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Book part
Publication date: 10 November 2016

Parissa Safai

This chapter explores the emergence, growth, and current status of the sociology of sport in Canada. Such an endeavour includes acknowledging the work and efforts of Canadian…

Abstract

This chapter explores the emergence, growth, and current status of the sociology of sport in Canada. Such an endeavour includes acknowledging the work and efforts of Canadian scholars – whether Canadian by birth or naturalization or just as a result of their geographic location – who have contributed to the vibrant and robust academic discipline that is the sociology of sport in Canadian institutions coast-to-coast, and who have advanced the socio-cultural study of sport globally in substantial ways. This chapter does not provide an exhaustive description and analysis of the past and present states of the sociology of sport in Canada; in fact, it is important to note that an in-depth, critical and comprehensive analysis of our field in Canada is sorely lacking. Rather, this chapter aims to highlight the major historical drivers (both in terms of people and trends) of the field in Canada; provide a snapshot of the sociology of sport in Canada currently; and put forth some ideas as to future opportunities and challenges for the field in Canada.

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Sociology of Sport: A Global Subdiscipline in Review
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-050-3

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Book part
Publication date: 5 February 2019

Deana Simonetto

Drawing on interviews with football wives from the Canadian Football League (CFL), this article examines how these women define their personal identity through their talk about…

Abstract

Drawing on interviews with football wives from the Canadian Football League (CFL), this article examines how these women define their personal identity through their talk about being married to a pro football player. Using the concept of courtesy identity and Anderson and Snow’s (1987) conceptualization of identity talk, this chapter explains the processes in which these women claim a courtesy identity of a football wife. I identify two strategies these women use to construct their identity: distancing from stereotypes and envisioning self as his teammate. I argue that women performed this verbal identity work in pursuit of legitimizing their courtesy identity of a football wife. They accomplish this by distancing self from a stereotypical, anticipated social identity of the football wife as a “gold digger” or naïve woman and then working up another socially positive and normative one that they are supportive women who have worked alongside their husband and are part of their career. I conclude by summarizing the findings and argue that by constructing themselves as devoted football wives, they uphold these idealized images of traditional masculinity and femininity in professional sports.

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The Interaction Order
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-546-7

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Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2023

Mary J. Dudas

Reading the political and the familial in The Americans illuminates central features of the New Right. In particular, The Americans provides an opportunity to reconsider the…

Abstract

Reading the political and the familial in The Americans illuminates central features of the New Right. In particular, The Americans provides an opportunity to reconsider the significance of the ‘pro-family’ label to New Right organising, the importance of mothering to the ‘pro-family’ narrative offered by the New Right, and the relationship between this account of mothering and democratic citizenship more broadly. This paper argues: first, the ‘pro-family’ label served to weaponise American families against equality and egalitarian public institutions; second, that this weaponisation of the family was accomplished through a rhetorical and real elevation of the moralised work of mothers in the home; and third, this account of mothering is incompatible with democratic citizenship not only because it reproduces inequality but also because it presents families, particularly mothers, as surrounded by enemies. Surrounded by enemies, their children appear endangered or dangerous should they become products of enemy forces. The pro-family rhetoric of the New Right – with its emphasis on the labour of women, particularly mothers – concealed an insurgent factional bid for power just as the Jennings family concealed an insurgent operation inside the United States. The displacement of law in The Americans mirrors the displacement of law in American conservative politics in the 1980s and law’s replacement by the ideal of sanctified families that the guard republic. The Americans both recognises this reversal in American conservative politics and parodies the reversal of the idea that law protects the family.

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Law, Politics and Family in ‘The Americans’
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-995-6

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Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2023

Anna-Maria Marshall

In The Americans, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are undercover operatives for the Soviet Union. In that capacity, they are responsible for crimes including murder and espionage…

Abstract

In The Americans, Philip and Elizabeth Jennings are undercover operatives for the Soviet Union. In that capacity, they are responsible for crimes including murder and espionage. Yet they also pose as a law-abiding family, running a small business, raising children, and making friends with their neighbours. By ‘practicing’ American life, Philip becomes more American, forging an identity more receptive to American values and attitudes. This chapter draws on concepts from the literature on legal consciousness to examine the relationship between identity and hegemony. Studies of legal consciousness emphasise that consciousness is not simply legal attitudes or even ideology; rather legal consciousness is reflected in the way that people enact their legal beliefs and values. Those enactments help individuals form identities, but those identities are constrained by the hegemonic ideologies that are prevalent in the culture. Law and legal consciousness are important to both processes.

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Law, Politics and Family in ‘The Americans’
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-995-6

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Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2023

Claire Rasmussen

The narrative of The Americans weaves together a spy thriller and a family drama, though it drives home the inseparability of the political and the personal through the lives of…

Abstract

The narrative of The Americans weaves together a spy thriller and a family drama, though it drives home the inseparability of the political and the personal through the lives of the central characters, Philip and Elizabeth, a couple whose marriage is a cover for their work as Soviet spies. This chapter provides a queer reading of their marriage, drawing from the real history of the Cold War politics of sexuality that associated American values with the hetero- and gender normative, white, and middle-class nuclear family. In contrast, the Soviet Union was understood to have disrupted this natural order by installing the state as an overbearing patriarch. Philip and Elizabeth’s fictional cover as a nuclear family requires them to perform American marriage, family, and selfhood. In doing so, they reflect the centrality of the family in America’s Cold War self-image in which the family serves as the anchor of the American order, enabling economic and political self-sufficiency. Their performance of the family challenges our ability to differentiate between real, authentic family that can serve as the legitimate source of social reproduction and between the counterfeit, fake family that disrupts the social order. The queer family, refusing to be placed beyond realm of the political by the moral language of family values, subverts our ability to distinguish between genres since the family drama is already a political thriller.

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Law, Politics and Family in ‘The Americans’
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-995-6

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Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2023

Susan Burgess

This piece argues that television families’ shift away from the traditional nuclear family form is crucial to understand the relatively rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage in…

Abstract

This piece argues that television families’ shift away from the traditional nuclear family form is crucial to understand the relatively rapid acceptance of same-sex marriage in mainstream politics. Released in the early 2010s, The Americans focusses on a KGB-created family composed of two Soviet spies, total strangers who ultimately have two children to further their cover as an innocent American family running a DuPont Circle travel agency and living in a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C. Rather than being idealised or sought after, The Americans reveals that the nuclear family is legally, socially, and politically constructed, and, in the end, doomed to failure. Sex and love and even children are instrumentally manipulated on a regular basis to further political goals, transforming basic assumptions about how marriage and family life really work beyond the façade of suburban America. This opens space for consideration and acceptance of alternative family forms, including same-sex marriage.

Book part
Publication date: 1 October 2008

Grant W. Shoffstall

This is an experimental text with a performative cast, the aim of which is to enact, excavate, chronicle, and interrogate the racialized experiences and spectacles endured…

Abstract

This is an experimental text with a performative cast, the aim of which is to enact, excavate, chronicle, and interrogate the racialized experiences and spectacles endured, consumed, and performed by the author in the course of a two-week stay at a Native American themed catholic summer camp during his youth. Following Philip J. Deloria, it is argued that the camp's history and appropriation of Native American culture eventuate in the formation of a highly racialized space where relatively well-off white children come to “play Indian,” a space that furthermore conspires in the construction and maintenance of “whiteness” as a cultural identity. The text is characterized by its multiple and rotating speaking parts and thus lends itself to both impromptu seminar readings as well as more elaborate forms of theatrical performance.

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Studies in Symbolic Interaction
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-125-1

Book part
Publication date: 22 November 2017

J. T. Snipes and Carl Darnell

Desegregation still remains a pressing issue of many of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the United States. This chapter provides a historical narrative…

Abstract

Desegregation still remains a pressing issue of many of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) in the United States. This chapter provides a historical narrative of the history of desegregation in the United States, and how legal ruling impacts recruitment and retention of non-Black students at HBCUs. In addition, this chapter will examine landmark desegregation court cases and current challenges imposed upon historically black colleges. Finally, implications will be provided for administrators at public HBCUs.

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Black Colleges Across the Diaspora: Global Perspectives on Race and Stratification in Postsecondary Education
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-522-5

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Decolonising Sambo: Transculturation, Fungibility and Black and People of Colour Futurity
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-347-1

Book part
Publication date: 25 September 2023

Richard H. McAdams

The television series The Americans succeeds as a family drama, crime drama, and political drama. Criminal law offers a useful perspective for interpreting the series. By…

Abstract

The television series The Americans succeeds as a family drama, crime drama, and political drama. Criminal law offers a useful perspective for interpreting the series. By examining the post-finale criminal liability of two key characters, daughter Paige Jennings and FBI agent Stan Beeman, this chapter provides some novel insights into the characters, their motivations, and the events in the last season of the series. The legal analysis also uncovers some ironies. Most notably, Paige’s legal vulnerability will put her in a moral dilemma because her best way of avoiding a lengthy prison term is to provide evidence against Stan, punishing him for letting her and her parents go.

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Law, Politics and Family in ‘The Americans’
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-995-6

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