Sport as Culture: Social class, styles of cultural consumption, and sports engagement in Canada

Abstract

The consumption of culture has often been ascribed the power to reflect and reproduce social inequalities. However, most work in this area has focused upon music and the arts. Sport is an important element of culture that can and should be studied in a similar fashion as others (Bourdieu, 1978). This thesis thus seeks to bring the theoretical frameworks and analytical tools of sociologies of culture further into the realm of sport. Substantively, this thesis provides an updated and comprehensive re-examining of the relationship between direct sports participation and social stratification in the relatively unexplored national context of Canada. I also innovatively provide an examination of the relationship between social stratification and professional sports consumption. Finally, this thesis fills a gap in the literature by analysing where the consumption of sport fits within broader cultural lifestyles. For these investigations, I use large-scale survey data and various statistical methods to test the foundational theories of Pierre Bourdieu, the ‘omnivore’ thesis, and individualisation arguments of social action to explain these patterns. The findings show direct sports participation relying primarily on dispositions towards the body which are stratified by education and income, especially for the most elite sports. They also show the two most selective omnivorous profiles for professional sport, rather than the most omnivorous, with the highest levels of education and income. This thesis thus sheds doubt on the omnivore thesis within sport, while also showing elements of individualisation regarding age and sex differentiation in consumption. Sports consumption in Canada thus cuts across all three theories of the relation between socio-economic position and sport. These more delimitated consumption profiles contrast with the general adherence to the omnivore thesis within broader cultural lifestyles. This therefore suggests that sport may be a cultural domain where general omnivores practise more distinctive consumption.

Parental Status Connection and Social Network Variety in Adulthood

“…In this analysis, Erickson draws on Peterson's [36] theory of the cultural 'omnivore', who are those individuals that engage with a diverse range of cultural tastes and behaviors, irrespective of the relative social status of those forms of culture. Both Peterson and a number of subsequent studies (e.g., [37][38][39][40]) consistently have linked this behavior and this cultural variety with elevated social position.…”

Religion and Social Capital: Examining Social Networks and Religious Identification in the UK

“…Similarly, the increasing prevalence and possible trendiness represented by those asserting multiple religious identities may confer a type of cultural capital associated with openness (e.g. Chan, 2019; Coulangeon, 2017; Gemar, 2019), the ‘exotic’ (Johnston and Baumann, 2007), or elements of late modernity such as Beck’s ‘cosmopolitans’ or Bauman’s ‘tourists’. Popular associations with some of these religious identities and their practices may indeed signify these values contemporarily.…”

Women's consumption of men's professional sport in Canada: Evidence of the ‘feminization’ of sports fandom and women as omnivorous sports consumers?

“…To conclude, the primary contributions of this study arise from the ability of the study design to offer new insights into the nature of women's sports fandom and their patterns of professional sports following, both contemporarily and in recent history. We do this through the understudied national context of Canada (Gemar, 2019b(Gemar, , 2020b, and through the currently absent methodology of large-scale quantitative analysis (Lagaert and Roose, 2018). In doing so, it is hoped that this article will initiate a new line of research, one which draws on quantitative studies of women sports fans across different contexts to complement the rich qualitative data that is emerging in this field.…”

“…It also makes one contribution towards changing the dearth of research on sports fandom in Canada. Although sports fandom plays a prominent role in Canadian society and there is a breadth to the sporting landscape in North America that is not matched in other areas of the world, research on sports followers is generally absent (Gemar, 2019b(Gemar, , 2020a(Gemar, , 2021. The originality of this article also lies in our use of quantitative research methodologies to examine women fans.…”