Staging The Nation

Nations are more than geopolitical entities; they are discursive constructs—constructions of the character, the culture, and the historical trajectory of a people. Such constructions, by their very nature, are acts of inclusion and exclusion. They symbolically delineate membership in the national “imagined community.” Recent scholarship suggests that in diverse national contexts, discourses of national identity are gendered and ethnicized. These gendered and ethnicized discourses of national identity at times both reflect current social hierarchies and contribute to the maintenance of these hierarchies by naturalizing the marginalization of women and ethnic minorities within these nations. However, such discourses are inherently dynamic and open to contestation, with the potential to mirror and amplify changes in the status of subordinated social groups. This article examines gendered and ethnicized constructions of Japaneseness, Australianness, and Americanness in the opening ceremonies of the Nagano 1998, Sydney 2000, and Salt Lake City 2002 Olympic Games, respectively.