A valuable and wide-ranging contribution to the field of sport and cultural studies

Helge Chr. Pedersen
Department of Education, UiT the Arctic University of Norway

Mariann Vaczi and Alan Bairner’s book Indigenous, Traditional, and Folk Sports: Contesting Modernities is an impressive collection of global research into sport, tradition and modernization. It is an ambitious anthology that brings together a wide collection of stories from across the globe to interrogate the marginalization, resilience, and transformation of “non-Western” and “subaltern” sporting practices as the editors call these indigenous, traditional, folk sport practices. Spanning disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, history, and cultural studies, the book interrogates how Indigenous, traditional, and folk sports have been shaped by, and in turn resisted or adapted to the sportification and diffusion of today’s global sports, and to the pressures of western colonialism, nationalism, modernity. The book is well-suited for graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and scholars in sport studies, Indigenous studies, cultural studies, and postcolonial theory. It is especially relevant for those interested in the politics of knowledge production and the future of sport in a pluralistic and contested world.

The book explores topics such as UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage designation, the heritage-making process, and the politics of authenticity and appropriation in sport. Sports examined include Sámi Reindeer racing, Senegalese wrestling, Basque rural sports, and Native American lacrosse, among others, illustrating first that sport is part of people’s lives irrespective of natural environment and cultural adaptation, and second the rich diversity and complexity of traditional physical practices in global contexts. Throughout the volume, it becomes clear that sporting practices rooted in tradition and the distant past face many of the same contemporary pressures—often reinforcing inequalities and hegemonic cultural norms. The book aims to reclaim Indigenous, traditional, and folk worldviews and epistemologies through the lens of sporting cultures (p. 2), and the chapters collectively address a central question: What happened to Indigenous voices and knowledges as a result of their encounter with “western” global sporting (and other) modernities? (p. 2).

Indigenous perspectives on sport, and how both traditional folk sports and the modern “western” sports has been used to both assimilate and as resistance in postcolonial contexts, is by now well established within the research field.

Vaczi and Bairner present indigenous, traditional, and folk sports as fundamentally different from the Western modern sports that emerged in 19th-century Britain in the wake of the Industrial Revolution and were subsequently spread globally through the British Empire. In contrast to the rigid, rule-oriented western sports, Indigenous and traditional sports are, according to Vaczi and Bairner, often embedded in ritual, spirituality, and intergenerational continuity, tied to alternative ontologies and epistemologies. These sports are located on the margins of the global sport complex, yet they have persisted—both in resistance to and in negotiation with the dominance of Western sport (p. 1). Indigenous, traditional, and folk sports occupy a subaltern position; as surviving the global spread of Western sports; and as existing “between the local, the national, and the global; between the archaic and the modern; and between ritual and record” (p. 1) according to the editors.

The editors state in the introduction that the book was created in response to a need to “reexamine dominant narratives and insert subaltern voices into the mainstream history, sociology, and anthropology of sport” (p. 2). They aim to address this through a decolonizing lens. However, it is not entirely clear what new perspectives the book contributes that have not already been presented in earlier anthologies on sport, Indigenous peoples, and traditional physical practices. Indigenous perspectives on sport, and how both traditional folk sports and the modern “western” sports has been used to both assimilate and as resistance in postcolonial contexts, is by now well established within the research field. Despite underlining the decolonizing aim of the book, it is notable that the positionality of most contributors, and how they relate to the sporting contexts and cultures they study, is unclear. This lack of clarity stands out, particularly in a volume concerned with decolonization, power and representation.

One notable limitation of the introduction is its insufficient discussion of what the term sport entails, and what conceptually separates “traditional” or “Indigenous” sports from so-called “modern Western” sports. The book tends to present these categories as oppositional and mutually exclusive, but without acknowledging that dominant Western sports themselves evolved from folk practices with ritualistic and communal functions. A more critical exploration of these continuities and the constructed nature of such binaries would have challenged the modern/traditional dichotomy that persists throughout the book. What, for example, qualifies Swedish bandy or Finnish Pesäpallo (Finnish baseball) as traditional or folk sports, rather than Western modern sports? Perhaps an alternative categorization of them could be localor regional sports. After all, they exhibit many of the defining features of modern Western sports: they are institutionalized, professionalized, systematic, and governed by clearly defined rules, but without the global appeal of sports like football. Although the book clearly states a decolonial ambition—especially through its engagement with Indigenous moralities and worldviews—the analytical execution could have been more consistent.

Indigenous, Traditional, and Folk Sports: Contesting Modernities is a valuable and wide-ranging contribution to the field of sport and cultural studies. The volume succeeds in highlighting underrepresented sporting practices and worldviews. It invites readers to reconsider the boundaries of sport and challenges the dominance of Western narratives in both scholarship and global sporting culture. At the same time, however, the book reinforces a dichotomous understanding of sport as either “Western” or “traditional” and “Indigenous.” One might question whether this distinction between Western and traditional sport is really as fundamental as this dichotomy suggests. After all, both “Western” and “traditional” sports are deeply embedded in ritual and tradition, in emotion and belonging on the one hand, and in the desire to compete and play within defined frameworks on the other.

Copyright © Helge Chr. Pedersen 2025