I often see, hear and read people connecting surfing with freedom: Surfing makes me feel free. Su... more I often see, hear and read people connecting surfing with freedom: Surfing makes me feel free. Surfing can be described by one word: freedom. Surfing is freedom.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Commentators are advocating for research to better understand relationships between healthy coast... more Commentators are advocating for research to better understand relationships between healthy coastal ecosystems and human wellbeing. Doing so requires inter- and transdisciplinary approaches across humanities, arts, social sciences, and science and technology disciplines. These approaches include culturally diverse knowledge systems, such as indigenous ones, that locate sustainable use of and relationships to marine ecosystems. This paper contributes to this agenda through a case-study of relationships between coastal ecosystems and human wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article highlights interconnected cultural and wellbeing benefits of, and socio-ecological relationships between, these coastal ecosystems drawing on a case study of one ocean-based, ‘immersive’ leisure activity, surfing. Further, it examines how these relationships impact human physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and the wellbeing of communities and ecosystems. The research illustrates that surfing c...
We are delighted to introduce this special virtual issue of Australian Feminist Studies, timed to... more We are delighted to introduce this special virtual issue of Australian Feminist Studies, timed to coincide with the “Technicity, Temporality, Embodiment” conference in Byron Bay, Dec 2016. This conference is the tenth international conference on Somatechnics held since 2003, when the first, “Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves” was held at Macquarie University in Sydney, co-convened by Nikki Sullivan, Samantha Murray and Elizabeth Stephens. The Somatechnics research network grew out of this event. Recent conferences have been held in Linköping (2013), Otago (2014) and Tucson (2015). The term “somatechnics” itself was coined in 2003, and was intended to provide a new critical framework through which to rethink the relationship between technologies and embodiment. As Nikki Sullivan argues in a recent issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly: “techné is not something we add or apply to the already constituted body (as object), nor is it a tool that the embodied self employs to its own ends. Rather, technés are the dynamic means in and through which corporealities are crafted” (TSQ 1.1-2 2014). Our articles span a period of almost 25 years, with our earliest text (“Burney, Linda. “An Aboriginal Way of Being Australian” by Linda Burney) published in 1994, and this is also roughly the period in which scholarship in this area has taken shape and blossomed.
Feminist cultural studies encourages researchers to privilege everyday, lived experiences of the ... more Feminist cultural studies encourages researchers to privilege everyday, lived experiences of the people and cultures we are researching to uncover alternative possibilities for greater diversity and inclusion. This politicized foundation impacts on our methodological choices and the various outputs we produce from our findings. In this chapter I explore the ways my feminist cultural studies research approach offered opportunities to engage in un/intentional pedagogies in the fields of my research, and to contribute to changes in attitudes about, and opportunities for, women who surf. The forms of pedagogy I discuss in this chapter are different to the traditional pedagogies of a classroom, but are embodied, intersecting, relational pedagogies that are implicit in the often banal aspects of our everyday lives.
In this work, a Tungsten disulfide (WS 2) reflective saturable absorber (SA) fabricated using the... more In this work, a Tungsten disulfide (WS 2) reflective saturable absorber (SA) fabricated using the Langmuir-Blodgett technique was used in a solid state Nd:YVO 4 laser operating at 1.34 µm. A Q-switched laser was constructed. The shortest pulse width was 409 ns with the repetition rate of 159 kHz, and the maximum output power was 338 mW. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that short laser pulses have been generated in a solid state laser at 1.34 µm using a reflective WS 2 SA fabricated by the Langmuir-Blodgett method.
Physical cultural studies (PCS) scholars have been engaging in critical discussions about the eth... more Physical cultural studies (PCS) scholars have been engaging in critical discussions about the ethics and politics of research, including special issues on these topics in Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies (2008) and Sociology of Sport Journal (2011). According to David Andrews and Michael Giardina (2008: 408), the goal of PCS is ‘the deployment and (re)-realization of a Cultural Studies that matters, one that aims to produce the types of knowledge through which it would be in a position to intervene in the (broader social) world and make a difference’ (emphasis original). Building on this, Michael Silk and David Andrews (2011: 14) argue that cultural research should be ‘about helping people to empower themselves, determining what research can do for them (not us), and placing knowledge at their disposal to use in whichever way they wish’. In this way, the work we produce has the capacity to contribute to cultural change and thus researchers need to consider how we do our work, what we publish, and what the potential effects and affects of this might be
Drawing from a recent AustLit project on climate change fiction, this paper discusses the earlies... more Drawing from a recent AustLit project on climate change fiction, this paper discusses the earliest example we have traced of climate-change fiction in post-invasion Australia: James Edmond’s short story ‘The Fool and His Inheritance’. Published in 1911, the story begins in ‘the basement of things among the coals and the debris’ and moves through the Industrial Revolution, water wars, and the Great Slaying to the ultimate destruction of the Last Man by rising oceans. Analysis of this work in the twin contexts of its writing (1911) and our reading (2019) show the seeds of modern climate-change fiction sown over a century ago, as well as revealing the complex roots of such strains of thinking as ecofascism. We bring to this analysis three discrete and distinct approaches: bibliography, environmental science, and feminist cultural studies. From our diverse disciplinary positions, we offer a tripartite analysis to critique Edmond’s story, make sense of its place in the ‘climate change fi...
This article investigates how safety is experienced, navigated and cultivated by women on Instagr... more This article investigates how safety is experienced, navigated and cultivated by women on Instagram. Using qualitative interview data, we explore women’s understanding and practices of keeping them...
Feminist research has been important in making visible and advocating against the structural and ... more Feminist research has been important in making visible and advocating against the structural and cultural inequalities that women and others face as a consequence of male dominated social, economic, and political histories. Olive Rebecca has experienced many similarly challenging interactions while conducting participant-observations in her local community, both online and in the waves. Reflexivity and positionality are often negotiated as lone acts, yet continuing to approach them alone is perhaps another case of the way "many scholars of sport have ignored debates concerning power, authorship, and the other". In the three cases presented herein, corporeal considerations are central whether that is through reflexive negotiations of perceived failures, research collaborations developed in a politics of relation to other researchers, the field, literature, and the issues, or an embodied approach to spatialized researcher subjectivities that help develop relational, ethical, and accessible ways of communicating. These practices are driven by feminist theory and politics to centralize ethics throughout our research processes.
This article introduces the special issue (JSSI 45.1 and 45.2) on ‘Understanding Blue Spaces’ whi... more This article introduces the special issue (JSSI 45.1 and 45.2) on ‘Understanding Blue Spaces’ which examines relationships between blue spaces, sport, physical activity, and wellbeing. The articles progress conversations across humanities, social sciences and inter-disciplinary areas of research on diverse sporting practices, that span local to trans-national contexts. This collection offers new insights into politics, possibilities, and problems of the role of blue spaces in our wellbeing—individually, socially, and ecologically. In addition to outlining the 10 articles in the SI, which include ocean swimming, surfing, sailing/yachting, and waka ama paddling, we contextualize this work, discussing key thematic areas both across these papers, and in the wider interdisciplinary body of work on blue spaces, wellbeing, and sport. Specifically, we outline the role of physical activities and leisure practices in how we access, understand, experience, and develop relationships to seas and...
ABSTRACT Inspired by the activism of young people in response to growing calls for climate justic... more ABSTRACT Inspired by the activism of young people in response to growing calls for climate justice, this discussion examines the rich possibilities to more meaningfully engage with the interconnections between human and environmental health in the AC:HPE. We explore how the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority is articulated throughout the Health and Physical Education learning area of the Australian Curriculum (AC:HPE). Adopting an ecofeminist framework based on the work of Val Plumwood, we follow the current of Sustainability as it flows through the AC:HPE, to reveal the limited ways it manifests, as well as the points at which greater inclusion is possible. Given our analysis, we focus on expanding definitions and interconnections in the AC policy language to resituate Sustainability in more ecological and ethical terms, and thereby activate new pedagogical possibilities for teachers and students.
Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 2020
ABSTRACT In this article we draw on our varied experiences of conducting feminist sport and leisu... more ABSTRACT In this article we draw on our varied experiences of conducting feminist sport and leisure scholarship in digital spaces to offer some reflections, learnings and ways forward for navigating the challenges of digital and social media research. The paper outlines our methodological and ethical relationships to doing feminist research with and about women and girls, taking Margaret McClaren’s activist lens as a starting point to consider issues of positionality and reflexivity when researching lived experiences of gender in digital spaces. We then analyse our own actions across four dimensions of the research process: (1) connecting with communities and participants, (2) conceptualising and managing data, (3) navigating the ethics of representation and (4) vulnerabilities and self-care. In sharing our learnings from a range of projects, this paper offers insights into the methodological implications of conducting digital research on the moving body, as well as practical considerations for those doing feminist research on sporting and physical cultures in digital spaces. This article contributes to emerging conversations amongst qualitative sport and physical activity researchers about the challenges of digitisation for feminist engagements with power, context and situated knowledges.
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 2018
Studying is above all thinking about experience, and thinking about experience is the best way to... more Studying is above all thinking about experience, and thinking about experience is the best way to think accurately.-Paulo Freire (1985, 3, in Offord 2016, 62) Contemporary cultural studies is engaged with the meanings people construct in their everyday lives, and how such meanings have significance. It explores how we understand our world, how we fit into our world, and, as a consequence, how others fit into our world (Couldry 2000; Morris 1998; Turner 2012). The major implication of this view is that the varied and subjective experiences of individuals' impact on their understandings of what various cultures mean; individuals are not only affected by culture, but cultures are created, developed, maintained, manipulated, and expressed by people. To explore this, many cultural studies scholars have adopted reflexive, embodied theoretical and methodological approaches, which require them to be engaged with their own subjective position within their research, both as part of an institution (university) and as individuals with their own cultural histories, subjectivities, and relationships. The reflexive concerns of cultural studies researchers have impacted approaches they take to the teaching of cultural studies at an undergraduate level. As part of this, scholars are asking questions of how we might teach cultural theory in ways that are engaging and relevant to an ever-changing student population, and which present students with "the possibility of redrawing the boundaries around oneself … where pedagogy becomes potentially transformational" (Garbutt, Biermann and Offord 2012, 79). That is, to teach content to reflect the way cultural studies is "critical and concerned with its contribution to the public good" (Turner 2012, 6-7). These approaches to pedagogy embraces pedagogical exchange as "the activation of new understandings, encounters and relationships" (Offord 2016, 54), an approach that unsettles and disrupts. Graeme Turner's notion of cultural studies contributing to the public good and Baden Offord's (2016) suggestion that cultural studies subjects can activate students as "a form of critical human rights education" (58), remain key drivers in my own development in higher education.
For Australian Indigenous women, especially those who lived on settlements and missions, particip... more For Australian Indigenous women, especially those who lived on settlements and missions, participation in the male preserve of sport was doubly shaped by colonization and by Western notions of women's bodies. In this paper, we will discuss the Cherbourg Marching Girls, who competed in precision marching from 1957 to 1962, to explore how, as young Indigenous women growing up on a settlement in mid-twentieth-century Queensland, the Marching Girls were able to use their participation in what could be viewed as a Western, militarized, disciplined activity to access the joys and pleasures of sport and to strengthen connections with other Indigenous Australian girls and women. These connections and pleasures continue 60 years later through their memories of marching. In this article, we draw on Moreton-Robinson's Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory to truly listen to how the Marching Girls continue to make sense of their lives in the past and present.
In Australian surfing, localism is a practice through which surfers claim authority to protect th... more In Australian surfing, localism is a practice through which surfers claim authority to protect their surf breaks and access to waves from newcomers and outsiders. While localism has been shown to be a central component of the cultural identities of men who surf, the relationships to and experiences of localism of women who surf have rarely been the subject of critical analysis. In this discussion, I build on Krista Comer's use of "girl localism" to understand how effects of globalisation are experienced as place-specific by surfers. In this case, thinking about localism helps shift an analysis of how women surf from a sole focus on sex and gender, and away from cisgendered white women, to adopt a more intersectional approach that considers multiple aspects of women's surfing subjectivities, and the ways these impact their surfing lives. Examining the politicised nature of localism in surfing reveals how women are affected by and complicit in surfing hierarchies, highlights how surfing is enmeshed in the settler politics of place in Australia and, suggests means by which surfers might make more ethical approaches to entering surfing places as newcomers.
While competition-based team sports remain dominant in community and sport-for-development progra... more While competition-based team sports remain dominant in community and sport-for-development programs, researchers are exploring the value of alternative, less "sportized" activities such as lifestyle/action sports. In this paper, we explore the ways in which surfing is being used in development programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand, examining the perceived social benefits and impact. Our methods involved: (a) mapping the range of surfing projects; and (b) 8 in-depth interviews with program personnel. Widespread conviction in the positive developmental benefits of surfing was evident, and that surfing had a "special" capacity to reform or heal those who participate in it. However, the ways in which individuals' self-developments were promoted appear to be following the traditional sport/youth development path. They focus on policies aimed at improved life chances, equipping youth with the tools for self-improvement and self-management, inculcating self-governance and self-reliance. However, a counter narrative co-existed, highlighting surfing as a freeing experience, which, rather than restoring social order, works to instigate a personal transformation or awakening. Despite the range of challenges presented by surfing as a tool for positive development, surfing presents a potentially "critical alternative" which if sport-for-development programs are to be a form of social change, we should remain open to exploring.
In this chapter the Editors contextualize the book within 20 years of research on women in action... more In this chapter the Editors contextualize the book within 20 years of research on women in action sport cultures. As well as detailing the structure of the book, they explain how the 17 chapters build upon and extend existing feminist research on the gender relations in sport and movement culture by offering empirically informed insights into the multiple forms of power operating on and through women’s bodies in the various physical and mediated spaces of action sporting cultures. With an emphasis on the relationships between culture, bodies, subjectivities and power, they present the chapters in this book as highlighting important new directions for research and activism.
I often see, hear and read people connecting surfing with freedom: Surfing makes me feel free. Su... more I often see, hear and read people connecting surfing with freedom: Surfing makes me feel free. Surfing can be described by one word: freedom. Surfing is freedom.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Commentators are advocating for research to better understand relationships between healthy coast... more Commentators are advocating for research to better understand relationships between healthy coastal ecosystems and human wellbeing. Doing so requires inter- and transdisciplinary approaches across humanities, arts, social sciences, and science and technology disciplines. These approaches include culturally diverse knowledge systems, such as indigenous ones, that locate sustainable use of and relationships to marine ecosystems. This paper contributes to this agenda through a case-study of relationships between coastal ecosystems and human wellbeing in Aotearoa New Zealand. This article highlights interconnected cultural and wellbeing benefits of, and socio-ecological relationships between, these coastal ecosystems drawing on a case study of one ocean-based, ‘immersive’ leisure activity, surfing. Further, it examines how these relationships impact human physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, and the wellbeing of communities and ecosystems. The research illustrates that surfing c...
We are delighted to introduce this special virtual issue of Australian Feminist Studies, timed to... more We are delighted to introduce this special virtual issue of Australian Feminist Studies, timed to coincide with the “Technicity, Temporality, Embodiment” conference in Byron Bay, Dec 2016. This conference is the tenth international conference on Somatechnics held since 2003, when the first, “Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves” was held at Macquarie University in Sydney, co-convened by Nikki Sullivan, Samantha Murray and Elizabeth Stephens. The Somatechnics research network grew out of this event. Recent conferences have been held in Linköping (2013), Otago (2014) and Tucson (2015). The term “somatechnics” itself was coined in 2003, and was intended to provide a new critical framework through which to rethink the relationship between technologies and embodiment. As Nikki Sullivan argues in a recent issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly: “techné is not something we add or apply to the already constituted body (as object), nor is it a tool that the embodied self employs to its own ends. Rather, technés are the dynamic means in and through which corporealities are crafted” (TSQ 1.1-2 2014). Our articles span a period of almost 25 years, with our earliest text (“Burney, Linda. “An Aboriginal Way of Being Australian” by Linda Burney) published in 1994, and this is also roughly the period in which scholarship in this area has taken shape and blossomed.
Feminist cultural studies encourages researchers to privilege everyday, lived experiences of the ... more Feminist cultural studies encourages researchers to privilege everyday, lived experiences of the people and cultures we are researching to uncover alternative possibilities for greater diversity and inclusion. This politicized foundation impacts on our methodological choices and the various outputs we produce from our findings. In this chapter I explore the ways my feminist cultural studies research approach offered opportunities to engage in un/intentional pedagogies in the fields of my research, and to contribute to changes in attitudes about, and opportunities for, women who surf. The forms of pedagogy I discuss in this chapter are different to the traditional pedagogies of a classroom, but are embodied, intersecting, relational pedagogies that are implicit in the often banal aspects of our everyday lives.
In this work, a Tungsten disulfide (WS 2) reflective saturable absorber (SA) fabricated using the... more In this work, a Tungsten disulfide (WS 2) reflective saturable absorber (SA) fabricated using the Langmuir-Blodgett technique was used in a solid state Nd:YVO 4 laser operating at 1.34 µm. A Q-switched laser was constructed. The shortest pulse width was 409 ns with the repetition rate of 159 kHz, and the maximum output power was 338 mW. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that short laser pulses have been generated in a solid state laser at 1.34 µm using a reflective WS 2 SA fabricated by the Langmuir-Blodgett method.
Physical cultural studies (PCS) scholars have been engaging in critical discussions about the eth... more Physical cultural studies (PCS) scholars have been engaging in critical discussions about the ethics and politics of research, including special issues on these topics in Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies (2008) and Sociology of Sport Journal (2011). According to David Andrews and Michael Giardina (2008: 408), the goal of PCS is ‘the deployment and (re)-realization of a Cultural Studies that matters, one that aims to produce the types of knowledge through which it would be in a position to intervene in the (broader social) world and make a difference’ (emphasis original). Building on this, Michael Silk and David Andrews (2011: 14) argue that cultural research should be ‘about helping people to empower themselves, determining what research can do for them (not us), and placing knowledge at their disposal to use in whichever way they wish’. In this way, the work we produce has the capacity to contribute to cultural change and thus researchers need to consider how we do our work, what we publish, and what the potential effects and affects of this might be
Drawing from a recent AustLit project on climate change fiction, this paper discusses the earlies... more Drawing from a recent AustLit project on climate change fiction, this paper discusses the earliest example we have traced of climate-change fiction in post-invasion Australia: James Edmond’s short story ‘The Fool and His Inheritance’. Published in 1911, the story begins in ‘the basement of things among the coals and the debris’ and moves through the Industrial Revolution, water wars, and the Great Slaying to the ultimate destruction of the Last Man by rising oceans. Analysis of this work in the twin contexts of its writing (1911) and our reading (2019) show the seeds of modern climate-change fiction sown over a century ago, as well as revealing the complex roots of such strains of thinking as ecofascism. We bring to this analysis three discrete and distinct approaches: bibliography, environmental science, and feminist cultural studies. From our diverse disciplinary positions, we offer a tripartite analysis to critique Edmond’s story, make sense of its place in the ‘climate change fi...
This article investigates how safety is experienced, navigated and cultivated by women on Instagr... more This article investigates how safety is experienced, navigated and cultivated by women on Instagram. Using qualitative interview data, we explore women’s understanding and practices of keeping them...
Feminist research has been important in making visible and advocating against the structural and ... more Feminist research has been important in making visible and advocating against the structural and cultural inequalities that women and others face as a consequence of male dominated social, economic, and political histories. Olive Rebecca has experienced many similarly challenging interactions while conducting participant-observations in her local community, both online and in the waves. Reflexivity and positionality are often negotiated as lone acts, yet continuing to approach them alone is perhaps another case of the way "many scholars of sport have ignored debates concerning power, authorship, and the other". In the three cases presented herein, corporeal considerations are central whether that is through reflexive negotiations of perceived failures, research collaborations developed in a politics of relation to other researchers, the field, literature, and the issues, or an embodied approach to spatialized researcher subjectivities that help develop relational, ethical, and accessible ways of communicating. These practices are driven by feminist theory and politics to centralize ethics throughout our research processes.
This article introduces the special issue (JSSI 45.1 and 45.2) on ‘Understanding Blue Spaces’ whi... more This article introduces the special issue (JSSI 45.1 and 45.2) on ‘Understanding Blue Spaces’ which examines relationships between blue spaces, sport, physical activity, and wellbeing. The articles progress conversations across humanities, social sciences and inter-disciplinary areas of research on diverse sporting practices, that span local to trans-national contexts. This collection offers new insights into politics, possibilities, and problems of the role of blue spaces in our wellbeing—individually, socially, and ecologically. In addition to outlining the 10 articles in the SI, which include ocean swimming, surfing, sailing/yachting, and waka ama paddling, we contextualize this work, discussing key thematic areas both across these papers, and in the wider interdisciplinary body of work on blue spaces, wellbeing, and sport. Specifically, we outline the role of physical activities and leisure practices in how we access, understand, experience, and develop relationships to seas and...
ABSTRACT Inspired by the activism of young people in response to growing calls for climate justic... more ABSTRACT Inspired by the activism of young people in response to growing calls for climate justice, this discussion examines the rich possibilities to more meaningfully engage with the interconnections between human and environmental health in the AC:HPE. We explore how the Sustainability cross-curriculum priority is articulated throughout the Health and Physical Education learning area of the Australian Curriculum (AC:HPE). Adopting an ecofeminist framework based on the work of Val Plumwood, we follow the current of Sustainability as it flows through the AC:HPE, to reveal the limited ways it manifests, as well as the points at which greater inclusion is possible. Given our analysis, we focus on expanding definitions and interconnections in the AC policy language to resituate Sustainability in more ecological and ethical terms, and thereby activate new pedagogical possibilities for teachers and students.
Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 2020
ABSTRACT In this article we draw on our varied experiences of conducting feminist sport and leisu... more ABSTRACT In this article we draw on our varied experiences of conducting feminist sport and leisure scholarship in digital spaces to offer some reflections, learnings and ways forward for navigating the challenges of digital and social media research. The paper outlines our methodological and ethical relationships to doing feminist research with and about women and girls, taking Margaret McClaren’s activist lens as a starting point to consider issues of positionality and reflexivity when researching lived experiences of gender in digital spaces. We then analyse our own actions across four dimensions of the research process: (1) connecting with communities and participants, (2) conceptualising and managing data, (3) navigating the ethics of representation and (4) vulnerabilities and self-care. In sharing our learnings from a range of projects, this paper offers insights into the methodological implications of conducting digital research on the moving body, as well as practical considerations for those doing feminist research on sporting and physical cultures in digital spaces. This article contributes to emerging conversations amongst qualitative sport and physical activity researchers about the challenges of digitisation for feminist engagements with power, context and situated knowledges.
Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 2018
Studying is above all thinking about experience, and thinking about experience is the best way to... more Studying is above all thinking about experience, and thinking about experience is the best way to think accurately.-Paulo Freire (1985, 3, in Offord 2016, 62) Contemporary cultural studies is engaged with the meanings people construct in their everyday lives, and how such meanings have significance. It explores how we understand our world, how we fit into our world, and, as a consequence, how others fit into our world (Couldry 2000; Morris 1998; Turner 2012). The major implication of this view is that the varied and subjective experiences of individuals' impact on their understandings of what various cultures mean; individuals are not only affected by culture, but cultures are created, developed, maintained, manipulated, and expressed by people. To explore this, many cultural studies scholars have adopted reflexive, embodied theoretical and methodological approaches, which require them to be engaged with their own subjective position within their research, both as part of an institution (university) and as individuals with their own cultural histories, subjectivities, and relationships. The reflexive concerns of cultural studies researchers have impacted approaches they take to the teaching of cultural studies at an undergraduate level. As part of this, scholars are asking questions of how we might teach cultural theory in ways that are engaging and relevant to an ever-changing student population, and which present students with "the possibility of redrawing the boundaries around oneself … where pedagogy becomes potentially transformational" (Garbutt, Biermann and Offord 2012, 79). That is, to teach content to reflect the way cultural studies is "critical and concerned with its contribution to the public good" (Turner 2012, 6-7). These approaches to pedagogy embraces pedagogical exchange as "the activation of new understandings, encounters and relationships" (Offord 2016, 54), an approach that unsettles and disrupts. Graeme Turner's notion of cultural studies contributing to the public good and Baden Offord's (2016) suggestion that cultural studies subjects can activate students as "a form of critical human rights education" (58), remain key drivers in my own development in higher education.
For Australian Indigenous women, especially those who lived on settlements and missions, particip... more For Australian Indigenous women, especially those who lived on settlements and missions, participation in the male preserve of sport was doubly shaped by colonization and by Western notions of women's bodies. In this paper, we will discuss the Cherbourg Marching Girls, who competed in precision marching from 1957 to 1962, to explore how, as young Indigenous women growing up on a settlement in mid-twentieth-century Queensland, the Marching Girls were able to use their participation in what could be viewed as a Western, militarized, disciplined activity to access the joys and pleasures of sport and to strengthen connections with other Indigenous Australian girls and women. These connections and pleasures continue 60 years later through their memories of marching. In this article, we draw on Moreton-Robinson's Australian Indigenous women's standpoint theory to truly listen to how the Marching Girls continue to make sense of their lives in the past and present.
In Australian surfing, localism is a practice through which surfers claim authority to protect th... more In Australian surfing, localism is a practice through which surfers claim authority to protect their surf breaks and access to waves from newcomers and outsiders. While localism has been shown to be a central component of the cultural identities of men who surf, the relationships to and experiences of localism of women who surf have rarely been the subject of critical analysis. In this discussion, I build on Krista Comer's use of "girl localism" to understand how effects of globalisation are experienced as place-specific by surfers. In this case, thinking about localism helps shift an analysis of how women surf from a sole focus on sex and gender, and away from cisgendered white women, to adopt a more intersectional approach that considers multiple aspects of women's surfing subjectivities, and the ways these impact their surfing lives. Examining the politicised nature of localism in surfing reveals how women are affected by and complicit in surfing hierarchies, highlights how surfing is enmeshed in the settler politics of place in Australia and, suggests means by which surfers might make more ethical approaches to entering surfing places as newcomers.
While competition-based team sports remain dominant in community and sport-for-development progra... more While competition-based team sports remain dominant in community and sport-for-development programs, researchers are exploring the value of alternative, less "sportized" activities such as lifestyle/action sports. In this paper, we explore the ways in which surfing is being used in development programs in Aotearoa/New Zealand, examining the perceived social benefits and impact. Our methods involved: (a) mapping the range of surfing projects; and (b) 8 in-depth interviews with program personnel. Widespread conviction in the positive developmental benefits of surfing was evident, and that surfing had a "special" capacity to reform or heal those who participate in it. However, the ways in which individuals' self-developments were promoted appear to be following the traditional sport/youth development path. They focus on policies aimed at improved life chances, equipping youth with the tools for self-improvement and self-management, inculcating self-governance and self-reliance. However, a counter narrative co-existed, highlighting surfing as a freeing experience, which, rather than restoring social order, works to instigate a personal transformation or awakening. Despite the range of challenges presented by surfing as a tool for positive development, surfing presents a potentially "critical alternative" which if sport-for-development programs are to be a form of social change, we should remain open to exploring.
In this chapter the Editors contextualize the book within 20 years of research on women in action... more In this chapter the Editors contextualize the book within 20 years of research on women in action sport cultures. As well as detailing the structure of the book, they explain how the 17 chapters build upon and extend existing feminist research on the gender relations in sport and movement culture by offering empirically informed insights into the multiple forms of power operating on and through women’s bodies in the various physical and mediated spaces of action sporting cultures. With an emphasis on the relationships between culture, bodies, subjectivities and power, they present the chapters in this book as highlighting important new directions for research and activism.
We are delighted to introduce this special virtual issue of Australian Feminist Studies, timed to... more We are delighted to introduce this special virtual issue of Australian Feminist Studies, timed to coincide with the “Technicity, Temporality, Embodiment” conference in Byron Bay, Dec 2016. This conference is the tenth international conference on Somatechnics held since 2003, when the first, “Body Modification: Changing Bodies, Changing Selves” was held at Macquarie University in Sydney, co-convened by Nikki Sullivan, Samantha Murray and Elizabeth Stephens. The Somatechnics research network grew out of this event. Recent conferences have been held in Linköping (2013), Otago (2014) and Tucson (2015).
The term “somatechnics” itself was coined in 2003, and was intended to provide a new critical framework through which to rethink the relationship between technologies and embodiment. As Nikki Sullivan argues in a recent issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly: “techné is not something we add or apply to the already constituted body (as object), nor is it a tool that the embodied self employs to its own ends. Rather, technés are the dynamic means in and through which corporealities are crafted” (TSQ 1.1-2 2014).
Our articles span a period of almost 25 years, with our earliest text (“Burney, Linda. “An Aboriginal Way of Being Australian” by Linda Burney) published in 1994, and this is also roughly the period in which scholarship in this area has taken shape and blossomed.
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Papers by Rebecca Olive
The term “somatechnics” itself was coined in 2003, and was intended to provide a new critical framework through which to rethink the relationship between technologies and embodiment. As Nikki Sullivan argues in a recent issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly: “techné is not something we add or apply to the already constituted body (as object), nor is it a tool that the embodied self employs to its own ends. Rather, technés are the dynamic means in and through which corporealities are crafted” (TSQ 1.1-2 2014).
Our articles span a period of almost 25 years, with our earliest text (“Burney, Linda. “An Aboriginal Way of Being Australian” by Linda Burney) published in 1994, and this is also roughly the period in which scholarship in this area has taken shape and blossomed.