Christopher J Hallinan

Up Front and Beyond the Centre Line: Australian Aborigines in Elite Australian Rules Football

Although there has been a substantial growth in the number of Aboriginal players in the Australian Football League over the past decade, issues of structural and institutional racism have not been explored. This investigation of the assignment of players by position revealed marked patterns of difference, which tend to reflect stereotypes about Aboriginal athletes. The results are similar to research conducted in the USA and the UK but suggest even stronger patterns of differentiation.

Perceptions of current and ideal body shape of athletes and nonathletes

This study was done to examine the relationship between sex and perception of body image among athletes and nonathletes. A total of 211 men and women athletes and nonathletes completed a questionnaire which asked them to identify from a nine-figure body-silhouette scale their current image and the image that they thought was most ideal. t tests showed no significant differences for men based upon athletic participation and that both athletes and nonathletes were satisfied with their body image. However, when comparing current image and ideal image, significant differences were found for women athletes and nonathletes. These data support previous research documenting womens dissatisfaction with their body images and show athletic participation is not associated with this perception.

Race relations, Indigenous Australia and the social impact of professional Australian football

We consider how Indigenous athletes have become symbols of what is perceived by white Australia to be progressive race relations. In particular, the mens professional sports of Australian football and Rugby League draw the most heavily mediated attention as well as significant numbers of Indigenous players. We draw upon the narratives of key advocates of Indigenous participation and performance in professional Australian football: journalists and recruiting managers. The emergent theme of white privilege is used to examine how their advocacy of Indigenous performance masks shortcomings in access and opportunity beyond playing roles. We conclude with the idea that race relations progress fulfils the needs of white Australia but fails to sufficiently deliver genuine opportunity for Indigenous Australian participants.

Supporting the 'World Game' in Australia: A Case Study of Fandom at National and Club Level

While soccer football is the most popular participation team sport in Australia, it lags in the media and spectator sport. Media commentators have long suggested that the ‘world’ game is un‐ or less‐Australian because many teams and clubs are founded/organised around ‘ethnic’ non‐Anglo derivatives. Despite the re‐naming of the sport and the re‐construction of the national club competition around a decidedly corporate managerial structure with big city names, clubs in the lower divisions in each state persist with ‘ethnic’ nicknames. This paper draws upon a case study of a Serbian–based club in the south‐eastern suburbs of Melbourne. We contrast this club alongside the newly formed A‐League team. We employed fieldwork observations, interviews and document analysis to capture and interpret the maintenance of a Serbian identity through the actions of supporters. Our findings suggest that despite likely acceptance of the corporate de‐ethicised model, suburban teams with non‐Anglo ethnic derivatives remain a vital area for both sport and their respective communities.

Body-shape perceptions of elderly women exercisers and nonexercisers

Perceptions of current and ideal body shape for 49 elderly women exercisers (66 to 88 yr.) and 29 nonexercisers were measured using a nine-figure sihouette scale. Exercisers showed greater difference between current and ideal shape than non-exercisers, but no association was found for age Further research needs to consider additional socioeconomic factors and be validated from a broader population.

Seishin Habitus : Spiritual Capital and Japanese Rowing

Sport, including club activities in Japanese schools and universities, occupies an important place in educational curricula; but is it imbued with what Bourdieu suggests are guaranteed capital properties? That is, can sport and physical education help to accrue capital, and can such capital become cultural and economic capital? Further, is this capital similar to that resulting from academic education? Although western culture recognizes Cartesian differentiation, mind and body are seen as one in the Japanese understanding of the individual, unified by the concept of spirit (this is different to the concept of soul). Recognizing this concept of the body is crucial in addressing the question of transferring educational (in this case physical) capital into forms of cultural capital. This article investigates the responses of members of a Japanese University Rowing club when addressing questions dealing with various uses of the body in rowing and perceived opportunities for future employment.

The beautiful game in Howard’s ‘Brutopia’: football, ethnicity and citizenship in Australia

Writing in the British newspaper The Observer in 2006, Kevin Mitchell commented on the centrality of sport to the Australian way of life: ‘sport defines their culture ... It is their proud, shouting declaration of statehood to a world that is literally and notionally far away’.1 Whether or not Mitchell was peddling a well-worn stereotype of sport-mad Australia he was certainly correct in suggesting that sport has long been and continues to be a core symbol of Australian identity. National teams are often portrayed as the ultimate bearers of Australia’s collective pride. Major sporting occasions such as the Olympic and Commonwealth Games and World Cups and championships provide occasion for the display of national unity and sometimes celebration. Such was the case with the coming together of soccer players to represent Australia in the 2006 FIFA World Cup. Indeed, the World Cup provided soccer with occasion to slip its usual marking as ‘other than Australian’, i.e. the marking of soccer as being from elsewhere, as a foreign game, and for this reason existing on the margins of the Australian Anglophone sporting mainstream. Soccer’s perceived un-Australianness reflects its post-war history of association with ethnic communities of non-Englishspeaking background. Relatedly, the familiar representation of soccer is one of fragmentation, even confrontation. In the latter regard it is not overstating the point to suggest that a moral panic has long existed whereby ethnic groups stand accused within media reportage of using the soccer terrace as a forum for violence, as the stock standard phrase goes, ‘for the settling of age old ethnic grievances’.2 Admittedly, crowd disturbances associated with tensions between certain ethnic groups have spasmodically occurred at soccer matches in Australia, but of greater interest to the cultural analyst is the readiness of the media to amplify such occurrences and routinely typify them as un-Australian. In his paper ‘The Battle of Ideas in Australian Politics,’ published in late 2006, Kevin Rudd argued: ‘For Howard and the political project for which he stands, there is a twist: There is nothing to fear but the end of fear itself.’3 Rudd is now Prime Minister and Leader of the Labor Party at the national government level in Australia. Rudd’s paper claimed that a hallmark of the preceding Prime Minister John Howard and his ousted Liberal (Conservative) government was the marking of events and activities as ‘un-Australian’ and the associated threats posed to national security by the intrusion of ‘foreign’ otherness. During his 11 years as Prime Minister, Howard was

Changes in assumptions about Australian Indigenous footballers: from exclusion to enlightenment.

The participation of large numbers of Indigenous players in Australian professional football is a relatively recent phenomenon. Prior to the 1970s participation was, at best, limited. This paper identifies the underlying assumptions, shared values, beliefs and ideologies that have been held by the chief recruiters of elite teams. Football club recruiters are ideal subjects because, more than any other group of persons, they are gatekeepers of the game at the elite level. Furthermore, many have served in this generalized role over a long period of time. Recruiters were interviewed to understand how the recruiting strategies involving Indigenous players have changed. We investigated the interpretive frameworks that have been used by recruiting working staff, and to identify some of the complex dynamics that have enabled a shift from a blunt exclusion to a form of participation characterized by Stuart Hall as ‘inferential racism’. An analysis of factors that facilitate narratives and aligned opportunities for Indigenous players revealed that several themes permeate the language of recruiters.

Women's Leadership in Junior Girls' Basketball in Victoria: Foucault, Feminism and Disciplining Women Coaches

The effect of the implementation of Title IX in American Intercollegiate sports has been one of increased opportunities for women to play sport accompanied by a substantial reduction in the number of female coaches and administrators. Whilst much of the literature dealing with Title IX in America implies that the preponderance of male coaches and administrators in womens sport is the result of the influx of additional funding for womens collegiate sport, our research would suggest that such a discrepancy in the gender of coaches occurs in a number of sporting settings that are not professional. We would suggest that the coaching discourse precedes the existence of monetary reward, and it is this discourse which limits the type of subject positions that women can appropriate. We analyze one such sports setting, elite junior basketball in Melbourne, Australia, and investigate the strategies used by both men and women coaches to improve their own situations and to broaden their margins of liberty in acting.

Duelling paradigms: Australian Aborigines, marn-grook and football histories

The Australian Football League (AFL) boasts a significant over-representation of players from Indigenous Australian backgrounds. On this basis the AFL has come to represent itself as a leading national authority on anti-racism in sports and as a key supporter of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia. In contracting an official history of Australian football, the AFLs volume reveals the limits of a historical analysis that presents itself as neutral and objective, but is epistemologically constrained and axiologically tilted within a whitestream view of both Australia and Australian football. We explore the limits of the official history, the debates surrounding it and the inevitable, limited and ethnocentric conclusions delivered by official historians. We conclude that the Australian football ‘history wars’ is yet another example of how contemporary discourses of race and culture reflect broader Australian struggles to accept Indigenous people as active and intelligent human subjects who have a rightful place in contemporary society.