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    The cultural transition of Indigenous Australian athletes into professional sport. Sport, Education and Society. (2017)

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    UC Permalink
    http://hdl.handle.net/10092/15441
    
    Publisher's DOI/URI
    https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2017.1391085
    
    ISSN
    1357-3322
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    • Health: Journal Articles [157]
    Authors
    Light RL
    Evans JR
    Lavallee D
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    Abstract

    This article reports on a study that inquired into the journeys of sixteen Indigenous Australian athletes from their first touch of the footy to the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL) that identified two distinct stages of their journeys. These were: (1) the development of expertise and of a distinctly Aboriginal style of play from their first touch of a footy to around the age of thirteen and, (2) a process of cultural transitioning toward and into the AFL and NRL. This article takes an interdisciplinary approach to focus on the second stage of transitioning into the world of professional sport and sport as business. Identifying this as a process of cultural transitioning from local Aboriginal culture to the culture of professional sport provided insight into this transitioning process while illuminating the profound importance of culture in this process. It also helped identify the ways in which tensions between local approaches to ‘footy’ as play and cultural expression and professional sport as work, within the global culture of sport-as-business, were manifested in the challenges that the participants had to overcome. This article thus contributes to knowledge about Indigenous development of sporting expertise, of the specific challenges they face in transitioning into the global culture of commodified sport and how they succeed from a cultural perspective.

    Citation
    Light RL, Evans JR, Lavallee D (2017). The transition of Indigenous Australian athletes into professional sport. Sport, Education and Society. Published ahead of print, 19 October. Sport, Education and Society. on line(NA).
    This citation is automatically generated and may be unreliable. Use as a guide only.
    Keywords
    indigenous sport; Australian sport; cultural transitioning; culture; global; local; commodification; economic rationalism
    ANZSRC Fields of Research
    13 - Education::1303 - Specialist Studies in Education::130301 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education
    11 - Medical and Health Sciences::1106 - Human Movement and Sports Science

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      This article draws on the findings of a three-year, inter-disciplinary study conducted on the journeys of sixteen Australian Indigenous sportsmen from their first touch of the ‘footy’ to the most elite levels of Australian ...
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