Course Objectives:
. Students will understand how anthropology analyzes sport and why and how it is conceptualized into a topic for anthropological inquiry. Students will comprehend the interpretive processes that produce distinctions between sports, games and play. “Rituals, bodies and embodiment, aesthetics, the creation of meaning-these are some of the classical anthropological concerns, and these provide a crucial orientation that allows a deeper understanding of what sport ‘is.’” (Lithman 2004)
2. Students will understand the influence of culture on sport and how sport influences culture. We will survey how the body, health, fitness, and disability are socially constructed and idealized across cultures. Additionally, the gendered nature of sports and sports’ role in societal understandings of ethnicity and race will be explored. For example, how major sports franchises continue to use Aboriginal mascots despite protests by Aboriginal peoples about their cultural inappropriateness. Issues of cultural appropriation, racism, power, and resistance all inhere within this particular example.
3. Students will delve into the consumer/entertainment/power element of sport. We will also explore how violence in sport is directly related to ideas of power and politics found in our society. Soccer hooliganism will be one area examined in this regard.
4. Overall: By considering how sports operate to organize space, meaning, power and ethnicity, to define and modify bodies, to establish moralities, and to shape cultural perceptions, students will understand the intimate connection between culture and sport.
Required Texts: 3 Sources
1. Crane, Julia G. and Michael V. Angrosino. 1992. Field Projects in Anthropology: A Student Handbook 3rd ed. Long Grove Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc.
2. E-Journals at UNB library website: Where indicated you will download articles directly from the journal where the article is located.
3. Readings On 2-hour Reserve in Harriet Irving Library: call number PB A32's.
Anth3683 books on reserve:
GN454. B56 The anthropology of sport
GV706.5. G36 Games, sports and cultures
GV706.5. S73256 Sport, identity and ethnicity
- Teacher: Craig Proulx