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This chapter employs arts-based, visual, and reflexive methods to amplify marginalised voices. It weaves three creative nonfiction pieces from the participants’ data, enabling Indo-Fijian women to share their realities, challenge sporting boundaries, and express lived experiences which go beyond words. The chapter applies Puwar’s (Space invaders: Race, gender and bodies out of place. Berg, 2004) concept of ‘space invaders’ to explore how sporty Indo-Fijian women disrupt the Fijian cultural and social intersectional status quo scale(FCSISS) by entering and asserting their presence in sporting spaces traditionally dominated by iTaukei communities. Their participation challenges exclusionary norms while creating opportunities for their sporting passion, health and fitness, self-expression, empowerment, and social cohesion. Findings show that young Indo-Fijian women navigate Fijian sports by adopting iTaukei language and behaviours to integrate into dominant team sports. While this can erode their cultural identity and capital, it also enables them to assert agency, foster racial assimilation, and reclaim their narratives. Historically, iTaukei men have used sports to assert racial, social, and gender dominance. This chapter explores how sports can instead become spaces of inclusion, diversity, and mutual understanding when both Indo-Fijian women and iTaukei critically reflect on and unlearn their privileges. Moreover, the chapter draws on Spivak’s (The Spivak reader: Selected works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (G. Landry D and Mac Lean, Ed.). Routledge, 1996) notion of the subaltern voice to connect the experiences of contemporary sporty Indo-Fijian women to their female girmitiya ancestors, who navigated intersections of gender, race, religion, and class on Fijian farms. Often seen as unsuitable for Fijian physical culture, Indo-Fijian women have redefined their roles in sports and farming, achieving a social conquest that reshapes participation and perceptions, belonging, and identity in Fijian physical culture and broader society.

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From girmit to Game: Indo-Fijian Women Challenging Boundaries in Fijian Physical and Sporting Culture

  • 章节

  • 发表日期：

    2025年

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  • Rohini Balram

摘要

This chapter employs arts-based, visual, and reflexive methods to amplify marginalised voices. It weaves three creative nonfiction pieces from the participants’ data, enabling Indo-Fijian women to share their realities, challenge sporting boundaries, and express lived experiences which go beyond words. The chapter applies Puwar’s (Space invaders: Race, gender and bodies out of place. Berg, 2004) concept of ‘space invaders’ to explore how sporty Indo-Fijian women disrupt the Fijian cultural and social intersectional status quo scale(FCSISS) by entering and asserting their presence in sporting spaces traditionally dominated by iTaukei communities. Their participation challenges exclusionary norms while creating opportunities for their sporting passion, health and fitness, self-expression, empowerment, and social cohesion. Findings show that young Indo-Fijian women navigate Fijian sports by adopting iTaukei language and behaviours to integrate into dominant team sports. While this can erode their cultural identity and capital, it also enables them to assert agency, foster racial assimilation, and reclaim their narratives. Historically, iTaukei men have used sports to assert racial, social, and gender dominance. This chapter explores how sports can instead become spaces of inclusion, diversity, and mutual understanding when both Indo-Fijian women and iTaukei critically reflect on and unlearn their privileges. Moreover, the chapter draws on Spivak’s (The Spivak reader: Selected works of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (G. Landry D and Mac Lean, Ed.). Routledge, 1996) notion of the subaltern voice to connect the experiences of contemporary sporty Indo-Fijian women to their female girmitiya ancestors, who navigated intersections of gender, race, religion, and class on Fijian farms. Often seen as unsuitable for Fijian physical culture, Indo-Fijian women have redefined their roles in sports and farming, achieving a social conquest that reshapes participation and perceptions, belonging, and identity in Fijian physical culture and broader society.