Hegemony Contests: Challenging the Notion of a Singular Canadian Hockey Nationalism (original) (raw)
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Journal of American Folklore, 2002
Sport in Canada during the late 19th century was intended to promote physical excellence, emotional restraint, fair play, and discipline; yet these ideological principles were consistently undermined by the manner in which Canadians played the game of hockey. This article explores the genesis of violence in hockey by focusing on its vernacular origins and discusses the relevance of violence as an expression of Canadian national identity in terms of First Nations and French Canadian expressions of sport.
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Sociology of Sport Journal, 2008
The purpose of this article is to examine issues relating to desirable hockey masculinity and how they are played out within the Canadian Hockey League (CHL). My aim is to explore how the presentation/representation of hegemonic Canadian hockey masculinity within the CHL works to marginalize non-North American hockey players. I examine how gender is performed by the players, how the CHL as an institution supports dominant notions of gender, and how ideas about gender are taken up by the media. I draw from ten semistructured narrative interviews conducted with non-North American hockey players who competed in the CHL, as well as the scholarly literature, media representations and commentary on the game, supplemental interviews, and an examination of North American and international hockey policy.
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 2010
In this article, I will explore how Canadian national identity is constructed with regard to ice hockey. National Hockey League (NHL) star, Sidney Crosby has been positioned as an important symbol of Canadian national identity. Given Crosby’s perceived importance, particularly within the Canadian media, I will examine how he is constructed as an appropriate model of Canadian masculinity and Canadian national identity. Crosby’s expressions of masculinity are not to be left to chance and for that reason there has been constant surveillance and critique of his expressions of masculinity. Interestingly, although the media tends to construct Crosby as a model of Canadian masculine identity, fans of the game (as well as some players and others in the media) frequently challenge this construction.
2018
This dissertation offers an alternative lens to understand Canada's gradual embrace of multiculturalism. Scholars have typically "worked back" from Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's famous 1971 declaration to unearth the origins of multicultural legislation, focusing on departmental policies, intense lobbying by ethnic organizations, and changing attitudes during the sixties' container of "third force" (of neither English nor French origin) activism. This story of Canadian multiculturalism is told from the grassroots level of immigrant leisure, where a pluralistic envisioning of English Canada was foreshadowed, renegotiated, and acted out "from below." It argues that the thousands of European immigrant men who played and watched sports on Toronto's sport periphery were agents of change. They created a competitive model of popular multiculturalism that emphasized cultural distinctiveness during a period of rapid social and political transformation and national self-reflection. By the 1980s, the firstgeneration immigrants and community leaders moved this model of competitive pluralism into transnational spheres and interacted with other diasporic projects when they sent their Canadian-born children on "homeland trips" to Europe to discover their roots in the context of sport tournaments. At the same time, popular multiculturalism moved into the mainstream when the City of Toronto appropriated soccer fandom as the example for its own rebranding as a metropolis of urban harmony and conviviality. This dissertation also studies how and why one immigrant community played an outsized role in the grassroots organization of diversity. Italians were the first to establish a profitable model out of ethnic sport, and the estimated 250,000 people who celebrated unscripted on the streets of Toronto after Italy's 1982 World Cup victory, it is argued, produced a watershed moment in the history of Canadian multiculturalism. The World Cup party inaugurated new modes of citizen participation in the public sphere, produced the narrative with which Italians formed a collective memory of their post-migration experience, and prompted mainstream political and commercial interests to represent themselves to the public in the symbols and language of multiculturalism as sport. This dissertation also shows how the movement of a male-driven, competitive pluralism to the centre, sometimes accompanied by outbursts of rough masculinities, revealed the paradoxical problem that in the new vision of inclusivity, cultural distinctiveness had to be identified, maintained, and sometimes defended to survive. First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Jordan Stanger-Ross, for his guidance, motivation, immense knowledge, and patience. His exceptional gift of "tidy thinking" turned our meetings into islands of clarity during the long and fatiguing Ph.D. research and writing process. I am particularly grateful for his listening ear and willingness to support a different approach to migration and ethnic history. Although no supervisory relationship is "normal," ours has the unconventional distinction that his partner, Ilana, a midwife, successfully delivered my first child. This supplemental service was not written into the original Ph.D. acceptance letter. Dr. Stanger-Ross' personal advice of "Survive and Enjoy" also became a new life maxim as I entered and embraced fatherhood.
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Living With War: Sport, Citizenship, and the Cultural Politics of Post-9/11 Canadian Identity
If sport scholars are going to contribute to a critical (inter)national dialogue that challenges “official versions” of a post-9/11 geo-political reality, there is a need to continue to move beyond the borders of the US, and examine how nationalistic sporting spectacles work to promote local military initiatives that are aligned with the imperatives of neoliberal empire. In this article we provide a critical reading of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s nationally-televised broadcast of a National Hockey League game, colloquially known as Tickets for Troops. We reveal how interest groups emphasized three interrelated narratives that worked to: 1) personalize the Canadian Forces and understandings of neoliberal citizenship, 2) articulate warfare/military training with men’s ice hockey in relation to various promotional mandates, and 3) optimistically promote the war in Afghanistan and the Conservative Party of Canada via storied national traditions and mythologies.
Variations in Race Relations: Sporting Events for Native Peoples in Canada
Sociology of Sport Journal
Four native sporting practices from different parts of Canada—the Arctic Winter Games and the Northern Games from northern Canada, and the Native Sport and Recreation Program and the All-Indian Sport System from southern Canada—are analyzed within the broader context of race relations in Canada (which differentially shape, and are shaped by, the “practical consciousness” of native peoples). Within these race relations, native participants are facilitated to different degrees in sport. The Inuit and Dene of northern Canada demonstrate an ability to reshape opportunities for sport in ways which address their needs, even when they are not directly in control of the event. Meanwhile, native peoples1 in southern Canada, even when they are directly in control of the event, tend to largely reproduce the dominant eurocanadian-derived system of sport, along with government-created definitions of race.
Canadian Graduate Journal of Sociology and Criminology, 2014
Ice hockey is particularly significant in Canada, since it acts as a primary site of socialization for boys and men. This form of socialization raises questions about masculinity on the public agenda in terms of the problematic nature of hypermasculinity in sport, stereotypical images of athletes, and questions of social responsibility as both men and athletes. These issues are presently relevant as Canada (and perhaps all of North America) finds itself in an era characterized by media accounts of competitive athletes' cavalier lifestyles, hazing rituals, violence, homophobia, drug addictions, and suicides. Scholars agree that these social issues can largely be attributed to problematic socialization through participation in hockey. This literature review uses secondary research to problematize masculinity in the ice hockey context by presenting the overarching claim that male hockey players embody hegemonic masculinity. The piece begins by defining R.W. concept of hegemonic masculinity and situating it in its current academic context. Next, it offers an overview of relevant literature on masculinity and sport along with a concise examination of scholarly work on the relationship between hegemonic masculinity and ice hockey in Canada. It concludes by summarising calls for further research in the field and by suggesting approaches to future studies.
Hockey as Canada's Uniting Force in Jeff Lemire's The Collected Essex County (Volumes I & II).
Časopis za književnost i kulturu "People Say/ Ljudi govore" (39/40), Toronto, Canada, 2022
The paper presents an analysis of the first two volumes in The Collected Essex County, Jeff Lemire's trilogy of graphic novels that was published in 2009, in terms of the role hockey has in Canada, both on a local and on the national level. It presents an inquiry into the Canadian mindset regarding the way in which the game that is deemed to be one of its most iconic national symbols helps build a sense of togetherness and shared affiliation between individuals, as well as between communities and the nation, as a whole. Volumes I and II present an arena of exploration appropriate for analyzing how individuals equate athletes with superheroes, how and why they assume the roles of national heroes, and it lends itself to exploration of the discord and rift that exist between anglophone and francophone sides of Canada. The paper also shows that hockey is seen as a uniting force between the graphic novel's two sets of family members, whose bond is strengthened precisely by their immense love for the game.