Cultural Considerations
Sports as Sites of Resistance in the Poetry of Sherman Alexie
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nabeel Mohammed Ali
The contemporary Native American poet Sherman Alexie (1966-) links White American sports with the policy of forced assimilationism. He strongly believes that Native sports can offer sites of resistance to this colonial policy. Therefore, his poetry focuses on the practice of sports (such as football, basketball, or baseball) to achieve significant self-esteem as well as to assert Native identity, history, and the persistence of the Native culture, pride, and community. This paper highlights the significance of the social, cultural, and political role of sports in the lives and experiences of Native Americans living on the Reservations as shown in Alexie's three poems "Defending Walt Whitman", Victory", and " Indian Education".
Being the “Significant Other” - How Parents and Partners Negotiate the Sporting Environment to Support Athletes across Their Playing Career and into Retirement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deborah Agnew, Doughlas Mathew Pierre, Elizabeth Abery
Significant others are those who have a substantial influence in one’s life and who are emotionally invested in the individual. In the elite sporting context key significant others are parents and partners Their role in supporting the athlete is a major contributor to the development of the athlete’s sporting identity and success. Major life transitions, such as the retirement from elite sport are often shared experiences, with the athlete’s transition out of sport having the potential to impact their significant other. While the experiences of athletes transitioning into retirement are well-known, the experiences of significant others such as parents and partners are under-researched. This paper presents findings from a qualitative research study on the experiences of partners and parents of elite athletes in supporting an elite athlete through their career and into retirement from sport and how their own identity and role changed along with the athlete’s once removed from the culture of the competitive sporting environment and its demands. Findings suggest that elite athlete retirement has a significant impact on parents and partners personally, financially, and emotionally and as such there is a need to include significant others in retirement preparation planning. Sporting organisations need to better understand and support the role of significant others particularly through the transition into retirement so that they can create a culture that supports the key supporters of elite athletes. This study adds insight to the relational aspect of retirement transition through exploring the experiences of partners and parents of elite athletes.
Envisioning Fun at a Women-only Playground in Kerala: Behind the Scenes of Penkalikkalam
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Amritha Mohan
Sports, games, and physical cultures are often mentioned in popular definitions around fun and play— as activities that invoke a specific sense of enjoyment and joy, conceptualised broadly as fun. In the Indian context, scholars have noted that leisure, recreation, and fun continue to be gendered—as spaces and sensations that are not immediately accessible to women. While sports, games, physical cultures and movement-based leisure practices are supposed to be “fun”, discourses around these activities rarely mention or deal with the idea of fun—and instead are performance, efficiency or meritocracy-oriented. In this regard, I ask: how can sport and movement-based leisure activities for women in India be centred around the idea of fun, and what kinds of tensions does that invoke? Using multiple in-depth interviews with the creator of a women-only playground in rural Kerala and observations from the (play)ground, I argue that fun can be a resourceful emotion and tool to consolidate sport and movement-based leisure activities for women. I find that while fun simultaneously runs the risk of being co-opted into health and self-defence agendas, its staunch orientation towards joy and enjoyment poses a radical approach towards sport for women. Here, I specifically focus on physical activities that demand an overt occupation of open, public spaces and ask whether conceptualisations around fun can activate a serious feminist politics in India. This paper imagines a ‘playful’ future for women in India, wherein they get to claim public spaces to play leisurely, with minimal concerns around demonstrating respectability and purpose.
