Understanding Sport as a Religious Phenomenon

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Bain-Selbo ◽  
D. Gregory Sapp
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Religious Experience ◽  
American South ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The American South ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Classroom Use

Readers are introduced to a range of theoretical and methodological approaches used to understand religion – including sociology, philosophy, psychology, and anthropology – and how they can be used to understand sport as a religious phenomenon. Topics include the formation of powerful communities among fans and the religious experience of the fan, myth, symbols and rituals and the sacrality of sport, and sport and secularization. Case studies are taken from around the world and include the Olympics (ancient and modern), football in the UK, the All Blacks and New Zealand national identity, college football in the American South, and gymnastics. [new paragraph] Ideal for classroom use, Understanding Sport as a Religious Phenomenon illuminates the nature of religion through sports phenomena and is a much-needed contribution to the field of religion and popular culture.

Colonization, Decolonization, and Power: Ruptures and Critical Junctures Out of Dominance

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Liu ◽  
Felicia Pratto
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
European Colonization ◽  
Historical Trajectory ◽  
The Impact

Colonization and decolonization are theorized at the intersection of Critical Junctures Theory and Power Basis Theory. This framework allows human agency to be conceptualized at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels, where individuals act on behalf of collectives. Their actions decide whether critical junctures in history (moments of potential for substantive change) result in continuity (no change), anchoring (continuity amid change with new elements), or rupture. We apply this framework to European colonization of the world, which is the temporal scene for contemporary social justice. Several critical junctures in New Zealand history are analyzed as part of its historical trajectory and narrated through changes in its symbology (system of meaning) and technology of state, as well as the identity space it encompasses (indigenous Māori and British colonizers). The impact of this historical trajectory on the social structure of New Zealand, including its national identity and government, is considered and connected to the overarching theoretical framework.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Diane Miller Sommerville
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Gender Bias ◽  
American South ◽  
Evidence Base ◽  
Cultural Discourse ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Methodological Approaches ◽  
The American South ◽  
And Gender

Lays out blueprint for the book by outlining methodological approaches, evidence base, and historiographical interventions (including ‘dark turn’ in Civil War scholarship) of a study on suicide and suffering during and after the Civil War in the American South. Identifies evidentiary challenges including poor record keeping, attempts to hide suicides, elusiveness of cause or motivation, and gender bias in lethal suicides. Case studies emphasize experiences of individuals, transcending well-trodden theological and cultural discourse about suicide. Examines impact of war traumas like PTSD on soldiers and veterans, and on their wives and families. Racialized ideas about suicide and depression shaped southerners’ understanding of suffering, held by whites to be a marker of civilized peoples.

Sustainability in Photography Can Change the World

2014 ◽  
pp. 39-53
Author(s):  
Rowena H. Scott
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
International Competition ◽  
Landscape Photography ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
Raising Awareness ◽  
The World ◽  
The University ◽  
World Environment

Photography plays important, but undervalued and misunderstood, roles in how modern urban humans relate to nature and how nature is mediated to us, forming our perceptions and national identity. Typically landscape photography depicts nature aesthetically as sublime, picturesque and beautiful. Photographs have been powerful raising awareness of sustainability and communicating political messages. The chapter reviews the influence of two great Australian wilderness photographers, Olegas Truchanas and Peter Dombrovskis, as well as Edith Cowan University's (ECU) Photography for Environmental Sustainability Competition. In conjunction with World Environment Day, the university invited students to submit photographs that showcase the principles and practices of environmental sustainability. This chapter describes the history, purposes and impact of photography and the competition. Starting as an engagement partnership between the environment coordinator, academics and the Perth Centre for Photography, it is now an international competition across Australia and New Zealand, not exclusive to photography students, hosted by Australasian Campuses Towards Sustainability (ACTS).

Barcode Applications for M-Business

2011 ◽  
pp. 66-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eusebio Scornavacca ◽  
Stuart J. Barnes
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Business Models ◽  
Future Research ◽  
The World ◽  
Technological Platform ◽  
The Uk

One pertinent area of recent m-commerce development is in methods for personal transaction and information transfer. Several companies around the world have begun to use barcodes for the provision of m-commerce services. This chapter provides background on the enabling technological platform for providing such services. It then continues with three cases where mobile barcodes have been used—in Japan, New Zealand, and the UK. Subsequently, these are used as the basis for a discussion and analysis of the key business models, and strategic implications for particular markets. The chapter concludes with predictions for the market and directions for future research.

scholarly journals The multiple mobilities of civil rights in Jeanine Tesori’s Violet and Caroline, or Change

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-253
Author(s):  
Allan Kilner-Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
American History ◽  
American South ◽  
Tony Kushner ◽  
Civil Rights Act ◽  
Female Protagonists ◽  
The World ◽  
The American South

This article centres on Jeanine Tesori’s Violet (book and lyrics by Brian Crawley) and Caroline, or Change (book and lyrics by Tony Kushner), both of which are set in the American south during a crucial period in American history running between the assassination of John F. Kennedy on 22 November 1963 and the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Both works musically capture the imaginative traditions of the American south through gospel, country, Motown, and blues in order to detail the complex negotiations of the titular female protagonists through challenges of isolation, entrapment and liberation in the months following Kennedy's assassination. This article argues that the promise and affordance of mobility within these musicals are rooted in an uncanny spiritual fervour expressed by Violet and Caroline, both of whom have defined a distinctive, and, as will be recognized by each musical’s conclusion, mistaken theology of personal devotion and faith that runs precisely counter to the liberating potentials in the world around them.

“I Ain’t no Man!”

2020 ◽  
pp. 68-88
Author(s):  
Veronica T. Watson
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Black People ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
American South ◽  
Black Masculinity ◽  
Black History ◽  
The World ◽  
Women Of African Descent ◽  
The American South

As an African American man in Augusta, a town deeply rooted in the racist ideologies and practices of the segregated South, Frank Yerby certainly had had enough experiences with Jim Crow living, discrimination, and racial terrorism to fuel his writing for a lifetime. Despite becoming best-known, perhaps, for his prolific authorship of novels that focused primarily on white lives and characters, Yerby commented in an interview with Maryemma Graham, “In every novel I have written about the American South, I have subtly infused a very strong defense of Black history and Black people” (70). Rhetorical defenses in novels that are largely not about Black lives are certainly worth noting; however, in this chapter I argue that the exploration of the world as it impacted Black people was a more consistent interest for Yerby than many recognized. He wrote a number of short stories that specifically focused on the impacts of racism and subjugation on the Black psyche and identity, the intimate relationships between men and women of African descent, and the understandings and performances of Black masculinity.

scholarly journals 'The Awful Stuff': Colin McCahon, High Art, and the Common Culture 1947-2000

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lara Strongman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Common Culture ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Impact

<p>This thesis analyses the conditions of artistic production at two pivotal moments in the reception of modernism in New Zealand: the emergence of a tradition of modernist painting in the work of Colin McCahon in the late 1940s, and the dispersal of that tradition under the impact of postmodernism and postcolonialism circa 1990 in the work of Michael Parekowhai and Ronnie van Hout, among others. Artists’ distinctive engagement with a broad compass of visual culture is considered alongside a critique of local high culture in relation to the culture of everyday life. The reception of this work is figured as emblematic of the historical contestation over the representation of the everyday; a struggle for visibility which reveals the social antagonisms of New Zealand culture.  The first part of the thesis considers the vituperative critical response to McCahon’s use of formal devices drawn from comic books and commercial design in the late 1940s, against the background of the establishment of the national high culture. It accounts for the response by exploring the social factors inherent in critical disdain for commercial art and mass culture, which drew on the trenchant opposition of British intellectuals, and suggests that in McCahon’s work popular culture is employed as a form of aesthetic primitivism with which to represent the barbarities of World War II, as well as to express the experience of everyday life in New Zealand to a broad public audience. It concludes that fundamental to the antagonism over his work was disagreement over what constituted local cultural authenticity.  The second part of the thesis considers problems of New Zealand high culture figured in antagonistic relation to the culture of everyday life that were advanced by New Zealand critics in the years after McCahon produced his popular-culture inflected paintings. The anti-Americanism of New Zealand culture is considered in relation to the rise of the ‘comics menace’ as a source of moral panic in the early 1950s. However, the interest of a new generation of New Zealand scholars in popular culture is observed in changing attitudes towards comic strips (and to American culture) in the 1980s. The same scholars also seek new terms for local critical address. A final chapter of this section explores the afterlife of McCahon’s work following his death in 1987, tracking the movement of the work out into the common culture and the high culture’s contestation of his modernist legacy.   The third part of the thesis opens with an account of aspects of art practice under emerging cultural conditions of postmodernism and postcolonialism in New Zealand in the 1990s, and explores the continued role of McCahon’s work in expressing and revising issues of national identity. Central here is ‘Choice!’ (1990), an exhibition of contemporary Māori art, which introduced Michael Parekowhai’s work and precipitated an ongoing discussion on the politics of identity in contemporary art. While Parekowhai located aspects of Māori identity in the traditions of high art and globalised mass culture, other artists interrogated national identity by similar means. The result was an expansion of the terms both of national identity and of the critical territories of the high culture. The thesis concludes by examining the critical furore that arose when Te Papa Tongarewa, New Zealand’s new national museum, opened with the exhibition of a painting by Colin McCahon beside a refrigerator of the same vintage. The debate, which ensued, was largely concerned with the desire of critics to separate the domain of art from the domain of everyday life.  This analysis demonstrates how contestation between the high culture and the common culture represents a recurring and generative dynamic in the history of New Zealand art—in which McCahon is a pivotal figure—during the second half of the twentieth century.</p>

scholarly journals Politics and Sport don’t mix – or do they? National Identity and New Zealand’s Participation in the Olympic Games

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Micheal Warren
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Imagined Community ◽  
Olympic Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Benedict Anderson ◽  
The Olympic Games ◽  
New Zealanders

<p>Sports matter. Today sport is one of the most enduring social events that humans from across the world participate in, no matter their race, religion or gender. Moreover, the biggest of all those sporting events is the Olympic Games, which is held every four years. The modern version of the Games was founded by Frenchman Baron Pierre de Coubertin and first took place in Athens in 1896. New Zealand first competed alongside Australia as Australasia in London 1908 and Stockholm 1912. Following the games of 1916 which were cancelled due to World War I, New Zealand has competed as a sovereign nation since Antwerp 1920. Since 1908, over 1200 New Zealanders have competed at the Olympic Games, winning more than 100 medals. That performance in itself makes New Zealand one of the most successful nations in Olympic history on a per capita basis. That statistic alone underscores the relationship between the Olympics and national identity, as an embodiment of New Zealanders believing they ‘punch above their weight’ on the world stage.  Benedict Anderson wrote about the imagined community, where the nation is imagined because it is impossible for every citizen to know each other.¹ This research has found that sporting teams like the All Blacks and the New Zealand Olympic Team are perfect avenues to help create this imagined community. New Zealand’s national identity is not fixed, it has evolved, but the one mainstay of that identity is the sense of being an underdog on the world stage.  The research has found that over the past three decades New Zealand governments have increasingly woken up to the importance of high-performance sport and following the disappointment of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, funding was increased, which has led to better results and more medals. Today New Zealand athletes are funded on a per-capita basis just as well as many other nations we would compare ourselves with. New Zealand politicians have been quick to associate themselves alongside sportsmen and women and often speak about the close link that exists between sport and identity in New Zealand. However, unlike Australia, New Zealand does not have a national sports museum, and also unlike Australia, and the United Kingdom, New Zealand legislation does not allow for free-to-air television coverage of games of national significance. New Zealand does not adequately showcase its sporting history, and this has the potential to negatively affect the importance New Zealanders place on sport and the Olympic Movement as an important part of its national identity.  Ultimately this research has found that the New Zealand Olympic Team epitomises what it means to be a New Zealander and has found that across multiple levels of analysis, the Olympic Movement has significantly contributed to the development of New Zealand’s national identity. More broadly, the Olympic Games have become a key avenue in which that national identity can be projected to the world.  ¹ Benedict Anderson, ‘Imagined Communities,’ (London: Verso, 2006), pp.6-7.</p>

When Johnny Went Marching Home

2021 ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Jim Powell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Financial Crises ◽  
American South ◽  
Free Market ◽  
World Market ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Catastrophic Failure ◽  
Futures Trading ◽  
The World ◽  
The American South

This chapter considers the aftermath of the war, in Liverpool and in the American South during Reconstruction. In Liverpool, a combination of speculation, financial crises, the transatlantic telegraph and futures trading created a cauldron of disruption. The immediate question was whether American cotton could be produced in the pre-war quantity at the pre-war price. The reality was that, after the evils of slavery and the sacrifices of the war, little got better afterwards for anyone who produced cotton in America. The American South proved unable to organise itself collectively, to diversify its industry, or to escape the stifling control of the credit merchants, and the result was endemic poverty. There was no demonstrable failure of free labour, but there was a catastrophic failure of the free market. The conclusion of the book is that the civil war years were a time of unmitigated catastrophe for most of Britain’s cotton trade, and ultimately for America’s cotton producers. 1861 marked the end of the largely Anglo-centric era in which British cotton goods, using a raw material produced by American slaves, dominated the world market.

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