Diversity and Division - Race, Ethnicity and Sport in Australia

by Christopher J. Hallinan (Editor)

The influence of race, ethnicity and ideologies of Australianness in sports has been and continues to be significant in Australia. Sports in Australia have long histories of racial and ethnic exclusion. Men and women in all non-Anglo ethnic communities traditionally have been underrepresented at all levels of competition and management in most competitive sports. Prior to the 1950s, the organizations that sponsored sport teams and events seldom opened their doors fully to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, and non-Anglo migrant groups. When members of ethnic and racial minority groups played sports in Australia, they usually played among themselves in games and events segregated by choice or by necessity. These sustained ideologies prevent people from seeing whiteness as an issue because in an Anglocentric culture, whiteness is the taken-for-granted standard against which everything else is viewed and judged. This volume is intended to publish research which documents some of the ways that sport has been a conduit for population groups in Australia who are hegemonically marginal to Australian identity and why some sports remain vitally important to these groups. This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.

144 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2010