Book of Abstracts North American Society for the Sociology of Sport 2017 Annual Conference Windsor, Ontario, Canada November
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Book of Abstracts North American Society for the Sociology of Sport 2017 Annual Conference Windsor, Ontario, Canada November 1-4 Age Matters: Canadian Hockey-style Masculinity Comes to Curling Kristi Allain, St Thomas University As Canadian baby boomers reach retirement age and the country becomes increasingly defined by its old(er) citizens, it is surprisingly rare to see the bodies of old(er) men on sports channels and in the newspapers’ sports sections. Men’s curlers have been a noteworthy exception to this trend. Men’s curling — with its focus on older men, hospitality, affability, and a lack of physical exertion — has always stood apart from men’s hockey — which often privileges aggressive and violent masculinity. However, since the Sochi Olympics, when the media heralded the curlers on Team Jacobs for bringing to curling a young, muscular style, a troubling shift has taken place. I argue that media representations of curling draw on both the language and values of Canadian hockey-style masculinity, showing how this results in the problematic erasure of curling’s once-unique form of Canadian sports masculinity. I discuss how curling and hockey connect to the Canadian consciousness and construct the nation as white and male. I then explain how curling’s privileging of non-athletic qualities such as sociability, makes it unique among Canadian sports. Thus, the emerging media discourse, which applies the norms of hockey masculinity to male curlers, demonstrates a complex social reordering of popular understandings of men who curl, and a “sweeping away” of an older, less aggressive masculinity. The Paradox of Professionalism: Elite Women Athletes Negotiate Gender Inequality in Sport Rachel Allison, Mississippi State University Based on interviews with 20 U.S. women's professional soccer players, I describe the “paradox of professionalism”: by moving from NCAA Division I college soccer to the highest level of competition, the resources, visibility, and cultural value attached to soccer participation decline. This downward mobility exists in distinct contrast to pathways in U.S. men's sports. I describe the challenges for players presented by the lack of material resources and cultural value that characterize elite women's sports, and show how players make sense of ongoing gender inequality in professional soccer. Players simultaneously challenge the gender ideologies that support inequality and accept some degree of inequality within a gender-neutral narrative of slow progress over time. I argue that racial and class privilege, as well as the dominance of liberal feminist framings of gender (in)equality in sport, are key to understanding players' perspectives. Participative Learning in the Sociology of Sport Lauren Anderson, Lasell College When teaching the sociology of sport, many sensitive topics arise, including but not limited to Native American mascots, transgender athletes, domestic violence and other off-field transgressions, and racist and sexist media discourse. As teachers, it can be challenging to educate students on these topics without allowing our own biases to lead the discussion. In this session, I will introduce a teaching strategy that encourages students to lead class discussion on controversial topics, which not only fosters open dialogue, but also allows students to form their own opinions on such topics. While this teaching strategy encourages critical thinking and debate, it also ensures that all voices are heard—especially those of the 1 marginalized. The goal of this session is to provide several tools and ideas for teachers to use in their own classrooms to make class more well-rounded, participative, and engaging. Diversity Outreach in Major League Baseball: A Stakeholder Approach Shaun Anderson, Loyola Marymount University Matthew M. Martin, West Virginia University In 1989, Major League Baseball (MLB) implemented Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities (RBI) (Klein 1990) and the Urban Youth Academy (UYA) (MLB.com, 2016) in 2006 to help diversify their team rosters and fan base in the United States. However, MLB is still facing the issue that team rosters and fan bases are majority white. Given this, 11 RBI/UYA program managers representing 11 MLB teams were interviewed to ascertain the effectiveness and problems of these programs. The result of the study revealed that attendance, lack of knowledge regarding the programs, and lack of parental involvement were the biggest challenges in getting black youth involved in the game. A surprising result from this study is that there is a lack of congruency between each team program manager interviewed and the front office regarding how their RBI/UYA programs are managed; which could be a hindrance to the success of the programs. While important, the results forward a need to debate and dialogue on how MLB should amend their programs to provide a more inclusive environment for black youth. Sustaining Racialized Heteronormativity: Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao, Homophobia, and the Limits of Philippine Nationalism Constansio Arnaldo, University of Nevada, Las Vegas This paper examines how eight-time world boxing champion Manny “Pac-Man” Pacquiao’s symbolic heterosexual masculine nationalism creates the conditions of (im)possibility for diasporic Filipino claims to national belonging. Reflecting the conference’s theme of “Sport Matters,” in this paper, I examine how sport is both matter and sport matters for diasporic Filipina/o Americans in the United States. I attend to this double meaning by historically situating U.S. colonial ideological “matters” of muscular Christianity as part of U.S. colonialism in the Philippines that continue to inform Pacquiao’s twenty-first century homophobic nationalism. I do so by discussing how Pacquiao symbolizes a racialized heteronormativity in relation to African American boxer, Floyd “Money” Mayweather. I then analyze his February 2016 homophobic comments, and end with interviews I conducted with two Filipina/o Americans who grapple with how Pacquiao “matters” to an exclusive community within the Filipina/o diaspora. This article deploys a queer of color diasporic critique to underscore how privileging Pacquiao’s heterosexual masculinity demarcates parameters of national exclusion for the rest of the Filipina/o diasporic community, especially queer Filipina/os and women. Online Tennis Forum: An Arena for Coach-Athlete Relationship? Nadia Ayer, University of Waterloo Ron McCarville, University of Waterloo Technology is changing the ways we experience sports (Woods, 2016). Relevant and timely information on favourite athletes, events, equipment, and training is easily accessed in online forums. Such forums provide interactive and iterative venues where enthusiasts can 2 seek and offer advice. We wondered how information sources like these might serve as surrogates for traditional coaching. Coaches seek to influence athletes’ training and results (Philippe et al., 2011). Athletes hope to benefit from this influence (Yang & Jowett, 2011). Online expertise can approximate that of the traditional coach. Forum posters are free to communicate, collaborate, and empathize. Experts may offer guidance and support to those seeking to improve. Unlike traditional coaching, online relationships may be loosely structured, anonymous, and transient. We explored forum posters’ communications concerning the coaching process. We considered how and when posters seek out, offer aid, answer questions of credibility, monitor performance, and seek feedback. Observation of 745 messages posted to 5 discussion threads on a popular tennis forum revealed elements of power, expertise, and personal attachment consistent with more traditional coaching relationships (Jowett & Poczwardowski, 2007). We found too that posters can act as intermediaries or experts. We reflect how these dynamics might influence tennis and coaching. Ultimate Teams, Digital Flaneurs, and the Sports Video Game Andrew Baerg, University of Houston, Victoria This essay takes its cue from Goldhaber’s (1997) discussion of the attention economy and Giulianotti’s (2002) taxonomy of sports spectators to consider recent developments in the sports video game. Over the course of the last decade, Electronic Arts has devoted an increasing amount of resources to a mode called Ultimate Team. Ultimate Team exists as part card collection, part auction participation, and part video game play. Outside of the revenues from the sales of EA’s sports video games themselves, Ultimate Team now generates more than $800 million per year in additional capital. Although scholars have mentioned Ultimate Team tangentially (Conway, 2015; Oates, 2015), the mode’s ongoing importance to and for the sports video game has gone unexamined. This paper describes Ultimate Team and explains its significance through the lens of Goldhaber’s notion of illusory attention and Giulianotti’s notion of the sports spectating flaneur. The paper then critically engages some of the implications of Ultimate Team mode for the sports video game, its means of attracting and providing attention, and its potential consequences for twenty first century sports fandom. Biopower, Biopolitics, and the Biological Turn in Coaching Pedagogy Anna Baeth, University of Minnesota Sport specialization has become increasingly common for athletes across the United States. As a result, the profession of sport coaching has also become increasingly specialized. While scholars have long studied coaching pedagogy through the lenses of sport culture and power, few