Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

A Detour Through `Nascar Nation'

2007; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 42; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1177/1012690207088113

1461-7218

Joshua I. Newman,

Music History and Culture

This study offers an ethnographically informed critical interrogation of the spaces and spectacles of `NASCAR Nation'. Informed by a series of open-ended interviews with fans and administrators at NASCAR races, hundreds of hours of participant observation and spatial analysis at these events, and examination of various mediations of NASCAR driver-celebrity, spectacle, and fandom, this project illuminates the processes by which citizenship and entitlement in `NASCAR Nation' are both constructed and contested. The article also investigates the ways in which NASCAR — often referred to as America's `fastest growing sport' — has played a significant role in articulating the hegemonic structures of consumer capitalist neoliberalism and the current regime's brand of faith-based, militarized neoconservativism to the identity politics of stock car racing fandom.