View related articlesView Crossmark data Citing articles: 2 View citing articles † I dedicate this article to the late Whetu Tipiwai: E te rangatira e Whetu E tangi tonu ana te ngākau E rere tonu ana ngā roimata e te pāpa, i tōu rironga moe mai rā I haramai au ki te kimi mātauranga whutuporo Me ngā hononga o te whutuporo ki te iwi Māori Nāhau au i tautoko i ārahi kia tūtuki ai āku mahi Ko te wairua o ōu mahi rangatira Ka ora tonu i roto i aku tuhituhinga Anei āku kupu mihi, āku tangi Aroha naku nā Domenica Gisella Calabrò received her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Messina, Italy. Her thesis investigated the indigenisation of rugby and its role in the process of Māori identity definition. A postdoctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam and member of the ERC (European Research Council) funded project 'Globalsport', directed by Professor Niko Besnier, her research focuses on the construction of Māori masculinities in rugby and the transnational mobility of Māori players.

Since the advent of professional rugby, Māori have gained international visibility and attractiveness. The representation of the New Zealand rugby team revolves around their integration and the incorporation of their warrior tradition, suggesting a strong connection between rugby and contemporary Māori society. Rugby has indeed been the object of a process of indigenization, fulfilling goals of sociocultural continuity, political acknowledgment, and, in the professional era, upward social mobility. Nevertheless, rugby has also partly fulfilled its role as a tool of colonization in creating and sanctioning power differentials. Drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork in New Zealand, this article examines the relationship between Māori and rugby as a dialectic phenomenon that has resulted in the diversification of Māori experiences and perceptions of rugby and attests to the heterogeneity of Māori life experiences, aspirations, and formulations of indigeneity in contemporary society.

Mutual Images is a semiannual, double-blind peer-reviewed and transcultural research journal established in 2016 by the scholarly, non-profit and independent Mutual Images Research Association, officially registered under French law (Loi 1901).Mutual Images' field of interest is the analysis and discussion of the everchanging, multifaceted relations between Europe and Asia, and between specific European countries or regions and specific Asian countries or regions.A privileged area of investigation concerns the mutual cultural influences between Japan and other national or regional contexts, with a special emphasis on visual domains, media studies, the cultural and creative industries, and popular imagination at large.

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