ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: the BROWNING of the ALL BLACKS: PACIFIC PEOPLES, RUGBY, and the CULTURAL POLITICS of IDENTITY IN
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ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: THE BROWNING OF THE ALL BLACKS: PACIFIC PEOPLES, RUGBY, AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN NEW ZEALAND Andrew David Grainger, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Dissertation directed by: Professor David L. Andrews Department of Kinesiology In this dissertation I examine how the complex, and often contradictory, discourses of being a ‘Pacific person’ are played out in, and through, New Zealand rugby. In particular, I interrogate how these discourses—manifest in various forms of public expression—structure, regulate, and, potentially, challenge traditional notions of nationality. In the opening chapters I first explore how liberal values and the goals of inclusion and pluralism have been an important part of defining New Zealand identity. In this regard Pacific peoples are playing an ever-more important role. I suggest, however, that an emergent ‘Pacific multiculturalism’ actually reinforces white cultural power. It also masks the way national belonging has been racialized in New Zealand, and the role rugby has, and continues to, play in inscribing the Otherness of Pacific peoples. What I suggest is needed is alternative or resistant models of ‘culture.’ In the concluding chapters I turn to the notion of diaspora as one potential alternative. Rearticulating the insightful ideas of Paul Gilroy in my penultimate chapter, I argue that diaspora can be productively adapted as a model to comprehend the lives, travels, migrations, and significances of Pacific athletes. I suggest they provide important diasporic resources for rearticulating modes of belonging that exceed national boundaries. Methodologically, this project is a discursive analysis of the public discourses of Pacificness circulating in a diverse range of documentary, literary, and media sources. I suggest that this critical analysis of the performance, practice, and institutions of Pacific/New Zealand rugby provides a unique context within which to examine the ensemble of discourses and forces by which identity is understood and produced, and through which the Pacific subject in constituted. My hope is that, in accord with Gilroy (1993), this analysis both identifies and actively produces alternatives to divisive discourses of national and ethnic absolutism. That is, my goal is to produce a text which not only critiques, but offers strategies of resistance to, the practices, structures, and ideologies of exclusion. THE BROWNING OF THE ALL BLACKS: PACIFIC PEOPLES, RUGBY, AND THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF IDENTITY IN NEW ZEALAND by Andrew David Grainger Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor David L. Andrews, Chair Professor Mary McDonald Professor George Ritzer Professor Jaime Schultz Professor Damion Thomas © Copyright by Andrew David Grainger 2008 DEDICATION To Dave and Josh. Best friends on the journey. ii CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................I DEDICATION ................................................................................................................. II CONTENTS ....................................................................................................................III PROLOGUE ...................................................................................................................... 1 AN IMMIGRANT ’S TALE .................................................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 17 THE POLITICS OF (N OT ) BELONGING ............................................................................ 17 About this Dissertation ........................................................................................... 31 CHAPTER 1 .................................................................................................................... 57 PACIFIC MULTICULTURALISM : RUGBY , RACE , AND THE EGALITARIAN MYTH .......... 57 Rugby: The Game for All New Zealanders? ....................................................... 64 Brown Boys in the Back-line: On the Proper Uses of ‘Polynesian’ All Blacks 79 A Forgetful Nation?: Whiteness and Pacific Multiculturalism ......................... 90 Conclusion: The Contradictions of Inclusion .................................................... 108 CHAPTER 2 .................................................................................................................. 116 WHERE HAVE ALL THE WHITE BOYS GONE ? OR, SOCCER ’S FOR SISSIES : SPATIAL ANXIETIES AND THE BROWNING OF NEW ZEALAND RUGBY .................................... 116 New Racism in an Election Year ......................................................................... 121 “They’re Giants. Let’s Find Another Sport”: Wounded White Boys and the Pakeha Game ......................................................................................................... 128 The Pakeha Game: Polynesian Bodies Out of Place ......................................... 141 The Wimp Factor: Of White Men and Rugby ................................................... 157 CHAPTER 3 .................................................................................................................. 184 MODERN WARRIORS : POLYNESIAN BODIES PAST AND PRESENT .............................. 184 ‘Scripting’ the Polynesian Body .......................................................................... 188 Savages Noble and Ignoble: Natural Bodies, Island Lives .............................. 196 From Savages to Athletes: Rugby and (Neo)colonial Discourse .................... 223 CHAPTER 4 .................................................................................................................. 274 PACIFIC NOMADS OR THE NEW LABOUR MERCENARIES ?: ‘S AMOAN ’ ATHLETES , NEOCOLONIALISM , AND THE RUGBY WORLD -SYSTEM .............................................. 274 iii Sport Labour Migration Research: Players on the Move, Nations Under Threat? .................................................................................................................... 280 “Last One on the Plane Turn Off the Lights”: New Zealand Rugby Joins the Global (Labour) Game .......................................................................................... 305 “Island Raiding”?: Poaching, Pinching, Piracy, and the Predicament of Samoan Rugby ....................................................................................................... 310 “The Samoans didn’t even get lunch money”: Labour Migration and the Underdevelopment of Samoan Rugby ............................................................... 327 Theorizing Rugby’s ‘Muscle Trade’: Samoans and the Sporting World-System .................................................................................................................................. 347 CHAPTER 5 .................................................................................................................. 363 PACIFIC PEOPLES AND THE DIASPORIC SPORTING IMAGINARY ................................ 363 Oceans and Islands: Pacific Paradigms .............................................................. 368 Defining (?) Diaspora ............................................................................................ 373 A Brown Pacific? ................................................................................................... 385 ‘Grounding’ the Brown Pacific ............................................................................ 394 The Brown (Sporting) Pacific ............................................................................... 403 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 418 RUGBY AND THE ‘A RT ’ OF RESISTANCE ...................................................................... 418 The Sporting Body: Power and Resistance ........................................................ 421 (Re)reading Rugby Through C. L. R. James ...................................................... 438 EPILOGUE .................................................................................................................... 456 A REFLECTION ON BEING PAKEHA ............................................................................ 456 APPENDIX .................................................................................................................... 478 NOTES ON ‘C ULTURAL STUDIES ’ ................................................................................ 478 (Stuart Hall) On Theory ........................................................................................ 478 On Articulation ...................................................................................................... 483 On Articulation and ‘Method’ ............................................................................. 486 On Discourse and Discourse Analysis ............................................................... 487 On the Politics of Cultural Studies ...................................................................... 491 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................... 495 iv PROLOGUE An Immigrant’s Tale At around 2pm on the