Malcolm MacLean | The University of Queensland, Australia (original) (raw)

Papers by Malcolm MacLean

Sport in History, 2022

The Empire’s subaltern peoples and its justification in coloniality are strangely absent from Bri... more The Empire’s subaltern peoples and its justification in coloniality are strangely absent from British sport history, despite a key strand of the field being grounded in links between Empire, masculinity and sport: in this the subject reflects gaps and silences in British social history more generally. This paper that is both theoretical and historiographical explores this absence and considers ways that it might be addressed. It first sketches the coloniality of sport history as epistemology and ontology through an exploration of the field’s methodological national whiteness as redacting the agency and voice (past and present) of Indigenous and colonial subaltern peoples and implicating sport history in a continuing Imperial Archive. Although necessarily broad brush the paper concludes by examining aspects of the field that disrupt methodological nationalism and methodological whiteness to suggest ways of rethinking and recasting historians’ practice to suggest decolonial methods for British sport history that rupture in analyses of sport the constraints of the nation as anachronism and Whiteness as a fundamental characteristic of British history.

Sport History Review, 2022

International Journal of the History of Sport, 2022

Critical Reflections on Physical Culture at the Edges of Empire , 2020

Despite its reputation as a place of leisure, pleasure and recreation, we have very little unders... more Despite its reputation as a place of leisure, pleasure and recreation, we have very little understanding of the place of sport in the Pacific region. Scholarship in the field has been patchy and localised ranging from studies of baseball in US zones of influence, such as Japan, Taiwan & the Philippines to cricket and rugby in the broadly British sphere of influence in the south and central Pacific, often linked to Australia and New Zealand’s role as second order imperial powers. The stand-out focus of distinctive scholarly research has centred on surfing, presented as a Hawai’ian practice but in evidence in various forms across the region. Despite these differences these studies share a common ‘universalising’ (read: imperial) outlook based in a shared North Atlantic outlook.

Recent years have seen a change and there is a small but growing body of scholarly research exploring social, cultural and political histories and sociologies of sport, with some of the very best informed both by subaltern perspectives and the drive to decolonise the academy. This paper draws on recent studies of sporting cultures in the Pacific, including the Pacific Rim, focusing particularly on cricket and surfing to discuss the dynamics between indigenous and colonising peoples in historical and contemporary sport settings and to unpick sport as a practice of modernity to begin to open up ways that its practice and its study might be decolonised in a Pacific setting.

Journal of Sport History, 2019

The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much... more The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much of the critical studies tradition does little more than add “data” from colonially suppressed peoples without re-examining the dominant discursive narratives. This paper explores the historiography of indigenous sport to pose questions about the ways the Imperial Archive has shaped our understandings and the manner of access to that source material, suggesting ways that they might be used to disrupt the dominant epistemologies of colonial(ist) sport history. It constructs a sixfold typology and explores each type through the analysis of a single representative source. In doing so, it tests the limits of researchers’ moral responsibility to include research communities in the process of development and production of data and critiques the view that responsibility for and conduct of the analysis rests solely with the researcher. In posing the problem of “the archive,” the paper explores ways in which the decolonization of sport history and the indigenization of the subject can help reconfigure the meaning of modern sport and develop a more fluid, dialogic approach to historiographical practice.

International Journal of the History of Sport, 31(15) pp. 1832-1851, Sep 2014

For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a c... more For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an “entrenched system of racial discrimination”. The call to boycott South African sport emerged in the 1950s as the apartheid state was developing and refining its comprehensive and systematic legal form amid growing international pressure for decolonisation. This is a different social and political context than the call 50 years later by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS). This paper draws on analyses of international anti-apartheid movements’ campaigns against sporting contact with South Africa and the BDS call for the isolation of the Israeli state to propose a theory of sports boycotts. It looks at the anti-apartheid campaigns, especially those in the early 1960s, to consider ways in which the BDS campaign has an impact on existing historical understandings of cultural boycotts as a tactical and strategic campaign tool.

Play and Democracy: Philosophical Perspectives, 2022

This chapter unpacks the development of philosophical practice through our involvement as ‘confer... more This chapter unpacks the development of philosophical practice through our involvement as ‘conference ethnographers’ in the fifth Philosophy at Play conference. It is both an ethnographic engagement with the conference, its content and location and also a philosophical exploration of questions raised by both this conference and the wider philosophy at play project. As part of the authors’ dialogue, we reflect on the tensions between play as a force for democracy and as a site of democratic practice. As part of this the chapter considers the antagonisms of academic conferencing, instrumental scholarly praxis (including the production of a set of academic papers) and the place of play(fulness) in creating the space necessary for critical insight and practice.

Play, Philosophy and Performance, 2021

Philosophical Perspectives on Play , 2016

The Age of Industry (ed, Mike Huggins), Vol 5, Bloomsbury Cultural History of Sport (eds, Wray Vamplew & Mark Dyreson)., 2021

National Identities, 2014

Journal of Sport History, 2014

Sport in Society 17(10), Dec 2014

Scholars have been slow to recognise the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the po... more Scholars have been slow to recognise the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the political economy of intellectual work. This paper draws on recent work exploring critical models of higher education practice in art education as well as in political economy and philosophy exploring copying, accumulation by dispossession and the threats of commodification of the Commons of culture, external and internal nature to explore the current circumstances of scholarship in sport. It draws on theories of the Commons to argue that sport social scientists must grapple with the antagonisms between scholarship and copyright and between membership of a ‘secular vocation’ and the relations of intellectual production and labour processes of the contemporary corporate university. Finally drawing on the principles of critical social science, the paper considers a range of desirable, viable and achievable objectives the teaching, writing and publishing to propose ways that scholars can respond to these emerging relations of intellectual labour and production.

The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2000

The International Journal of the History of Sport

Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and... more Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation that is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations influences both the current shape and provision of sport as well as our image and understanding of specific sports as cultural practice, we know very little about sports’ basic institutional unit, the sports club. This paper considers reasons for historians’ relative silence about sports clubs, reflects on concepts of associativity as essential to understanding sports history and argues for a more rigorous understanding of sports clubs as major aspects of civil society.

This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodolog... more This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodological and discipline-refining questions to call for a more open dialogue between sports historians and others in the discipline. The argument includes a call on the wider discipline to both recognise the need for and participation in sub-discipline specific debates.

The Philosophy Play, 2013

The ‘literary turn’ in cultural and historical analysis has introduced a suite of new perspective... more The ‘literary turn’ in cultural and historical analysis has introduced a suite of new perspectives, theoretical approaches and analytical techniques to the humanities and social sciences. The emergence of post-colonial modes of analysis, related to this literary turn, has increased our awareness and interpretation of various representational techniques in and approaches to colonial cultures. One theoretical approach has, above all others, shaped these post-colonial interpretations: Homi K Bhabha’s argument that subaltern cultures may be understood as characterised by mimicry and a ‘sly civility’. Although this model is seldom explicitly invoked in sports studies, it remains implicit in many interpretations of sport in British colonies of settlement. This paper explores the usefulness of these tropes derived from Bhabha’s work through a critical reading of C L R James’s Beyond a Boundary.
********************************
Also reprinted in Wray Vamplew (ed) Sports History, Vol 4, 2014, pp 99-117, Abingdon, Routledge (978-0-415-83747-7);
also reprinted in John Nauright, Alan G Cobley and David K Wiggins (eds) Beyond C.L.R James: Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity in Sport, Fayetteville, University of Kansas Press. 2014. pp 17-39 (978-1-557-28649-9)

West Indies cricket writing has been characterised by the sly civility of Beyond A Boundary or a ... more West Indies cricket writing has been characterised by the sly civility of Beyond A Boundary or a cultural politics of nationalism as seen in Cricket and I. More recently, Viv Richards’s biography Hitting Across The Line has been described by Hilary Beckles as “a manifesto of the progressive movement”. [2] This paper explores Richards’s biography through the lens of cultural nationalism to argue that in the absence of an unproblematically indigenous people, Richards constructs a place-derived sense of indigeneity and hence authenticity in West Indies cricket, and in doing so exposes many of the contradictions of West Indies and other sporting cultural nationalisms in the context of postcolonising tendencies in the former British Empire.

One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half ... more One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half of the twentieth century centred on the demand for the sporting and broader cultural, social, economic, and political isolation of South Africa during the apartheid era. The struggle saw apartheid endorsed South African sports organisations expelled from international bodies beginning in the 1950s, with the South African National Olympic Committee being the only one ever expelled from the IOC. The sports boycott was one of the major successes of the international anti-apartheid campaign, yet the existing literature on boycotts is only marginally relevant to cultural (including sports) boycotts. Furthermore, the existing literature dealing with sports boycotts, with its focus on the multilateral politics of Olympic boycotts, is of minimal use in explaining mass activist campaigns such as the anti-apartheid movement. This paper centres on the campaign against the 1981 South African rugby tour of Aotearoa New Zealand to explore the multiple significances of sport in the target (South Africa) and sender (Aotearoa New Zealand) states, and the character of the mass movement to argue that the cultural significance of both sport and the politics of ‘race’ and colonialism are vital to an effective understanding mass movement supported bilateral cultural boycotts.

Sport in History, 2022

The Empire’s subaltern peoples and its justification in coloniality are strangely absent from Bri... more The Empire’s subaltern peoples and its justification in coloniality are strangely absent from British sport history, despite a key strand of the field being grounded in links between Empire, masculinity and sport: in this the subject reflects gaps and silences in British social history more generally. This paper that is both theoretical and historiographical explores this absence and considers ways that it might be addressed. It first sketches the coloniality of sport history as epistemology and ontology through an exploration of the field’s methodological national whiteness as redacting the agency and voice (past and present) of Indigenous and colonial subaltern peoples and implicating sport history in a continuing Imperial Archive. Although necessarily broad brush the paper concludes by examining aspects of the field that disrupt methodological nationalism and methodological whiteness to suggest ways of rethinking and recasting historians’ practice to suggest decolonial methods for British sport history that rupture in analyses of sport the constraints of the nation as anachronism and Whiteness as a fundamental characteristic of British history.

Sport History Review, 2022

International Journal of the History of Sport, 2022

Critical Reflections on Physical Culture at the Edges of Empire , 2020

Despite its reputation as a place of leisure, pleasure and recreation, we have very little unders... more Despite its reputation as a place of leisure, pleasure and recreation, we have very little understanding of the place of sport in the Pacific region. Scholarship in the field has been patchy and localised ranging from studies of baseball in US zones of influence, such as Japan, Taiwan & the Philippines to cricket and rugby in the broadly British sphere of influence in the south and central Pacific, often linked to Australia and New Zealand’s role as second order imperial powers. The stand-out focus of distinctive scholarly research has centred on surfing, presented as a Hawai’ian practice but in evidence in various forms across the region. Despite these differences these studies share a common ‘universalising’ (read: imperial) outlook based in a shared North Atlantic outlook.

Recent years have seen a change and there is a small but growing body of scholarly research exploring social, cultural and political histories and sociologies of sport, with some of the very best informed both by subaltern perspectives and the drive to decolonise the academy. This paper draws on recent studies of sporting cultures in the Pacific, including the Pacific Rim, focusing particularly on cricket and surfing to discuss the dynamics between indigenous and colonising peoples in historical and contemporary sport settings and to unpick sport as a practice of modernity to begin to open up ways that its practice and its study might be decolonised in a Pacific setting.

Journal of Sport History, 2019

The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much... more The drive to decolonize the academy has led to the reconstruction of old understandings, yet much of the critical studies tradition does little more than add “data” from colonially suppressed peoples without re-examining the dominant discursive narratives. This paper explores the historiography of indigenous sport to pose questions about the ways the Imperial Archive has shaped our understandings and the manner of access to that source material, suggesting ways that they might be used to disrupt the dominant epistemologies of colonial(ist) sport history. It constructs a sixfold typology and explores each type through the analysis of a single representative source. In doing so, it tests the limits of researchers’ moral responsibility to include research communities in the process of development and production of data and critiques the view that responsibility for and conduct of the analysis rests solely with the researcher. In posing the problem of “the archive,” the paper explores ways in which the decolonization of sport history and the indigenization of the subject can help reconfigure the meaning of modern sport and develop a more fluid, dialogic approach to historiographical practice.

International Journal of the History of Sport, 31(15) pp. 1832-1851, Sep 2014

For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a c... more For the first time in nearly 30 years, 2013 has seen increasing public awareness of calls for a comprehensive boycott of and sanctions on a state based on questions of an “entrenched system of racial discrimination”. The call to boycott South African sport emerged in the 1950s as the apartheid state was developing and refining its comprehensive and systematic legal form amid growing international pressure for decolonisation. This is a different social and political context than the call 50 years later by Palestinian civil society for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel (BDS). This paper draws on analyses of international anti-apartheid movements’ campaigns against sporting contact with South Africa and the BDS call for the isolation of the Israeli state to propose a theory of sports boycotts. It looks at the anti-apartheid campaigns, especially those in the early 1960s, to consider ways in which the BDS campaign has an impact on existing historical understandings of cultural boycotts as a tactical and strategic campaign tool.

Play and Democracy: Philosophical Perspectives, 2022

This chapter unpacks the development of philosophical practice through our involvement as ‘confer... more This chapter unpacks the development of philosophical practice through our involvement as ‘conference ethnographers’ in the fifth Philosophy at Play conference. It is both an ethnographic engagement with the conference, its content and location and also a philosophical exploration of questions raised by both this conference and the wider philosophy at play project. As part of the authors’ dialogue, we reflect on the tensions between play as a force for democracy and as a site of democratic practice. As part of this the chapter considers the antagonisms of academic conferencing, instrumental scholarly praxis (including the production of a set of academic papers) and the place of play(fulness) in creating the space necessary for critical insight and practice.

Play, Philosophy and Performance, 2021

Philosophical Perspectives on Play , 2016

The Age of Industry (ed, Mike Huggins), Vol 5, Bloomsbury Cultural History of Sport (eds, Wray Vamplew & Mark Dyreson)., 2021

National Identities, 2014

Journal of Sport History, 2014

Sport in Society 17(10), Dec 2014

Scholars have been slow to recognise the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the po... more Scholars have been slow to recognise the impact of the developing ‘information society’ on the political economy of intellectual work. This paper draws on recent work exploring critical models of higher education practice in art education as well as in political economy and philosophy exploring copying, accumulation by dispossession and the threats of commodification of the Commons of culture, external and internal nature to explore the current circumstances of scholarship in sport. It draws on theories of the Commons to argue that sport social scientists must grapple with the antagonisms between scholarship and copyright and between membership of a ‘secular vocation’ and the relations of intellectual production and labour processes of the contemporary corporate university. Finally drawing on the principles of critical social science, the paper considers a range of desirable, viable and achievable objectives the teaching, writing and publishing to propose ways that scholars can respond to these emerging relations of intellectual labour and production.

The International Journal of the History of Sport, 2000

The International Journal of the History of Sport

Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and... more Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation that is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations influences both the current shape and provision of sport as well as our image and understanding of specific sports as cultural practice, we know very little about sports’ basic institutional unit, the sports club. This paper considers reasons for historians’ relative silence about sports clubs, reflects on concepts of associativity as essential to understanding sports history and argues for a more rigorous understanding of sports clubs as major aspects of civil society.

This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodolog... more This paper addresses issues raised in Paul Ward's essay ‘Last man picked’, focusing on methodological and discipline-refining questions to call for a more open dialogue between sports historians and others in the discipline. The argument includes a call on the wider discipline to both recognise the need for and participation in sub-discipline specific debates.

The Philosophy Play, 2013

The ‘literary turn’ in cultural and historical analysis has introduced a suite of new perspective... more The ‘literary turn’ in cultural and historical analysis has introduced a suite of new perspectives, theoretical approaches and analytical techniques to the humanities and social sciences. The emergence of post-colonial modes of analysis, related to this literary turn, has increased our awareness and interpretation of various representational techniques in and approaches to colonial cultures. One theoretical approach has, above all others, shaped these post-colonial interpretations: Homi K Bhabha’s argument that subaltern cultures may be understood as characterised by mimicry and a ‘sly civility’. Although this model is seldom explicitly invoked in sports studies, it remains implicit in many interpretations of sport in British colonies of settlement. This paper explores the usefulness of these tropes derived from Bhabha’s work through a critical reading of C L R James’s Beyond a Boundary.
********************************
Also reprinted in Wray Vamplew (ed) Sports History, Vol 4, 2014, pp 99-117, Abingdon, Routledge (978-0-415-83747-7);
also reprinted in John Nauright, Alan G Cobley and David K Wiggins (eds) Beyond C.L.R James: Shifting Boundaries of Race and Ethnicity in Sport, Fayetteville, University of Kansas Press. 2014. pp 17-39 (978-1-557-28649-9)

West Indies cricket writing has been characterised by the sly civility of Beyond A Boundary or a ... more West Indies cricket writing has been characterised by the sly civility of Beyond A Boundary or a cultural politics of nationalism as seen in Cricket and I. More recently, Viv Richards’s biography Hitting Across The Line has been described by Hilary Beckles as “a manifesto of the progressive movement”. [2] This paper explores Richards’s biography through the lens of cultural nationalism to argue that in the absence of an unproblematically indigenous people, Richards constructs a place-derived sense of indigeneity and hence authenticity in West Indies cricket, and in doing so exposes many of the contradictions of West Indies and other sporting cultural nationalisms in the context of postcolonising tendencies in the former British Empire.

One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half ... more One of the major manifestations of sport-centred activist political struggles in the latter half of the twentieth century centred on the demand for the sporting and broader cultural, social, economic, and political isolation of South Africa during the apartheid era. The struggle saw apartheid endorsed South African sports organisations expelled from international bodies beginning in the 1950s, with the South African National Olympic Committee being the only one ever expelled from the IOC. The sports boycott was one of the major successes of the international anti-apartheid campaign, yet the existing literature on boycotts is only marginally relevant to cultural (including sports) boycotts. Furthermore, the existing literature dealing with sports boycotts, with its focus on the multilateral politics of Olympic boycotts, is of minimal use in explaining mass activist campaigns such as the anti-apartheid movement. This paper centres on the campaign against the 1981 South African rugby tour of Aotearoa New Zealand to explore the multiple significances of sport in the target (South Africa) and sender (Aotearoa New Zealand) states, and the character of the mass movement to argue that the cultural significance of both sport and the politics of ‘race’ and colonialism are vital to an effective understanding mass movement supported bilateral cultural boycotts.

This book explores the complex and multi-layered relationships between democracy and play, presen... more This book explores the complex and multi-layered relationships between democracy and play, presenting important new theoretical and empirical research. It builds new paradigmatic bridges between philosophical enquiry and fields of application across the arts, political activism, children’s play, education and political science.

Play and Democracy addresses four principal themes. Firstly, it explores how the relationship between play and democracy can be conceptualized and how it is mirrored in questions of normativity, ethics and political power. Secondly, it examines different aspects of play in urban spaces, such as activism, aesthetic experience, happenings, political carnivals and performances. Thirdly, it offers examples and analyses of how playful artistic performances can offer democratic resistance to dominant power. And finally, it considers the paradoxes of play in both developing democratic sensibilities and resisting power in education. These themes are explored and interrogated in chapters covering topics such as aesthetic practice, pedagogy, diverse forms of activism, and urban experience, where play and playfulness become arenas in which to create the possibility of democratic practice and change.

Adding extra depth to our understanding of the significance of play as a polit- ical, cultural and social power, this book is fascinating reading for any serious student or researcher with an interest in play, philosophy, politics, sociology, arts, sport or education.

Routledge, 2021

from the publisher's burb: Play, Philosophy and Performance is a cutting-edge collection of essa... more from the publisher's burb:

Play, Philosophy and Performance is a cutting-edge collection of essays exploring the philosophy of play. It showcases the most innovative, interdisciplinary work in the rapidly developing field of Play Studies.

How we play, and the relation of play to the human condition, is becoming increasingly recognised as a field of scholarly inquiry as well as a significant element of social practice, public policy and socio-cultural understanding. Drawing on approaches ranging through morality and ethics, language and the nature of reality, aesthetics, digital culture and gaming, and written by an international group of emerging and established scholars, this book examines how our performance at play describes, shapes and influences our performance as human beings.

This is essential reading for anybody with an interest in leisure, education, childhood, gaming, the arts, playwork or many branches of philosophical enquiry.

Contents:

Introduction: 'Just' (pre)tending: the performativity of philosophising play - Malcom MacLean, Wendy Russell & Emily Ryall

Part I: Play and the Performance of Morality
1 Do Toy Guns Kill People? Playing with Guns - Chris Bateman
2 Analyzing Morality via the Philosophy of Play - Martin Weichold
3 A Playful Approach to Cultivating Intellectual Virtues: Why So Serious? - Yujia Song
4 Ethical Dimensions of Play and Care: Reflections Based on Donald Winnicott’s Theory of Play and the Ethics of Care - Alice Koubová and Petr Urban

Part II: Language and Play In/And ‘The Real’
5 Language, Play, and Understanding: What Semantics Might Learn from Children - Charles Djordjevic
6 Living on the Edge: Zhuangzi, Ludus, and 遊 (you) - Brandon Underwood
7 Robert Pfaller and the Disappearance of Play in Contemporary Culture: Illusions without Subjects - Kevin Kennedy

Part III: Playful Aesthetics
8 Notes on Playful Cinema and Performance: Stop Making Sense - Elena Pachner Sarno
9 Childhood Ghosts with Boltanski and Benjamin - Rosana Kohl Bines
10 The Complexity of Play: A Response to Guyer’s Analysis of Play in Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man - Kate Brelje
11 How Computer Game Design Affects Moral Engagement: Mechanics Taking Over - Oliver Milne and Viktor Ivanković

Part IV: Play’s Performative Praxis
12 Unexpected Movements as Meaningful Expression in Play: Strange Twists of the Body - Ellen Mulder
13 Posthuman Interpretations of Mutual Play between a Human, Cat and Machine - Marleena Mustola
14 Time and Creativity in Survival Games: Bergson Plays with the Tao - Ivan Mussa
15 Digital Play as an Epistemic Experience - Rita Santoyo Venegas

It is now widely acknowledged that play is central to our lives. As a phenomenon, play poses impo... more It is now widely acknowledged that play is central to our lives. As a phenomenon, play poses important questions of reality, subjectivity, competition, inclusion and exclusion. This international collection is the third in a series of books (including The Philosophy of Play and Philosophical Perspectives on Play) that aims to build paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play.

Divided into four sections (Play as Life, Play as Games, Play as Art and Play as Politics), this book sheds new light on the significance of play for both children and adults in a variety of cultural settings. Its chapters encompass a range of philosophical areas of enquiry such as metaphysics, aesthetics and ethics, and the spectrum of topics explored includes games, jokes, sport and our social relationship with the Internet.

With contributions from established and emerging scholars from around the world, The Philosophy of Play as Life is fascinating reading for all those with an interest in playwork, the ethics and philosophy of sport, childhood studies or the philosophy of education.

Play is a vital component of childhood and child development and, arguably, of the social life an... more Play is a vital component of childhood and child development and, arguably, of the social life and well-being of adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of philosophical issues in play. It includes meta-analyses from a range of philosophical approaches and theorists as well as an exploration of some key applied ethical issues. Its main objective is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life and value, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including a specific section dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport.

Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This boo... more Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of the related philosophical issues. It also includes meta-analyses from a range of philosophers and theorists, as well as an exploration of some key applied ethical considerations.

The main objective of The Philosophy of Play is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life and values, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including specific chapters dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport.

Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This b... more Play is a vital component of the social life and well-being of both children and adults. This book examines the concept of play and considers a variety of the related philosophical issues. It also includes meta-analyses from a range of philosophers and theorists, as well as an exploration of some key applied ethical considerations.

The main objective of The Philosophy of Play is to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play and its relation to human life and values, and to build disciplinary and paradigmatic bridges between scholars of philosophy and scholars of play. Including specific chapters dedicated to children and play, and exploring the work of key thinkers such as Plato, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Deleuze and Nietzsche, this book is invaluable reading for any advanced student, researcher or practitioner with an interest in education, playwork, leisure studies, applied ethics or the philosophy of sport.

This special issue of National Identities explores the social and cultural practises of nationhoo... more This special issue of National Identities explores the social and cultural practises of nationhood and the articulation of nations and states in sport contexts. The dominant models of nations and nationalism studies centre on a received paradigm that has an implicit but seldom critically articulated association with states – that is, the nation-state equation appears as axiomatic in many cases of nationalism studies where the received version of politics holds that a nation without a state is incomplete or in some way not a real nation. This issue unpicks these issues through a set of discussions that will explore one of the most pervasive, banal, and comprehensive areas of this taken-for-granted association of culture, nations and states, i.e., sport.

There is a set of sports and other cultural practices that disrupt this axiomatic association of nations/states and identities: we see these in, for instance, indigenous sports (such as the question of the Iroquois Nationals' travel documents, visas and attendance at the World Lacrosse Championships), events such as the VIVA World Cup for football teams representing nations without states, in various post-national and post-colonial understandings of sport-as-cultural practice such as the place of cricket in South Asian and West Indies diaspora communities, and in transnational/transcultural sports events such as the Francophone Games that seem to be premised on a cultural nation beyond the state.

Papers in the issue analyse rugby, wine and regional identies in France (Occitania), Cornish sporting identities, the potential for normative rules of international sports representation, Circassian sporting identities in the context of Russian nationialism associated with the winter Olympics in Sochi, national and indigenous associations of skiing in northern Norway (Sami) and claims to nationhood in the context of the 2010 VIVA Football World Cup. Our opening essay considers the question of the palce of the state in claims to sporting nationalism.

'A Gap but Not an Absence: Clubs and Sports Historiography' Although sports organisations dominat... more 'A Gap but Not an Absence: Clubs and Sports Historiography' Although sports organisations dominate and shape the provision of sport and provide the level and form of institutionalisation which is one of the defining characteristics of modern sport and although the history of sports organisations influences both the current shape and provision of sport as well as our image and understanding of specific sports as cultural practice, we know very little about sports' basic institutional unit, the sports club. This paper considers the reasons for historians' relative silence about sports clubs, reflects on the concepts of associativity as essential to understanding sports history and argues for a more rigorous understanding of sports clubs as major aspects of civil society.

Journal of Sport History, 2020

Sport in History, 2022

Review of two 2021 books exploring aspects of the sport-related international campaign to isolate... more Review of two 2021 books exploring aspects of the sport-related international campaign to isolate apartheid South Africa

Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, 2019

Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, 2018

Sport in Society, 2018

Book review published in Sport in Society, 21(9): 1489-91 in 2018

Book review published in Sport in History 36 (3). pp. 425-7 in 2016

Book review published in Sport in History 36 (4). pp. 546-549, 2016.

History (forthcoming). It appears here in its pre‐publication format in lieu of the publisher's v... more History (forthcoming). It appears here in its pre‐publication format in lieu of the publisher's version of record. Author: Malcolm MacLean ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Travis Vogan, ESPN: The Making of A Sports Media Empire (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2015). Pp. x + 242. £13.99 (pb). ISBN 978‐0‐252‐08122‐4. That most of us experience our sport in a mediated form is not all that new; that we experience through engagement with a sport‐media complex is also not new (but newer); what is in flux, however, is the medium and means by which sport is mediated. For sport historians, these developments pose problems about sports' historicisation given its status as a heavily historicised popular cultural practice. In an unjustified and rather self‐deprecating tone, Travis Vogan described this excellent analysis of a single sports news channel (a rather deprecating description of ESPN) as " a relatively straight forward and industrial analysis " (p vii): while this is true, it is also a long way from the truth. The book opens with such an analysis – the first chapter provides a mainly institutional exploration of ESPN's development and growth, highlighting its role in the growth of the sports‐media sector as well as a sector innovator and its multi‐platform mode of operation. In addition to these three characteristics, Vogan's exploration at the outset of SportsCentre as an iconic show anticipates a key analytical trope throughout the text: the tension between the network's 'frat‐boy' dynamic and its aspirations to being a serious analyst of and player in the sports world. This trope opens up the key reasons Vogan's discussion has significance beyond ESPN's predominantly North American market (although in the contemporary media world this is barely still the case): the first is that although not explicit the analysis provides an important basis to consider the roles of newer networks such as Sky or Euro Sport, but more importantly Vogan opens up the exploration of sports media networks as historiographers of sport, drawing attention in this case to status‐seeking associations that help legitimate that historiography. The historiographical significance of ESPN is developed in two ways. In his discussion of SportsCentury, an eighteen month review of the North America's greatest sporting moments of the twentieth century, Vogan presents " ESPN as the [my emphasis] public historian of record for twentieth‐century sport " (p55). In doing so, he draws attention to several ways in which this public historian role is legitimated. First, by pointing to the composition of the panel selecting the 100 best athletes, including well‐respected journalists and sports writers (arguably sports public intellectuals), academics and leading figures in sports institutions. These three groups provide cultural credibility with a range of sports markets and audiences, and in doing so endorse both the athletes selected and ESPN's authority to do so. Secondly, Vogan identifies ESPN's expansionism, in particular its acquisition of the Classic Sports Network with its extensive archive and then restriction of access to that achieve meaning that ESPN could then control where and how large tracts of sports historic film footage was being used. Whereas SportsCentury may be seen as ESPN working in a magazine‐style format that is becoming increasingly characteristic in the world of proliferating specialist or niche channels, the network's more venture into documentary film, notably through its 30 th anniversary‐marking 30 for 30 series is

Recent years have seen a growing awareness of, concern about and action on injuries in high impac... more Recent years have seen a growing awareness of, concern about and action on injuries in high impact contact sports. While policy makers and sports' governing bodies may only just be beginning to pick up the issues, to realise that they might have to be seen to do something and in some cases it seems to feign shock that their sport might just be dangerous, players and analysts have long know of that danger. For historians, Jaime Schultz's excellent Moments of Impact is a polysemous text exploring three cases of sports injury in (American) football in college sport, with significance for how we do history, for how we think about sports 'heroes' and their memories and memorialisation, and for how we think of the significance of sport in the USA. That's an awful lot to carry for 146 pages of text, but it works. These three cases explore incidents involving black footballers at predominantly white colleges and universities (PWCU) in Iowa. Jack Trice played two games in 1923 for Iowa State University, was seen by many as having enormous potential, was the only African‐American player on the team and died from injuries sustained in the second game. Ozzie Simmons was, again, the only Black player in his team from the University of Iowa and for many offered the hope of reinvigoration of the University of Iowa team in the mid‐1930s and was seriously injured in a game against the University of Minnesota part way through his first of several seasons playing college football. Johnny Bright, also a very talented player inspiring his team to performances significantly better than previous years and the only African‐American on the Drake University team in the early‐1950s was knocked out three times in the first quarter of a game against Oklahoma A&M in 1951, an incident that although effectively ending Bright's season also resulted in Drake withdrawing from Missouri Valley Conference (the league including Oklahoma A&M). These are incidents lasting only a few seconds, and in the case of Bright spread out over only a few minutes, but they have enough about them for Shultz to take as the basis of a rich narrative of justice, injustice, the past in the present and the reinscription of the past by the present. In dealing not with teams, seasons, conferences but with individuals, incidents and their place in histories of the present she is able to explore the politics of remembering as well as the politics and poetics of history‐making. The substance of the book deals not so much with the moments of impact on the field, but the moments of (historical/social) impact decades later as College and University administrations come under pressure to make and commemorate these three young Black men, in an overwhelmingly White state with an overwhelmingly White university system. With care and empathy as well as nuanced consideration of the times in which the incidents occurred Schultz constructs narratives of remembering, of memory, of commemoration that sees each of these events as a racialized construction of what were, almost certainly, racialized acts.

Recent years have seen the publication of a number of monographs, collections and scholarly texts... more Recent years have seen the publication of a number of monographs, collections and scholarly texts exploring sports films, some grounded in film studies, others in more conventional disciplinary approaches including history. Film themed papers are becoming more common at conferences, the Journal of Sport History for instance has a film review section and has published themed sections dealing with sport film, and there are more classes in sports film and several sports film festivals. There is clearly something happening in the cinematic realm, yet this 'happening' is to a very large degree constrained by discourses of realism and reality, and accordingly by the gender dynamics of sport as a powerfully masculine space. As is the case in much of the sporting world, sports films' women are marginalised, sexualised, trivialised, objectified and shown as interlopers in a world that continues to highlight forms of masculine homosociality. This context makes Viridiana Lieberman's exploration of women in sports films an important, if sacrificial, contribution to this growing field – sacrificial in that the first monograph in a field of study becomes the one that subsequent analysts work off and against as a reference point, foundation and foil for arguments. The volume is a usefully teacherly text with descriptive and analytical assessments of several films at the core of each chapter: given that the earliest films considered are from the 1940s and early 1950s there is a reasonable chance that many students will not have seen them, making the description alongside the analysis particularly valuable. Similarly, Lieberman provides a useful typology of women‐in‐sports films, with seven categories: female athletes in individual sports; female athletes in team sports; women athletes in men's teams; sports where women do not seem out of place – tennis, basketball and the like; films where men and women appear in drag; films dealing with women coaches and finally those dealing with women owners. Typologies can be help us think better analyses, and for her purposes in this volume and possibly more generally this one seems to work, capturing key areas of tension and core dynamics in sport films and their social contexts. The typology is useful also in that it should allow further discussion of sports films' tropes grounded in realism, and in conjunction with that the relationship between these fictional films and reality. Some attention to these filmic frames might have enhanced and strengthened the argument. Lieberman's case, through all of the work, is that sports films are not fictional enough, in that makers do not use their fictional form to imagine alternative ways of being in and doing sport. This may be a limitation imposed by her focus on mainstream, Hollywood or Hollywood‐like cinema where it may be the case that the realism‐reality tension is as much a product of commercial demands to sell tickets as much as anything else; a constraint limited by the implicit coding of sports films as films for

The International Journal of the History of Sport

Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies, 2(1): 103-5, 2014