Society for the Anthropology of Religion

Volunteered - Oral Presentation Session

Moral-Ethical Change in Ice Hockey: An Alternative Approach to Sport as Religion

Ethics, Morality, Cultural Model

Presenter(s)

• PB

  Patrick Bondy

  MA Student
  Dalhousie University

Co-Author(s)

Howard Ramos (Dalhousie University)

Anthropologists of morality and ethics tend to focus on the religious lives of those they research. And while anthropologists of sport have often approached sport as a religion, when doing so they focus on the ubiquity of ritual and collective effervescence in sport. In this paper, drawing on eight months of fieldwork and interviews with hockey players, parents and fans in Halifax and Toronto, Canada, I investigate moral and ethical change in hockey. I look at changes in hockey in terms of changes in 1) the nature and severity of penalties in the game, 2) expectations around fan and parent behaviour in hockey arenas, and 3) the unwritten ‘code’ of the game. I will develop a 'seepage' model of culture change, where change happens slowly and actors resist or acquiesce to these changes to different degrees. I will demonstrate how research from the anthropology of sport can contribute to emergent conversation on the nature of ethical and moral change.