Running after the Common Good
In the aftermath of the Second World War, the Chinese Nationalist Party(Kuomintang) took control of Taiwan, before falling back therepermanently from 1949. Its administration slipped into the structuresestablished by the Japanese colonial government (1895–1945) andinstitutions such as schools are now a part of the public service ofthe Republic of China. Sports practices are included in publiceducation and are considered as levers for the integration of the localpopulations in the colonial system, mainly those of Austronesianorigin. The performances of young Austronesian athletes, especially ininternational tournaments, are stones in the construction of amultiethnic state dominated by the Han-Chinese majority. In thiscontribution, it will be a question of observing and analyzing how theAustronesians Formosans, who have the status of Indigenous since 1994,divert and reclaim sports practices within the framework of the publiceducational service—sport and education being understood here aspart of the common good—to negotiate their position in theTaiwanese state and face the assimilative policies of the centralgovernment. How relations of power and domination has been historicallyframed between Austronesian peoples of Taiwan and the centralauthorities, especially through sport? How the moral and physicalstereotypes which have negatively characterized Indigenous athletesbecame a lever for their claims? In what way is the re-appropriation ofsports by Indigenous people a form of access to the common good and avector of the reproduction of Austronesian societies within a publicspace in which they are generally marginalized?