Extending understandings of risk in organised sport

Abstract

Risk has been particularly associated with pain, injury, illness and even death in the studies of organised high-performance sport: in short, physical risk has been the primary focus. In contrast, this article explores the cultural dimensions of risk alongside the physical risk, which are revealed in an in-depth ethnographic study of waka ama (outrigger canoeing),1 an organised sport that is profoundly influenced by indigenous Māori culture. Waka ama participants’ discursive, embodied and agential responses to risk are presented as factionalised stories, a blend of fact and fiction that respects Māori oral traditions as a form of knowledge. The findings related to the influences of cultural concepts on shaping participants’ perceptions and responses to risk emerge as important new understandings of risk in organised sport.

Paddling Through Bluespaces: Understanding Waka Ama as a Post-Sport Through Indigenous Māori Perspectives

“…Whakapapa informs the classic Ma ori social structure, namely, waka-iwi-hapu -wha nau (Wikaire & Newman, 2013;Williams, 2004). Mika (2014) encouraged us to think of whakapapa not only as the layering of meanings or physical connections to Ma ori identifications, but also to consider how it "enables us to think of things in the world as constantly moving" (p. 54). This constant moving also represents becoming.…”

“…This constant moving also represents becoming. Mika (2014) points out that the lexical components of whakapapa-comprising whaka [become or becoming] and papa [earth]-can be understood as becoming earth/whenua [land], yet it is something a living human can attune and relate to, but can never actually become.…”

“…Papa can be substituted by other entities, such as the sky (Mika, 2014), and in this article, it stands for nature and the bluespaces to which Ma ori waka ama paddlers are attuned and related to, but can never actually become. In this sense, having one's own whakapapa is similar to Pronger's concept of being a postsport athlete, who blurs the boundaries between human and nonhuman and yet can never really escape the boundaries and sociocultural discourses.…”

“…However, I hesitated to identify waka ama paddling as a lifestyle sport. Lifestyle sport is usually associated with risk, pleasure, and excitement-seeking, and such categorization may overlook the indigeneity of waka ama, particularly Ma ori participants' experiences of embodied, emotional, and spiritual connections with ancestry, nature, and other people through waka ama paddling (Liu, 2018;Liu & Bruce, 2019). Furthermore, unlike lifestyle sports which are primarily dominated by (presumably White) male participants (Falcous, 2017;Fletcher, 2008;Sisjord, 2015), female waka ama paddlers are common to see.…”

Mid-life Chinese women’s understandings of sporting pain and injury: A non-Western cultural analysis via the Confucian concept of ‘ren’

“…Yet, critical examinations of non-Western sportswomen are important as this research can illustrate how broader cultural dynamics shape risk practices and reactions to pain and injury within specific sports. Cultural analysis can, accordingly, reveal the broader societal workings of power that encourage or discourage the normalisation of sporting pain (Liu and Bruce, 2019).…”