Examining power relations are a fundamental requirement when discerning the affects of sport in particular social environments. As such, the use of sport as a means of social control for Aboriginal youth that targeted change in behaviour, destruction of culture, and reinforcement of Eurocentric values was not a mechanism confined to residential schools. Accordingly, the subsequent section will provide an examination of Aboriginal sport policy developments in Canada and sequentially analyze the overall implications of these manifestations using the Foucauldian notions of biopower, Panopticism and governmentality. The Native Sport and Recreation program existed in Canada from 1972 to 1981. This program was established by Fitness and Amateur
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First, the policy developments of the Native Sport and Recreation Program, Sport: Everbody’s Business, and Sport the Way Ahead will be analyzed using Foucault’s understanding of discipline, Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, and biopower. In the following section the APP will be examined using Foucault’s notion of governmentality. As such, according to a Foucauldian understanding, the goal of discipline is to facilitate normalization, which is defined by the dominant discourse of a particular society. To clarify, as Harvey and Rail (1995) …show more content…
Ultimately, the Panopticon lead to a process of self-discipline or self-surveillance wherein individuals learn to regulate themselves according to specific social norms. This offers a valuable paradigm for how societies function and morally regulate individuals as power becomes normalized and instilled into the individual as, “an infestesmal power over the active body” (Foucault, 1977, pp. 137). Panoptic surveillance ultimately produces self-regulation that is inseparable from the body, but paradoxically appears to the individual as a type of freedom to shape conceptions of the self. When considering the fundamental assimilationist objectives of the Native Sport and Recreation Program and the subsequent development of sport policies in 1990’s the continued external control that continued to exclude Aboriginal voices echoes the conceptual framework of Panopticism. These policies provided powerful mechanisms of control and surveillance that sought conformity through the continued socialization to colonial, Eurocentric norms predicated upon
First, the policy developments of the Native Sport and Recreation Program, Sport: Everbody’s Business, and Sport the Way Ahead will be analyzed using Foucault’s understanding of discipline, Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, and biopower. In the following section the APP will be examined using Foucault’s notion of governmentality. As such, according to a Foucauldian understanding, the goal of discipline is to facilitate normalization, which is defined by the dominant discourse of a particular society. To clarify, as Harvey and Rail (1995) …show more content…
Ultimately, the Panopticon lead to a process of self-discipline or self-surveillance wherein individuals learn to regulate themselves according to specific social norms. This offers a valuable paradigm for how societies function and morally regulate individuals as power becomes normalized and instilled into the individual as, “an infestesmal power over the active body” (Foucault, 1977, pp. 137). Panoptic surveillance ultimately produces self-regulation that is inseparable from the body, but paradoxically appears to the individual as a type of freedom to shape conceptions of the self. When considering the fundamental assimilationist objectives of the Native Sport and Recreation Program and the subsequent development of sport policies in 1990’s the continued external control that continued to exclude Aboriginal voices echoes the conceptual framework of Panopticism. These policies provided powerful mechanisms of control and surveillance that sought conformity through the continued socialization to colonial, Eurocentric norms predicated upon