DEFINING ONE'S LIFE THROUGH SPORT
Kinesiology prof looks at sport as
part of everyday life

by James Keller

Douglas Brown wants to reconfigure the perceptions that both athletes and the general public have about the sporting community. In doing so, he hopes to learn more about how people incorporate their bodies and physical culture into their everyday lives.

To do this, the kinesiology professor will examine the lives and attitudes of Calgary speedskaters for his three-year-long, SSHRC funded study, Calgary’s Olympic Legacy Project.

"The reason I think this project is important is that sport is very often considered this extra thing we do," says Brown, pointing to the attitudes of both athletes and non-athletes. "For some people, doing sport is truly an extension of their everyday life. It’s how they define themselves; it’s how they create a social and cultural identity."

Brown will interview up to 64 people who actively use the U of C’s Olympic Oval over the next three years. Through these open-ended interviews, Brown will collect and compile the life histories of each participant, discovering how they operate within this specific sport and this very unique space.

"My interest is really in the relationship between sporting behaviours, sporting spaces and the lives of everyday people," explains Brown, adding that his study will examine not only elite athletes, but student and recreational speedskaters as well. "I expect to find a great deal of variety at the Oval. Even though they all do the same activity, even though they all use the same space, the individual histories that they bring to that activity and the space will create something unique and meaningful for them and the community."

Again, Brown emphasizes the results of this study are not just for researchers and objective observers, but also for the athletes themselves. He hopes those taking part in the study can gain a new perspective from this process of reflection and autobiographical story telling.

"I think athletes do not always recognize the opportunities they have to deviate from the behavioural norms or stereotypical identities associated with the practice of sport," says Brown.

Beyond the reach of the Oval, Brown points out that the research will have implications and value elsewhere, both in sport and beyond.

"The common thing I expect to find is that everybody engages in a degree of negotiation in whatever cultural pastime they’re involved with," Brown says. "If a person who likes to debate, for example, goes into a debating society where there are very formal rules, very codified ways of behaving, the experience is still going to be moderated by the longitudinal nature of their life. Everybody is going to bring in something different to the space."

Brown was also able to draw from his own experiences as he developed the project and his research goals. As a former cross-country skier, Brown can relate to the prior restrictions and attitudes that are imposed on athletes.

"I didn’t compete at the same level as some of the athletes down at the Oval, so my perceptions are a little different," Brown admits. "But I can remember being awe-inspired and shy and uncertain about my own identity as an athlete when I came into contact with people whose public notoriety due to sporting success preceded their physical presence in a shared sporting space."

Upon completion, the life histories will be archived in the McKimmie Library and exchanged with other institutions conducting the similar types of research.

"The production of life histories is fundamentally an archival process. I’m generating life histories that not only I will use; hopefully other scholars and students will use them as well."