Synopsis
Social Dimensions of Canadian Sport and Physical Activity by Jane Crossman and Jay Scherer is an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of the relationship between sociological issues and sport, with a specific focus on the Canadian sports industry.
Each chapter in this contributed text is written by experts in their field, using both Canadian and international perspectives to address contemporary sociological issues. The authors hope that this text will provide students with a sound basis for understanding the social dimensions of sport and physical activity from a uniquely Canadian perspective.
About the Author
EDITORS
Dr. Jane Crossman is a Professor Emeritus at Lakehead University where she held several administrative positions throughout her career including Chair and Graduate Coordinator of the School of Kinesiology. She taught graduate and undergraduate courses in sport sociology, research methods and mental training. Jane’s research, which pertains to the newspaper coverage of sporting events and the psychosocial dimensions of sports injuries, has been published in a number of scholarly journals. She has edited three books: Coping With Sports Injuries: Psychological Strategies for Rehabilitation (2001) and Canadian Sport Sociology, Editions 1 (2003) and 2 (2007). Jane contributed a chapter to the book The Sport Scientist’s Research Adventures, in which she gave insights into the challenges and gratification of being a researcher. Jane is on the editorial board of the Journal of Sport Behavior and regularly reviews for a number of journals and texts in the fields of sport sociology, sport psychology and research methods. During sabbaticals, Jane has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Exeter and Brighton (UK) the University of Otago (New Zealand), Victoria University (Australia) and the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland). Jane enjoys exercising a border collie, golfing, and fiction and non-fiction writing.
Dr. Jay Scherer is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Physical Education and Recreation at the University of Alberta where he has taught sociology of sport courses since 2005. His primary research interests include: cultural studies of sport and leisure; globalization, sport, and public policy; and, sport and the media. Jay’s research has been published in a number of scholarly journals, and his most recent book (with David Rowe) is Sport, Public Broadcasting, and Cultural Citizenship: Signal Lost? (Routledge, 2013). Outside of the office, Jay enjoys cycling, running, and cross-country skiing. He is an avid fiction reader, and a long-suffering fan of the Toronto Blue Jays and the Edmonton Oilers.
CONTRIBUTORS
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, the sociology of fitness and contemporary issues in sexuality. 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 writes on issues related to the history of sexuality, queer and feminist social movements and on gender and sexuality in sport and physical activity. She has recently started work on two new projects: an oral history with feminist sport activists on the legacies of feminism in contemporary women’s sport; and, a historical cultural study of the meanings of walking.
Dr. Rob Beamish holds a joint appointment in the Department of Sociology and the School of Kinesiology and Health at Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. During that time, in addition to his teaching and research responsibilities, he has served as the Associate Dean (Studies) and two terms as the Head of the Department of Sociology. Dr. Beamish’s research centers on high-performance sport as a form of work and specific issues related to work, labour, and classical social theory. In addition to numerous articles, book chapters and encyclopedia entries related to social theory and sport sociology, in general, and the use of performance-enhancing substances, in particular, he 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.
Dr. Duane Bratt is a Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Department of Policy Studies at Mount Royal University (Calgary, Alberta). He teaches public policy and international politics. While his primary research interests are in nuclear energy and Canadian foreign policy, he also writes on sport policy. This includes a recent research project that led to the inclusion of physical literacy standards in Alberta's day care accreditation standards. As a sport practitioner, he is the National Resource Person and Chair of the LTAD committee for the Canadian Lacrosse Association.
Dr. Tim Fletcher is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Brock University. His teaching and research interests are in physical education pedagogy and teacher education. In particular, his research focuses on ways in which teachers understand the connections between their teaching identities, practices, and student learning. Much of his recent work has used self-study methodology, including the co-edited text Self-study of physical education: The interplay of scholarship and practice (forthcoming 2014, Springer) with Alan Ovens from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. In 2014, he was awarded a Young Scholar Award from the International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP).
Dr. Jean Harvey is a professor at the School of Human Kinetics, University of Ottawa. He is also the founding director of the Research Centre for Sport in Canadian Society. His main areas of research are sport policy in Canada and abroad, as well as sport in the context of globalization. Jean has published extensively both in French and in English in multiple refereed journals. He is also the co-editor with Lucie Thibault of Sport Policy in Canada (2013, University of Ottawa Press), and co-author of Sport and Social Movements (2013, Bloomsbury).
Dr. Brad Humphreys is a professor in the College of Business and Economics, Department of Economics at West Virginia University. He holds a PhD in economics from the Johns Hopkins University. He previously held positions at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Alberta. His research on the economics of gambling, the economics and financing of professional sports, and the economics of higher education has been published in academic journals in economics and policy analysis. He has published more than 80 papers in peer-reviewed journals in economics and public policy. He twice testified before the United States Congress on the economic impact of professional sports teams and facilities. His current research projects include an assessment of the informational efficiency of sports betting markets, an examination of the effect of new sports facilities on urban residential construction projects, an assessment of the causal relationship between recreational gambling and health outcomes, and an evaluation of the value Canadians place on Olympic Gold medals.
Professor Moshe Lander is a Lecturer at Concordia University. He holds an MA in Applied European Languages and is a PhD candidate in Economics. He is an award-winning teacher, having spent most of the last two decades teaching economics, statistics, mathematics and finance at post-secondary institutions in Alberta, Ontario and Quebec. Moshe is known on campus as much for his unique presentation skills and his appearance as he is for his extremely dry wit and linguistic dexterity. Though he spends much of his time in the classroom teaching, Moshe loves to spend his down time either at his picturesque summer retreat in Hapolonia or in Flin Flon, Manitoba watching the annual migration of fake tootie birds.
Dr. Jason Laurendeau is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta. He received an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology, and Masters and PhD degrees in Sociology, from the University of Calgary. His research and teaching interests include deviance and social control, sport and embodiment, gender, risk, fatherhood, and autoethnography. His work has appeared in a number of scholarly journals, including Deviant Behavior, Sociological Perspectives, Sociology of Sport Journal, Journal of Sport and Social Issues, and Emotion, Space and Society. Jason enjoys a number of sport and leisure pursuits, including cross-country skiing, hiking, backcountry camping, cycling, and swimming. He is also active in his local community, and an avid traveller. He dedicates this chapter to the memory of Rosco.
Dr. Stacy L. Lorenz is an Associate Professor in Physical Education and History at the University of Alberta, Augustana Campus, in Camrose, Alberta. He completed a BA in History at Augustana University College, an MA in History at the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD in History at the University of 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. He also coached the men’s basketball team at Augustana for eight years. Stacy’s research interests include newspaper coverage of sport, media experiences of sport, sport and local and national identities, violence and masculinity, and hockey and Canadian culture. He has written several book chapters and published articles in such journals as Canadian Journal of History of Sport, Journal of Sport History, Sport History Review, Journal of Canadian Studies, and Journal of Sport & Social Issues. He has also written a number of newspaper articles about issues related to sport, society, and culture.
Dr. Don Morrow is a Professor of Kinesiology at Western University in London, Ontario. His academic teaching and research interest areas are Canadian sport history, sport literature, body-culture and concepts of exercise history, integrative health/medicine, and health promotion. He is the author of eight textbooks including the most recent, 3rd edition of Sport in Canada: A History (2013, Oxford) and numerous academic journal articles, an award-winning teacher, a past-President of the North American Society for Sport History, and an elected Fellow of the American Academy Kinesiology and Physical Education.
Dr. Victoria Paraschak is a Professor of Kinesiology at the University of Windsor, where she teaches sociology of sport, government and sport, social construction of leisure, and outdoor recreation. She received a BPE from McMaster University in 1977, an MHK from the University of Windsor in 1978, and a PhD from the University of Alberta in 1983. The primary focus of her research is Aboriginal peoples in sport, and in physical cultural practices, more broadly. In 1999, she took a year’s leave to work with seven different Northwest Territories sport and recreation organizations and establish a direction for the new millennium. She looked at the creation of health services for the Canada Games held in Whitehorse, Yukon in February 2007, examining the interfaces between sport and public health perspectives on such services as part of a health services legacy for these Games. Her work focuses on power relations, social construction, and the creation, reproduction, and/or reshaping of cultural practices through the duality of structure. She is currently expanding on that framework to incorporate a strengths perspective, which includes the fostering of practices of hope that enable individuals to work together to achieve broader collective goals.
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 and sociology of the modern Olympic Games. Ian’s research interests include performance-enhancing drug use in sport and the history of anti-doping rules, media, gender, and various aspects of the Olympic Games. In addition to several chapters in edited volumes, he co-authored (with Rob Beamish, Queen’s University) the book Fastest, Highest, Strongest: A Critique of High-Performance Sport (Routledge, 2006), and is currently writing a manuscript on the history of the modern Olympic Games. A former Canadian varsity rower and coach, Ian now enjoys long distance trail and marathon running, golfing, cycling, curling, and various outdoor travel-related activities such as hiking and camping. Ian lives in Fenwick, Ontario with his wife and three children.
Dr. Susan Tirone is the Associate Director of the College of Sustainability at Dalhousie University. Her administrative duties involve overseeing the Environment, Sustainability and Society program, a multi-disciplinary, undergraduate program with an enrollment of over 600 students each year, and she is the academic leader of the RBC Sustainability Leadership Certificate program offered by the College of Sustainability. She co-teaches a Problem Based Learning course in the College drawing upon current and topical sustainability issues in the local community to inform discussions about how people in their various roles as employers, volunteers, consumers, and engaged citizens contend with the sustainability problems we face. Susan is interested in how communities sustain their populations by welcoming new and diverse groups of immigrants. She focuses her studies on the formal and informal social support networks that facilitate a welcoming environment for new immigrants. Some of her research has delved into how sport organizations contribute to welcoming new immigrants to communities in Canada. She is cross-appointed in the Faculty of Health Professions at Dalhousie University where she has taught since 2001.
Dr. Ralph Wheeler is an Associate Professor in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at Memorial University in St. John’s, Newfoundland. He received his PhD from the University of Alberta in 1998. His research and teaching interests include pedagogy of teaching and curriculum studies. Ralph was a successful varsity and club swim coach and his CIS teams went undefeated in Atlantic University Sport competition for four years and was ranked as high as 5th in the CIS national team rankings. He also served as provincial coordinator for the National Coaching Certification Program. Professor Wheeler has served on many provincial and national committees promoting physical education and sport and in 2006 he was awarded the Certificate of Honour from the Provincial Physical Education Council for his outstanding contribution to the profession. A passionate fly fisherman, he has been known to “disappear” for weeks into the Labrador wilderness in pursuit of the king of sport fish ―the Atlantic salmon.
David Whitson is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science, University of Alberta. He is co-author of Game Planners: Transforming Canada’s Sport System (with Donald Macintosh), Hockey Night in Canada: Sport, Identities, and Cultural Politics (with Richard Gruneau), and Writing Off the Rural West: Globalization, Governments, and the Transformation of Rural Communities (with Roger Epp), as well as numerous articles on global events and the globalization of sport and culture. In retirement, he continues to enjoy cycling and skiing, and watching the world of sport.
Brian Wilson is a sociologist and Professor in the School of Kinesiology at The University of British Columbia. He is author of Sport & Peace: A Sociological Perspective (Oxford, 2012) and Fight, Flight or Chill: Subcultures, Youth and Rave into the Twenty-First Century (McGill-Queen’s, 2006) as well as articles on sport, social inequality, environmental issues, media, social movements, and/or youth culture. His most recent work focuses on how the sport of running is used for peace-promotion in Kenya and on responses to golf-related environmental concerns.
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