Description
Book SynopsisLisa Uperesa charts the cultural, historical, and social dynamics that have made American football so central to Samoan culture.
Trade Review"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 *
"Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates. Graduate students, faculty, and professionals." -- J. A. Badics * Choice *
Table of ContentsPreface 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
