CfP: The Making of a Global Market: Resort Skiing, Knowledge Transfer, and Media Culture during the Post-War Era (1950s-1970s)
Type: Call for Papers
Date: November 30, 2016
Location: Australia
Subject Fields: World
History / Studies, Sport History & Studies, Social History /
Studies, Journalism and Media Studies, Economic History / Studies
Call
for Papers: The Making of a Global Market: Resort Skiing, Knowledge
Transfer, and Media Culture during the Post-War Era (1950s-1970s)
We
are seeking contributions for a peer reviewed, edited volume about
skiing, knowledge transfer and media culture in ski resorts during the
post-war era (1950s-1970s) which is intended to be published at a high
quality publishing house in 2017.
Skiing as a sport has been
practised in various forms and shapes for a long time. The earliest
artefacts have been dated back to about 6,000 BC. In the last 150 years
or so, alpine skiing has emerged and undergone “many improvements and
almost metamorphoses” (Allen, 2012). But it was only in the post-war era
that skiing turned from a niche sport into a multi-billion-dollar
industry. The post-war-model of single purpose ski resorts attracted an
increasing amount of visitors to mountainous regions all across the
world and helped “morphing the sport from an elite practice to become a
keystone of middle-class identity” (Denning, 2015).
The broadening
of media sports cultures through the mainstreaming of television and
the introduction of video supported the spread of ski resorts. The media
coverage of ski competitions promoted the sport, creating visibility
for ski cultures around the world. With resort skiing gaining
popularity, formerly undeveloped, often inaccessible, regions in
mountainous regions became centres of a mass industry, attracting skiers
to specific, purposefully built places to practise the sport.
Research
examining these historical developments will offer fresh insights: It
will uncover a variety of critical domains such as knowledge exchange,
migration, modernization and tourism – and interrogate the “strong
interactive influences of various countries and certain persons in the
sport” (Hoffmann, 2013). It will also discuss the significant role of
media in the creation of emerging mass cultures around skiing. Many
accounts document the influence of Austrian and Swiss know-how in the
development of new areas: The establishment of ski resorts in the
American west, for example, is described as a “facsimile of the Alps”
(Denning 2015) with “a Gasthaus here and a Bierkeller there”
(Allen, 2012). In the Australian context, the narrative of European
influence is present as well, as migrants from Europe built up
Australian post-war resorts according to what they have learned in
various resorts all over the European Alps (Cross, 2012). In any case,
the question if and how developers all over the world drew on similar
patterns to create resorts, needs further exploration. Due to a lively
exchange between the single resorts in different countries, an increased
mobility of skiers, as well as global media coverage of ski events, ski
resorts soon turned into transnational spaces.
The edited volume
wants to analyse worldwide exchange processes and pin down flows of
knowledge, ideas and thoughts that took place in ski resorts across the
world during the 1950s and 1970s. Since “the power of sports media –
especially for an emergent sport – can have the effect of profoundly
influencing its developmental direction” (Rowe, 2015), this book will
also consider the role of media culture in the development of resort
skiing as a mass phenomenon during that time. “Research about
intercultural transfer necessarily depends on comparisons” (Paulmann,
1998) and the book follows a comparative approach that allows seizing
dynamic developments in different parts of the world and placing it into
a global context.
Scholars from all academic disciplines are
strongly encouraged to contribute to this new approach by providing a
case study which addresses some of the following questions:
- Direction and Diffusion of Knowledge: How did ideas and concepts of winter mass tourism in ski resorts spread across the world? What type and/or direction of exchange of ideas and concepts can we discern? Was there a multi-layered multi-directional exchange of ideas or did ideas and concepts rather spread from dominant to peripheral regions?
- Realisation and Translation of Knowledge: How was the practice of skiing shaped in different regions of the world? Did some resort developers simply copy patterns of other resorts or did they configure existing concepts to local needs? Was there something like a “global formula” for the creation of successful resorts
- Actors: Who were the leading figures in the creation of different ski resorts (Differences and commonalities)? To what extent did migrants contribute to the development process? Where there any globally operating companies in ski resorts? What was the role of passionate enthusiasts and grassroots collectives?
- Popularisation and Media Culture: What role did media play in the creation of ski resorts and establishing an easily recognizable ski culture? What ideas and social norms associated with skiing did media disseminate, and through what content and media forms?
- Material culture and consumption: What were the patterns of a new middle-class culture of consumption in ski resorts? And how did technological developments (including equipment), fashion and advertising figure in embedding skiing as consumption practice? How did innovations in practice diffuse?
Please send a brief CV and a proposal of no more than 400 words by November 30, 2016 to pstrobl@swin.edu.au, and to Aneta.Podkalicka@Monash.edu.
The book will be edited by Aneta Podkalicka (Monash University,
Melbourne) and Philipp Strobl (Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne)
Contact Info:
Philipp Strobl
Swinburne Institute for Social Research
Swinburne University of Technology
H53, PO Box 218, Hawthorn VIC 3122
Contact Email: