Notice Board

Department of Kinesiology & Physical Education: 2021 Hart Cantelon Distinguished Lecture presents Lessons from the Old: Aging and Physical Activity, Beyond Neoliberal Pressures and Burdens on the State with Kristi Allain, Canada Research Chair and Associate Professor at St. Thomas University.

Join us on Zoom.

As Canada becomes demographically older, state actors, economists, the press, and the public have asserted that the old have a responsibility to care for themselves as a way of mitigating the costs of age-related physical decline. These neoliberal pressures on the old call for near-constant physical activity. Participation in sport and physical fitness has become a marker of self-worth in later life. As these pressures mount, it is important to see how the old both take up and resist social pressures to stay fit and active, in all their contradictions. Drawing from ethnographic research with older men in curling and hockey, this talk will address the various ways that these men resist neo-liberal pressures and instead construct their later-life sports practices as inclusive, ethical, and more pleasurable than the sports played during their youth. This talk poses important questions about the ethics of contemporary sport practices and suggests that there might be alternative ways of doing sports well, ways that actually include and celebrate the old. 

Kristi Allain's work examines the intersections of physical activity and identity, asking how dominant notions of Canadian national identity privilege particular members of the nation while marginalizing others. Her work examines this celebration/marginalization dichotomy within Canadian winter sport.