Boundary Making and Community Building in Japanese American Youth Basketball Leagues
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Hoops, History, and Crossing Over: Boundary Making and Community Building in Japanese American Youth Basketball Leagues A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology by Christina B. Chin 2012 Copyright by Christina B. Chin 2012 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Hoops, History, and Crossing Over: Boundary Making and Community Building in Japanese American Youth Basketball Leagues by Christina B. Chin Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology University of California, Los Angeles, 2012 Professor Min Zhou, Chair My dissertation research examines how cultural organizations, particularly ethnic sports leagues, shape racial/ethnic and gender identity and community building among later-generation Japanese Americans. I focus my study on community-organized youth basketball leagues - a cultural outlet that spans several generations and continues to have a lasting influence within the Japanese American community. Using data from participant observation and in-depth interviews collected over two years, I investigate how Japanese American youth basketball leagues are active sites for the individual, collective, and institutional negations of racial, ethnic, and gendered categories within this group. Offering a critique of traditional assimilation theorists who argue the decline of racial and ethnic distinctiveness as a group assimilates, my findings demonstrate how race and ethnic meanings continue to shape the lives of later-generation Japanese American, particularly in sporting worlds. I also explain why assimilated Japanese ii Americans continue to seek co-ethnic social spaces and maintain strict racial boundaries that keep out non-Asian players. Because Asians are both raced and gendered simultaneously, I examine how sports participation differs along gendered lines and how members collaboratively “do gender” that both reinforce and challenge traditional hegemonic notions of masculinity and femininity.
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