Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

In contemporary era, sports is no longer viewed in limited definition of play, game, and contest for the purpose of entertainment and leisure but rather on its growing involvement into various social issues and formation of national character and identity both as a transmitter and as a platform. This paper explores the dynamics of sports and its role in postcolonial identity construction. It shows the adoption of a former colonized state, the Philippines, of the sports culture— in particular of basketball— of it former colonizer, the US, and how it is processed, owned, and used as tool of identification and source of national character. I used the seven types of postcolonial sportoid forms of Bale and Bronin to locate the sportoid forms of basketball which were further analyzed through postcolonial concepts of appropriation and hybridity. Using content analysis of secondary data sources, I argue that the development of basketball in the International and Professional level is different from what developed in the grassroots having different postcolonial sportoid forms. Despite difference in forms, basketball in general is very instrumental in creating national imaginings for the Filipinos; it was appropriated for the purpose of developing Filipino identities. In conclusion, Filipinos may not have made a clearly distinct basketball that can be called ‘Filipino basketball’ by rules, forms, and standards, in both professional and popular games, making it hard for them to totally own it in all forms and aspects, but the imaginings that it has created is a sufficient source of identity.