Sport in the Pacific is a comparative consideration of the modern movement of Pacific peoples and their physical pursuits across national and cultural boundaries. It covers Australia, Japan and the United States. Its contributors ensure a deeper understanding of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific—particularly their social identities and cultural responses in the wake of the arrival of modern sport. Sport in the Pacific comprises eight original contributions which analyze Polynesian and Abogirnal athletes and athletics in colonial and post-colonial contexts. Their analyses stress the importance of adaptation and appropriation, reinvention and revivialism, as well as diaspora and globalization. The volume will have three overlapping themes: change and continuity, cultural and transcultural power, and the complexity of race, gender, and national identity. Sport in the Pacific, in short, compares the significance of modern sport in a largely ignored setting: the indigenous societies of the Pacific.
This book was previously published as a special issue of International Journal of the History of Sport.