Karen Farquharson
Biographic Data
| ID | 143005 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Farquharson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen |
| FAMILY NAME | Farquharson |
| SIGNATURE | FARQUHARSON K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swinburne University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5848-865X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 205 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Everyday racism in Australian community sport
This article examines the types of racism experienced in community sport in Australia. Drawing on interviews with 51 community sport stakeholders, including 26 individuals with lived experiences of racism in sport, the article shows how Australian community sport maintains white dominance through everyday racisms including: the use of racial norms and stereotypes that shape how Indigenous peoples and racialised settlers are treated; favouritism a…
Representing Public Opinion
Canadian and Australian Immigration Policy Trends
This comparative analysis examines the historical trajectories and contemporary trends of immigration policies in Canada and Australia, elucidating the enduring influence of past practices on current frameworks. Focusing on the pre-1960s through post-2000s eras, the study reveals how both nations’ migration policies have shifted from racially based to skills-based approaches, with a recent emphasis on language proficiency as a key selection crite…
A new conceptualization of the professional practice of environmental health
Environmental health professionals play a significant role in preventing and addressing public health problems. Improving this area of practice continues to be a key strategy of the Australian Government; however, achieving this outcome presents several challenges. These challenges relate to the changing context of the practice and the complexities inherent in the practice itself. To address this problem, we investigated the qualitatively differe…
Covid-19, Migration, and Racism in Australia
The unique and complex social, health, and economic challenges arising from the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) pandemic have been subject to extensive discussion and deliberation in global scholarship and p
Son Preference in a Welfare State
Son preference has traditionally been a fundamental cultural value in Vietnamese families, and this preference appears to have intensified in Vietnam in recent years. The key explanation for why parents prefer sons to daughters is that Vietnamese families embrace Confucian notions of gender hierarchy. Based on in-depth interviews with twenty first-generation Vietnamese migrant parents from refugee and skilled migrant backgrounds, and 18 Vietnames…
Racism and White privilege
Skilled immigrant women represent a source of skills for the Australian economy. However, political and historical choices have formed and reinforced new emergent diasporic spaces in a country which remains marked by the British Empire’s heritage. Drawing on 31 qualitative interviews, this article focuses on the career journeys of skilled immigrant women from the UK, India, China and the Philippines in a White Anglo-dominant society. By marking a…
Gender Relations, Gender Equity, and Community Sports Spaces
This study employs a spatial analysis to critically examine gender relations within an Australian football and netball community sports club that has sought to address gender inequity and promote the participation of women across the club. Notable changes included increased female representation in the club's decision-making structures, growing numbers of female members, and the establishment of a women's and girls' football section. Using an in-…
Relating Worlds of Racism
Australian media and the politics of belonging
'Australian Media and the Politics of Belonging' addresses key topical themes and concerns in contemporary Australia, which will be of interest to both students and researchers concerned with developing a greater understanding of issues of belonging, and to a broader and general readership concerned with engaging with this key area of national and international interest.
Isomorphism
Isomorphism refers to the process whereby organizations become increasingly similar over time. There are two main approaches to understanding isomorphism: competitive and institutional. Competitive isomorphism refers to the isomorphism that occurs due to competition between organizations in a system for survival. There are three forms of institutional isomorphism: coercive, mimetic, and normative. Once fields become established, these processes o…
Relating Worlds of Racism
This international edited collection examines how racism trajectories and manifestations in different locations relate and influence each other. The book unmasks and foregrounds the ways in which notions of European Whiteness have found form in a variety of global contexts that continue to sustain racism as an operational norm resulting in exclusion, violence, human rights violations, isolation and limited full citizenship for individuals who are…
Diversity work in community sport organizations
Diversity is a key term used in a range of public and private organizations to describe institutional goals, values and practices. Sport is a prominent social institution where the language of diversity is frequently and positively used; yet, this rhetoric does not necessarily translate into actual practice within sport organizations. This paper critically examines diversity work in community sports clubs. Drawing upon qualitative research at 31 …
Workplace integration
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how highly skilled migrants to Australia integrate into the workplace, focussing on the factors that foster or hinder that integration. Design/methodology/approach An inductive method using an interpretive methodological approach was employed. In-depth interview data were analysed thematically. Findings Informal workplace practices, such as informal peer mentoring and having an “empathetic” supervis…
Qualitative Social Research
Media and the politics of belonging
Nolan, Burgin, Farquharson and Marjoribanks focus on media as a significant site through which a politics of belonging is played out, focusing particularly on coverage of Sudanese Australians. To this end, they analyse letters to the editor that concern Sudanese Australians in three Victorian newspapers in 2007, a highly significant year in which this group became the focus of significant levels of (predominantly negative) media coverage. Through…
Social integration of Australian Muslims
This article presents a dramaturgical view of the social integration of minorities. Based on 30 interviews with prominent Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that they explain and approach the problem of social integration largely in presentational terms. As a corollary, their chief collective and political strategy towards social integration is to put forward alternative discourses to counter the dominant anti-Islam discourses. We use Goffman's …
Qualitative Social Research
Qualitative Social Research employs an accessible approach to present the multiple ways in which criticism enhances research practice. Packed full of relevant, 'real world' examples, it showcases the strengths and pitfalls of each research method, integrating the philosophical groundings of qualitative research with thoughtful overviews of a range of commonly used methods
Sport and Social Inequalities
This article reviews recent research on the relationship between sport and social inequalities, focusing on gender, race, nation and social mobility. Through an engagement with these areas of research, we highlight how sport reflects and reinforces broader hierarchical structures; how it serves as a site for both inclusion and exclusion, but in ways that work unevenly; and how sport is ultimately a site for social reproduction of hierarchy and so…
Australian Muslim leaders and normalisation discourses
Social integration is a contested concept that has been defined in various ways by different stakeholders. Drawing on research with Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that social integration can be usefully conceptualised as both a process of normalisation and the end product of this process. In this paper, we first discuss the identity aspect of social integration and then outline the discursive strategies the Muslim leaders utilise in their at…
The initiation and progression of late-life romantic relationships
This research explores the initiation and progression of new late-life romantic relationships among older Australians (60 years plus). Our research found that older adult romantic relationships were meaningful, important and sexually intimate. However, few led to cohabitation or marriage, with these older adults preferring to date or to maintain separate households (living-apart-together, LAT). In line with Giddens' ideal of 'pure' relationships,…
A Fair Game for All? How Community Sports Clubs in Australia Deal With Diversity
Diversity and equality are key issues confronting sport. This article draws on findings from qualitative research carried out in Australia to critically examine how diversity is understood and valued in community sport. The findings suggest that there is a discrepancy between the policy objectives of government and sport organizations and the way in which diversity is understood and responded to in practice. Diversity management is not being adop…
Regulating sociology
This article examines the adoption of threshold learning outcomes (TLOs) for academic disciplines in Australia as an example of institutional isomorphism. It is argued that the type of sociology embedded in the TLOs values the sociology of the metropole and that, while the TLOs are broad enough to allow for individual sociology departments to continue to teach their own version of sociology, they further institutionalise the norm that sociology i…
Sport and Society in the Global Age
Modern professional sport is a key site of social action. This book focuses on the interactions of sport and society, and engages with the political, policy and organisational aspects of such interactions. With a clever structure that takes in turn issues of process, regulation and culture, this is a unique introduction to the sociology of sport
Doing 'Race' on the Internet
‘Race’ is an important social category both face-to-face and online. Using online parenting communities as a case study, I investigate how ‘race’ is disclosed on the Internet. I find that ‘race’ is disclosed in these communities through the posting of photos and racialised avatars, and that racial disclosure is a routine practice. I also find that this particular part of cyberspace is a largely white space. As a result, while there are no formal …
A Fair Game for All? How Community Sports Clubs in Australia Deal With Diversity
Diversity and equality are key issues confronting sport. This article draws on findings from qualitative research carried out in Australia to critically examine how diversity is understood and valued in community sport. The findings suggest that there is a discrepancy between the policy objectives of government and sport organizations and the way in which diversity is understood and responded to in practice. Diversity management is not being adop…
Gender Relations, Gender Equity, and Community Sports Spaces
This study employs a spatial analysis to critically examine gender relations within an Australian football and netball community sports club that has sought to address gender inequity and promote the participation of women across the club. Notable changes included increased female representation in the club's decision-making structures, growing numbers of female members, and the establishment of a women's and girls' football section. Using an in-…
Influencing Policy Transnationally
Using the global tobacco advocacy networks as a case study, this article argues that the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith 1999), which theorises how advocacy coalitions affect policymaking domestically, and Keck and Sikkink's research into transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) can provide insights into the mechanisms of how transnational advocacy networks impact both local and intergovernmental policymaki…
Sport and Social Inequalities
This article reviews recent research on the relationship between sport and social inequalities, focusing on gender, race, nation and social mobility. Through an engagement with these areas of research, we highlight how sport reflects and reinforces broader hierarchical structures; how it serves as a site for both inclusion and exclusion, but in ways that work unevenly; and how sport is ultimately a site for social reproduction of hierarchy and so…
Mediated Multiculturalism
While multiculturalism has been central to the Australian political and social landscape since the 1970s, it has been recently challenged, with the (re)emergence of discourses of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘integration’. In this paper, we engage with these contests by focusing on newspaper coverage of Sudanese Australians around the time of the 2007 Federal Election. We ask: how did the Australian print media represent Sudanese people during this peri…
Introduction
Additional informationNotes on contributorsVal Colic-PeiskerVal Colic-Peisker is a Senior Research Fellow at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). She is a sociologist/political scientist with special interest in migration, multiculturalism, global mobility of professionals, cosmopolitanism and employment of immigrants in Australia. Her latest book Migration, Class and Transnational Identities: Croatians in Australia and Amer…
Workplace integration
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how highly skilled migrants to Australia integrate into the workplace, focussing on the factors that foster or hinder that integration. Design/methodology/approach An inductive method using an interpretive methodological approach was employed. In-depth interview data were analysed thematically. Findings Informal workplace practices, such as informal peer mentoring and having an “empathetic” supervis…
A Different Kind of Snowball
Studying policy networks raises challenges in three important areas: identifying members of the policy network, gaining access to the network, and reporting findings from the study while maintaining confidentiality. Using the tobacco control policy and health policy networks in Victoria, Australia as a case study, the article describes how to use a reputational snowball to identify a policy network. I argue that the reputational snowball not only…
Media and the politics of belonging
Nolan, Burgin, Farquharson and Marjoribanks focus on media as a significant site through which a politics of belonging is played out, focusing particularly on coverage of Sudanese Australians. To this end, they analyse letters to the editor that concern Sudanese Australians in three Victorian newspapers in 2007, a highly significant year in which this group became the focus of significant levels of (predominantly negative) media coverage. Through…
The initiation and progression of late-life romantic relationships
This research explores the initiation and progression of new late-life romantic relationships among older Australians (60 years plus). Our research found that older adult romantic relationships were meaningful, important and sexually intimate. However, few led to cohabitation or marriage, with these older adults preferring to date or to maintain separate households (living-apart-together, LAT). In line with Giddens' ideal of 'pure' relationships,…
Transforming the Springboks
Nation-building occurs not only through the creation of formal institutions,but also through struggles in cultural and symbolic contexts. In apartheid South Africa, the rugby union Springboks both symbolised and institutionalised a racially based form of ‘bounded citizenship’. In postapartheid South Africa, the Springboks have emerged as a contested and significant site in the attempt to build a non-racial nation through reconciliation. To explor…
Diversity work in community sport organizations
Diversity is a key term used in a range of public and private organizations to describe institutional goals, values and practices. Sport is a prominent social institution where the language of diversity is frequently and positively used; yet, this rhetoric does not necessarily translate into actual practice within sport organizations. This paper critically examines diversity work in community sports clubs. Drawing upon qualitative research at 31 …
Australian Muslim leaders and normalisation discourses
Social integration is a contested concept that has been defined in various ways by different stakeholders. Drawing on research with Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that social integration can be usefully conceptualised as both a process of normalisation and the end product of this process. In this paper, we first discuss the identity aspect of social integration and then outline the discursive strategies the Muslim leaders utilise in their at…
Representing Australia
Sport and representations of sport in the media are key sites for political and social struggles around race and nation. In order to explore how meanings of race are constructed in a sporting context, we undertook a discourse analysis of Australian print media coverage of two incidents of alleged racial vilification in sport. In one, Australian cricketer Darren Lehmann was suspended for racially vilifying the Sri Lankan team. In the other, Pakist…
Social integration of Australian Muslims
This article presents a dramaturgical view of the social integration of minorities. Based on 30 interviews with prominent Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that they explain and approach the problem of social integration largely in presentational terms. As a corollary, their chief collective and political strategy towards social integration is to put forward alternative discourses to counter the dominant anti-Islam discourses. We use Goffman's …
Regulating sociology
This article examines the adoption of threshold learning outcomes (TLOs) for academic disciplines in Australia as an example of institutional isomorphism. It is argued that the type of sociology embedded in the TLOs values the sociology of the metropole and that, while the TLOs are broad enough to allow for individual sociology departments to continue to teach their own version of sociology, they further institutionalise the norm that sociology i…
Influencing Policy Transnationally
Using the global tobacco advocacy networks as a case study, this article argues that the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier and Jenkins‐Smith 1999), which theorises how advocacy coalitions affect policymaking domestically, and Keck and Sikkink's research into transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) can provide insights into the mechanisms of how transnational advocacy networks impact both local and intergovernmental policymaki…
Transforming the Springboks
Nation-building occurs not only through the creation of formal institutions,but also through struggles in cultural and symbolic contexts. In apartheid South Africa, the rugby union Springboks both symbolised and institutionalised a racially based form of ‘bounded citizenship’. In postapartheid South Africa, the Springboks have emerged as a contested and significant site in the attempt to build a non-racial nation through reconciliation. To explor…
A Different Kind of Snowball
Studying policy networks raises challenges in three important areas: identifying members of the policy network, gaining access to the network, and reporting findings from the study while maintaining confidentiality. Using the tobacco control policy and health policy networks in Victoria, Australia as a case study, the article describes how to use a reputational snowball to identify a policy network. I argue that the reputational snowball not only…
Representing Australia
Sport and representations of sport in the media are key sites for political and social struggles around race and nation. In order to explore how meanings of race are constructed in a sporting context, we undertook a discourse analysis of Australian print media coverage of two incidents of alleged racial vilification in sport. In one, Australian cricketer Darren Lehmann was suspended for racially vilifying the Sri Lankan team. In the other, Pakist…
Doing 'Race' on the Internet
‘Race’ is an important social category both face-to-face and online. Using online parenting communities as a case study, I investigate how ‘race’ is disclosed on the Internet. I find that ‘race’ is disclosed in these communities through the posting of photos and racialised avatars, and that racial disclosure is a routine practice. I also find that this particular part of cyberspace is a largely white space. As a result, while there are no formal …
Mediated Multiculturalism
While multiculturalism has been central to the Australian political and social landscape since the 1970s, it has been recently challenged, with the (re)emergence of discourses of ‘social cohesion’ and ‘integration’. In this paper, we engage with these contests by focusing on newspaper coverage of Sudanese Australians around the time of the 2007 Federal Election. We ask: how did the Australian print media represent Sudanese people during this peri…
Introduction
Additional informationNotes on contributorsVal Colic-PeiskerVal Colic-Peisker is a Senior Research Fellow at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University). She is a sociologist/political scientist with special interest in migration, multiculturalism, global mobility of professionals, cosmopolitanism and employment of immigrants in Australia. Her latest book Migration, Class and Transnational Identities: Croatians in Australia and Amer…
Sport and Society in the Global Age
Modern professional sport is a key site of social action. This book focuses on the interactions of sport and society, and engages with the political, policy and organisational aspects of such interactions. With a clever structure that takes in turn issues of process, regulation and culture, this is a unique introduction to the sociology of sport
Regulating sociology
This article examines the adoption of threshold learning outcomes (TLOs) for academic disciplines in Australia as an example of institutional isomorphism. It is argued that the type of sociology embedded in the TLOs values the sociology of the metropole and that, while the TLOs are broad enough to allow for individual sociology departments to continue to teach their own version of sociology, they further institutionalise the norm that sociology i…
The initiation and progression of late-life romantic relationships
This research explores the initiation and progression of new late-life romantic relationships among older Australians (60 years plus). Our research found that older adult romantic relationships were meaningful, important and sexually intimate. However, few led to cohabitation or marriage, with these older adults preferring to date or to maintain separate households (living-apart-together, LAT). In line with Giddens' ideal of 'pure' relationships,…
A Fair Game for All? How Community Sports Clubs in Australia Deal With Diversity
Diversity and equality are key issues confronting sport. This article draws on findings from qualitative research carried out in Australia to critically examine how diversity is understood and valued in community sport. The findings suggest that there is a discrepancy between the policy objectives of government and sport organizations and the way in which diversity is understood and responded to in practice. Diversity management is not being adop…
Qualitative Social Research
Qualitative Social Research employs an accessible approach to present the multiple ways in which criticism enhances research practice. Packed full of relevant, 'real world' examples, it showcases the strengths and pitfalls of each research method, integrating the philosophical groundings of qualitative research with thoughtful overviews of a range of commonly used methods
Sport and Social Inequalities
This article reviews recent research on the relationship between sport and social inequalities, focusing on gender, race, nation and social mobility. Through an engagement with these areas of research, we highlight how sport reflects and reinforces broader hierarchical structures; how it serves as a site for both inclusion and exclusion, but in ways that work unevenly; and how sport is ultimately a site for social reproduction of hierarchy and so…
Australian Muslim leaders and normalisation discourses
Social integration is a contested concept that has been defined in various ways by different stakeholders. Drawing on research with Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that social integration can be usefully conceptualised as both a process of normalisation and the end product of this process. In this paper, we first discuss the identity aspect of social integration and then outline the discursive strategies the Muslim leaders utilise in their at…
Qualitative Social Research
Media and the politics of belonging
Nolan, Burgin, Farquharson and Marjoribanks focus on media as a significant site through which a politics of belonging is played out, focusing particularly on coverage of Sudanese Australians. To this end, they analyse letters to the editor that concern Sudanese Australians in three Victorian newspapers in 2007, a highly significant year in which this group became the focus of significant levels of (predominantly negative) media coverage. Through…
Social integration of Australian Muslims
This article presents a dramaturgical view of the social integration of minorities. Based on 30 interviews with prominent Australian Muslim leaders, we argue that they explain and approach the problem of social integration largely in presentational terms. As a corollary, their chief collective and political strategy towards social integration is to put forward alternative discourses to counter the dominant anti-Islam discourses. We use Goffman's …
Workplace integration
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore how highly skilled migrants to Australia integrate into the workplace, focussing on the factors that foster or hinder that integration. Design/methodology/approach An inductive method using an interpretive methodological approach was employed. In-depth interview data were analysed thematically. Findings Informal workplace practices, such as informal peer mentoring and having an “empathetic” supervis…
Australian media and the politics of belonging
'Australian Media and the Politics of Belonging' addresses key topical themes and concerns in contemporary Australia, which will be of interest to both students and researchers concerned with developing a greater understanding of issues of belonging, and to a broader and general readership concerned with engaging with this key area of national and international interest.
Isomorphism
Isomorphism refers to the process whereby organizations become increasingly similar over time. There are two main approaches to understanding isomorphism: competitive and institutional. Competitive isomorphism refers to the isomorphism that occurs due to competition between organizations in a system for survival. There are three forms of institutional isomorphism: coercive, mimetic, and normative. Once fields become established, these processes o…
Relating Worlds of Racism
This international edited collection examines how racism trajectories and manifestations in different locations relate and influence each other. The book unmasks and foregrounds the ways in which notions of European Whiteness have found form in a variety of global contexts that continue to sustain racism as an operational norm resulting in exclusion, violence, human rights violations, isolation and limited full citizenship for individuals who are…
Diversity work in community sport organizations
Diversity is a key term used in a range of public and private organizations to describe institutional goals, values and practices. Sport is a prominent social institution where the language of diversity is frequently and positively used; yet, this rhetoric does not necessarily translate into actual practice within sport organizations. This paper critically examines diversity work in community sports clubs. Drawing upon qualitative research at 31 …
Relating Worlds of Racism
Racism and White privilege
Skilled immigrant women represent a source of skills for the Australian economy. However, political and historical choices have formed and reinforced new emergent diasporic spaces in a country which remains marked by the British Empire’s heritage. Drawing on 31 qualitative interviews, this article focuses on the career journeys of skilled immigrant women from the UK, India, China and the Philippines in a White Anglo-dominant society. By marking a…
Gender Relations, Gender Equity, and Community Sports Spaces
This study employs a spatial analysis to critically examine gender relations within an Australian football and netball community sports club that has sought to address gender inequity and promote the participation of women across the club. Notable changes included increased female representation in the club's decision-making structures, growing numbers of female members, and the establishment of a women's and girls' football section. Using an in-…
Sociology (25 works) · Political science (24 works) · Gender Studies (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Social science (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Public relations (8 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (8 works) · Sports, Gender, and Society (8 works) · Media studies (7 works)