Abstract
This research investigated how meanings associated with race, gender, and class relations in New Zealand mainstream schools are produced, reproduced, and challenged within the arenas of school sport, physical education, and physical activity. The study focused specifically on Māori girls' and young Māori women's experiences in these arenas in order to determine how race, gender, and class identities interact, and also provided Māori girls and young women with an opportunity to be heard in research. The effects of historical and contemporary discourses, polices, and practices in New Zealand sport and school were reviewed. Theoretical perspectives and methodologies such as critical theory, kaupapa Māori research, feminism, postmodernism, and cultural studies informed the research. Qualitative methods of study such as critical ethnography, document analysis, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and self-reflective diaries were used in order to observe, investigate, and empower the Māori girls and women, teachers, and the school involved. By utilising social reproduction concepts such as hegemony (Gramsci), discourse (Foucault), and cultural capital (Bourdieu), initiatives in schools that related to Māori girls and young women were investigated at three different levels; the fantasy discourse level, the implementation level, and the reality discourse level. The many identities and ideologies of those involved in the transformation from fantasy to reality had an effect on what was ultimately produced, reproduced, and challenged. These were also implicit and explicit ideologies operating in school sport, physical education, and physical activity arenas that worked to reproduce gendered dualisms, racial stereotypes, and class differentiation. By focusing on power relations at the structural and personal level, instances where Māori girls and young women practised 'power over' others, or the 'power to act' were discussed. Māori concepts such as whakaiti, whakamaa, whakahiihii, tautoko, aawhina, and manaaki, as well as more colloquial terms such as being hungus, hori, and hoha highlighted the attitudes, values, beliefs and behaviours of participants involved in the study and were used to inform the different levels of analysis. Difficulties in closing the gap between what was hoped for and what actually happened were discussed, and political and practical implications were suggested.