Recreation and Leisure Studies 100: Multiculturalism
Who am I?
Leisure behaviour
(football player, etc.)
Social class
(working class family, etc.)
Gender
(male/female)
Race/ethnicity
(asian, African American, etc.)
Understanding Terms
Race versus ethnicity
Race: Physical characteristics (skin colour, hair colour, eyes, etc.)
Ethnicity: cultural traditions/characteristics (language, value systems, religion, etc.)
“Racialized ethnicity” (Omi & Winant, 1994)
When referring to people by both race AND ethnicity (the two overlap)
o Ex. “you’re Chinese”
“Visible minority group” (Employment Equity Act S.C. 1995, c. 44 (section 3))
Persons other than Aboriginal people or indigenous people that are non-Caucasian in race, or non-
white in colour
Demographic Trends: Region of Waterloo and Canada
In 2006, 14% of K-W was made up of visible minorities
Projection for 2031 is 28% (projected to double)
31% of Canada’s population is predicted to be made up of visible minorities
Predicted that over 70% of visible minorities will be living in urban centres (Toronto, Montreal, or
Vancouver)
What is the impact on leisure??
Right now, the impact is uncertain
o Can begin to answer the impact of leisure by looking at the different models of cultural
change
Models of Cultural Change
Anglo-conformity
When ethnic and racial divisions are shed, and visual minority groups are expected to conform to
dominant majority
o Not a popular model of cultural change
o When groups come in and are expected to leave all of their divisions behind them to
conform to new cultures
Melting pot
When ethnic and racial divisions are shed, and a new culture is created that is unique to this new
group of people
o Most often used to describe the US
Multiculturalism/Cultural Pluralism
When people move into a new place and their diversity is respected and accommodated
o Freedom of choice (able to be whoever you want to be)
o Most often used to describe Canada
Selective acculturation
When people move into a new place and they maintain their ethnic traditions very strongly
o They learn just enough to live in their new place in a new place to survive
Leisure Expressiveness and Ethnic Consciousness
Leisure can be an important social space for traditional cultural values
Leisure can play a critical role in the persistence of ethnic-group identity, despite powerful trends
toward Anglo conformity in the workplace, at school, etc. Leisure is an important space for people to maintain their homeland traditions/values/culture
Presumably, in our leisure we are more free (to speak whatever language, whatever activity,
connect with the people we choose to connect; we are intrinsically motivated to do this)
Methodological Issues
Emotionally laden concepts
For both researcher and those participating in the research
It makes some people uncomfortable (and can be challenging to study)
Moral and ethical concerns - use and abuse
Groups that have really been over-researched
Researches haven’t done a good job of treating communities with respect and getting back to them
and getting their input
Can dominant groups comprehend the experiences of outsiders (White scholars doing research on
race?)
Many scholars have been white
o Whether or not they can really appreciate the experiences of visual minority groups
Ethnographies of the imagined, the imaginary and the critically real: blackness, whiteness, the north of
England and rugby league (Spracklen, Timmins, & Long, 2010)
Three authors discuss how race has impacted their research in the area of rugby culture and
masculinity
White researchers:
black players were mistrustful and hesitant to talk about issues of racism and their concerns
Own “insider” perspective vs. “outsiders” experiences
Black researcher:
As a well-known rugby player had access to predominantly white clubs etc.. but talking about
racism was still problematic
Found his race and background to be factors he could utilize in different ways
This is an emotionally laden situations Ugly on the Diamonds: An Examination of White Privilege in Youth Baseball (Glover, 2007)
Explored the experiences of adults/kids involved in ‘First String’, a co-ed youth baseball league in the
US for African American children
Confronted the complexity involved in being ‘both a recipient of, yet advocate against, white privilege’
with the:
“explicit intent to encourage other scholars to take up the challenge of exposing white privilege
in leisure practice and policy.” (Glover, 2007, pg. 201)
Origins of Canadian Research
Malpass (1973) and the “total community”
In order to understand this area, we need to research the total community (including ethnic and
racial minorities (VMG))
Recreational services failed to address cultural differences (1984 Ministry of Recreation and Tourism)
Significance of early research
Wake-up call to researchers to acknowledge that we are not understanding our cultural mosaic
Leisure, Place, and Identity: The Experiences of Ethnic Minority Youth (Tirone & Pedlar, 2005)
Leisure allowed second-generation South-Asian-Canadian youth to enter and exit three different
communities with relative ease:
Home/family/community (people they knew from their homeland)
Dominant cultural spaces (leisure that occurred within their dominant group; with school
friends)
Diverse leisure spaces (leisure experiences with other visual minority groups)
Leisure activities such as sports, music, etc.
Access to the three communities offered the youth opportunities to learn customs, experiment with
social roles, and experience both independence and support/acceptance.
The Role of Leisure for Chinese Immigrants Living in the Greater Toronto Area (Ng, 2011)
Older adult immigrants from China (ages 50-65) Explored their leisure experiences and the meaning they attached to those experiences
How their leisure experiences impacted their lives and the meaning they attached to those
experiences
Findings:
Changing leisure with changing culture
Achieving and maintaining health
essential to experiencing freedom and choice
essential for cultural expression and learning
Feeling a sense of community (despite being new to Canada)
Overall: leisure is an essential component of life
Leisure was a site for cultural expression (a place where they could speak their own language, follow
their own traditions, etc.) and the development of an ethnic community within Canada
Leisure was also a way for them to access what they called “Canadian culture”
Leisure was a really essential component of their life while living in Canada
Two Types of Discrimination
35% of new Canadians say they experienced some form of experience in the past 5 years
o Dond’t know what % occurs during their leisure time
Perceived Discrimination
South Asian teenagers (Ti
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