
Inventing Tradition
Cowboy Sports in a Postmodern Age
Michael J. Hightower(Author)
AV Akademikerverlag
Published on 4. June 2012
Book
Paperback/Softback
204 pages
978-3-639-42263-4 (ISBN)
Description
Revision with unchanged content. As a one-time working cowboy in the American Southwest, the author was intrigued to find cowboy sports in his adopted state of Virginia. Blending scholarship and horsemanship, he competed in dozens of cowboy contests and collected data on a group whose members (himself included) he dubbed "Old Dominion cowboys." Through a close reading of his fieldnotes, he identified themes that emerge from a typical day of penning, sorting, and cutting cattle. He analyzes these themes in the context of frontier history, identity formation, the Western genre of entertainment, social memory studies, and sport sociology, all in an effort to situate cowboy sports in a cultural and historical context. Dr. Hightower frames these rowdy sports as frontier relics that were appropriated and modified by turn-of-the-twentieth-century cultural leaders to mitigate the disruptive effects of modernity. Cowboy sports thus fall under the rubric of invented tradition. Today, they serve as avenues of identity formation and cultural expression in ways that are both representative of and resistant to postmodernity.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 220 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
322 gr
ISBN-13
978-3-639-42263-4 (9783639422634)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Michael J. Hightower, PhD, is an adjunct professor of sociology at the University of Virginia. His research interests lie in the areas of sport sociology, comparative & historical sociology, and communications. Author photos by Jason M. Warren. Inside photos by Jason M. Warren, S. Barrett Hightower, Mark Meier, and the author.