Sport : scandal, gender and the nation

Sport generates and attracts intensive media and public attention, including through highly-charged scandals, because it is a social institution characterised by a deep contradiction between its noble mythologies (most conspicuously evident in the philosophy of Olympism) and some of its more ignoble practices. Sport is also routinely treated as integral to national identity. For example, Australian Citizenship: Our Common Bond, the official information booklet for the citizenship test, states that "[t]hroughout our history, sport has both characterised the Australian people and united us" (Commonwealth of Australia, 2013: 43). If this proposition is accepted, a crisis of sport is also a crisis of Australian national identity. This occasional paper addresses and analyses the sport-nation nexus, paying particular regard to two issues: the relationship between sport, gender and citizenship in view of the male domination of Australian sport; and the meaning of sport-based national identity in an increasingly demographically and culturally diverse Australia where identification with the nation through sport cannot be automatically assumed, and may be proplematic. Discussion of these subjects seeks to encourage sociologically informed public debate on one of Australia's most cherished and flawed social institutions.