Highlighting the contested nature of sport in Aotearoa New Zealand: An edited collection

Rod Philpot
School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University of Auckland

I am peeling the wrapping off Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand: Contested Terrain (Routledge) on the backdrop of flurry of New Zealand successes in sport on a world stage including the recent Black Ferns Rugby World Cup victory, Lydia Ko’s LPGA golf tour championship, the Rugby League World Cup, the 20/20 cricket World Cup, and the continued success of our sailors in the SailGP series. Back in Aotearoa New Zealand, several local football fields are being ripped up, resowed and reconstructed in preparation for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup (co-hosted by New Zealand and Australia). With this focus on high performance sport and success on a world stage as a backdrop to my coloured reading of the book, the notion that sport in Aotearoa New Zealand is ‘contested terrain’ seems doubtful.

Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand: Contested terrain by editors Damion Sturm and Roslyn Kerr investigates the role, place, and impact of sport and recreation in Aotearoa New Zealand. The edited collection includes 15 chapters that examines sport from sociological, historical, and managerial perspectives. The challenge of capturing the essence of a diverse collection of chapters written on a range of sporting contexts from a range of theoretical positions in a review is therefore formidable. For the sake of brevity, I have cultivated a review that inscribes two broad themes based on my reading of the individual chapters. The first broad theme is a critical examination of how the Aotearoa New Zealand sporting landscape serves to construct identities, simultaneously privileges and marginalises individuals and communities, and secondly, the contested ‘place’ of sport in supporting wellness.

In regard to the first theme, in chapter 2, Kavanagh and Rinehart convey how neoliberal ideology has become infused in sport in Aotearoa New Zealand. The authors explore how this is evident in the professionalisation of sport, the increase in private-public partnerships and the emphasis on hosting mega sporting events (such as the upcoming FIFA Women’s World Cup). Although this chapter is not written as a framework for the chapters that follow, the “increased social inequity, greater economic disparity and larger concentration of resources in a smaller number of individuals” (p. 8) is largely the focus of eight of the remaining book chapters.

These cases include Waka ama, a culturally significant recreation activity; Māori rugby, a race-based men’s national rugby team; and the visibility of Māori knowledge and athletes at Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

Jackson and Sturm continue to highlight the impact of neoliberalism in chapter 3 where they examine how advertising, branding and corporate nationalism have formed a symbiotic relationship with the Aotearoa New Zealand men’s national rugby team, the ‘All Blacks.’ In this chapter, the authors trace the evolution of an amateur team to a globally recognised brand and the tensions between its commitment to sponsors and its relevance as THE national team of the country.

Chapter 4 and 6 explore the inclusion of Māori and Pacifika athletes and perspectives in the sports of cricket and rugby respectively. These chapters are timely as they are written at a time when Aotearoa New Zealand is grappling with the challenges of readdressing the impacts of colonization. In chapter 4, Ryan questions the absence of Māori and Pacifika athletes in cricket. In chapter 6, the writing team lead by Bevan Erueti explores the place of Māori knowledge in sport. In this chapter, which is framed by Māori concepts of wellbeing, the authors report on three ‘cases’ that represent different struggles with representation and recognition. These cases include Waka ama, a culturally significant recreation activity; Māori rugby, a race-based men’s national rugby team; and the visibility of Māori knowledge and athletes at Olympic and Commonwealth Games.

In chapter 5, Marfell explores how netball reproduces dominant concepts of femininity. Netball is a rare example of a sport that was “created by women for women” (p. 43) and remains one of the few team sports in Aotearoa New Zealand and the world that is played almost exclusively by female participants. As a result, it remains a unique sport on the sporting landscape in New Zealand worthy of further study. In chapter 13, Crocket, Pringle and Puddle examine the performance and production of masculinity in Ultimate Frisbee and parkour, sports that were developed to provide an alternative to mainstream sports. Gender equity at the policy and leadership level is the focus of chapter 8 where Shanks et al. highlight that despite multiple government reports and strategic initiatives to increase involvement of women in sporting organisations, they remain underrepresented. Chapter 9 continues the investigation of leadership and governance and the impact of modernisation on integrity.

The interrogation of the sporting landscape continues in chapter 10, where Falcous and Potgieter question the myths about the egalitarian nature of sport in New Zealand, and again in Chapter 11, where Sturm and Kobayashi explore how Sonny Bill Williams, Lydia Ko and Brendon McCullum are positioned differently as current global-local sports stars.

As we return from the COVID19 global pandemic, it is not surprising that my reading of the book suggests that a second theme that connects many book chapters is the place of sport in supporting wellness. In chapter 9, Cassidy explores how sport in Aotearoa New Zealand is continually contested, highlighting the tensions between programmes that focus on athlete development and programmes and initiatives such as ‘Everybody Active’ that focusses on the wellbeing of everyone in Aotearoa New Zealand. In chapter 12, Espiner, Stewart and Apse explore the opportunities and challenges within outdoor recreation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Although no tourists from outside of Aotearoa New Zealand were allowed during COVI19, many New Zealanders filled this void, enjoying many of the world class walks and adventures that had often become the domain of the international visitor. In chapter 14 and 15 respectively, the authors explore how wellbeing can be fostered through a focus on relationships in basketball and participation in marching

Sport in Aotearoa New Zealand: Contested terrain is timely in its reminder that amongst the euphoria of success on international stages, and the pride of ‘punching above our weight on the international stage’, the success and benefits of sport in Aotearoa New Zealand are not evenly distributed. The breadth of the chapters is a strength and perhaps a limitation of the book. The strength of the book is captured in the title; that sport remains a contested field in Aotearoa New Zealand. All chapters contribute to this aim. My main critique is the absence of a thread or perhaps multiple threads that divide the book into coherent chunks. In addition to, or perhaps instead of the two themes foregrounded in the review, the book could be divided into sections that focus on the commodification of sport, cultural contestations and inequities, and equity focussed interventions. This change in organisation may make it easier to access for readers less familiar with Aotearoa New Zealand.

Overall, I enjoyed reading the text and I accessed new understandings of sport, sportspeople and sporting and recreational activities that are occurring in my own backyard. That in itself may be the most important litmus test for an academic book.

Copyright © Rod Philpot 2022