“To Be as Good as Kobe Bryant. And to Be Able to Dunk Like Michael Jordan”: Media, Consumption, and Gendered Aspiration

• In Event: Investigating Trajectories of Student Aspiration in Low-Socioeconomic-Status Schools in Western Sydney

Abstract

Appadurai stresses that no longer should we give ‘epistemic privilege’ to the ‘lived particularities of social life’; we must also be alert to how everyday lives are powered by the ‘possibilities that the media (either directly or indirectly) suggests are available’ (1996, p. 55). This paper builds on the previous paper by extending our application of Appadurai’s theoretical work to consider how electronic mediation of desire is also central to the ‘break’ or ‘rupture’ in modernity that has also enabled mass migration. He elaborates how ‘mediascapes’ operate as ‘image-centred, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality…that offer a series of elements (such as characters, plots and textual forms) out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives’ (1996, p. 35).

The objective of this paper is to trace the operations of desire shaped by media through the representations of aspirations produced by students in the single sex boys’ school in the STAR project. It traces two facets of media-driven desire that emerged in student- artefacts from students in years 9 and 11. Data at this school were digitally compiled images or hand-drawn A4 posters or powerpoint slides representing desired futures, containing images and words. Unlike lengthier interventions at the other secondary schools in the project, students in this school had a single lesson to create their artefacts and worked alone on them.

Findings from this case study school indicated particular patterns emerging between students who were designated as high or low SES by their teachers, and between students in year 9 and students in year 11. In particular, practices of consumption and celebrity, both of which are significantly shaped by media, feature in the boys’ accounts of their futures. Furthermore, a large proportion of the senior boys, who were predominantly low SES and in the non-selective stream of the school, expressed ‘hopes’ or ‘dreams’ to become global sports celebrities and to play in globally recognised high profile sports teams. These contrasted with the intentions of younger students, half of whom were in the selective stream of the school, who had greater inclinations to attend university and achieve professional careers, which were further linked to social status, wealth and acquisition of consumer goods. Both of these facets relate to Appadurai’s concept of the mediascapes that are reshaping imagined futures in (post)modernity. Brief contrasts are made with the patterns of aspiration that are evident in student artefacts from the neighbouring girl’s school in order to consider gendered factors and patterns. The paper concludes that while imagination is a crucial factor in shaping aspirations, and, as has been argued earlier in this panel, is impacted by mobility and voice (Sellar & Gale, 2011) and social, economic and ethnic capital (Bourdieu, 1997), researchers must also attend to the mediascapes that structure young people’s imaginations, and incite hopes and dreams for particular futures over others (Appadurai, 1996, 2004; Sellar, Gale & Parker, 2011).

Author

• Susanne Marie Gannon, University of Western Sydney