In September 2019, 19,000 amateur runners participated in the Canada Army Run, a road race hosted by the Canadian Forces (CF). This ethnographic study explores the event as a site of socialization, demonstrating that the Army Run: (a) focuses on promoting the CF rather than maximizing race results, (b) promotes the CF by exceptionalizing its members, and (c) is a celebratory site of promilitary socialization and recruitment that precludes critical engagement with the CF. These findings indicate that military promotional strategies have evolved since the immediate post 9/11 era; whereas previous initiatives used sport to tie local military agendas into larger neoliberal military imperatives, the 2019 Army Run demonstrates a new tactic, depoliticizing the CF and reifying an idealized, decontextualized Canadian military.
CITATION STYLE
Desjardins, B. M. (2021). Running (for) the military: An ethnography of sport militarism at the Canada Army Run. Sociology of Sport Journal, 38(3), 276–284. https://doi.org/10.1123/SSJ.2020-0011
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