Talking T‐shirts: a visual exploration of youth material culture

Abstract

Readers should also refer to the journal's website at http://www.informaworld.com/rqrs and check volume 2, issue 2 to view the visual material in colour.

The author completed a visual ethnography, first to explore the sport experiences of high school students taking part in New Zealand’s major rowing competition, the Maadi Cup. Additionally, the project set out to explore the process and potential of using photographs as representations of such experiences. The core of this research project was based on spending 10 days and nights at the regatta site, living the everyday life of rowers and rowing. The compressed time frame required the convenience of digital photography and video. In addition to the obvious artefacts of rowing, there is a notable influence of material culture. Part of the rowers’ everyday practice included this cultural production represented through the wearing and trading of T‐shirts. Despite its highly competitive nature, this regatta is important to young people as an opportunity to socialise and explore individual identities. For many of these students, Maadi is both grueling and gregarious. True, it is important for them to participate as competitors, but these objects of material culture (e.g. T‐shirts) help us understand how these young people communicate the wider meanings of being rowers.

Keywords:

• youth sport
• rowing
• visual ethnography
• material culture
• de Certeau

Acknowledgements

The author would like to express gratitude to Associate Professor Bob Rinehart and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

Notes

1. While it would be a valuable exercise to explore in detail the nature of these messages, I wish to reiterate that this was not the purpose of this paper. Rather, it was to explore youth sport experiences, and in this case the impact of material culture, as well as discuss how visual research could capture those experiences. These conversations (represented through their slogans) were between the rowers and I believe that imposing my interpretation of their messages diminishes their voices. The voices of these rowers has been addressed (Pope 2010) elsewhere.