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sportswomen to emphasize sexual attractiveness as a marketing tool in pursuit
of greater media, sponsor and advertiser attention). The issue of sex and gender
equality in sport and media sport, and the ways in which it is confronted by
governments and business enterprises, raises the wider question of the role of
media sport in the whole domain of ‘cultural citizenship’.

Fighting for the right to watch

The concept of cultural citizenship is a broadening of the traditional idea of the
rights and responsibilities of states and citizens in recognition of the increased
‘culturalization’ of society. The outcome is a greater significance of culture and
communication under ‘postmodernity’ in fostering the creation of informed,
critically reflective persons capable of taking an active part both in their own
lives and in those of the collectivities of various kinds – families, peers, pressure
groups, political parties, and so on – in which they are involved. Just as, say,
the idea of what constitutes a necessity and what a luxury has changed over
many decades – possession of inside toilets, reticulated plumbing and domestic
electrical power was, until well into the twentieth century, the exception rather
than the norm for most of the population of the west (and still is in many non-
western societies and in indigenous settlements in ‘white settler’ countries) – so
what is considered to be an essential prerequisite for comprehensive partici-
pation in all of society’s major institutions, debates and processes has been
extended. In making informed choices, contemporary citizens need to have
ready access to highly detailed information about the values, histories, per-
formances and intentions of the various parties engaged in formal and informal
political processes. Therefore, they must possess the means of ready communi-
cation in the public sphere (televisions, newspapers, radios, telephones, com-
puters, and so on) and the appropriate educational means to decode, interpret,
adjudicate on and respond to the messages that are circulating in that ‘public
sphere’ (Murdock 1992, 1997; Golding and Murdock 2000).
As culture has become, across the past two centuries, industrially produced
or provided and governed by the state (Bennett 1998), this entitlement to
information for guidance in voting or family health, personal hygiene or even
product choice (as applied both to commercial advertising and to state advice
on safe and healthy consumer behaviour) has progressively expanded. It now
involves the claimed right to certain kinds of cultural (including strictly enter-
tainment) provision so that the citizen can take part fully in the cultural as well
as the political life of the nation and even of humanity. Here a model of cultural
heritage encompasses quite recent historical developments, like the twentieth-
century practice of broadcasting major public events to the entire nation.