The cultural transition of Indigenous Australian athletes into professional sport. Sport, Education and Society. (2017)
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 rationalismANZSRC Fields of Research
13 - Education::1303 - Specialist Studies in Education::130301 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education11 - Medical and Health Sciences::1106 - Human Movement and Sports Science
Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Socialisation, culture and the foundations of expertise in elite level Indigenous Australian sportsmen
Light, R.L.; Evans, J.R. (University of Canterbury. School of Sport & Physical Education, 2016)This article reports on an ongoing study that investigates the development of expertise in rugby league and Australian football by Indigenous Australians as a socially and culturally situated process of learning. Focused ... -
The long road from local communities to professional sport and the culture of the global sport industry for Indigenous Australians
Light R; Evans J; Lavallee D (2020)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 ... -
Learning as transformation in the development of expertise by elite indigenous Australian athletes
Light RL; Evans JR (Montenegrin Sports Academy, 2018)This article addresses the lack of attention paid to research on the development of Indigenous sporting expertise from a socio-cultural perspective. It inquires into the role that informal games played in the development ...