Diasporic belonging, masculine identity and sports: how rugby league affects the perceptions and practices of Pasifika peoples in Australia
Creators: name: Hawkes, Gina
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024
Subjects: classificationCode: 440107
subject: Social and cultural anthropology
classificationCode: 451823
subject: Pacific Peoples sociological studies

description: Pasifika men are significantly over-represented in Australian Rugby League with their dramatic influx into the sport over the past 20 years often being attributed to their "natural" athleticism and other corporeal reasons invoking hyper-masculinity. They are both glorified and demonised for these perceived qualities, and like other indigenous groups of men across the world, can be caught in a paradox of indigenous male athlete as 'hero and dupe' (Hokowhitu 2013: xvii). This thesis takes a decolonial approach to Pasifika rugby league in Australia by drawing on the Pasifika concept of va - the spaces between - to challenge popular paradoxes and binaries such as indigenous/non-indigenous, hero/dupe, physical/intellectual, Pasifika/Australian, and masculine/feminine. <br> <br>The va is a space of active service, harmony, aesthetics, and connection, and I argue for its central role in mending the gaps between colonially separated categories for the Australian based Pasifika diaspora, particularly in rugby league which has va-like qualities. Sport is often described as liminal, being betwixt and between reality and fiction, and as such shares similarities with Pasifika concepts of relationality where it is in the spaces that connect, rather than those that separate, where meaning is made. Sport has the power to both affirm and transgress off-field hostilities and traditions. It can be (and indeed has been) used as a colonising tool to "discipline the natives", and at the same time it can be (and has been) used as an opportunity to beat the "master" at his or her own game.  <br> <br>Within these paradoxes are the most fruitful spaces - which I connect to the va - and where in this thesis liminality gets a Pasifika makeover. I focus on the lived experiences, feelings and emotions of sport for the Australian Pasifika diaspora (and to a lesser degree New Zealand's), exploring how Pasifika masculinity is framed and how this affects diasporic Pasifika peoples' roles in "the three f's" - family, faith, and football. Being a Pacific Islander in Australia is very different to being one in New Zealand or the United States of America. In Australia it is sports and sports media where most visibility and knowledge of Pasifika culture emanates and much of this is based on ideas around masculinity. Like the sea connecting Pacific Islands, diasporic Pasifika identities are made through connections to each other, to ancestral homelands and to their new homes and what they do there, including the playing and consuming of sports, which is, by no accident, itself betwixt and between. <br> <br>Sport often exists in a balancing act between possibilities for emancipation and oppression and can aid both simultaneously. This includes the emancipation of indigenous masculinity from an inferior position to hegemonic white patriarchal masculinity, and the oppression of other subaltern forms of masculinity and femininity, including homosexual and transgender masculinities, and women. By acknowledging both the powers and pitfalls of rugby league for Australia's Pasifika diaspora, and drawing attention to how both often coexist within the perceptions and practices of Pasifika peoples, I shed light on the complexities of what sport brings to an indigenous peoples' lives on an everyday level, both good and bad, and what sport offers in and of itself rather than as a means to an end. I demonstrate how rugby league in Australia plays a paradoxical role in both reinforcing and challenging social values around race and masculinity and I put forward suggestions for better ways of understanding. I argue that being indigenous away from home and on stolen land is different to being indigenous to the land one occupies, but that indigenous people share common experiences of colonisation. <br> <br>This thesis takes an ethnographic, multidisciplinary and mixed-methods approach which draws on Pasifika methodologies and values, my anthropological background, my position as a white female researcher in a Pasifika masculine research topic, and a commitment to decolonial practices. Like the subjects of this thesis, the way it is written reflects a space between traditional academic paradigms, and decolonial, indigenous and Pasifika frameworks. I am just as interested in how to research diasporic Pasifika identity as I am on the subject of diasporic Pasifika identity. For this work to adequately engage with decolonial and indigenous practices, I question the role of research itself, considering the spaces and paradoxes between so-called objectivity in research, and Pasifika concepts of connection. <br> <br>Rugby league is fast becoming a Pasifika majority-played sport in Australia, and this position comes with opportunities to refashion a colonially introduced national sport that is run and reported on by a majority white-male cohort and shape it in ways that better benefit Pasifika peoples. While rugby league can be accused of perpetuating limiting stereotypes and perceptions of Pasifika identity, it also offers a rare space for subaltern masculinities and indigeneities, such as those from the Pacific Islands, to thrive in the culturally valued arena of sports in Australia. The arguments in this thesis contribute to more accurate understandings of Pasifika personhood being just as expansive as Hau`ofa's Pacific geographic imaginings - Pasifika peoples are not just part of a 'sea of islands', they are part of a constantly changing global diaspora of emergent and creative identity practices. I contend that Pasifika identity is not merely reflexive or tied to particular cultural tenets, but rather is formative, emergent and creative.