Suchergebnisse

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.

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.

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.

Science studies has long been concerned with the theoretical and methodological challenge of mess—the inevitable tendency of technoscientific objects and practices to spill beyond the neat analytic categories we (or their actors) construct for them. Nowhere is this challenge greater than in the messy world of large-scale collaborative science projects, particularly though not exclusively in their start-up phases. This article examines the complicated life and death of the WATERS Network, an ambitious and ultimately abandoned effort at collaborative infrastructure development among hydrologists, engineers, and social scientists studying water. We argue in particular against the "forensic imagination," a particular style of accounting for failure in the messy world of large-scale network development, and against two common conceptual and empirical pitfalls that it gives rise to: defaults to formalism and defaults to the future. We argue that alternative postforensic approaches to "failures" like the WATERS Network can support forms of learning and accountability better attuned to the complexities of practice and policy in the real world of scientific collaboration and network formation.

Using a modified circuit of culture as a methodological and theoretical framework, this paper examines the interrelated moments associated with the production, representation, and consumption of a recent televised advertisement for adidas's sponsorship of the New Zealand All Blacks. The study suggests that each articulatory moment represents a key site for in-depth multiperspectival analyses, which can facilitate a broad contextual understanding of the complexities, contradictions, and power relations associated with contemporary culture in general and specifically in relation to indigenous culture.

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.

Sport policies are underpinned by particular interpretive frameworks or paradigms . These paradigms shape: a) the construction of policy problems, b) the alternative approaches to resolving these problems and c) what is considered to be an acceptable government intervention. This article investigates how a policy paradigm shaped the findings and recommendations of New Zealand's Ministerial Taskforce on Sport, Fitness and Leisure. Using empirical data gathered from observations of the Taskforce's consultations, interviews with Taskforce members and a review of public submissions, it is argued that a paradigm (stressing rationalization and integration) served as the basis for recommendations to reduce the number of regional sports trusts, to centralize control over the sector and to coordinate the administration of sport. Two fundamental contradictions and paradoxes arising from this paradigm shift are discussed. The first notes the historical contingencies that gave rise to the problem of fragmented sport delivery structures, including government's preference for contractual agreements and decentralized control. The second examines the appropriateness of centralizing powers given the inherent need for specialized (and autonomous) delivery mechanisms. This study's focus on paradigms helps to explain how policies can alter institutional relations and the lived world of actors with respect to their identities, opportunities and capacities to act.

While there have been significant refinements in the scholarly development of the sport and Americanization/globalization literature in recent years, the individual, psychosocial consequences resulting from the intersection of global forces and local cultures remain largely unexplored. A sample of 510 New Zealand youth (average age = 14.5 yrs) was administered a survey instrument to identify their public heroes and heroines (reference idols), that is, celebrity others who are 'very important in your life'. Statistical analysis of these data as well as movie and television consumption patterns revealed that these youth are heavily influenced by global media in general and American popular culture in particular. The data suggested that the influence of popular American cultural icons (e.g. Michael Jordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson) extended well beyond simple admiration for some respondents to include impacts on beliefs, values, self-appraisals, and behaviors. It was concluded that focusing on adolescent reference idol choices and their identityrelated consequences is a promising approach to understanding the influence of the 'global' on the 'local'.