Karen Farquharson

A Different Kind of Snowball: Identifying Key Policymakers

Studying policy networks raises challenges in three important areas: identifying members of the policy network, gaining access to the network, and reporting findings from the study while maintaining confidentiality. Using the tobacco control policy and health policy networks in Victoria, Australia as a case study, the article describes how to use a reputational snowball to identify a policy network. I argue that the reputational snowball not only presents a useful tool for identifying micro‐level network members, but also provides a means for assessing which members of the policy network are core, and which ones are on the periphery. Issues around reporting in studies of policy influentials are also discussed.

Mediated multiculturalism: newspaper representations of Sudanese migrants in Australia

While multiculturalism has been central to the Australian political and social landscape since the 1970s, it has been recently challenged, with the (re)emergence of discourses of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘integration’. In this paper, we engage with these contests by focusing on newspaper coverage of Sudanese Australians around the time of the 2007 Federal Election. We ask: how did the Australian print media represent Sudanese people during this period? In addition, what do such representations suggest about contemporary media discourses around multiculturalism? Drawing on a content analysis of 203 newspaper articles published in The Age, The Herald Sun and The Australian, we argue that dominant media discourses are both influenced by and contribute to integrationist agendas that situate Sudanese Australians as outsiders to the Australian mainstream, thereby providing a significant challenge to contemporary multiculturalism.

Representing Australia: race, the media and cricket.

Sport and representations of sport in the media are key sites for political and social struggles around race and nation. In order to explore how meanings of race are constructed in a sporting context, we undertook a discourse analysis of Australian print media coverage of two incidents of alleged racial vilification in sport. In one, Australian cricketer Darren Lehmann was suspended for racially vilifying the Sri Lankan team. In the other, Pakistani cricketer Rashid Latif was accused of racially vilifying an Australian cricketer. Our research suggests the following: first, there was strong condemnation of racial vilification; second, despite this, print media representations reflect a white versus black divide in world cricket; third, a Lehmann as victim/reverse racism theme emerged. We conclude that race is being mobilized as a potent but contested symbol of both inclusion and exclusion within Australia.

Introduction: a new era in Australian multiculturalism? The need for critical interrogation

This special issue of the Journal of Intercultural Studies analyses Australian ethnic and race relations and the notion of multiculturalism, a societal domain that has experienced considerable change over the past decade. It seeks to contribute a crossdisciplinary effort in rethinking and reconceptualising multiculturalism at the end of the eventful first decade of the twenty-first century from an Australian angle. The papers collected here were first presented at the workshop titled ‘‘A New Era in Australian Multiculturalism?’’ that took place in Melbourne in November 2010, involving leading Australian researchers in this area. Since its inception, the modern Australian nation has been shaped by successive waves of immigration from increasingly diverse sources. Large post-Second World War immigration from non-English-speaking countries prompted political changes that led to the introduction of a public discourse of multiculturalism and related policies in the early 1970s (Lopez 2000, Jupp 2002, Fraser and Simons 2010). Multiculturalism was institutionalised in government policy during the late 1970s and 1980s, but from its inception faced political and ideological challenges. After a peak in the early 1990s, by the mid-late 1990s and during the 2000s multiculturalism was out of favour in Australia, at least at the level of federal politics, until its very recent ideological re-emergence. At the level of State politics and policy, in Labor Party-controlled states, the withdrawal from multiculturalism was less noticeable.

The initiation and progression of late-life romantic relationships

This research explores the initiation and progression of new late-life romantic relationships among older Australians (60 years plus). Our research found that older adult romantic relationships were meaningful, important and sexually intimate. However, few led to cohabitation or marriage, with these older adults preferring to date or to maintain separate households (living-apart-together, LAT). In line with Giddens’ ideal of ‘pure’ relationships, our research indicates that older adults are looking for egalitarian relationships based on emotional and sexual equality, albeit not necessarily based on cohabitation or monogamy.

Sport and society in the global age

Introduction: Sport and Society in the Global Age PART I: UNDERSTANDING SPORT AND SOCIETY Theorizing Sport and Society Researching Sport and Society PART II: SPORT AND SOCIETAL PROCESSES Sport, Race and Racism Sport, Gender and Sexuality Sport, National Identity and Nation Building Sporting Bodies PART III: REGULATING SPORT Governing Sport: The Club, League and Global The Politics of Sport Regulation Sport and Social Justice PART IV: GLOBAL CULTURES OF SPORT The Global Athlete The Transformation of Fandom The Media and Consumption of Sport PART V: CONCLUSION Conclusion: Sport, Society and Sociology Glossary

A Fair Game for All? How Community Sports Clubs in Australia Deal With Diversity

Diversity and equality are key issues confronting sport. This article draws on findings from qualitative research carried out in Australia to critically examine how diversity is understood and valued in community sport. The findings suggest that there is a discrepancy between the policy objectives of government and sport organizations and the way in which diversity is understood and responded to in practice. Diversity management is not being adopted widely among local sports clubs. The idea of a moral imperative to cater to people with diverse backgrounds and abilities is largely absent; rather, the dominant discourse is underpinned by a business rationale which interprets diversity in terms of benefits and costs to the organization. This business-driven approach is often detrimental to the social policy objective of ensuring equitable outcomes in sport. A fundamental reconsideration of the rationale and practice of managing diversity in sport is therefore necessary.

Regulating sociology: Threshold learning outcomes and institutional isomorphism

This article examines the adoption of threshold learning outcomes (TLOs) for academic disciplines in Australia as an example of institutional isomorphism. It is argued that the type of sociology embedded in the TLOs values the sociology of the metropole and that, while the TLOs are broad enough to allow for individual sociology departments to continue to teach their own version of sociology, they further institutionalise the norm that sociology is about metropolitan theory and methods. Nevertheless, these isomorphic processes may serve to positively legitimise and institutionalise sociology, potentially enhancing the discipline’s position in higher education.

Diversity work in community sport organizations: Commitment, resistance and institutional change

Diversity is a key term used in a range of public and private organizations to describe institutional goals, values and practices. Sport is a prominent social institution where the language of diversity is frequently and positively used; yet, this rhetoric does not necessarily translate into actual practice within sport organizations. This paper critically examines diversity work in community sports clubs. Drawing upon qualitative research at 31 amateur sports clubs in Australia, the findings show that diversity work in community sport organizations is often haphazard and accidental, rather than a strategic response or adaptation to policy. This paper concludes that while individual champions are critical to the promotion of diversity, persistent tensions and resistance arise when they seek to translate the language of diversity into institutional practice and culture change.

Social integration of Australian Muslims: A dramaturgical perspective

This article presents a dramaturgical view of the social integration of minorities. Based on 30 interviews with prominent Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that they explain and approach the problem of social integration largely in presentational terms. As a corollary, their chief collective and political strategy towards social integration is to put forward alternative discourses to counter the dominant anti-Islam discourses. We use Goffman’s (1959, 1963) dramaturgical model to analyse their strategies. In a striking difference from dominant narratives that situate Islamic values and western values as incompatible, the analysis we provide shows that Muslim leaders do not see Islamic teachings or texts as a problem for social integration; rather they view the problem as negative media representations and the solution as putting forward alternative images.