“Kick it to me Pierre!” Bourdieu and football: theorizing an Australian rural youth culture

Abstract

This article examines a cultural development process in an Australian rural youth culture, with a particular focus on the place of Australian Rules football, to explore a theoretical model of cultural development. The Bourdieuian idea that culture is constructed through a process of capital exchange and negotiation as individual and group habitus are iteratively formed is extended by Lingard and Rawolle's theory of cross-field effects. The way that place and space impact on the process of capital exchange is also explored. The formative impact of football's cultural and social capital exchange in material, social and discursive space, and the role this can play in other fields of practice, is surfaced in an examination of the culture-building process in a rural youth culture.