- Jay Scherer |
- Brian Wilson |
Title overview
For courses in the Sociology of Sport
Sport and Physical Culture in Canadian Society is based on the idea that historical, comparative, and critical reflection is needed if we are to better understand, and indeed work towards improving, relationships between and in sport, physical culture, and society. Students learn, for example, that the opportunities to participate in various sports in Canada are by no means equitable, and that significant and enduring issues and problems remain in contemporary sport and physical culture. More importantly, they learn that the personal troubles that individuals experience along these lines are intimately connected to public issues of social structure and historical relations.
Each chapter in this contributed text is written by experts in their field, using both Canadian and international perspectives to address contemporary sociological issues.
Hallmark features of this title
Sport and Physical Culture in Canadian Society contains 16 chapters. Because the chapter sequence has been purposely coordinated, we recommend that the chapters be read consecutively. However, since the content of each chapter is distinctive, it is certainly possible to read the chapters in an altered order, or as standalone contributions. Each chapter concludes with relevant Critical Thinking Questions, Suggested Readings, and References.
New and updated content
- Dr. Rob Beamish, the author of a revised fourth chapter, provides students with an insightful overview of sport and social stratification in Canada, with a particular focus on class relations and economic inequality. He outlines the main sociological theories that have focused on social class, as well as the contemporary studies that have explored the relationship between sport participation and income, with a particular focus on the expansion of economic inequality in Canada over the course of the past four decades.
- In an entirely new Chapter 5, Drs. Courtney Szto and Sabrina Razack invite students to think deeply about race and racism in the Canadian sport context. Students are introduced to key concepts such as race, racism, and racialization, and their enduring impacts in sport, in Faculties/Departments of Kinesiology, and in Canadian society. Dr. Szto and Dr. Razack conclude their chapter by discussing the historical and enduring significance of social movements and athlete activism, especially the Black Lives Matter Movement, that continue to confront and challenge anti-Black racism in sport and beyond.
- In another significant new addition to this text, Chapter 6 authors Drs. Moss Norman and Janice Forsyth provide students with a compelling review of Indigeneity, sport, and physical culture. Drawing from rich historical examples, they outline key concepts like settler colonialism, and how this enduring process has dramatically impacted Indigeneity and physical culture. They encourage students to consider the ways in which sport was used by powerful groups, like the church and the government, to assimilate Indigenous Peoples into Canada. But they also, crucially, draw our attention to how Indigenous Peoples have always resisted assimilation and subjugation, inviting all of us to deeply reflect on how sport and Canadian society can be decolonized - a process that can be supported by sociological analysis and deep reflection. .
- In ann entirely new Chapter 9, Dr. Michael Atkinson provides a timely and important overview of enduring questions about what is considered to be deviant in sport and in Canadian society. Why are some actions and practices considered to be “normal” and “tolerable” in certain contexts like sport, and not in others? Who gets to assign these labels and how are they struggled over and responded to by certain groups? In raising these issues, Dr. Atkinson encourages students to think critically about a host of examples—gambling, drug use, and violence against animals, amongst others—in ways that challenge many taken-for-granted assumptions and beliefs about sport.
- In yet another new contribution, Chapter 10, Dr. Danielle Peers and Stephanie Dixon introduce students to sociological concepts and theoretical tools developed by critical disability scholars to better understand and transform sport and physical cultural phenomena in Canada. Their insights help us understand why disability and sport were, for so long, seen as two words (and worlds) that simply did not belong together. In so doing, they underline several enduring inequalities that continue to set limits on opportunities for disabled people to participate in movement cultures in Canada.
Table of contents
- Sport and Physical Culture in Canadian Society
- Thinking Sociologically: Sport, Physical Culture, and Critical Theory
- Sport and Physical Culture in Historical Perspective
- Sport and Social Stratification
- Thinking Through Race and Racism in the Canadian Sport Context
- Indigeneity, Sport, and Physical Culture
- Sex, Gender, and Sexuality
- Youth Sport and Physical Culture
- Sport, Physical Culture, and Deviance
- Disability and Ableism in Sport and Physical Culture
- Violence and Sport
- Sport and Health
- Sport, Media, and Ideology
- Sport, Politics, and Policy
- The Business of Sport
- Globalization, Sport, and International Development
- Sport and the Environment
Author bios
Editors
Dr. Jay Scherer is a professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta. He has taught sociology of sport courses for over two decades. He has a wide range of research interests and has published extensively on a variety of topics, including: sport and forced migration; the impacts of sport-related gentrification on urban communities; the political economy of the Canadian sports/media complex; and the politics of international hockey during the Cold War. He enjoys reading and listening to music, and cycling and cross-country skiing with family and friends.
Dr. Brian Wilson is a professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Director of UBC’s Centre for Sport and Sustainability. He is author of The Greening of Golf: Sport, Globalization and the Environment (with Brad Millington), Sport & Peace: A Sociological Perspective, and Fight, Flight, or Chill: Subcultures, Youth, and Rave into the 21st Century—and co-editor of Sport and the Environment: Politics and Preferred Futures (with Brad Millington). Dr. Wilson’s interests revolve around sport, environmental issues, peace, and media—with a particular interest in media coverage of sport-related social and environmental issues, and what ‘best practice’ coverage looks like.
Contributors
Dr. Carly Adams is a Board of Governors Research Chair (Tier I) and Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Lethbridge, Alberta. As a social historian and an advocate for oral history, her research explores community, resiliency, and gender with a focus on sport, recreation, and leisure experiences. She co-leads the Nikkei Memory Capture Project, a community-based oral history project focusing on Japanese Canadian histories in southern Alberta (with Dr. Darren Aoki at the University of Plymouth, UK). She is the author of Queens of the Ice (Lorimer), editor of Sport and Recreation in Canadian History (Human Kinetics), co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Sport History (Routledge), and the Editor of Sport History Review. Her work has appeared in, among others, Journal of Sport History, Journal of Canadian Studies, Memory Studies, the International Journal of the History of Sport, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, and many edited collections. Dr. Adams was the recipient of the 2023 NASSH Sue and Ron Smith Service Award and the NASSH 2022 Guy Lewis Award for Contributions to the Field of Sport History.
Dr. Mary Louise Adams is a professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies and the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University, where she teaches courses on sport and culture, contemporary issues in sexuality, and learning and activism strategies for engaging with a troubled world. She is the author of Artistic Impressions: Figure Skating, Masculinity and the Limits of Sport (2011) and The Trouble with Normal: Postwar Youth and the Making of Heterosexuality (1997). She has written on issues related to feminism and sport, the history of sexuality, and queer and feminist social movements.
Dr. Michael Atkinson is a Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Michael’s research and teaching interests pertain to violence and suffering in physical culture, invisible/hidden disabilities, human-animal relationships, men and masculinity, bioethics, and ethnography. He is author/editor of eleven books including Sport, Mental Illness, and Sociology (2018), and Deviance and Social Control in Sport (2018, with Dr. Kevin Young). His ethnographic and narrative work has focused on case studies of fell running, Parkour enthusiasm, epilepsy in physical cultures, parental violence in sport, and fell running. Michael is former Editor of the Sociology of Sport Journal, and former co-Editor of Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, and Health.
Dr. Sarah Barnes is the Curator for Sport and Leisure at the Canadian Museum of History. Previously, she was Assistant Professor of Experiential Studies in Community and Sport at Cape Breton University. Dr. Barnes holds a M.A and Ph.D. from the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at Queen’s University. Dr. Barnes has a record of research, teaching and publications, with expertise in the history of athlete welfare and social issues in sport.
Dr. Rob Beamish is a Professor Emeritus at Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada where, for the past 42 years, he held a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies. Beamish’s research has focused on the philosophy of science, contemporary and classical sociological theory, social inequality, and high-performance sport as a form of labour. His current work centres on theories of social action and the nature of the human condition. In addition to numerous articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries related to social theory and sport sociology, Beamish is the author of several books, including: Marx, Method and the Division of Labor; Fastest, Highest, Strongest: The Critique of High-Performance Sport (with Ian Ritchie); The Promise of Sociology: The Classical Tradition; and Contemporary Sociological Thinking, and Steroids: A New Look at Performance-Enhancing Drugs. Administratively, Beamish served as an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at Queen’s and two terms as the Head of the Department of Sociology.
Dr. David Black is Lester B. Pearson Professor of International Development Studies and professor of political science at Dalhousie University. His research has focused primarily on Canada’s involvement in sub-Saharan Africa, South African foreign policy, disability and development, and sport in world politics and development—notably the politics of sport mega-events, sport for development, and elite sport policy. His publications concerning sport include two co-edited special issues of Third World Quarterly, on “Mainstreaming sport into international development studies” (with Simon Darnell, 2011), and “Going global: the promises and pitfalls of hosting global games” (with Janis van der Westhuizen, 2004), as well as articles in International Journal, Third World Thematics, International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, Sport in Society, International Journal of the History of Sport, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, and Politikon. Other publications include: Canada and Africa in the New Millennium: The Politics of Consistent Inconsistency (2015); Rethinking Canadian Aid, 2nd edition (2016, co-edited with Stephen Brown and Molly den Heyer); and South African Foreign Policy: Identities, Intentions, and Directions (2017, co-edited with David Hornsby).
Dr. Jesse Couture is a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Health and Kinesiology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research and teaching each align broadly with the sociology of sport and physical culture. His research program centres on questions tied to sport and community, digital health technologies, and child and youth sport. His work has appeared in Sociology of Sport Journal, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise, and Health, and International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics. Jesse enjoys spending his leisure time in the outdoors with his partner and their rescue dogs. He can often be found talking to the birds and squirrels while running long distances in the mountains.
Dr. Simon C. Darnell is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Sport Policy Studies in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. He has conducted research across the field of Sport for Development and Peace (SDP), including the role of international volunteers and NGOs in SDP; SDP and south-south development cooperation; the political economy of SDP; the history of SDP; the connections between SDP and sports mega-events; and SDP in relation to environmental sustainability and climate change. He is the author of The History and Politics of Sport for Development: Activists, Ideologues and Reformers (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019, with Russell Field and Bruce Kidd).
Stephanie Dixon (she/them) is a disabled white-settler, researcher, facilitator, and activist who works within collaborative projects that imagine and create spaces where more of us can feel welcome, valued, and included in meaningful ways. Stephanie engages in critical and affirming work as guided by lineages and modalities that are anti-oppressive and justice-oriented. Stephanie earned a MSc in the Faculty of Kinesiology & Physical Education at the University of Toronto and works as a research assistant in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport and Recreation at the University of Alberta. She is also a three-time Paralympian and served as chef de mission at the 2020 Paralympic Games.
Dr. Janice Forsyth (Fisher River Cree Nation) is a Professor in Indigenous Land-Based Physical Culture and Wellness in the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver). Working at the intersection of history and sociology, her research seeks to better understand the ideological and structural constraints that limit Indigenous involvement in sports, as well as how Indigenous Peoples use sports to revitalize their cultures and foster community wellbeing.
Maya Hibbeln is a public opinion researcher based in Toronto, Canada. She previously earned an honours BA in political science at Dalhousie University and holds an MSc in Sport Policy from the University of Edinburgh, where she specialized in the politics of sport at both national and international levels. She is currently the Managing Editor of Research for the Journal of Emerging Sport Studies.
Dr. Lyndsay Hayhurst is a York Research Chair (Tier II) in Sport, Gender, Development and Digital Participatory Research, and an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is an award-winning sociologist of sport and feminist physical culture, and her research interests include sport for development (SFD); sexual and gender-based violence prevention and sexual and reproductive health rights promotion in/through SFD; cultural studies of youth, de/anti-/postcolonial feminist theory, global governance and corporate social responsibility. She has published over 60 articles and chapters on these topics, and is a co-author (with Holly Thorpe and Megan Chawansky) of Sport, Gender and Development: Intersections, Innovations and Future Trajectories (2021). Dr. Hayhurst’s research has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Canadian Foundation for Innovation and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Her current research uses digital feminist participatory action research to: 1) critically investigate the use of the bicycle as a possible catalyst for achieving mobility justice, gender equity, and global development; 2) address physical inactivity and assess inequities amongst highly marginalized pregnant and/or parenting self-identified women (*cis and trans) and youth who are affected by violence and trauma; and 3) examine how SFD programs may create novel possibilities for feminist climate justice activism and educational strategies to prevent SGBV. She has previously worked for the United Nations Development Programme and Right to Play.
Dr. Brad R. Humphreys is professor of economics in the Department of Economics, John T. Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University. He received his PhD in economics from Johns Hopkins University. He previously held faculty positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Alberta. His research on the economics and financing of professional sports and the economics of gambling has been published in academic journals in economics and policy analysis, including the Journal of Urban Economics, the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the Journal of Regional Science, the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Regional Science and Urban Economics. He has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals in economics and public policy. He is editor-in-chief of Contemporary Economic Policy, a general interest economics journal, and serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Sports Economics, the International Journal of Sport Finance, the International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, and International Gambling Studies. He is the 2017−2018 Benedum Distinguished Scholar in Behavioral and Social Sciences at West Virginia University.
Dr. Jason (Jay) Laurendeau is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge. His research interrogates sport, settler colonialism, and racial (in)justice, with additional interests at the intersections of gender, risk, embodiment, and childhood. He is the author of Sport, Physical Activity, and Anti-Colonial Autoethnography: Stories and Ways of Being (Routledge) and his journal articles have appeared in such venues as Sociological Perspectives, the Sociology of Sport Journal, the Journal of Sport & Social Issues, and Emotion, Space & Society. Jay enjoys a number of sport and leisure pursuits, including cross-country skiing, hiking, backcountry camping, cycling, and running.
Dr. Stacy L. Lorenz is Vice Dean and a professor in physical education and history at the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, in Camrose, Alberta. He teaches in the areas of sport history, sociocultural aspects of sport and physical activity, sport and social issues, and sport and popular culture. Stacy’s research interests include newspaper coverage of sport, media experiences of sport, violence and masculinity, race and sport, and hockey and Canadian culture. He is the author of Media, Culture, and the Meanings of Hockey: Constructing a Canadian Hockey World, 1896-1907 (2017). He has written several book chapters and published articles in such journals as the Canadian Journal of History of Sport, Journal of Sport History, Sport History Review, Journal of Canadian Studies, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, the International Journal of the History of Sport, Journal of Historical Sociology, and Canadian Historical Review.
Dr. Brad Millington is an associate professor in the Department of Sport Management at Brock University. He has two main areas of research focus: sport and environmental sustainability; and sport media and technology. He is the author of two books: The Greening of Golf: Sport, Globalization and the Environment (2016, with Brian Wilson); and Fitness, Technology and Society: Amusing Ourselves to Life (2018). He is also co-editor of the book Sport and the Environment: Politics and Preferred Futures (2020, with Brian Wilson).
Dr. Mark Norman is an assistant professor in the Department of Human Kinetics at St. Francis Xavier University. His diverse research interests include the media production and consumption of sport, physical culture and incarceration, Sport for Development and Peace, and gender and risk in criminal justice work. His work on digital media and sport has been published in venues such as Sociology of Sport Journal, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, and the edited collection Digital Leisure Cultures: Critical Perspectives. His wider research has appeared in journals such as International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise & Health, and Feminist Criminology. Mark is currently co-investigator (with Liam Kennedy and Derek Silva) on a grant, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Sport Canada Research Initiative, entitled “Policing and Post-Pandemic Participation in Sport and Physical Activity.”
Dr. Moss E. Norman is an associate professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of British Columbia. As a white settler researcher, he partners with multiple Cree communities in exploring the intersections of physical culture, gender and health. These research partnerships have existed since 2014 and have been consistently funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research funding agencies. His work has been published in a diversity of venues, including the Journal of Sport Sociology, Men & Masculinities, Gender, Place & Culture, and the Sociological Review, to name but a few.
Dr. Danielle Peers is a Canada Research Chair (Tier II, SSHRC) in Disability and Movement Cultures, and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta. Danielle studies how movement cultures (including art, recreation, and sport) can be used to transmit and transform a community’s values, politics, and inequities. Mobilizing embodied disability justice approaches, Peers prioritizes deep, intersectional collaborations, in order to co-create knowledges and practices that reduce harm and create more accessible, affirming, and transformative movement cultures. Danielle’s work draws from their experiences as a Paralympic athlete, coach, dancer, and filmmaker.
Dr. Sabrina Razack is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the intersection of race, media, gender, and social movements. Her PhD thesis, titled "Joy as a Mode of Resistance: An Examination of Black Girl Hockey Club's Ongoing Quest for Racial Justice," explores these themes in depth. Additionally, her research publications investigate gendered racial politics in sport and how sport systems perpetuate inequities.
Dr. Ian Ritchie is associate professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Ian received his PhD in sociology from Bowling Green State University, Ohio, where he studied classical and contemporary sociological theory. He teaches courses in sport sociology, social theory, and sociology of the modern Olympic Games. Ian’s research interests include performance-enhancing drug use in sport, the history of anti-doping rules and policies, Canadian anti-doping policy, gender and sex determination policies, the history of the Olympic Games, and social theory as it applies to sport and physical culture. His publications have been included in several journals, including the International Review for the Sociology of Sport, Sport History Review, the International Journal of the History of Sport, the International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, in addition to numerous chapters in edited volumes; he is also co-author of the book Fastest, Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High-Performance Sport (Routledge, 2006, with Rob Beamish). Ian lives in Fenwick, Ontario, with his wife and three children.
Dr. Parissa Safai is a Professor in and Chair of the School of Kinesiology and Health Science in the Faculty of Health at York University. Her research interests focus on the critical study of sport at the intersection of risk, health, and healthcare. This includes research on sports’ “culture of risk,” the development and social organization of sport and exercise medicine, as well as the social determinants of athletes’ health. Her research and teaching interests also centre on sport and social inequality with focused attention paid to the impact of gender, socioeconomic, and ethnocultural inequities on accessible physical activity for all. Parissa is currently the President of the International Sociology of Sport Association (ISSA), the leading international organization for scholars from across the world who share a common goal in advancing the sociology of sport.
Dr. Brian Soebbing is an associate professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation at the University of Alberta. His primary research interest focuses on the strategic behaviour of sports organizations and their constituents. His secondary interest is in the social and economic impact of gambling. Brian has published over 75 peer-reviewed articles in the research areas of sport management, economics, gambling studies, and urban studies. He is an associate editor for the International Journal of Sport Finance, European Sport Management Quarterly, and the Journal of Leisure Research.
Dr. Courtney Szto is an Associate Professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies at Queen's University. Her book, Changing on the Fly: Hockey through the voices of South Asian Canadians, won the Outstanding Book Award at the 2021 North American Society for the Sociology of Sport Conference. She also produced a short documentary about bike waste titled Revolutions that won Best Canadian Short Documentary at the British Columbia Environmental Film Festival. Her current research project explores how historically marginalized groups work to create community and (re)claim space in outdoor culture while also considering anti-colonial practices.