Steven J. Jackson

Sport, Tribes, and Technology: The New Zealand all Blacks Haka and the Politics of Identity

This study examines how global forces are shaping local indigenous cultures with a particular focus on the relationship between global capitalism, new media technologies, and transnational advertising. Concentrating on Mäori culture and identity in Aotearoa/New Zealand, the authors examine a contemporary political debate related to indigenous culture and intellectual property rights. Specifically, the study explores the politics of identity associated with global sports company Adidas and its use of the traditional New Zealand All Blacks haka as part of a global advertising campaign. A key feature of the analysis is the controversy surrounding a lawsuit filed by a Mäori tribe claiming compensation for the commercial use of its culture. Overall, the study highlights the problem of maintaining and protecting cultural spaces where indigenous identities can be constructed and affirmed.

Sport Policy Development in New Zealand Paradoxes of an Integrative Paradigm

Sport policies are underpinned by particular interpretive frameworks or paradigms . These paradigms shape: a) the construction of policy problems, b) the alternative approaches to resolving these problems and c) what is considered to be an acceptable government intervention. This article investigates how a policy paradigm shaped the findings and recommendations of New Zealand’s Ministerial Taskforce on Sport, Fitness and Leisure. Using empirical data gathered from observations of the Taskforce’s consultations, interviews with Taskforce members and a review of public submissions, it is argued that a paradigm (stressing rationalization and integration) served as the basis for recommendations to reduce the number of regional sports trusts, to centralize control over the sector and to coordinate the administration of sport. Two fundamental contradictions and paradoxes arising from this paradigm shift are discussed. The first notes the historical contingencies that gave rise to the problem of fragmented sport delivery structures, including government’s preference for contractual agreements and decentralized control. The second examines the appropriateness of centralizing powers given the inherent need for specialized (and autonomous) delivery mechanisms. This study’s focus on paradigms helps to explain how policies can alter institutional relations and the lived world of actors with respect to their identities, opportunities and capacities to act.

Globalization American-style and reference idol selection: the importance of athlete celebrity others among New Zealand youth.

While there have been significant refinements in the scholarly development of the sport and Americanization/globalization literature in recent years, the individual, psychosocial consequences resulting from the intersection of global forces and local cultures remain largely unexplored. A sample of 510 New Zealand youth (average age = 14.5 yrs) was administered a survey instrument to identify their public heroes and heroines (reference idols), that is, celebrity others who are ‘very important in your life’. Statistical analysis of these data as well as movie and television consumption patterns revealed that these youth are heavily influenced by global media in general and American popular culture in particular. The data suggested that the influence of popular American cultural icons (e.g. Michael Jordan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Morrison, Michael Jackson) extended well beyond simple admiration for some respondents to include impacts on beliefs, values, self-appraisals, and behaviors. It was concluded that focusing on adolescent reference idol choices and their identityrelated consequences is a promising approach to understanding the influence of the ‘global’ on the ‘local’.

Sports Advertising, Cultural Production and Corporate Nationalism at the Global-Local Nexus: Branding the New Zealand All Blacks

This essay provides an in-depth examination of a contextually-specific case study of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchis production of a recent television commercial for adidass sponsorship of New Zealands iconic rugby team, the All Blacks. Through interviews with representatives from adidas, the New Zealand Rugby Union, and Saatchi & Saatchi, and analyses of industry documents, the commercial is located within a range of interrelated cultural, economic, technological and institutional conditions of production. The analysis reveals the complexity of the processes and practices through which the commercial was encoded with dominant cultural meanings and representations employed to communicate a complex televisual discourse of corporate nationalism and spectacle at the global-local nexus.

The media sports cultural complex: local/global disjuncture in New Zealand/Aotearoa.

This article explores the interdependence of interest groups operating within the media sports cultural complex in relation to the national sport of rugby union in New Zealand/Aotearoa. Specifically, we scrutinize the corporate “partnerships” between the New Zealand Rugby Union (NZRU), Adidas, and News Corporation in relation to issues and debates surrounding the globalization of New Zealands iconic rugby team, the All Blacks. The article draws on extensive interviews with the NZRUs marketing and sponsorship manager and Adidas New Zealands marketing manager. These interviews provide rare insights into how the strategies of these organizations, and their interrelated (but not interchangeable) commercial objectives, set limits and exert powerful pressures on aspects of the production and consumption of the national sporting mythology in New Zealand.

Cultural Studies and the Circuit of Culture: Advertising, Promotional Culture and the New Zealand All Blacks

Using a modified circuit of culture as a methodological and theoretical framework, this paper examines the interrelated moments associated with the production, representation, and consumption of a recent televised advertisement for adidass sponsorship of the New Zealand All Blacks. The study suggests that each articulatory moment represents a key site for in-depth multiperspectival analyses, which can facilitate a broad contextual understanding of the complexities, contradictions, and power relations associated with contemporary culture in general and specifically in relation to indigenous culture.

Exorcizing the Ghost: Donovan Bailey, Ben Johnson and the Politics of Canadian Identity

This article explores how sporting ‘Others’, such as Ben Johnson and Donovan Bailey, are constituted by, and constitutive of, the politics of racial and national identity in Canada. Tracing the emerging media discourses surrounding these two ‘Jamaican-born’ Canadian sprinters, this study specifically examines: (a) the context within which Ben Johnson and the contemporary crisis of racial and national identity in Canada emerged; (b) previous research regarding the discourses which defined and redefined Ben Johnson’s racial and national identities before and after the 1988 steroid scandal; and (c) evidence of the nature and extent to which the symbolic spectre of Ben Johnson haunts Donovan Bailey and other Canadian black people of Caribbean descent, as well as Canada itself.

Between and beyond politics: Sport and foreign policy in a globalizing world

Despite its strategic and enduring place within politics and international relations, sport remains an ambiguous, intangible and conspicuously elusive part of contemporary foreign policy. Although it may sound somewhat contradictory, this situation may be due to sport being conceptualized, and even celebrated, as something that is pure and serious on the one hand, and quite trivial on the other. Lincoln Allison offers some insight into how these divergent cultural perspectives on the role and significance of sport may have emerged:

Reflections on Communication and Sport On Advertising and Promotional Culture

This essay highlights the unique and intimately interrelated nature of the relationship between communication and advertising by providing a selective overview of communication about and through sport within the context of promotional culture. While advertising and marketing of sport leagues, teams, celebrity athletes, and commodities are important, this treatment focuses on how the advertising industry has come to dominate contemporary social life, and why “sport” is such an important channel of communication within promotional culture. The article (a) outlines the emergence, nature, and social significance of advertising; (b) offers a framework for analysis based on the circuit of commodification and communication model that emphasizes the context and complex interrelationships between particular moments in commodification processes; (c) discusses a current research example examining sport, globalization, and corporate nationalism; and (d) considers directions for future research.

Rugby World Cup 2011: sport mega-events and the contested terrain of space, bodies and commodities

This paper examines the contested terrain of sport mega-events and focuses on some recent examples from Rugby World Cup (RWC) 2011, hosted by New Zealand, a small nation of 4.3 million people. Overall, the analysis illustrates how one particular sporting event offers insights into the role of sport as part of a wider set of relations of globalization, politics, economics and cultural identity. This paper is divided into three main parts: (1) the social and cultural significance of sport mega-events as strategic sites of cultural analysis; (2) the politics and economics of the bid to host RWC 2011 and (3) the multidimensional nature of the contested terrain of RWC 2011 with respect to space, bodies and commodities. This paper concludes by contrasting the political rhetoric associated with sport mega-events with the lived realities and experience of citizens.