- De Montfort University, International Centre for Sport History and Culture, Department MemberThe University of Gibraltar, Research, Department Memberadd
- Cultural Studies, Marxism, Gender History, Post-Colonialism, Caribbean History, Anthropology of Sport, and 115 moreColonialism, Race and Ethnicity, Nationalism, Sports History, History, Cultural History, Ethnohistory, Media Studies, Media Sport, Indigenous Politics, Popular Culture, Postcolonial Studies, Historiography, Comparative History, Imperial History, Bodies and Culture, Commonwealth History, Sociology of consumption, Sociology of Culture, Cultural Sociology, Cultural Memory, Creative Commons, Intellectual Property, Indigenous Sports and Games, Michael Burawoy, Apartheid Boycotts, Academic boycotts, BDS, Israel/Palestine, Media and Cultural Studies, Sociology of Sport, Protest, Anti-Apartheid Movement, Anti-Aparthied, Associativity, CLR James, Planned Obsolescence, Sport, University of gloucestershire, Clr James Beyond a Boundary, West Indies (History), Asymmetrical Power Relations, Indigenousness, Cultural Theory, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Social History, Social Movements, Israel/Palestine, ISHPES, Indigeneity, Visual Culture, Cricket, Decolonial Thought, Surfing, Pasifika, Settler Colonial Studies, Settler colonialism, Palestine, Apartheid, Sanctions, BDS, Sports and politics, Boycott Movements, Antiapartheid Movements, Philosophy, Democracy, Play Theory, Children's Play, Philosophy of Play, Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Modernity, Modernity/coloniality/decoloniality, National Identity, Film Studies, Cooperatives, Immaterial Labour, Critical Social Sciences, New Zealand, Voluntary Associations, Civil Society and the Public Sphere, Historography, Mimicry, CLR James, Bhabha, Cricket, West Indies, Beyond a Boundary, Viv Richards, History of New Zealand, Schmalenbach, Critical Discourse Analysis, Football, Athlete Violence, National Racial Stereotypes, Sociology of Work, Gender, Work and Labour, Labour markets, Horse racing, Popular Music, Television Studies, Cultural Geography, Lefebvre, Soja, Physical Activity, Health, Choice, Sports Coaching, New Zealand Studies, Labour Law, Trade unions, Biculturalism, Political Theory, Resistance (Social), Virtue Ethics, Performativity, Outdoor Play and Learning, Play, Banal nationalism, Sámi Studies, Circassian Studies, and Women's Sportedit
- I am Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, where I completed my PhD in 2004. Until January 20... moreI am Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, where I completed my PhD in 2004. Until January 2019 I was Reader in the Culture and History of Sport, and taught in the sport and exercise programmes at the University of Gloucestershire from 2000. Between 2006 and 2016 I was also ½ time in Academic Registry as Associate Dean, Quality & Standards. I am also Honorary Research Fellow in the International Centre for the History and Culture of Sport at De Montfort University in England and Senior Research Associate at the Universty of Gibraltar.
My research to date has focussed on sporting identities, mainly in the former British Empire and post-colonising states, with an emphasis on notions of indigenousness, both on the part of first nations and other indigenous peoples and for subsequent settler populations, both voluntary and enforced settlers. Alongside that I have a continuing research strand dealing with social movements, especially sport and other cultural boycotts with a particular emphasis on sport-centred anti-apartheid movements. This work straddles the disciplinary boundaries of history and sociology, with influences from cultural studies.
Most of my teaching has focussed on historical and sociological aspects of sport, exercise and play, although I have also taught research methods for most of the time I have been in the School. My principal undergraduate teaching centred was a final year class in sport & the sociology of consumption. My major teaching commitment is supervising research degrees in the School of Sport and Exercise as well as in the School of Business and Management, although most of my research students work in sport, exercise and play.
As well as teaching I am also active in leading and developing research programmes and capacity, where I now work with the University of Gibraltar to support and help develop ethical literacy in research and support research students. This builds on my work at Gloucestershire where I chaired the University’s Research Ethics Committee from 2006-18 and led the University’s work to develop both enhanced research ethics literacy and more generally to enhance our systems to support research integrity.
I am Special Projects Editor for the International Journal of the History of Sport. I have been Chair of the British Society of Sports History and am currently a Vice President of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport, have served on and convened several working groups of the North American Society for Sports History and am a member of the International Council of the New Zealand Studies Association.edit
The Empire’s subaltern peoples and its justification in coloniality are strangely absent from British sport history, despite a key strand of the field being grounded in links between Empire, masculinity and sport: in this the subject... more
The Empire’s subaltern peoples and its justification in coloniality are strangely absent from British sport history, despite a key strand of the field being grounded in links between Empire, masculinity and sport: in this the subject reflects gaps and silences in British social history more generally. This paper that is both theoretical and historiographical explores this absence and considers ways that it might be addressed. It first sketches the coloniality of sport history as epistemology and ontology through an exploration of the field’s methodological national whiteness as redacting the agency and voice (past and present) of Indigenous and colonial subaltern peoples and implicating sport history in a continuing Imperial Archive. Although necessarily broad brush the paper concludes by examining aspects of the field that disrupt methodological nationalism and methodological whiteness to suggest ways of rethinking and recasting historians’ practice to suggest decolonial methods for British sport history that rupture in analyses of sport the constraints of the nation as anachronism and Whiteness as a fundamental characteristic of British history.
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Despite its reputation as a place of leisure, pleasure and recreation, we have very little understanding of the place of sport in the Pacific region. Scholarship in the field has been patchy and localised ranging from studies of baseball... more
Despite its reputation as a place of leisure, pleasure and recreation, we have very little understanding of the place of sport in the Pacific region. Scholarship in the field has been patchy and localised ranging from studies of baseball in US zones of influence, such as Japan, Taiwan & the Philippines to cricket and rugby in the broadly British sphere of influence in the south and central Pacific, often linked to Australia and New Zealand’s role as second order imperial powers. The stand-out focus of distinctive scholarly research has centred on surfing, presented as a Hawai’ian practice but in evidence in various forms across the region. Despite these differences these studies share a common ‘universalising’ (read: imperial) outlook based in a shared North Atlantic outlook.
Recent years have seen a change and there is a small but growing body of scholarly research exploring social, cultural and political histories and sociologies of sport, with some of the very best informed both by subaltern perspectives and the drive to decolonise the academy. This paper draws on recent studies of sporting cultures in the Pacific, including the Pacific Rim, focusing particularly on cricket and surfing to discuss the dynamics between indigenous and colonising peoples in historical and contemporary sport settings and to unpick sport as a practice of modernity to begin to open up ways that its practice and its study might be decolonised in a Pacific setting.
Recent years have seen a change and there is a small but growing body of scholarly research exploring social, cultural and political histories and sociologies of sport, with some of the very best informed both by subaltern perspectives and the drive to decolonise the academy. This paper draws on recent studies of sporting cultures in the Pacific, including the Pacific Rim, focusing particularly on cricket and surfing to discuss the dynamics between indigenous and colonising peoples in historical and contemporary sport settings and to unpick sport as a practice of modernity to begin to open up ways that its practice and its study might be decolonised in a Pacific setting.
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The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much of the critical studies tradition does little more than add “data” from colonially suppressed peoples without re-examining the dominant... more
The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much of the critical studies tradition does little more than add “data” from colonially suppressed peoples without re-examining the dominant discursive narratives. This paper explores the historiography of indigenous sport to pose questions about the ways the Imperial Archive has shaped our understandings and the manner of access to that source material, suggesting ways that they might be used to disrupt the dominant epistemologies of colonial(ist) sport history. It constructs a sixfold typology and explores each type through the analysis of a single representative source. In doing so, it tests the limits of researchers’ moral responsibility to include research communities in the process of development and production of data and critiques the view that responsibility for and conduct of the analysis rests solely with the researcher. In posing the problem of “the archive,” the paper explores ways in which the decolonization of sport history and the indigenization of the subject can help reconfigure the meaning of modern sport and develop a more fluid, dialogic approach to historiographical practice.
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For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an “entrenched system of racial discrimination”. The call to boycott... more
For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an “entrenched system of racial discrimination”. The call to boycott South African sport emerged in the 1950s as the apartheid state was developing and refining its comprehensive and systematic legal form amid growing international pressure for decolonisation. This is a different social and political context than the call 50 years later by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS). This paper draws on analyses of international anti-apartheid movements’ campaigns against sporting contact with South Africa and the BDS call for the isolation of the Israeli state to propose a theory of sports boycotts. It looks at the anti-apartheid campaigns, especially those in the early 1960s, to consider ways in which the BDS campaign has an impact on existing historical understandings of cultural boycotts as a tactical and strategic campaign tool.
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This chapter unpacks the development of philosophical practice through our involvement as ‘conference ethnographers’ in the fifth Philosophy at Play conference. It is both an ethnographic engagement with the conference, its content and... more
This chapter unpacks the development of philosophical practice through our involvement as ‘conference ethnographers’ in the fifth Philosophy at Play conference. It is both an ethnographic engagement with the conference, its content and location and also a philosophical exploration of questions raised by both this conference and the wider philosophy at play project. As part of the authors’ dialogue, we reflect on the tensions between play as a force for democracy and as a site of democratic practice. As part of this the chapter considers the antagonisms of academic conferencing, instrumental scholarly praxis (including the production of a set of academic papers) and the place of play(fulness) in creating the space necessary for critical insight and practice.
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Scholars have been slow to recognise the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the political economy of intellectual work. This paper draws on recent work exploring critical models of higher education practice in art education... more
Scholars have been slow to recognise the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the political economy of intellectual work. This paper draws on recent work exploring critical models of higher education practice in art education as well as in political economy and philosophy exploring copying, accumulation by dispossession and the threats of commodification of the Commons of culture, external and internal nature to explore the current circumstances of scholarship in sport. It draws on theories of the Commons to argue that sport social scientists must grapple with the antagonisms between scholarship and copyright and between membership of a ‘secular vocation’ and the relations of intellectual production and labour processes of the contemporary corporate university. Finally drawing on the principles of critical social science, the paper considers a range of desirable, viable and achievable objectives the teaching, writing and publishing to propose ways that scholars can respond to these emerging relations of intellectual labour and production.
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Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation that is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations... more
Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation that is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations influences both the current shape and provision of sport as well as our image and understanding of specific sports as cultural practice, we know very little about sports’ basic institutional unit, the sports club. This paper considers reasons for historians’ relative silence about sports clubs, reflects on concepts of associativity as essential to understanding sports history and argues for a more rigorous understanding of sports clubs as major aspects of civil society.
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This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodological and discipline-refining questions to call for a more open dialogue between sports historians and others in the discipline. The argument... more
This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodological and discipline-refining questions to call for a more open dialogue between sports historians and others in the discipline. The argument includes a call on the wider discipline to both recognise the need for and participation in sub-discipline specific debates.
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The ‘literary turn’ in cultural and historical analysis has introduced a suite of new perspectives, theoretical approaches and analytical techniques to the humanities and social sciences. The emergence of post-colonial modes of analysis,... more
The ‘literary turn’ in cultural and historical analysis has introduced a suite of new perspectives, theoretical approaches and analytical techniques to the humanities and social sciences. The emergence of post-colonial modes of analysis, related to this literary turn, has increased our awareness and interpretation of various representational techniques in and approaches to colonial cultures. One theoretical approach has, above all others, shaped these post-colonial interpretations: Homi K Bhabha’s argument that subaltern cultures may be understood as characterised by mimicry and a ‘sly civility’. Although this model is seldom explicitly invoked in sports studies, it remains implicit in many interpretations of sport in British colonies of settlement. This paper explores the usefulness of these tropes derived from Bhabha’s work through a critical reading of C L R James’s Beyond a Boundary.
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Also reprinted in Wray Vamplew (ed) Sports History, Vol 4, 2014, pp 99-117, Abingdon, Routledge (978-0-415-83747-7);
also reprinted in John Nauright, Alan G Cobley and David K Wiggins (eds) Beyond C.L.R James: Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity in Sport, Fayetteville, University of Kansas Press. 2014. pp 17-39 (978-1-557-28649-9)
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Also reprinted in Wray Vamplew (ed) Sports History, Vol 4, 2014, pp 99-117, Abingdon, Routledge (978-0-415-83747-7);
also reprinted in John Nauright, Alan G Cobley and David K Wiggins (eds) Beyond C.L.R James: Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity in Sport, Fayetteville, University of Kansas Press. 2014. pp 17-39 (978-1-557-28649-9)
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West Indies cricket writing has been characterised by the sly civility of Beyond A Boundary or a cultural politics of nationalism as seen in Cricket and I. More recently, Viv Richards’s biography Hitting Across The Line has been described... more
West Indies cricket writing has been characterised by the sly civility of Beyond A Boundary or a cultural politics of nationalism as seen in Cricket and I. More recently, Viv Richards’s biography Hitting Across The Line has been described by Hilary Beckles as “a manifesto of the progressive movement”. [2] This paper explores Richards’s biography through the lens of cultural nationalism to argue that in the absence of an unproblematically indigenous people, Richards constructs a place-derived sense of indigeneity and hence authenticity in West Indies cricket, and in doing so exposes many of the contradictions of West Indies and other sporting cultural nationalisms in the context of postcolonising tendencies in the former British Empire.
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One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half of the twentieth century centred on the demand for the sporting and broader cultural, social, economic, and political isolation of South... more
One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half of the twentieth century centred on the demand for the sporting and broader cultural, social, economic, and political isolation of South Africa during the apartheid era. The struggle saw apartheid endorsed South African sports organisations expelled from international bodies beginning in the 1950s, with the South African National Olympic Committee being the only one ever expelled from the IOC. The sports boycott was one of the major successes of the international anti-apartheid campaign, yet the existing literature on boycotts is only marginally relevant to cultural (including sports) boycotts. Furthermore, the existing literature dealing with sports boycotts, with its focus on the multilateral politics of Olympic boycotts, is of minimal use in explaining mass activist campaigns such as the anti-apartheid movement. This paper centres on the campaign against the 1981 South African rugby tour of Aotearoa New Zealand to explore the multiple significances of sport in the target (South Africa) and sender (Aotearoa New Zealand) states, and the character of the mass movement to argue that the cultural significance of both sport and the politics of ‘race’ and colonialism are vital to an effective understanding mass movement supported bilateral cultural boycotts.
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"This paper explores the use of national and racial stereotypes in the moral panic surrounding a case of athlete violence at the 1954 World Cup of Football. The article focuses on the differences in mediation of this event across three... more
"This paper explores the use of national and racial stereotypes in the moral panic surrounding a case of athlete violence at the 1954 World Cup of Football. The article focuses on the differences in mediation of this event across three nations with different forms of involvement in or connection with the match. Texts are analysed from Norwegian and English national papers, and Swiss papers of German origin. Our analysis uses Fairclough’s (1995a, 1995b, 2003) critical discourse analysis. Each of the three national settings presented four discursive perspectives: degradation of play, the referee, the locker room fight, and national racial stereotypes. The media have long operated as agents and stimulants of moral indignation (Hall et al, 1978; Cohen, 1972:80). The analysis explores the extent to and ways in which mediation of the violence may be understood through the logic of a moral panic, which is interpreted as a parallel to Fairclough’s societal discourse order. We argue that the discursive framing of the event in each national context reveals common significant characteristics in the understanding of significant variations in the national and racial stereotypes invoked that are specific to the implicit codes associated with national socio-cultural practices, and to reinforce asymmetrical power relations to manage a sense of cultural threat to Western and Northern European cultural codes.
Keywords: moral panic, critical discourse analysis, athlete violence, national racial stereotypes, asymmetrical power relations, football."
Keywords: moral panic, critical discourse analysis, athlete violence, national racial stereotypes, asymmetrical power relations, football."
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Review of John Hughson, David Inglis and Marcus Free, The Uses of Sport: A Critical Study (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). pp. 212. £17.99. ISBN: 9780415269480; Tony Schirato, Understanding Sports Culture (London: Sage, 2007) pp. 150. £19.99.... more
Review of John Hughson, David Inglis and Marcus Free, The Uses of Sport: A Critical Study (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005). pp. 212. £17.99. ISBN: 9780415269480; Tony Schirato, Understanding Sports Culture (London: Sage, 2007) pp. 150. £19.99. ISBN: 9781412907392; Brian Stoddart, Sport, Culture and History: Region, Nation and Globe (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008) pp. 241. £75.00/£20.00. ISBN: 9780415420792 (hbk)/ 9780415495660 (pbk); Garry Whannel, Culture, Politics and Sport: Blowing the Whistle, revisited (Abingdon: Routledge, 2008) pp. 264. £24.99. ISBN: 9780415417075.
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This exploratory study examines the existence and effects of barriers to women’s participation in the flat racing industry, one of the only major professional sports in which men and women compete against each other on equal terms. Six... more
This exploratory study examines the existence and effects of barriers to women’s participation in the flat racing industry, one of the only major professional sports in which men and women compete against each other on equal terms. Six participants, three men and three women with at least three years experience working in the flat racing industry, were recruited for the study. Data were derived from semi-structured individual interviews and analysed using discourse analysis techniques. The results from this study suggest that women face discrimination in horse racing on account of a number of factors, the three main perceived reasons are due to their physical strength, body shape, and the tradition and history embedded within the industry. Although there is a shift starting to occur by which more women are coming through in flat racing, this is slow. Research participants consider that women may find these barriers and perceptions held by others difficult to overcome, limiting efforts to achieve equality in this sport. Given the exploratory character of the study, conclusions are tentative and we propose a number of areas for further research.
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Music often plays a key role in shaping the cultural understandings and affective relations of mediated sport. This paper uses John Frow’s notion of the Literary Frame to explore the role of music in the sport mediascape of Aotearoa/New... more
Music often plays a key role in shaping the cultural understandings and affective relations of mediated sport. This paper uses John Frow’s notion of the Literary Frame to explore the role of music in the sport mediascape of Aotearoa/New Zealand during the late 1970s by examining Give ‘em a taste of kiwi, a song used by Television New Zealand in its rugby union broadcasts in 1979 and 1980. This song is seen as articulating a particular version of national masculinity, and as asserting rugby’s role in ideal.
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This is a copy of the paper (as presented) I gave at the October 2010 Historians on Sport conference at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. The conference is now in its tenth year and this... more
This is a copy of the paper (as presented) I gave at the October 2010 Historians on Sport conference at the International Centre for Sports History and Culture at De Montfort University. The conference is now in its tenth year and this year looked at the legacy of Richard Holt's 1989 book Sport and the British. I was part of the panel with Chuck Korr and Pierre Lanfranche who looked at the book beyond Britain and the British. See also Martin Polley's contribution at his home page
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Abstract This article explores the use of national and racial stereotypes in the moral panic surrounding a case of athlete violence at the 1954 football World Cup, focusing on the differences in mediation of this event across three... more
Abstract This article explores the use of national and racial stereotypes in the moral panic surrounding a case of athlete violence at the 1954 football World Cup, focusing on the differences in mediation of this event across three nations with different forms of involvement in or connection with the match. Texts are analysed from Norwegian and English national newspapers, and Swiss newspapers of German origin using Fairclough's (1995a, 1995b, 2003) critical discourse analysis.
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During the 1970s and 1980s New Zealand was the site of an array of social and political struggles over issues centred on colonisation, gender politics, economic and social policies, international relations and state power. The single... more
During the 1970s and 1980s New Zealand was the site of an array of social and political struggles over issues centred on colonisation, gender politics, economic and social policies, international relations and state power. The single biggest protest movement centred on the question of sporting contact with South Africa and found full force during the 1981 Springbok rugby tour. This paper considers the range of protest movements and campaigns during this period and examines the reasons behind the priority given to the campaign against apartheid sport. In doing so it will examine the significance of rugby in New Zealand and its relations with South Africa, and show how 1981 provided a focal point for a wider set of social frustrations associated with broader social and political change.
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The campaign against the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour is a metonym of New Zealand's post-war change driven by and contributing to the disruption of the certainties of nation. Analyses that see the 1981 tour as a struggle for political... more
The campaign against the 1981 Springbok Rugby Tour is a metonym of New Zealand's post-war change driven by and contributing to the disruption of the certainties of nation. Analyses that see the 1981 tour as a struggle for political leadership between the depression/war generation and the baby boomers or 68ers are flawed. The model is both monocultural and ahistorical. The image of the 68ers, (old)youth, as revolutionary was made possible by a crisis of legitimacy experienced by the generation of old soldiers struggling to keep control where the old certainties of nation and masculinity had been weakened in the world of identity politics.
This paper employs a historicized analysis of youth and investigate protest leadership and participants to argue that the generation that took control of New Zealand in 1984 were isolated from the popular movements of the 1970s and 1980s and exploiuted the language of identity politics to protect and ensure their social power and status.
This paper employs a historicized analysis of youth and investigate protest leadership and participants to argue that the generation that took control of New Zealand in 1984 were isolated from the popular movements of the 1970s and 1980s and exploiuted the language of identity politics to protect and ensure their social power and status.
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This chapter explores the historiography if sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand, responding to a call to move beyond the taken for granted material and cultural limits of New Zealand (and in this sense parallels to general approach in Giselle... more
This chapter explores the historiography if sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand, responding to a call to move beyond the taken for granted material and cultural limits of New Zealand (and in this sense parallels to general approach in Giselle Byrnes (ed) The New Oxford History of New Zealand, Oxford University Press, 2009). The analysis suggests three principal themes in New Zealand's sports historiography: a focus on claims to national distinctiveness; a paradoxical absence of comparative analyss; and a focus on maculinist games. In doing so, I argue that sports history and anaylses of sports historiography in Aotearoa/New Zealand is remarkably limited in scope, and more about colonial New Zealand than indigenous Aotearoa.
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It would be fair to say that the recent popularising literary trend in sports writing has by-passed rugby. Not that literary engagements with sport are all that new—bull-fighting and game fishing had Ernest Hemingway, boxing has Norman... more
It would be fair to say that the recent popularising literary trend in sports writing has by-passed rugby. Not that literary engagements with sport are all that new—bull-fighting and game fishing had Ernest Hemingway, boxing has Norman Mailer and more especially Joyce Carol Oates, angling had Izaak Walton. This is without even considering Homer's Olympics, Verne's ballooning, Conan Doyle's archery or the chivalric sport of Sir Walter Scott's jousting knights.
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It is habitual to begin discussions of academic work on sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand with a deprecating comment about the paucity of academic analyses. It is, in this sense, usual to comment that sport is very significant in the national... more
It is habitual to begin discussions of academic work on sport in Aotearoa/New Zealand with a deprecating comment about the paucity of academic analyses. It is, in this sense, usual to comment that sport is very significant in the national culture but significantly under-represented in scholarly work. This rather pathetic defensiveness is not sustainable, and has not been sustainable for a number of years. Furthermore, the extent and breadth of references in these two publications show this to be the case.
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The passage of the Employment Contracts Act in May 1991 was the final step in New Zealand’s deregulation revolution beginning in 1984. This article will consider the changes to the industrial landscape as a consequence of this Act,... more
The passage of the Employment Contracts Act in May 1991 was the final step in New Zealand’s deregulation revolution beginning in 1984. This article will consider the changes to the industrial landscape as a consequence of this Act, especially the conditions contributing to widespread deunionisation. We will evaluate the range of union responses focusing on the inactivity of the major trade union centre, the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions, the rise of corporate unionism and emerging rhetoric of ‘employer partnership’. In particular, the activities of the Engineers’ Union will be discussed and its claims to be a success story of modern unionism critically evaluated. We will show that the Engineers’ Union growth has not lead to an expansion of unionisation, but is the consequence poaching from other unions and of high rates of deunionisation in some industries. Particular attention will be paid to the impact of the Act on women workers, including as a result of the demise of the Clerical Workers’ Union, the largest private sector union. These developments will be assessed alongside the emergence of the New Zealand Trade Union Federation as an alternative union centre. The TUF was formed as a result of the lack of resistance by the NZCTU, is a logical outcome of labour market deregulation and reflects both material and political tensions within the trade union movement. Finally, we will consider the emergence of demands for a second wave of industrial legislation to further deregulate labour relations in the wake of the formation of the coalition government after the 1996 general election. Employer groups seeking further deregulation have concentrated on judicial functions in disputes and seek the ability to fire at will. Recent cases will be assessed to suggest that the aims of those seeking a second wave have largely been achieved under current legislation.
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Although Barth's notion of boundary identification is crucial to develop an understanding of ethnicity, the politics of biculturalism requires that Pakeha (New Zealanders of European an extraction) identify the terms of Pakehaness. The... more
Although Barth's notion of boundary identification is crucial to develop an understanding of ethnicity, the politics of biculturalism requires that Pakeha (New Zealanders of European an extraction) identify the terms of Pakehaness. The bicultural policies of successive governments have amounted to a program of differentialist racism as Pakeha have successfully stripped biculturalism of any sense of power sharing and Maori sovereignty by attempting to incorporate Maori social formations into the Pakeha state. In doing so, they have naturalised the centre as Pakeha and refused to grant any legitimacy to critical investigations of Pakeha, creating in the process an empty alterity to the uniqueness of Maori. Furthermore, the actions of Pakeha and of the state stimulate the reinvention of distinctions between and among Maori and more importantly incorporate those distinctions into state structures. The historical fluidity of Maori society is thus denied as it become rigidified by the imposition of a colonial framework. The result is a biculturalism devoid of any potential for change. A small number of Pakeha are consciously attempting to identify Pakehaness, and the simple use of the word suggests the creation of a fictive ethnicity of the colonising group.
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This book explores the complex and multi-layered relationships between democracy and play, presenting important new theoretical and empirical research. It builds new paradigmatic bridges between philosophical enquiry and fields of... more
This book explores the complex and multi-layered relationships between democracy and play, presenting important new theoretical and empirical research. It builds new paradigmatic bridges between philosophical enquiry and fields of application across the arts, political activism, children’s play, education and political science.
Play and Democracy addresses four principal themes. Firstly, it explores how the relationship between play and democracy can be conceptualized and how it is mirrored in questions of normativity, ethics and political power. Secondly, it examines different aspects of play in urban spaces, such as activism, aesthetic experience, happenings, political carnivals and performances. Thirdly, it offers examples and analyses of how playful artistic performances can offer democratic resistance to dominant power. And finally, it considers the paradoxes of play in both developing democratic sensibilities and resisting power in education. These themes are explored and interrogated in chapters covering topics such as aesthetic practice, pedagogy, diverse forms of activism, and urban experience, where play and playfulness become arenas in which to create the possibility of democratic practice and change.
Adding extra depth to our understanding of the significance of play as a polit- ical, cultural and social power, this book is fascinating reading for any serious student or researcher with an interest in play, philosophy, politics, sociology, arts, sport or education.
Play and Democracy addresses four principal themes. Firstly, it explores how the relationship between play and democracy can be conceptualized and how it is mirrored in questions of normativity, ethics and political power. Secondly, it examines different aspects of play in urban spaces, such as activism, aesthetic experience, happenings, political carnivals and performances. Thirdly, it offers examples and analyses of how playful artistic performances can offer democratic resistance to dominant power. And finally, it considers the paradoxes of play in both developing democratic sensibilities and resisting power in education. These themes are explored and interrogated in chapters covering topics such as aesthetic practice, pedagogy, diverse forms of activism, and urban experience, where play and playfulness become arenas in which to create the possibility of democratic practice and change.
Adding extra depth to our understanding of the significance of play as a polit- ical, cultural and social power, this book is fascinating reading for any serious student or researcher with an interest in play, philosophy, politics, sociology, arts, sport or education.
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from the publisher's burb: Play, Philosophy and Performance is a cutting-edge collection of essays exploring the philosophy of play. It showcases the most innovative, interdisciplinary work in the rapidly developing field of Play... more
from the publisher's burb:
Play, Philosophy and Performance is a cutting-edge collection of essays exploring the philosophy of play. It showcases the most innovative, interdisciplinary work in the rapidly developing field of Play Studies.
How we play, and the relation of play to the human condition, is becoming increasingly recognised as a field of scholarly inquiry as well as a significant element of social practice, public policy and socio-cultural understanding. Drawing on approaches ranging through morality and ethics, language and the nature of reality, aesthetics, digital culture and gaming, and written by an international group of emerging and established scholars, this book examines how our performance at play describes, shapes and influences our performance as human beings.
This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in leisure, education, childhood, gaming, the arts, playwork or many branches of philosophical enquiry.
Contents:
Introduction: 'Just' (pre)tending: the performativity of philosophising play - Malcom MacLean, Wendy Russell & Emily Ryall
Part I: Play and the Performance of Morality
1 Do Toy Guns Kill People? Playing with Guns - Chris Bateman
2 Analyzing Morality via the Philosophy of Play - Martin Weichold
3 A Playful Approach to Cultivating Intellectual Virtues: Why So Serious? - Yujia Song
4 Ethical Dimensions of Play and Care: Reflections Based on Donald Winnicott’s Theory of Play and the Ethics of Care - Alice Koubová and Petr Urban
Part II: Language and Play In/And ‘The Real’
5 Language, Play, and Understanding: What Semantics Might Learn from Children - Charles Djordjevic
6 Living on the Edge: Zhuangzi, Ludus, and 遊 (you) - Brandon Underwood
7 Robert Pfaller and the Disappearance of Play in Contemporary Culture: Illusions without Subjects - Kevin Kennedy
Part III: Playful Aesthetics
8 Notes on Playful Cinema and Performance: Stop Making Sense - Elena Pachner Sarno
9 Childhood Ghosts with Boltanski and Benjamin - Rosana Kohl Bines
10 The Complexity of Play: A Response to Guyer’s Analysis of Play in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man - Kate Brelje
11 How Computer Game Design Affects Moral Engagement: Mechanics Taking Over - Oliver Milne and Viktor Ivanković
Part IV: Play’s Performative Praxis
12 Unexpected Movements as Meaningful Expression in Play: Strange Twists of the Body - Ellen Mulder
13 Posthuman Interpretations of Mutual Play between a Human, Cat and Machine - Marleena Mustola
14 Time and Creativity in Survival Games: Bergson Plays with the Tao - Ivan Mussa
15 Digital Play as an Epistemic Experience - Rita Santoyo Venegas
Play, Philosophy and Performance is a cutting-edge collection of essays exploring the philosophy of play. It showcases the most innovative, interdisciplinary work in the rapidly developing field of Play Studies.
How we play, and the relation of play to the human condition, is becoming increasingly recognised as a field of scholarly inquiry as well as a significant element of social practice, public policy and socio-cultural understanding. Drawing on approaches ranging through morality and ethics, language and the nature of reality, aesthetics, digital culture and gaming, and written by an international group of emerging and established scholars, this book examines how our performance at play describes, shapes and influences our performance as human beings.
This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in leisure, education, childhood, gaming, the arts, playwork or many branches of philosophical enquiry.
Contents:
Introduction: 'Just' (pre)tending: the performativity of philosophising play - Malcom MacLean, Wendy Russell & Emily Ryall
Part I: Play and the Performance of Morality
1 Do Toy Guns Kill People? Playing with Guns - Chris Bateman
2 Analyzing Morality via the Philosophy of Play - Martin Weichold
3 A Playful Approach to Cultivating Intellectual Virtues: Why So Serious? - Yujia Song
4 Ethical Dimensions of Play and Care: Reflections Based on Donald Winnicott’s Theory of Play and the Ethics of Care - Alice Koubová and Petr Urban
Part II: Language and Play In/And ‘The Real’
5 Language, Play, and Understanding: What Semantics Might Learn from Children - Charles Djordjevic
6 Living on the Edge: Zhuangzi, Ludus, and 遊 (you) - Brandon Underwood
7 Robert Pfaller and the Disappearance of Play in Contemporary Culture: Illusions without Subjects - Kevin Kennedy
Part III: Playful Aesthetics
8 Notes on Playful Cinema and Performance: Stop Making Sense - Elena Pachner Sarno
9 Childhood Ghosts with Boltanski and Benjamin - Rosana Kohl Bines
10 The Complexity of Play: A Response to Guyer’s Analysis of Play in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man - Kate Brelje
11 How Computer Game Design Affects Moral Engagement: Mechanics Taking Over - Oliver Milne and Viktor Ivanković
Part IV: Play’s Performative Praxis
12 Unexpected Movements as Meaningful Expression in Play: Strange Twists of the Body - Ellen Mulder
13 Posthuman Interpretations of Mutual Play between a Human, Cat and Machine - Marleena Mustola
14 Time and Creativity in Survival Games: Bergson Plays with the Tao - Ivan Mussa
15 Digital Play as an Epistemic Experience - Rita Santoyo Venegas
Research Interests:
Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of the related philosophical issues. It also includes meta-analyses from a range of... more
Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of the related philosophical issues. It also includes meta-analyses from a range of philosophers and theorists, as well as an exploration of some key applied ethical considerations.
The main objective of The Philosophy of Play is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life and values, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including specific chapters dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport.
The main objective of The Philosophy of Play is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life and values, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including specific chapters dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport.
Research Interests:
This special issue of National Identities explores the social and cultural practises of nationhood and the articulation of nations and states in sport contexts. The dominant models of nations and nationalism studies centre on a received... more
This special issue of National Identities explores the social and cultural practises of nationhood and the articulation of nations and states in sport contexts. The dominant models of nations and nationalism studies centre on a received paradigm that has an implicit but seldom critically articulated association with states – that is, the nation-state equation appears as axiomatic in many cases of nationalism studies where the received version of politics holds that a nation without a state is incomplete or in some way not a real nation. This issue unpicks these issues through a set of discussions that will explore one of the most pervasive, banal, and comprehensive areas of this taken-for-granted association of culture, nations and states, i.e., sport.
There is a set of sports and other cultural practices that disrupt this axiomatic association of nations/states and identities: we see these in, for instance, indigenous sports (such as the question of the Iroquois Nationals' travel documents, visas and attendance at the World Lacrosse Championships), events such as the VIVA World Cup for football teams representing nations without states, in various post-national and post-colonial understandings of sport-as-cultural practice such as the place of cricket in South Asian and West Indies diaspora communities, and in transnational/transcultural sports events such as the Francophone Games that seem to be premised on a cultural nation beyond the state.
Papers in the issue analyse rugby, wine and regional identies in France (Occitania), Cornish sporting identities, the potential for normative rules of international sports representation, Circassian sporting identities in the context of Russian nationialism associated with the winter Olympics in Sochi, national and indigenous associations of skiing in northern Norway (Sami) and claims to nationhood in the context of the 2010 VIVA Football World Cup. Our opening essay considers the question of the palce of the state in claims to sporting nationalism.
There is a set of sports and other cultural practices that disrupt this axiomatic association of nations/states and identities: we see these in, for instance, indigenous sports (such as the question of the Iroquois Nationals' travel documents, visas and attendance at the World Lacrosse Championships), events such as the VIVA World Cup for football teams representing nations without states, in various post-national and post-colonial understandings of sport-as-cultural practice such as the place of cricket in South Asian and West Indies diaspora communities, and in transnational/transcultural sports events such as the Francophone Games that seem to be premised on a cultural nation beyond the state.
Papers in the issue analyse rugby, wine and regional identies in France (Occitania), Cornish sporting identities, the potential for normative rules of international sports representation, Circassian sporting identities in the context of Russian nationialism associated with the winter Olympics in Sochi, national and indigenous associations of skiing in northern Norway (Sami) and claims to nationhood in the context of the 2010 VIVA Football World Cup. Our opening essay considers the question of the palce of the state in claims to sporting nationalism.
Research Interests:
'A Gap but Not an Absence: Clubs and Sports Historiography' Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation which is one of the defining characteristics of... more
'A Gap but Not an Absence: Clubs and Sports Historiography' Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation which is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations influences both the current shape and provision of sport as well as our image and understanding of specific sports as cultural practice, we know very little about sports' basic institutional unit, the sports club. This paper considers the reasons for historians' relative silence about sports clubs, reflects on the concepts of associativity as essential to understanding sports history and argues for a more rigorous understanding of sports clubs as major aspects of civil society.
Research Interests:
Review of two 2021 books exploring aspects of the sport-related international campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa
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Book review published in Sport in Society, 21(9): 1489-91 in 2018
Research Interests:
Book review published in Sport in History 36 (3). pp. 425-7 in 2016
Research Interests:
Book review published in Sport in History 36 (4). pp. 546-549, 2016.
Research Interests:
History (forthcoming). It appears here in its pre‐publication format in lieu of the publisher's version of record. Author: Malcolm MacLean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Travis Vogan, ESPN: The Making of A Sports Media... more
History (forthcoming). It appears here in its pre‐publication format in lieu of the publisher's version of record. Author: Malcolm MacLean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Travis Vogan, ESPN: The Making of A Sports Media Empire (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2015). Pp. x + 242. £13.99 (pb). ISBN 978‐0‐252‐08122‐4. That most of us experience our sport in a mediated form is not all that new; that we experience through engagement with a sport‐media complex is also not new (but newer); what is in flux, however, is the medium and means by which sport is mediated. For sport historians, these developments pose problems about sports' historicisation given its status as a heavily historicised popular cultural practice. In an unjustified and rather self‐deprecating tone, Travis Vogan described this excellent analysis of a single sports news channel (a rather deprecating description of ESPN) as " a relatively straight forward and industrial analysis " (p vii): while this is true, it is also a long way from the truth. The book opens with such an analysis – the first chapter provides a mainly institutional exploration of ESPN's development and growth, highlighting its role in the growth of the sports‐media sector as well as a sector innovator and its multi‐platform mode of operation. In addition to these three characteristics, Vogan's exploration at the outset of SportsCentre as an iconic show anticipates a key analytical trope throughout the text: the tension between the network's 'frat‐boy' dynamic and its aspirations to being a serious analyst of and player in the sports world. This trope opens up the key reasons Vogan's discussion has significance beyond ESPN's predominantly North American market (although in the contemporary media world this is barely still the case): the first is that although not explicit the analysis provides an important basis to consider the roles of newer networks such as Sky or Euro Sport, but more importantly Vogan opens up the exploration of sports media networks as historiographers of sport, drawing attention in this case to status‐seeking associations that help legitimate that historiography. The historiographical significance of ESPN is developed in two ways. In his discussion of SportsCentury, an eighteen month review of the North America's greatest sporting moments of the twentieth century, Vogan presents " ESPN as the [my emphasis] public historian of record for twentieth‐century sport " (p55). In doing so, he draws attention to several ways in which this public historian role is legitimated. First, by pointing to the composition of the panel selecting the 100 best athletes, including well‐respected journalists and sports writers (arguably sports public intellectuals), academics and leading figures in sports institutions. These three groups provide cultural credibility with a range of sports markets and audiences, and in doing so endorse both the athletes selected and ESPN's authority to do so. Secondly, Vogan identifies ESPN's expansionism, in particular its acquisition of the Classic Sports Network with its extensive archive and then restriction of access to that achieve meaning that ESPN could then control where and how large tracts of sports historic film footage was being used. Whereas SportsCentury may be seen as ESPN working in a magazine‐style format that is becoming increasingly characteristic in the world of proliferating specialist or niche channels, the network's more venture into documentary film, notably through its 30 th anniversary‐marking 30 for 30 series is
Research Interests:
Recent years have seen a growing awareness of, concern about and action on injuries in high impact contact sports. While policy makers and sports' governing bodies may only just be beginning to pick up the issues, to realise that they... more
Recent years have seen a growing awareness of, concern about and action on injuries in high impact contact sports. While policy makers and sports' governing bodies may only just be beginning to pick up the issues, to realise that they might have to be seen to do something and in some cases it seems to feign shock that their sport might just be dangerous, players and analysts have long know of that danger. For historians, Jaime Schultz's excellent Moments of Impact is a polysemous text exploring three cases of sports injury in (American) football in college sport, with significance for how we do history, for how we think about sports 'heroes' and their memories and memorialisation, and for how we think of the significance of sport in the USA. That's an awful lot to carry for 146 pages of text, but it works. These three cases explore incidents involving black footballers at predominantly white colleges and universities (PWCU) in Iowa. Jack Trice played two games in 1923 for Iowa State University, was seen by many as having enormous potential, was the only African‐American player on the team and died from injuries sustained in the second game. Ozzie Simmons was, again, the only Black player in his team from the University of Iowa and for many offered the hope of reinvigoration of the University of Iowa team in the mid‐1930s and was seriously injured in a game against the University of Minnesota part way through his first of several seasons playing college football. Johnny Bright, also a very talented player inspiring his team to performances significantly better than previous years and the only African‐American on the Drake University team in the early‐1950s was knocked out three times in the first quarter of a game against Oklahoma A&M in 1951, an incident that although effectively ending Bright's season also resulted in Drake withdrawing from Missouri Valley Conference (the league including Oklahoma A&M). These are incidents lasting only a few seconds, and in the case of Bright spread out over only a few minutes, but they have enough about them for Shultz to take as the basis of a rich narrative of justice, injustice, the past in the present and the reinscription of the past by the present. In dealing not with teams, seasons, conferences but with individuals, incidents and their place in histories of the present she is able to explore the politics of remembering as well as the politics and poetics of history‐making. The substance of the book deals not so much with the moments of impact on the field, but the moments of (historical/social) impact decades later as College and University administrations come under pressure to make and commemorate these three young Black men, in an overwhelmingly White state with an overwhelmingly White university system. With care and empathy as well as nuanced consideration of the times in which the incidents occurred Schultz constructs narratives of remembering, of memory, of commemoration that sees each of these events as a racialized construction of what were, almost certainly, racialized acts.
Research Interests:
Recent years have seen the publication of a number of monographs, collections and scholarly texts exploring sports films, some grounded in film studies, others in more conventional disciplinary approaches including history. Film themed... more
Recent years have seen the publication of a number of monographs, collections and scholarly texts exploring sports films, some grounded in film studies, others in more conventional disciplinary approaches including history. Film themed papers are becoming more common at conferences, the Journal of Sport History for instance has a film review section and has published themed sections dealing with sport film, and there are more classes in sports film and several sports film festivals. There is clearly something happening in the cinematic realm, yet this 'happening' is to a very large degree constrained by discourses of realism and reality, and accordingly by the gender dynamics of sport as a powerfully masculine space. As is the case in much of the sporting world, sports films' women are marginalised, sexualised, trivialised, objectified and shown as interlopers in a world that continues to highlight forms of masculine homosociality. This context makes Viridiana Lieberman's exploration of women in sports films an important, if sacrificial, contribution to this growing field – sacrificial in that the first monograph in a field of study becomes the one that subsequent analysts work off and against as a reference point, foundation and foil for arguments. The volume is a usefully teacherly text with descriptive and analytical assessments of several films at the core of each chapter: given that the earliest films considered are from the 1940s and early 1950s there is a reasonable chance that many students will not have seen them, making the description alongside the analysis particularly valuable. Similarly, Lieberman provides a useful typology of women‐in‐sports films, with seven categories: female athletes in individual sports; female athletes in team sports; women athletes in men's teams; sports where women do not seem out of place – tennis, basketball and the like; films where men and women appear in drag; films dealing with women coaches and finally those dealing with women owners. Typologies can be help us think better analyses, and for her purposes in this volume and possibly more generally this one seems to work, capturing key areas of tension and core dynamics in sport films and their social contexts. The typology is useful also in that it should allow further discussion of sports films' tropes grounded in realism, and in conjunction with that the relationship between these fictional films and reality. Some attention to these filmic frames might have enhanced and strengthened the argument. Lieberman's case, through all of the work, is that sports films are not fictional enough, in that makers do not use their fictional form to imagine alternative ways of being in and doing sport. This may be a limitation imposed by her focus on mainstream, Hollywood or Hollywood‐like cinema where it may be the case that the realism‐reality tension is as much a product of commercial demands to sell tickets as much as anything else; a constraint limited by the implicit coding of sports films as films for