Suchergebnisse

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to and analyse strategic representations and legitimacy production in sport policy advocacy processes. Considering it as a case of public consultation in part made possible by contemporary governing systems, the empirical base of the study is the public hearings with representatives of six parliamentary parties that were arranged by the Swedish Sports Confederation (SSC) prior to the 2014 election to the Swedish parliament. Using verbatim transcripts of these hearings as data and the notion of policy advocacy as institutionally situated production of legitimising accounts, two research questions are addressed: (1) What legitimising accounts are produced and deployed by the SSC during the hearings? (2) To what wider systems of meaning are those legitimising accounts connected and how? The analysis shows three sets of legitimising accounts and how both long-standing and contemporary ideas of the sport–government relationship in Sweden were used as cultural resources in these framing processes. Two aspects of policy advocacy processes arising from the study are discussed. First, the possible reasons for and consequences of the contradictory nature of legitimising accounts advanced, and second the transformations of the institutional conditions of sport that are implied by the emergence of phenomena, such as the hearings under analysis.

In the context of Malta's Valletta 2018 commitment to maximise, popularise and 'Europeanise' its cultural spaces, this paper examines the role of national museum spaces in the contemporary era of cultural hybridity, liquidity (Bauman, 2000) and mobility. Departing from a critical pedagogical framework, the paper examines how 'national' cultural sites which have historically served to reproduce hegemonic 'imagined communities' (Anderson 1991), can be genuinely transformed into 'ecologies of cognition' (de Sousa Santos 2006). These are dynamic public spaces where cognitive justice and democracy are affirmed. The role of curators as mediators of knowledges and as adult educators within mainly state-sponsored institutions will be interrogated. Also problematised is the notion of 'national' and 'permanent collection' in a Maltese context which is dynamic and cosmopolitan. In the final analysis, this paper will contribute to the ongoing search for greater participation of the Maltese publics in the formulation of national imaginations through active engagement in museum experiences. ; peer-reviewed