ICS Seminar Series - David Rowe

Date: Thursday 20 August 2015
Time: 11.30am - 1pm
Venue: EE.G.02, Western Sydney University, Parramatta South campus

David Rowe

Playing for Team Asia? Australia, Football Diplomacy and the 2015 AFC Asian Cup

Abstract 

Australia's relationship with Asia has become especially significant following substantial levels of Asian migration since the Vietnam War, and the increased economic importance to Australia of, successively, Japan, China and, potentially, of Indonesia and India. This turn to Asia has included advocacy of – and resistance to – the 'Asianisation of Australia', as well as a more technocratic emphasis on economic and political integration in the so-called 'Asian century'. But the sphere of bi-lateral trade agreements and political accords is limited in terms of fostering networks of cross-national/cultural engagement. For this reason, sport, among other cultural forms, has been championed as a promising domain of diplomacy (broadly defined as encompassing political, economic, social and cultural exchange in both formal and informal environments). 

Australia's deep connections to Britain help to explain the importance of sport to its historically Western-oriented national culture, while its extensive involvement in international sport (such as its unbroken participation in the summer Olympics since their revival in 1896 and hosting of them in 1956 and 2000) provides many opportunities to engage diplomatically with Asian nations. However, in most cases Australian sport has been governmentally separated from Asia – hence the significance of its departure from the Oceania Football Confederation and admission to the Asian Football Confederation in 2006. The opportunities for 'football diplomacy' are greatly enhanced when a common continental or regional governance structure allows Australia to be defined as an Asian sporting nation and so to host and participate in the 2015 AFC Asian Cup. Here, as in all sporting events, nations engage in overt competition, but this re-positioning of Australia for a sporting purpose is symbolically unifying, and may signify a new mode of integration and collective identification that situates Australia within Asia in the Asian century.

Biography

Professor David Rowe, FAHA has published extensively in the areas of media and popular culture, especially sport, music and journalism. He has substantial international research experience, serving as a peer reviewer/editorial advisor for more than 20 scholarly journals and for several national research councils. His books include Sport, culture and the media: the unruly trinity (second edition, Open University Press, 2004; Arabic translation, Cairo: The Nile Group, 2006; Chinese translation, Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2013); Global media sport: flows, forms and futures (Bloomsbury Academic, 2011); and Sport beyond television: the internet, digital media and the rise of networked media sport (authored with Brett Hutchins, Routledge, 2012). His latest book is Sport, public broadcasting, and cultural citizenship: signal lost? (edited with Jay Scherer, Routledge, 2014).