Making it ordinary : an unexceptional history of the early olympic movement in New Zealand

Making it ordinary presents an alternative history of the olympic movement in New Zealand. The crux of my argument is that the history of the local olympic movement is unexceptional given the contexts of international sport in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My approach is also alternative with respect to different aspects of the narrative. In the case of content, I employ a systematic model of historical context which, by complying with the conventions of the discipline, is unusual among historians of the olympic movement in New Zealand who have tended to write decontextualised, celebratory, hagiographies. My contextual model frames the content of the history that consists of two parts. In Part I (circa 1892-1911), I examine the conception of the olympic movement and its institutions; in Part 11 (circa 1911-1936), I investigate the consolidation of the movement. Both parts excavate the major forces, agents, ideology, and events I believe were significant to the early development of New Zealand's Olympic movement. With respect to the form of my narrative, my contextualisation is methodologically orthodox (i.e. I adhere to the analytical empiricism of mainstream history and employ a standard set of conceptual tools). However, I also adopt a deconstructionist sensibility throughout the thesis by foregrounding my narrative decisions and explicating my role as an author-historian. In Making it ordinary I propose that the development of the early Olympic movement was neither linear nor predetermined. Rather, it involved a complex interplay of forces, agents, ideologies, and events. While my thesis is essentially a contextual analysis, it is also involves remaking and playing with olympic memories. Lastly, in Part Ill, remembering olympic history, I draw on the politics of memory to argue that history is not necessarily about the end product but about the process by which it created (written/performed/presented). In my case, I set out to show the choices I made to create a particular narrative of New Zealand olympic history. There are multiple ways historians can remember and recraft New Zealand olympic history: Making it ordinary is one way of remembering anew

Crafting critical echoes in sport organizations: Oral histories of, and possibilities for, the New Zealand Olympic Committee

Sport organizations’ digital spaces (e.g. organizational websites, fanzines, blogs, electronic repositories and social media) are, potentially, rich empirical terrain in which sport narratives may be (re)presented, mobilised and challenged, and content disseminated to wider audiences. Drawing on New Zealand’s participation in the Olympic movement, and the national Olympic Committee’s efforts to embrace historical thinking, we consider the confluence of oral and digital approaches. More widely, we examine how sport organizations might utilise oral histories and digital spaces to engage audiences more effectively with critical understanding of the past. To note, progressive shifts in museum and heritage studies have advocated ideological and institutional redirection, critical reflection and radical departures from traditional representational practices. In these processes, oral histories have been identified as a key means to these ends. Presenting vignettes constructed from interviews with sport participants, we interrogate connections between oral history, narrative making and public heritage praxis

Sustainability, the Athens Marathon and Greece’s sport event sector: lessons of resilience, social innovation and the urban commons

Increasingly, a confluence of challenging global forces have precipitated sport sector change. While responses vary, a discernible trend has been the growing extents to which sport organisations and events have transcended typical participatory, performance and/or spectator focused logistics and embraced social responsibility acts that embed sport more deeply into communities. These manoeuvres have also become fundamental to organisation and sector capacity building and sustainability. Accordingly, this paper examines the example set by the Athens Marathon, Greece’s leading sport sector entity, towards sustainable event development through its strengthened volunteer and civil society practices and stakeholder relationships. Drawing data from key Athens Marathon informants and building upon conceptual models of sustainability that emphasise the interplay of resilience, social innovation and an urban commons, we demonstrate how the Athens Marathon affords a useful exemplar of how key organisational events may inform sustainability and sector strengthening

Physical activity, sport and transnational migrant spaces in Shanghai, China: (Re)crafting contours of a metropolitan cityscape

This study examines associations between sport/physical activity space, community formation, and social life among Shanghai’s highly-skilled migrant demographic. There is limited illustration of roles sports and physical exercise provision and spaces play in this migrant cohort’s lives, community formation, and participation in their host societies. Such evidence is of value in determining social policy, urban development and community engagement initiatives. Using a mixed-methods approach involving public policy critique, cultural and spatial analysis and virtual community investigation, this paper provides a conceptual exploration of ways sport and physical activity frame individual and collective migrant experiences, and how such experiences enmesh with wider geo-spatial, political and domestic context. Amid Shanghai’s presentation as a globally attractive space, we reveal some of the complexities of the city-scape as an emblematic location for highly mobile, highly-skilled migrants. A confluence of ideals about urban citizenship, social participation and localised physical activity/sport-based (inter)action, we note, articulate Shanghai anew, and contribute to debates on highly-skilled transnational mobility and community formation

Sporting Identity, Memory, and People with Dementia: Opportunities, Challenges, and Potential for Oral History

We report on a unique project which utilized oral history methodology undertaken with four people with dementia to explore their sense of identity within the context of their sports/physical activity histories. An oral history approach was advantageous in understanding the values individuals ascribed to sport/physical activities within their contemporary identities and daily lives. Findings and conclusions were made possible that would have been inaccessible using alternative methodological approaches, such as documentary analysis, because the project explored intersections between memory recollection and creation and first-hand experiences of physical praxis. The challenges encountered, and learning points identified from the data are discussed. We posit that when participant and contextual sensitives and sensibilities are adopted (here with a special cohort), oral history may work as an effective method of enabling reflection upon times past for a group of people as yet under-represented in sport history literature. In this way, oral history can enable historical experiences to be brought into the light, enjoyed, scrutinized, and understood

Professional sports work in times of geopolitical crises: experiences in men’s basketball in Ukraine

Purpose: Professional sport is distinct employment shaped by organisational and managerial relations, stakeholder involvements, performance imperatives, contextual forces and precarities. Such employment has raised questions regarding work, employment sustainability and careers. The purpose of this article is to examine experiences of sports workers in men’s professional basketball during the geopolitical conflict in Ukraine and highlight ways working conditions are negotiated in adverse contexts. Research methods: A case study approach that utilised semi-structured interviews was applied to enquire about the daily events, activities and related emotion as recalled by sports workers in men’s professional basketball in Ukraine during the geopolitical conflict. Findings: The examination reveals issues related to institutional/organisational, community and individual sustainability of the sport sector when faced with geopolitical crises. While turbulent events may unsettle sports workers, these sports workers demonstrated an ability to respond to the situation, mitigate adverse consequences, and sustain their careers. Practical implications: This work is of value those in sport organisations seeking to understand employees’ experiences and actions during periods of uncertainty, and how individual career continuity relates to organisational sustainability. Implications: Our approach advances understandings about sustainable organisational support and resources, and contingency planning in relation to navigating unforeseen events that arise in sports workers’ careers

Changing it up: implications of mid-season coach change on basketball players’ career and professional identities

Career and professional identities are utilized as a conceptual framework to consider the complexities of basketball players' working lives amidst mid-season coach change. Seven male professional basketball players, working in top European leagues, participated in semi-structured interviews. The interviews were centred on career trajectories and incidents of mid-season coach change. Results indicate sports workers' career success is contingent upon strategically undertaking identity work in order to best respond to the demands of the organizational context. Players' experiences of coach turnover, for example, may have varied however, the event had discernible influence on how they understood themselves, their positional relationship and overall longevity in the sport. Of concern is the necessity for organizations to appreciate their roles in shaping the settings in which their employees work, and the related consequences that contextual changes have in worker's abilities to labour and the strategies they may need to utilize to cope with such change

(Dis)located Olympic patriots: sporting connections, administrative communications and imperial ether in interwar New Zealand

During the interwar period (1919-1939) protagonists of the early New Zealand Olympic Committee NZOC worked to renegotiate and improve the country's international sporting participation and involvement in the International Olympic Committee IOC. To this end, NZOC effectively used its locally based administrators and well-placed expatriates in Britain to variously assert the organisation's nascent autonomy, independence and political power, progress Antipodean athlete's causes, and, counter any potential doubt about the nation's peripheral position in imperial sporting dialogues. Adding to the corpus of scholarship on New Zealand's ties and tribulations with imperial Britain (in and beyond sport) (e.g. Beilharz and Cox 2007; Belich 2001, 2007; Coombes 2006; MacLean 2010; Phillips 1984, 1987; Ryan 2004, 2005, 2007), in this paper I examine how the political actions and strategic location of three key NZOC agents (specifically, administrator Harry Amos and expatriates Arthur Porritt and Jack Lovelock) worked in their own particular ways to assert the position of the organisation within the global Olympic fraternity. I argue that the efforts of Amos, Porritt and Lovelock also concomitantly served to remind Commonwealth sporting colleagues (namely Britain and Australia) that New Zealand could not be characterised as, or relegated to being, a distal, subdued, or subservient colonial sporting partner. Subsequently I contend that NZOC's development during the interwar period, and particularly the utility of expatriate agents, can be contextualised against historiographical shifts that encourage us to rethink, reimagine, and rework narratives of empire, colonisation, national identity, commonwealth and belonging