Gridiron Capital: How American Football Became a Samoan Game

by Lisa Uperesa

Overview

Since the 1970s, a “Polynesian Pipeline” has brought football players from American Sāmoa to Hawaii and the mainland United States to play at the collegiate and professional levels. In Gridiron Capital Lisa Uperesa charts the cultural and social dynamics that have made football so central to Samoan communities. For Samoan athletes, football is not just an opportunity for upward mobility; it is a way to contribute to, support, and represent their family, village, and nation. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and media analysis, Uperesa shows how the Samoan ascendancy in football is underpinned by the legacies of US empire and a set of imperial formations that mark Indigenous Pacific peoples as racialized subjects of US economic aid and development. Samoan players succeed by becoming entrepreneurs: building and commodifying their bodies and brands to enhance their football stock and market value. Uperesa offers insights into the social and physical costs of pursuing a football career, the structures that compel Pacific Islander youth toward athletic labor, and the possibilities for safeguarding their health and wellbeing in the future.

Duke University Press Scholars of Color First Book Award recipient

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478018094
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	06/17/2022
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

Lisa Uperesa is Senior Lecturer in Pacific Studies at the University of Auckland.

Table of Contents

Preface  ix
Acknowledgments  xv
Introduction. Fabled Futures and Gridiron Dreams  1
1. Malaga: Forging New Pathways in Sport and Beyond  23
2. Football, Tautua, and Faʻasāmoa  48
3. Producing the Gridiron Warrior  71
4. Gridiron Capital  103
5. “Faʻmālosi!”: Strength, Injury, and Sacrifice  123
Conclusion. Niu Futures  151
Glossary  155
Notes  159
Bibliography  185
Index  211

What People are Saying About This

Brendan Hokowhitu

“Grounded in the burgeoning traditions of critical Indigenous studies, Lisa Uperesa’s Gridiron Capital animates and navigates through what was, up until the publication of this compelling and cogent book, the largely abstract subfield of Pacific sport and masculinities. Uperesa draws from a deeply personal research methodology to enliven and interrogate current sociohistorical understandings of Samoan migration and mobility in the United States in relation to sport and specifically American football as a political and contested space.”

Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field - David J. Leonard

“In this powerful and engaging book, Lisa Uperesa shines a spotlight on the importance of the voices, movement, and labor, of Samoan athletes within the history of football, asking readers to consider whose stories are told and whose futures are denied as we celebrate yet another touchdown. As Uperesa makes clear, the story of Samoan football is one of complexity and contradiction, one that offers a window into a world of dreams and defeats, movement and stagnation, triumph and despair.”

Editorial Reviews

"Uperesa’s book should not only appeal to anthropologists but also to general readers. She engagingly explains what football has come to mean to a whole range of Samoan players — in college programs and the NFL, as well as on youth and high school teams back home — and gives a compelling account of how dual systems of stratification, one based in Indigenous values and the other in capitalist imperatives, combine, for better and worse. . . . Readers interested in sports and culture in a transnational world will no doubt find Gridiron Capital engrossing."

Los Angeles Review of Books - David Lipset

"Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."

Choice - J. A. Badics

Gridiron Capital is written well and provides an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon that is accessible to a wide audience, resulting in a greater understanding of Samoa, sport, transnational movement.

International Review for the Sociology of Sport - Bliss Wong

"Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals."--J. A. Badics "Choice" (8/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Uperesa's book should not only appeal to anthropologists but also to general readers. She engagingly explains what football has come to mean to a whole range of Samoan players -- in college programs and the NFL, as well as on youth and high school teams back home -- and gives a compelling account of how dual systems of stratification, one based in Indigenous values and the other in capitalist imperatives, combine, for better and worse. . . . Readers interested in sports and culture in a transnational world will no doubt find Gridiron Capital engrossing."--David Lipset "Los Angeles Review of Books" (9/11/2022 12:00:00 AM)

From the Publisher

"Uperesa’s informed research and skillful writing allows Gridiron Capital to remain both relevant and accessible to a wide range of readers both within and outside of academia and sport studies, and will likely enable these readers to place the Samoan names they know so well, other names they may not, and perhaps even American Sāmoa itself into appropriate and nuanced historical and contemporary contexts."

Journal of Sport History - Garrett Hillyer