Sport's Social Historical Context

• Human behaviors, decisions, and social structures have history and root themselves in traditions, norms, and values that constantly change.
• Political and cultural struggles form the backdrop.
• Poses questions about how society arrived at this moment, how governing bodies organize sport, what groups hold power, and why certain sports and athletes are culturally revered.
• Also questions when the history of sport in Canada begins and why certain sport ideologies have persisted.

Historical Sensitivity

• The ability to locate social issues and behaviors in history to understand the complexity of society.
• It recognizes that all moments have a history, which helps us understand the present and the future.
• Sport reflects and responds to social, political, and economic issues in Canada and worldwide, and does not develop in isolation.

Critical Questions for Social Historical Context

• How did the press cover an event or moment?
• What documents explain why decisions were made?
• How can different historical perspectives expose power relations and social structures?
• Social histories have ideological and political implications.

Hockey as a Social Construct

• Hockey is deeply embedded in Canadian national identity and in the identity of cities and communities.
• It is considered Canada's sport.
• Hockey is a social practice and institution that is connected to primary and secondary socialization.
• Hockey can be conceptualized as an agent of socialization, teaching life lessons about commitment, teamwork, merit, gender, race, and citizenship.

Development of Modern Sport

• Modern sport emerged from a mid-19th century Industrial Revolution, coinciding with advancements in manufacturing, agriculture, the textile industry, and transportation.
• Modern sport is organized, structured, and regulated, differing from pre-industrial localized sport.
• Is a history of capital accumulation, unequal class and power relations, commodification and hegemony
• Sport is also a cultural form characterized by competitive individualism and achievement, which privileges certain social groups over others.

Evolution of Communication and Access to Sport

• Prior to the 19th century, reaching sporting contests took a long time by foot, horse, or canoe.
• Wealthy members were the only ones with access to the leisure, travel and execution of sport.
• Contests occurred in close proximity, with news spread by word of mouth.
• Full-time sports reporters, both men and women, were onboarded to Canadian newspapers by the 1920s.

Hockey and National Identity

• Hockey is Canada's national winter sport and is understood as a defining aspect of Canadian identity.
• Hockey is embedded in discussions of Canadian nationhood and has been linked to stories of Canadian nation-building since the 1870s.
• It was formally recognized as the national winter sport in 1994

Gender in Hockey

• Hockey has reproduced the dominant notions of "manliness" through interactions between players and coaches.
• The traditional masculine gender role in sports is valued as strong, dominant, aggressive and even violent.
• Sports can reinforce beliefs about gender.
• Women and girls have a long history of playing hockey in Canada, but have struggled to gain legitimacy and resources.
• By the 1920s, women challenged the ideology that women are weak by playing aggressive hockey.
• These women were denied rights on the grounds that hockey was too rough for women and they should participate in sports such as tennis, swimming, skating, and track and field.

Indigenous Peoples and Hockey

• Indigenous people in Canada have a long tradition of physical games and contests connected to their land, ways of life, and survival skills.
• A history of playing traditional events at celebrations before European contact with Indigenous people.
• The Artic Winter Games also provide sporting opportunities.

Hockey and Colonization

• Sports and games are pivotal sites through which power was legitimized and exercised through Aboriginal bodies in the residential school system.
• Hockey taught patriotic values, appropriate masculine and feminine behaviors, and the colonizers' dominant norms and values.

Modern Hockey

• The Humboldt Broncos tragic crash and the social media outpouring is a current moment in modern hockey.
• The launch of the PWHL (Professional Women's Hockey League) 2023-2024 season.

Assignment Ideas

• Write 700-1000 words.
• Drawing on course readings and lecture material, write on experiences (or lack their of) in physical play, informal games, and organized sports.
• Students should be critically self-reflective: remember, describe, and analyze your sports experiences, the contexts in which they occurred, and the impact they had on you and others who were involved.
• Think back to childhood experiences of playing physical games and how they relate to age, social class, ethnicity, family, neighborhood, or community.
• Consider ideas about the individual's body and how it relates to experiences, gender, race/ethnicity, and social class in connection to participating in sports.

Human behaviors, decisions, and social structures have history and root themselves in traditions, norms, and values that constantly change. Sport does not develop in isolation, and it reflects and responds to social, political, and economic issues in Canada and worldwide. It recognizes that all moments have a history, which helps us understand the present and the future.