Paper short abstract:

The ethnographic study of children's sport reveals this as a space of rampant and robust remembrance. Here I consider the implications and analytical challenges of enlisting memories of one's childhood and athletic experiences as an explicit part of the study of contemporary children's sports.

Paper long abstract:

Situated at the analytical intersection between childhood as a realm of socialization and sport as a medium of physical and cultural expression, the ethnographic study of children's sport further reveals this to be a space of rampant and robust remembrance. Of course, every adult ethnographer of childhood can expect to confront more or less fulsome or intense memories and personal adjudications of his or her own childhood. Was it a "good", "bad", or unremarkably "normal" childhood that an individual anthropologist brings to his or her investigations of childhood? To what extent and how can fleeting memories or more finished "accounts" of one's own childhood shape the anthropologist's examination or avoidance of the social terrain occupied by infants, children, and youth, not to mention parents and care-givers? In similar manner, ethnographers of sport typically embark upon their chosen fields of study equipped with personal experience of having played one or many games and sports during and possibly since childhood. Indeed, the embodied memory of trained physical movements and the incorporated aesthetics of particular styles of play and performance may be fundamental to framing the specific questions posed and analyses undertaken by ethnographers of sport.

Various forms and processes of remembrance have featured significantly in my ongoing study of sport and the cultural politics of childhood in Canada. In this chapter I shall consider the implications and analytical challenges of opting to enlist memories of one's childhood and athletic experiences as an explicit part of the ethnographic study of contemporary children's sports. The chapter will also assess the manner in which a participant observer's engagement as a parent of child athletes and as a volunteer coach serves to augment the range, complexity, and impact of personal memories within the context of ethnographic fieldwork and analysis. Finally, the chapter will explore the ways in which children's sport may be employed as an instrument for memorializing the self and family as a transitory domestic project and some of the hazards that this may entail.