Competing allegiances, divided loyalties : making sport identities in mobile societies

Analysing how sport, given its cultural prominence and powerful 'nationing' role, contributes to the constitution of everyday life and to the shaping of socio-cultural futures - and, indeed, to the forging of extant and 'future memories' - is important to the broader task of understanding societies in perpetual transition. This chapter draws on findings from two Australian Research Council-funded projects. one focused on Australian cultural fields and the other on cultural citizenship and sport in Australia. It presents selected quantitative data of the component of a national survey addressing participation (both physical and spectatorial), taste and knowledge of sport and its communication through media in Australia, and qualitative data analysis from Greater Western Sydney, Australia's most demographically diverse region, concerning how its highly mobile citizenry orient themselves to sport. media and nation. In addressing these research findings, the chapter explores sport's place in national cultural formations and the ways in which diverse, mobile human subjects are exposed to and construct narratives of the social self and other by means of mediated sports culture.