "sport for development" NGOs is reflective of broader developments in and around the NGO community.
In the face of growing scholarly concern about whiteness, and following Denzin's (1996) argument that "those who control the media control a society's discourses about itself" (p. 319), it becomes vital to interrogate and map what is at stake in specific representations of whiteness that gain purchase and mobilize the nation in shared ways. In death, America's Cup sailor and adventurer Sir Peter Blake was held up as a New Zealand hero representative of a "true" national character. We argue that in the context of marked changes in the racial, political, and economic landscape of New Zealand, Blake's unexpected death represented an important moment in the symbolic (re)production of historically dominant but increasingly contested notions of national character that are synonymous with white masculinity. We conclude that as long as the centrality of whiteness is under threat, we are likely to see the ongoing rearticulation of nostalgic visions of nationalism.
In response to the recent collection of articles on sports diffusion, some generalizations are in order. While a number of factors determine the processes of ludic diffusion, the most important of them is the relative political, economic, and culture power of the nations involved. The power vectors are usually, but not always, aligned. Cultural imperialism is a useful term to apply to these processes if one remembers that politically and economically dominated nations sometimes influence the sports of dominant nations. Modernization is on the whole a more precise term than Americanization to describe these processes. Traditional sports are certain to survive into the next century, but their formal-structural characteristics are likely to undergo changes that make them increasingly modem.
Rather than an Americanization, it is argued that there is a mundialization of sports over time. Similarities in sports activities in various countries are becoming greater than the differences. Cultural diffusion is leading to a trading of sports interests in all directions, and is likely to lead to a global sports culture—modified in varying and often substantial ways by diverse colonial legacies, historical backgrounds, and value contexts. Thus the longterm trend is toward greater homogenization in world sports culture.
In looking at the “Americanization” of sport in other societies, we are essentially looking at a version of cultural colonialism. Sport, as a segment of popular culture, is certainly an effective form of promoting cultural hegemony. However, this essay argues for the use of cultural resistance as an opposing notion. Based on the author’s study of Dominican baseball, the picture of a tension between hegemonic and resistant cultural forces is summarized and offered as a model to other sports researchers. The Dominican study examined the structural properties of major league baseball’s domination of the sport in the Caribbean. Resistance to major league baseball was not structurally apparent and required looking at more subtle indices. Fans’ preferences for symbols, content analysis of the sports pages in Santo Domingo, and examples of concrete behavior were looked at. Other researchers may find different indices more appropriate, but the use of sport related phenomena are felt to be valuable sources.
“Americanization” is a much more useful term than “globalization” in the Canadian context. The specific practices of commercial sport that have eroded local autonomy began as explicitly American practices, and state-subsidized American-based cartels flood the Canadian market with American-focused spectacles, images, and souvenirs. But the term does oversimplify the complexity of social determinations and masks the increasing role the Canadian bourgeoisie plays in continentalist sports. “American capitalist hegemony” is therefore preferable. The long debate over Americanization in Canada has also focused on the appropriate public policy response. Traditionally, Canadians have turned to the state to protect cultural expression from the inroads of American production, but that becomes increasingly difficult under neoconservative renovation and the regional trading bloc created by the 1989 U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement. The popular movements will need new means to protect and strengthen the presentation an...
Although there are obvious American influences on Australian popular culture, the term “Americanization” is of limited help in explaining the elaborate form and content of Australian sport. The recent transformation from amateur to corporate sport in Australia has been determined by a complex array of internal and international social forces, including Australia’s polyethnic population, its semiperipheral status in the capitalist world system, its federal polity, and its membership in the Commonwealth of Nations. Americanization is only one manifestation of the integration of amateur and professional sport into the media industries, advertising agencies, and multinational corporations of the world market. Investment in sport by American, British, New Zealand, Japanese, and Australian multinational companies is part of their strategy of promoting “good corporate citizenship,” which also is evident in art, cinema, dance, music, education, and the recent bicentennial festivities. It is suggested that the political economy of Australian sport can best be analyzed by concepts such as “post-Fordism,” the globalization of consumerism, and the cultural logic of late capitalism, all of which transcend the confines of the United States.
This paper examines the figurational dynamics and cultural significance of the emergence of American football on the landscape of English sports culture. To do this, it is necessary to place this development within the context of the more general debate concerning the Americanization of British culture. It is also necessary to examine how such changes in sports culture are intertwined with broader cultural changes. The substantive section focuses on the network of interdependencies involved in the making of American football in England in the 1980s. Attention is paid to the crucial role played by the marketing strategies of the NFL, Anheuser-Busch, and a British television company in promoting the game of American football in English society. An attempt is made to highlight the interweaving of interests of media and multinational corporations in the creation of a market not simply for the game of American football but also for the merchandising, sponsorship, and endorsement operations associated with it. The paper concludes with a consideration of Americanization, sport, and cultural change.
This paper provides a critical decoding of advertisements in Flex, a popular bodybuilding magazine. The analysis focuses on the visual and narrative representation of the muscular male body and bodywork practices in advertisements promoting bodybuilding technologies. The images of the muscular body found in bodybuilding advertisements encourage masculine self-transformation through bodywork. Moreover, the taken-for-granted representation of the muscular body as natural and desirable is rooted in an ideology of gender difference, championing dominant meanings of masculinity through a literal embodiment of patriarchal power. The foregrounding of the muscular body as a cultural ideal offers conservative resistance to progressive change and alternative masculinities by valorizing a dominance-based notion of masculinity.
Despite the rapid growth in new media technologies and interest from both sport organizations and corporations in interacting with premium consumers, very little research examines the cultural production and regulation of electronic sporting spaces of consumption. Drawing from interviews with the New Zealand Rugby Union's (NZRU) cultural intermediaries, this article presents an investigation of the production of allblacks.com. the virtual home of the New Zealand All Blacks and the official website of the game's governing body. Specifically, we employ a cultural-economic theoretical framework to illuminate the institutionalized codes of production and work routines of the rugby union's cultural intermediaries who police and regulate what appears on the website to unashamedly promote an elective affinity that includes corporate sponsors, media organizations, players, and the NZRU.
In this article I argue that digital technologies are remediating sport in ways that invite users to adopt posthuman subject positions. The focus of my analysis is EA Sports' "Madden NFL." First, I explain how video games reflect qualities of immediacy and hypermediation to create immersive gaming experiences. Then I go on to show how immersion in sport video games creates a relationship to the body and the self that are categorically different from those created by televised sport. I conclude that sport media studies will benefit from further consideration of the posthuman condition.
The analysis of televised sport production has largely ignored the conditions that frame cultural production and the ways in which broadcasts are constructed. Rather, scholarly discussions of televised sport production have been based on the text that goes to air. Given substantial realignments in political, economic, and cultural spheres brought about by the proliferation of a global media, it is argued that a textual perspective is inadequate if a thorough understanding of the complexities of televised sport production is to be attained. Rather, to appreciate the intricacies involved in cultural (re)production, scholars need to address the ways in which interactions among influential actors impact the process of reproducing sport for television. This paper investigates the conditions of production and the labor processes involved in reproducing a major sporting event. Using ethnographic data collected at the 1998 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games in Malaysia, the ways in which micro and macro institutional processes interacted to frame the reproduction of the Games are assessed and discussed.
Despite growing calls from activists and sport scholars for public consultation over the expenditure of public funds for stadium developments, there remains a lack of empirical research that examines the politics of these practices. This study critically examines the power relations and tensions present in the public-consultation processes and debates over the use of public funds to renovate or rebuild Carisbrook stadium. Specifically, we engage the enabling and constraining institutional mechanisms that structured five public meetings, which emerged as discursive political spaces in the policy-making process. In doing so, we critically examine the discourses that were actively shaped by stadium proponents to fit the mandates of neoliberal growth and resisted by concerned citizens who opposed: (a) the use of public funds to renovate or rebuild the stadium, and (b) a consultation process driven by a publicprivate partnership of business, civic, and rugby interests that had perplexing consequences for democratic politics in local governance.
Golf is described as elitist, racist, and sexist. Recently it has become clear that golf is also able-bodiest. Casey Martin, a young, upper class, white, male golfer with a physical disability, was featured in the media for challenging the Professional Golf Association (PGA) rules prohibiting use of a golf cart during tournament play. Drawing on Connell's (1987) construct of hegemonic masculinity and Wendell's (1996) notion of the "paradigm citizen" (p. 41 ), we examine if and how hegemonic masculinity and the paradigm citizen/golfer are reinforced, maintained, and challenged within four issues of major golf magazines and a special golfing issue of Sports Illustrated published around the time of the trial. We find that golfers with disabilities are absent from advertisements and photographs and given minimal attention in articles. Proportions of golfers who are older and women golfers, while generally consistent with subscriber proportions, were well under U.S. golfer population percentages. Data suggest that golf magazines continue to maintain and reinforce hegemonic masculinity and the paradigm citizen/golfer.
This paper explores the role of the advertising industry in mediating geographic aspects of economic and cultural change. A transnationalization of advertising agencies through both foreign direct investment and acquisition has concentrated control and extended the spatial reach of a few large American, Japanese, and British advertising agencies and holding companies in the 1980s and 1990s. In the case of U.S. agencies, internal reorganization signals a greater geographic concentration of advertising services in New York City and cutbacks at regional offices. I argue that "global agencies" have realigned their internal operations to facilitate a global advertising approach and have promoted images of "globalism" congruent with their transnational expansion. Agencies have accelerated the push toward standardized campaigns, global research studies, global media buying, and international accounts. In this way, agencies mediate the globalization of both clients and consumptive markets.
This paper is a preliminary exploration of the construction of meaning in sports telecasting. It starts from the position that the meanings which are routinely present in sports telecasts are not natural. Instead they involve highly mediated representations which actively promote certain “readings” of sport, while at the same time, other potentially alternative readings are rendered more difficult to conceptualize. Therefore the “deconstruction” of the social and textual structures within which meaning is negociated, and through which dominant meanings are articulated becomes an important analytical project. The larger research project from which this discussion is drawn included an analysis of the political economy of Canadian entertainment industries (including sport and television), and interviews and observation which explored the working world of sports telecast production personnel, as well as a semiotic analysis of such sports telecasts as a cultural “text”. This paper emphasizes the textual analysis, and it seeks to explain the contribution and the limits of semiology, as a way of understanding the ideological effects of televised sport.
Using original research materials of in-depth interviews with community network development workers, multimedia and graphic designers, public authority managers, and a number of case studies (a Bangladeshi Electronic Village Hall, Manchester Multimedia and Networking Centre, the Manchester Community Information Network, and Virtual Manchester) this article traces out the views of interviewees on the trajectory of community and civic net provision in the city. Sources of discontent were found in: commodification of local civic nets, a prevalent middle-brow approach to web page design, the influence of ‘cultural intermediaries’ in and on publicly funded telematics and multimedia software development agencies, the impact of an entrepreneurial ethos in local authority policy formation, and pedagogic and patronizing attitudes towards local communities on the part of local area net development agencies. The article argues that, alongside structural corporate ICT power and the technological and scientific ICT R&D professions, these problems have a telling impact on the nature of civic and community net development. As well as criticism of the prevailing nature of city nets, the article more positively prompts a call to local authorities to adopt a form of ‘critical regionalism’ in order to put the control of civic nets back with the communities they are supposed primarily to be aimed at. This means empowering community ICT nodes, involving them directly in the development process, and moderating the impact of corporate ICT and cultural intermediaries within publicly funded ICT agencies. Given the renewed role for local governance in conditions of globalization such policies would aid the development of thriving and viable local community networks.
From about the 1880s, an imagined sense of New Zealand-ness, mass communication, and the game of rugby took shape together. This process was primarily signified by the name, image, and exploits of the All Blacks. This article argues that global media and corporate sponsorship threatens the nationally constituted heritage of All Black rugby. But, the argument in question is not a nostalgic defence of some ‘golden age’. At given points in history, the All Black heritage was ideologically constructed and subjected to conflicting interpretations. The All Blacks have always been the template for a contested national imaginary. Now, however, the All Blacks are also the expression of a global corporate culture. In this context, the article explains how an old question takes on a new significance - to whom do the All Blacks belong?
Over the last three decades, public broadcasting in Europe, like other public institutions, has been under sustained pressure in various forms, including attacks on public provision from positions within, neoclassical economics and new right politics; left critique of public broadcast institutions and texts as reproductive of power formations; and development of new flexible media delivery systems and technologies. Public broadcasting has been required to justify itself under circumstances where conmmercial free-to-air broadcasting has been progressively challenged by pay TV in the broadcasting environment and where its necessarily national framework has been threatened by globalizing processes and. the flow of audiovisual technologies and content across national borders. One key site where these tensions are being played out is in the popular television genre of sport. Television sport is probably the most spectacular and regular vehicle for conveying and communicating both global and national culture. however these concepts might be critiqued and contested. Ini Europc, public broadcasters have played a foundational role in the development and nurturing of broadcast sport as national culture. Sport, therefore, is an especially important subject for debates about the state and future of the popular in public broadcasting. This article uses television sport as a case study in the exploration and analysis of the dilemrmrras of public broadcasting in Europe arid seeks to propose a tenable normrative framework for both its maintenance and development.
This essay presents the findings of research that examined the work practices of a selection of Australian Internet sport journalists, employed within either independent sport sites or those connected to a traditional print media parent company. The results are divided into three main categories – nature of the medium, work practices and self assessment – and in each it is clear that the work of Internet sport journalists differs from their print media colleagues in particular. Specifically, the Internet is a converged medium in which immediacy and interactivity influence both its content and its structure. Internet sport journalists, far more than their print media colleagues, are dependent on content from wire services and in the main engage in a role similar to a sub-editor, in which they edit material and prepare it for publication, rather than produce content in the manner of a conventional reporter. Finally, Internet sport journalists, like sport journalists in general 20 years ago, suffer from a poor reputation among their colleagues, particularly because the Internet is a new and unknown medium and thus, in the main, neither tested nor trusted.