Nicholas Hookway
Biographic Data
| ID | 278675 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nicholas Hookway |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nicholas |
| FAMILY NAME | Hookway |
| SIGNATURE | HOOKWAY N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Tasmania |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0187-4741 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 235 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
What motivates adults to participate in Australian Masters sport: Looking back to ‘move’ towards a prosperous future
Crafting your own virtual charity sport event: Emotional energy, rituals, digital intimacy and the benefits of inclusivity
COVID-19 created a global sporting standstill for mega-events like the Olympics and had a similarly profound impact on small and local events such as charity sport events. These events were forced to pivot to virtual offerings to continue to deliver the event experience and impacts, including critical fundraising outcomes. This paper uses semi-structured interviews with participants in Cancer Council Tasmania's first virtual Women's 5 km walk/run…
Changing masculinities? Using caring masculinity to analyse social media responses to the decline of men in Australian primary school teaching
Commentators have predicted that Australian male primary school teachers will be extinct within 50 years. Drawing upon sociological ideas about the emergence of ‘caring masculinities’, this article qualitatively examines popular Australian understandings about male primary school teachers, their importance, why they are declining and whether, and how, this gender imbalance can be addressed. The study analyses data from 541 comments posted in resp…
Becoming and being a masters athlete: Class, gender, place and the embodied formation of (anti)-ageing moral identities
Once discouraged or viewed as dangerous, Masters athletes are now seen as exemplars of how people should age. This paper qualitatively examines the sporting pathways, embodied experiences and the moral formation of ageing identities among 'young-old' athletes competing in the 16th Australian Masters Games. Held in regional Tasmania (Australia), the Games attracted over 5000 participants competing across 47 sports over an 8-day period. Contributin…
"I Decked Myself Out in Pink": Examining the Role of the Pink Uniform in a Virtual Sports Charity Event
Introduction From the annual ‘Pink Test’ cricket match in Australia to Mother’s Day fun runs, there has been a proliferation of ‘pink’ uniformed charity events. This article analyses the pink uniform of the 2020 Cancer Council Tasmania’s Women’s first virtual 5K walk/run (W5K). The Women’s 5K event took take place virtually in September 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. The annual event, which runs through the CBD of Launceston, a regional city …
Jehovah's Witnesses
The Jehovah's Witnesses are a highly visible and distinct “world‐rejecting” fundamentalist Christian group. Despite experiencing growth throughout the twentieth century, membership appears to be declining as the movement struggles with low retention rates, reputational damage, the proliferation of the Internet, and capitalizing on its own “end time” beliefs in an era of global risk and uncertainty
Generation Solidarity? The young (and old) Australians who are rejecting age-related stereotypes
Generation has become one of the major lenses we use to understand the big issues and challenges of our time, from housing and employment to climate change and the impact of the pandemic. It’s common to read about narcissistic millennials, and more recently about selfish baby boomers, and increasingly anxious, tech-distracted Generation Zs. Often these labels register societal anxieties about social change and are levelled at younger people
Fitness Philanthropy: Exploring a Movement at the Nexus of Leisure, Charity, and Events
Sport is increasingly being used by individuals, charities, and corporate sponsors as a means of acquiring donors and fundraisers to support a variety of social and health causes. This paper examines five key features of fitness philanthropy that when considered together provide new sociological insight into a unique social phenomenon. These are: (a) peer-to-peer giving, (b) social media accounts of embodied philanthropy, (c) community connection…
Navigating ‘thin’ dating markets: Mid-life repartnering in the era of dating apps and websites
This article is a qualitative analysis of how people aged in their 30s and 40s use dating apps and websites to repartner following relationship separation or divorce. While ‘mid-life’ is a period of significant relationship churn, there is little sociological research that addresses how people in this age group use digital dating technologies to repartner. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with a small group of Australians, the article shows how d…
Beyond millennials v baby boomers: Using kindness to assess generationalism across four age cohorts in Australia
Today's young people (youth and young adults) are routinely understood in generational terms, constructed as narcissistic and selfish in comparison with their predecessors. Despite announcements of a weakening commitment to values of kindness and generosity, there is little empirical research that examines these trends. The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes shows that young people are more likely to be kind but are less likely to think most A…
Everyday Moralities: Doing it Ourselves in an Age of Uncertainty
Winner of the 2020 Stephen Crook Memorial Prize fromThe Australian Sociological Association, a biennial prize for the best authored book in Australian sociology From concerns of dwindling care and kindness for others to an excessive concern with self and consumerism, plenty of evidence has been provided for the claim that morality is in decline in the West, yet little is known about how people make-sense of and experience their everyday moral liv…
Towards an understanding of loneliness among Australian men: Gender cultures, embodied expression and the social bases of belonging
Recent quantitative investigations consistently single out considerable gender variations in the experience of loneliness in Australia, and in particular how men are especially prone to protracted and serious episodes of loneliness. In 2017 the Director of Lifeline implicated loneliness as a significant factor in suicide among Australian men - currently three times the rate of suicide among women. Compared to women men also struggle to talk about…
The moral self: Class, narcissism and the problem of do-it-yourself moralities
This article is a qualitative exploration of how contemporary morality is understood and constructed using Australian blog and interview data. A key finding is that the bloggers articulate morality as an actively created and autonomous do-it-yourself project that prioritises the subjective authority and authenticity of the self. While the blog stories do lend support to charges of narcissism, this is partly a product of bloggers misidentifying th…
Risk, morality and emotion: Social media responses to pregnant women who smoke
In this article, we use qualitative data to examine the shape and nature of the online ‘moral outrage’ that was directed at a research trial that used financial incentives to encourage pregnant mothers to quit smoking. Mai Frandsen developed the research trial in Tasmania, a small island state in Australia characterised by high rates of smoking in pregnancy. In this article, we draw on data from 121 online text comments posted in relation to thre…
Reading in Community, Reading for Community: A Survey of Book Clubs in Regional Australia
Worries about weakening community are central to assessments of modern Australia, yet it is easy to overlook the everyday ways we “do” and participate in community life. Book clubs are one area of community participation largely ignored by researchers despite the local and national proliferation of such clubs. Surveying twenty-two book groups and ninety-seven book club members, this study investigates the roles that book clubs play in the cultura…
Zygmunt Bauman's moral saint: Reclaiming self in the sociology of morality
Zygmunt Bauman's sociology of morality signals an important new direction from the orthodoxy of Emile Durkheim's 'society' realised ethics. The first part of this paper defends Bauman's postmodern position as valuable in theorising the moral present, offering a sociological conception of the sources, strategies and experience of contemporary morality. The paper then shifts to a critique of Bauman's social theory of 'being for the other', arguing …
Kindness in Australia: An Empirical Critique of Moral Decline Sociology
A new sociological agenda is emerging that interrogates how morality can be established in the absence of the moral certainties of the past but there is a shortage of empirical work on this topic. This article establishes a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of everyday morality drawing on the work of theorists including Ahmed, Bauman and Taylor. It uses the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes to assess the state and shape of cont…
Living Authentic: "Being True to Yourself" as a Contemporary Moral Ideal
IntroductionFrom reality television and self-help literature to exhortations to be "true to yourself," authenticity pervades contemporary culture. Despite their prevalence, cultures of self-improvement and authenticity are routinely linked to arguments about increasing narcissism and declining care for others. Self-improvement involves self-based practices geared to help realise the "improved" and "better you" while authenticity is focused on dev…
Moral decline sociology: Critiquing the legacy of Durkheim
This article critically evaluates key assumptions within classical and contemporary 'decline' moral sociology. It argues that two dominant models of moral loss sociology - the 'cultural pessimist' and 'communitarians' - are indebted to a set of Durkheimian assumptions that underwrite his original diagnosis of the moral crisis of modernity. Three specific assumptions are identified and critiqued: view of human nature and self; 'society' as the nec…
Losing my religion: Managing identity in a post-Jehovah's Witness world
What is it like to be socialised into the self-contained Christian fundamentalist world of the Jehovah's Witnesses and to move towards disinheriting that tradition during adolescence? This article considers this question by looking at how a group of young, Australian Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs), who were born into the religion, make the journey from membership to dissent. The interview data suggest that for these young respondents the roots of disa…
Emotions, Body and Self: Critiquing Moral Decline Sociology
Morality is argued to be in a state of decline in the contemporary West. This article identifies two dominant strands of moral decline sociology: the 'cultural pessimists' and the 'communitarians'. The article argues that these two dominant assessments of moral loss are underwritten by a set of assumptions concerning 'society' as the necessary source of morality and a disparaging view of emotion, body and self-authenticity culture. Drawing on Bau…
Entering the blogosphere: Some Strategies for Using Blogs in Social Research
Since 1999 blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. In this article I highlight the significance of the 'blogosphere' as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that …
Entering the blogosphere: Some Strategies for Using Blogs in Social Research
Since 1999 blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. In this article I highlight the significance of the 'blogosphere' as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that …
Towards an understanding of loneliness among Australian men: Gender cultures, embodied expression and the social bases of belonging
Recent quantitative investigations consistently single out considerable gender variations in the experience of loneliness in Australia, and in particular how men are especially prone to protracted and serious episodes of loneliness. In 2017 the Director of Lifeline implicated loneliness as a significant factor in suicide among Australian men - currently three times the rate of suicide among women. Compared to women men also struggle to talk about…
Kindness in Australia: An Empirical Critique of Moral Decline Sociology
A new sociological agenda is emerging that interrogates how morality can be established in the absence of the moral certainties of the past but there is a shortage of empirical work on this topic. This article establishes a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of everyday morality drawing on the work of theorists including Ahmed, Bauman and Taylor. It uses the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes to assess the state and shape of cont…
Losing my religion: Managing identity in a post-Jehovah's Witness world
What is it like to be socialised into the self-contained Christian fundamentalist world of the Jehovah's Witnesses and to move towards disinheriting that tradition during adolescence? This article considers this question by looking at how a group of young, Australian Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs), who were born into the religion, make the journey from membership to dissent. The interview data suggest that for these young respondents the roots of disa…
Moral decline sociology: Critiquing the legacy of Durkheim
This article critically evaluates key assumptions within classical and contemporary 'decline' moral sociology. It argues that two dominant models of moral loss sociology - the 'cultural pessimist' and 'communitarians' - are indebted to a set of Durkheimian assumptions that underwrite his original diagnosis of the moral crisis of modernity. Three specific assumptions are identified and critiqued: view of human nature and self; 'society' as the nec…
Emotions, Body and Self: Critiquing Moral Decline Sociology
Morality is argued to be in a state of decline in the contemporary West. This article identifies two dominant strands of moral decline sociology: the 'cultural pessimists' and the 'communitarians'. The article argues that these two dominant assessments of moral loss are underwritten by a set of assumptions concerning 'society' as the necessary source of morality and a disparaging view of emotion, body and self-authenticity culture. Drawing on Bau…
The moral self: Class, narcissism and the problem of do-it-yourself moralities
This article is a qualitative exploration of how contemporary morality is understood and constructed using Australian blog and interview data. A key finding is that the bloggers articulate morality as an actively created and autonomous do-it-yourself project that prioritises the subjective authority and authenticity of the self. While the blog stories do lend support to charges of narcissism, this is partly a product of bloggers misidentifying th…
Zygmunt Bauman's moral saint: Reclaiming self in the sociology of morality
Zygmunt Bauman's sociology of morality signals an important new direction from the orthodoxy of Emile Durkheim's 'society' realised ethics. The first part of this paper defends Bauman's postmodern position as valuable in theorising the moral present, offering a sociological conception of the sources, strategies and experience of contemporary morality. The paper then shifts to a critique of Bauman's social theory of 'being for the other', arguing …
Navigating ‘thin’ dating markets: Mid-life repartnering in the era of dating apps and websites
This article is a qualitative analysis of how people aged in their 30s and 40s use dating apps and websites to repartner following relationship separation or divorce. While ‘mid-life’ is a period of significant relationship churn, there is little sociological research that addresses how people in this age group use digital dating technologies to repartner. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with a small group of Australians, the article shows how d…
Living Authentic: "Being True to Yourself" as a Contemporary Moral Ideal
IntroductionFrom reality television and self-help literature to exhortations to be "true to yourself," authenticity pervades contemporary culture. Despite their prevalence, cultures of self-improvement and authenticity are routinely linked to arguments about increasing narcissism and declining care for others. Self-improvement involves self-based practices geared to help realise the "improved" and "better you" while authenticity is focused on dev…
Changing masculinities? Using caring masculinity to analyse social media responses to the decline of men in Australian primary school teaching
Commentators have predicted that Australian male primary school teachers will be extinct within 50 years. Drawing upon sociological ideas about the emergence of ‘caring masculinities’, this article qualitatively examines popular Australian understandings about male primary school teachers, their importance, why they are declining and whether, and how, this gender imbalance can be addressed. The study analyses data from 541 comments posted in resp…
Fitness Philanthropy: Exploring a Movement at the Nexus of Leisure, Charity, and Events
Sport is increasingly being used by individuals, charities, and corporate sponsors as a means of acquiring donors and fundraisers to support a variety of social and health causes. This paper examines five key features of fitness philanthropy that when considered together provide new sociological insight into a unique social phenomenon. These are: (a) peer-to-peer giving, (b) social media accounts of embodied philanthropy, (c) community connection…
Beyond millennials v baby boomers: Using kindness to assess generationalism across four age cohorts in Australia
Today's young people (youth and young adults) are routinely understood in generational terms, constructed as narcissistic and selfish in comparison with their predecessors. Despite announcements of a weakening commitment to values of kindness and generosity, there is little empirical research that examines these trends. The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes shows that young people are more likely to be kind but are less likely to think most A…
Reading in Community, Reading for Community: A Survey of Book Clubs in Regional Australia
Worries about weakening community are central to assessments of modern Australia, yet it is easy to overlook the everyday ways we “do” and participate in community life. Book clubs are one area of community participation largely ignored by researchers despite the local and national proliferation of such clubs. Surveying twenty-two book groups and ninety-seven book club members, this study investigates the roles that book clubs play in the cultura…
Entering the blogosphere: Some Strategies for Using Blogs in Social Research
Since 1999 blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. In this article I highlight the significance of the 'blogosphere' as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that …
Emotions, Body and Self: Critiquing Moral Decline Sociology
Morality is argued to be in a state of decline in the contemporary West. This article identifies two dominant strands of moral decline sociology: the 'cultural pessimists' and the 'communitarians'. The article argues that these two dominant assessments of moral loss are underwritten by a set of assumptions concerning 'society' as the necessary source of morality and a disparaging view of emotion, body and self-authenticity culture. Drawing on Bau…
Living Authentic: "Being True to Yourself" as a Contemporary Moral Ideal
IntroductionFrom reality television and self-help literature to exhortations to be "true to yourself," authenticity pervades contemporary culture. Despite their prevalence, cultures of self-improvement and authenticity are routinely linked to arguments about increasing narcissism and declining care for others. Self-improvement involves self-based practices geared to help realise the "improved" and "better you" while authenticity is focused on dev…
Moral decline sociology: Critiquing the legacy of Durkheim
This article critically evaluates key assumptions within classical and contemporary 'decline' moral sociology. It argues that two dominant models of moral loss sociology - the 'cultural pessimist' and 'communitarians' - are indebted to a set of Durkheimian assumptions that underwrite his original diagnosis of the moral crisis of modernity. Three specific assumptions are identified and critiqued: view of human nature and self; 'society' as the nec…
Losing my religion: Managing identity in a post-Jehovah's Witness world
What is it like to be socialised into the self-contained Christian fundamentalist world of the Jehovah's Witnesses and to move towards disinheriting that tradition during adolescence? This article considers this question by looking at how a group of young, Australian Jehovah's Witnesses (JWs), who were born into the religion, make the journey from membership to dissent. The interview data suggest that for these young respondents the roots of disa…
Kindness in Australia: An Empirical Critique of Moral Decline Sociology
A new sociological agenda is emerging that interrogates how morality can be established in the absence of the moral certainties of the past but there is a shortage of empirical work on this topic. This article establishes a theoretical framework for the empirical analysis of everyday morality drawing on the work of theorists including Ahmed, Bauman and Taylor. It uses the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes to assess the state and shape of cont…
Risk, morality and emotion: Social media responses to pregnant women who smoke
In this article, we use qualitative data to examine the shape and nature of the online ‘moral outrage’ that was directed at a research trial that used financial incentives to encourage pregnant mothers to quit smoking. Mai Frandsen developed the research trial in Tasmania, a small island state in Australia characterised by high rates of smoking in pregnancy. In this article, we draw on data from 121 online text comments posted in relation to thre…
Reading in Community, Reading for Community: A Survey of Book Clubs in Regional Australia
Worries about weakening community are central to assessments of modern Australia, yet it is easy to overlook the everyday ways we “do” and participate in community life. Book clubs are one area of community participation largely ignored by researchers despite the local and national proliferation of such clubs. Surveying twenty-two book groups and ninety-seven book club members, this study investigates the roles that book clubs play in the cultura…
Zygmunt Bauman's moral saint: Reclaiming self in the sociology of morality
Zygmunt Bauman's sociology of morality signals an important new direction from the orthodoxy of Emile Durkheim's 'society' realised ethics. The first part of this paper defends Bauman's postmodern position as valuable in theorising the moral present, offering a sociological conception of the sources, strategies and experience of contemporary morality. The paper then shifts to a critique of Bauman's social theory of 'being for the other', arguing …
The moral self: Class, narcissism and the problem of do-it-yourself moralities
This article is a qualitative exploration of how contemporary morality is understood and constructed using Australian blog and interview data. A key finding is that the bloggers articulate morality as an actively created and autonomous do-it-yourself project that prioritises the subjective authority and authenticity of the self. While the blog stories do lend support to charges of narcissism, this is partly a product of bloggers misidentifying th…
Everyday Moralities: Doing it Ourselves in an Age of Uncertainty
Winner of the 2020 Stephen Crook Memorial Prize fromThe Australian Sociological Association, a biennial prize for the best authored book in Australian sociology From concerns of dwindling care and kindness for others to an excessive concern with self and consumerism, plenty of evidence has been provided for the claim that morality is in decline in the West, yet little is known about how people make-sense of and experience their everyday moral liv…
Towards an understanding of loneliness among Australian men: Gender cultures, embodied expression and the social bases of belonging
Recent quantitative investigations consistently single out considerable gender variations in the experience of loneliness in Australia, and in particular how men are especially prone to protracted and serious episodes of loneliness. In 2017 the Director of Lifeline implicated loneliness as a significant factor in suicide among Australian men - currently three times the rate of suicide among women. Compared to women men also struggle to talk about…
Generation Solidarity? The young (and old) Australians who are rejecting age-related stereotypes
Generation has become one of the major lenses we use to understand the big issues and challenges of our time, from housing and employment to climate change and the impact of the pandemic. It’s common to read about narcissistic millennials, and more recently about selfish baby boomers, and increasingly anxious, tech-distracted Generation Zs. Often these labels register societal anxieties about social change and are levelled at younger people
Fitness Philanthropy: Exploring a Movement at the Nexus of Leisure, Charity, and Events
Sport is increasingly being used by individuals, charities, and corporate sponsors as a means of acquiring donors and fundraisers to support a variety of social and health causes. This paper examines five key features of fitness philanthropy that when considered together provide new sociological insight into a unique social phenomenon. These are: (a) peer-to-peer giving, (b) social media accounts of embodied philanthropy, (c) community connection…
Navigating ‘thin’ dating markets: Mid-life repartnering in the era of dating apps and websites
This article is a qualitative analysis of how people aged in their 30s and 40s use dating apps and websites to repartner following relationship separation or divorce. While ‘mid-life’ is a period of significant relationship churn, there is little sociological research that addresses how people in this age group use digital dating technologies to repartner. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with a small group of Australians, the article shows how d…
Beyond millennials v baby boomers: Using kindness to assess generationalism across four age cohorts in Australia
Today's young people (youth and young adults) are routinely understood in generational terms, constructed as narcissistic and selfish in comparison with their predecessors. Despite announcements of a weakening commitment to values of kindness and generosity, there is little empirical research that examines these trends. The Australian Survey of Social Attitudes shows that young people are more likely to be kind but are less likely to think most A…
Jehovah's Witnesses
The Jehovah's Witnesses are a highly visible and distinct “world‐rejecting” fundamentalist Christian group. Despite experiencing growth throughout the twentieth century, membership appears to be declining as the movement struggles with low retention rates, reputational damage, the proliferation of the Internet, and capitalizing on its own “end time” beliefs in an era of global risk and uncertainty
"I Decked Myself Out in Pink": Examining the Role of the Pink Uniform in a Virtual Sports Charity Event
Introduction From the annual ‘Pink Test’ cricket match in Australia to Mother’s Day fun runs, there has been a proliferation of ‘pink’ uniformed charity events. This article analyses the pink uniform of the 2020 Cancer Council Tasmania’s Women’s first virtual 5K walk/run (W5K). The Women’s 5K event took take place virtually in September 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. The annual event, which runs through the CBD of Launceston, a regional city …
Changing masculinities? Using caring masculinity to analyse social media responses to the decline of men in Australian primary school teaching
Commentators have predicted that Australian male primary school teachers will be extinct within 50 years. Drawing upon sociological ideas about the emergence of ‘caring masculinities’, this article qualitatively examines popular Australian understandings about male primary school teachers, their importance, why they are declining and whether, and how, this gender imbalance can be addressed. The study analyses data from 541 comments posted in resp…
Becoming and being a masters athlete: Class, gender, place and the embodied formation of (anti)-ageing moral identities
Once discouraged or viewed as dangerous, Masters athletes are now seen as exemplars of how people should age. This paper qualitatively examines the sporting pathways, embodied experiences and the moral formation of ageing identities among 'young-old' athletes competing in the 16th Australian Masters Games. Held in regional Tasmania (Australia), the Games attracted over 5000 participants competing across 47 sports over an 8-day period. Contributin…
What motivates adults to participate in Australian Masters sport: Looking back to ‘move’ towards a prosperous future
Crafting your own virtual charity sport event: Emotional energy, rituals, digital intimacy and the benefits of inclusivity
COVID-19 created a global sporting standstill for mega-events like the Olympics and had a similarly profound impact on small and local events such as charity sport events. These events were forced to pivot to virtual offerings to continue to deliver the event experience and impacts, including critical fundraising outcomes. This paper uses semi-structured interviews with participants in Cancer Council Tasmania's first virtual Women's 5 km walk/run…
Sociology (21 works) · Political science (15 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Social Psychology (9 works) · Law (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Gender Studies (7 works) · Morality (7 works) · Philosophy (6 works)