ORCID Profile
0000-0002-0495-8625
Current Organisation
University of South Australia
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Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 11-2022
DOI: 10.1057/S41290-022-00172-3
Abstract: The Invictus Games is an international sporting competition involving military veterans who have become either wounded, injured or sick during their service. Having become a prominent event in the public sphere of participating nations that are drawn from Western security alliances, this article outlines results from a thematic analysis of Australian media surrounding the 2018 Sydney Games. While reporting of the Games included the use of cultural frames that reflect traditional symbolic relationships between sport and war, the data reveal new military–civilian discourses drawn from identity politics and focused on cultural recognition. These discourses emerge through the Invictus Games by (1) disability providing a cultural basis to demand greater respect for contemporary veterans and military service and (2) empowerment narratives of rehabilitation being symbolically connected to participants’ reengagement with their former military identity. Institutional problems central to rising political activism amongst contemporary veterans did not feature in the media coverage. It is argued that the Invictus Games illustrates the need for sociology to conceive of militarization in more multidimensional ways, appreciating both the prominence of a civilian–military gap in contemporary culture and how various social actors in Defense utilize post-heroic narratives in seeking to redress this cultural ide.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-2010
Abstract: As part of a larger ethnographic research project, this article analyses the history of memorialization on the First World War Gallipoli battlefields and its relationship with international travel and tourism. It contrasts the original Australian and New Zealand memorialization on the site with Turkish memorials constructed there in the late 20th century, a significant proportion of which are characterized by direct symbolic recognition of the ‘other’. Drawing on Bakhtin’s writings on referential discourses I refer to these as being dialogical. At Gallipoli this dialogical memorialization facilitated the rise of Australian tourism to the battlefields by allowing for a cosmopolitan reimagining of the military c aign, which included emphasizing extraordinary cases of humanity and framing soldiers as tourists. A cultural sociology of the public sphere is proposed as a way of comprehending such tourism, one that avoids assumptions about the severing of meaningful cultural ties with the events and institutions of modernity.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 05-12-2016
Abstract: The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami elicited the largest international humanitarian response of any disaster in history, yet comparatively little research has examined the way the disaster agent and the ensuing fundraising have been culturally framed in Western societies. While scholars have speculated that the humanitarian reaction is a response related to the capturing and distribution of the disaster through digital media, this paper focuses on the discursive meaning-making of the crisis as it appeared in a single national public sphere. From an analysis of articles in major Australian newspapers, the study finds that the tsunami discourses of risk, suffering, government aid and public charity were constructed in terms of Australian symbolic boundaries and national sentiment. Existing literature on humanitarian communication provides insights into this media portrayal however, to more fully comprehend the ways in which national discourse can mobilise populations in responding generously to global catastrophes we propose the concept of national humanitarianism.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 06-2006
Publisher: Elsevier
Date: 2010
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-1997
DOI: 10.1177/144078339703300205
Abstract: This research note builds upon our recent publication in this journal entitled 'Drought, Discourse and Durkheim' (West and Smith 1996). Drawing upon Robert Merton's methodological recommendation that functionalist research should explore possible functional alternatives, we examine discourses surrounding Australian natural disasters other than drought: floods, earthquakes, cyclones and bushfires. The paper identifies three variables that constrain the risk and ritual orientations of natural disaster discourses—time, space and mythology. These variables explain why drought has a unique place among Australian natural disasters as the generator of a national solidaristic narrative.
Publisher: Virginia Tech Libraries
Date: 2022
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 2000
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-01-2023
DOI: 10.1177/07255136221147954
Abstract: In this article we analyze the social memories of the Vietnam War afforded by tourism at the Cu Chi battlefield. Specifically, we explore the experiences of tourists at the site in order to address the under-theorized relationship between carnivalesque and dialogical discourses. Drawing on field interviews and ethnographic engagement with young adult Western tourists who took tours led by Vietnamese guides, we document how the tourists’ playful engagement with the past at Cu Chi facilitates the development of new dialogical memories of the war. Our interviews reveal a strong concern with the suffering of both occupying forces and the Vietnamese communist forces, a finding that points to the need for scholars to better appreciate the multiplicity of ways that social performances function in shaping social memory. Ultimately, we challenge social performance theories whose explanations reduce shifts in social memory to audience interpretations of authenticity.
Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
Date: 2016
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 20-08-2016
Abstract: In this article we use a module from the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes 2007 to analyse how particular events in history resonate with Australians. We emphasize three significant findings: (1) evidence of a strong level of attachment to the world wars and an equivalent significance given to the terrorist events of 9/11 and the 2002 Bali bombings, with far less importance given to other event types (2) a surprisingly weak correlation between the experience of events in adolescence and the assigning of historical significance (3) indication that both closeness to the nation and a strong sense of worldliness is important in explaining attachment to the past. Overall the data challenge recent theories of postmodern memory and a range of survey results that supports Mannheim’s cohort theory. Instead, we point to the resilience of historical events to remain culturally significant, particularly through the emergence of a cosmopolitan collective memory.
Publisher: Springer New York
Date: 2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 08-2006
Abstract: This article examines Australian working holidaymaker patronage of ‘Aussie’ theme pubs in London to explore meanings of the national themed environment. From semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork at three venues, it is argued that themed space can be interacted with in highly reflective ways while working to facilitate the reimagining of national identity. This finding challenges post-modern, critical and Weberian perspectives that argue the ersatz nature of themed space overwhelms actors’ ability to think critically while severing traditional connections with historical time. Attention is drawn to the polysemic dimensions of themed representations and the new ways that actors can engage with the nation in a globalizing world.
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2021
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-2008
Abstract: Utilizing a Geertzian cultural systems approach, Australian newspaper reporting of the 2002 Bali bombing is analysed to explore the dynamics of collective memory during crisis. With Australian footballers among the casualties in the terrorist attack, the traditional heroic figure of the Australian sportsman was widely used as a symbolic frame through which journalists, politicians and social commentators rationalized national suffering. The resulting promotion of an insular Australian nationalism inflamed public hostility towards Indonesia about the treatment of Australia's dead and injured. A counter-narrative of the attack emerged, however, with Australian tourists in Bali being mythologically aligned with First World War Anzac soldiers. In keying the bombing into the cultural logics of contemporary global travel and post-Fordist consumption, this collective memory provided a `model for' the emergence of a more cosmopolitan nationalism that legitimized a return to everyday activities and allowed for the development of closer diplomatic ties with Indonesia.
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2021
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 15-07-2016
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 12-2008
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 11-2014
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Date: 2022
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2021
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-02-2014
Publisher: Springer New York
Date: 2015
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 27-01-2011
Abstract: In recent decades there have been various calls for a pedagogical revolution in universities to address a new technology-savvy generation of students. These developments have been met with concern about the postmodern relativizing of educational achievement and accusations of the ‘dumbing down’ of course content. Moving beyond such culture war isions between orthodox and progressive worldviews, this article outlines how reference to popular culture and utilization of its styles can result in student re-engagement with traditional learning materials and formats. Drawing on focus group interviews with students from an introductory sociology class that incorporated a specifically designed DVD, we outline the in idual and societal benefits of a de-differentiated pedagogy that combines traditional rationalist education with more playful forms of learning that directly link with students’ life-worlds.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-2016
Abstract: In this article we make the case for a strong program of sociological research into war, the military and their symmetry with civil society, pointing to the ways in which sociology has failed to appreciate their relationship as a central feature of modernity. We particularly emphasize the need for a multi-dimensional comprehension of militarization and the relationships between representation, belief and action in conflict and post-conflict environments. We conclude that a strong sociology of the war and the military requires a greater appreciation of the influence of organized state violence on the shaping of contemporary social relations, breaking with weak traditions that only comprehend the significance of military institutions and warfare through analysing capital and other material and political forces.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 13-04-2023
Publisher: Routledge
Date: 15-07-2016
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 03-1996
DOI: 10.1177/144078339603200109
Abstract: In this paper we report the results of an extensive qualitative analysis of Australian discourses on drought. Themes in Australian discourses on drought are broadly Durkheimian in nature, referring to the need to reaffirm social morality and solidarity in the face of an unexpected and unprecedented challenge from nature. A brief analysis of statistical data suggests that drought discourses have a relative autonomy from both meteorological and social structural determinants. The paper concludes by theorising why 'drought' is so often invoked as a symbolic threat to the Australian national community.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-2008
DOI: 10.1111/J.1467-9558.2008.00328.X
Abstract: The burgeoning activity of Australian backpacker tourists visiting the WWI Gallipoli battlefields is analyzed to explore the rite of international civil religious pilgrimage. Drawing on Maurice Halbwachs, it is argued that this ritual form plays an important role in reimagining and enchanting established national mythologies. At Gallipoli, this occurred through the development of a dialogical historical narrative combining Australian and Turkish understandings of the past. The broader influence of this narrative on Australian historical understanding illustrates how global forces can be integrated within the study of national collective memory.
Publisher: Elsevier
Date: 2010
Publisher: Springer Singapore
Date: 2021
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Brad West.