Browsing by Author "Jacobs, Sarah Elizabeth"

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    Chasing Giants: An Ethnography of Developments in Speed Skating
    (2021-01-14) Jacobs, Sarah Elizabeth; Mather, Charles M.; Hatt, Doyle G.; Perić, Sabrina
    In this ethnography I examine the many developments of speed skating, from the history of the sport, to the construction of the Olympic Oval and the development of young athletes seeking to make the Canadian national team. I also survey the development of sport studies, situating my research within almost a century of scholarship on play, games and sport. I account for these developments with an overarching interest in continuity and change, considering the processes and events that deliver particular historical moments, and the ways in which the past becomes a resource for the future. Throughout, I explore relationships between people, practices, ideas, material objects and formal organizations. In so doing, I draw on classical oppositions within social theory and the study of sport, such as structure and agency, or ritual and record. These contradictions serve as productive tensions, enabling and enriching one another, and framing the specific transformations of times, spaces and bodies that I document. Lastly, I conclude by offering some commentary on sport as it relates to play, routine practice and modernity, arguing that for those who chase giants, both their work and their world remains unfinished.
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