Tom Mountjoy
(M.A., Associate Scholar)

Thomas.Mountjoy@sosantr.uib.no

Research interests

My interest in sports throughout the Pacific region stems a lifelong admiration and curiosity of the prowess and flair shown on the sporting field by Pacific and Melanesian migrants in New Zealand. From the grand displays of informality played out during post-church service games of kilikiti to the dramatic effect rugby players from the Islands have had upon the New Zealand sporting scene, sport has long been a visibly integral part of the identity of the Pacific Islands. Alongside the various religious activities surrounding the church, sport, has provided the most prominent unifying stage for instigating civil development and forging a certain sense of nationalism in the fragile nation states of Melanesia and throughout the Pacific. The anthropology of sport tries to understand the social and cultural contexts in which sports exist and in turn how these contexts are influenced by sport. The social worlds that people create in connection with sporting practice and the experiences of groups and individuals associated with these social worlds are ultimately questions that are crucial to anthropological debate. Further approaches to the anthropological study of sport must fully recognise the richness and social significance of sporting endeavour in culturally diverse locations, such as island Melanesia.

Fieldwork

Work for my B.A. Honours thesis involved tracing the internal dynamics of a newly formed professional rugby league club in Auckland, New Zealand. My M.A. thesis involved a 9 month long period of experiential fieldwork as a member of Bergen Rugby Klubb in Norway.
These ethnographies can be more closely defined as socio-historical projects which looked at how groups and individuals are entwined in relationships shaped by the flow of people, cultures and practices in everyday life. Sport is seen to become refashioned to suit the needs and complexities of the local societies, thus becoming essential and significant to these groups in a way that demands inclusion in a more complete framework of understanding the nature of a truly ‘global’ notion of sport.

M.A. thesis (pdf)