Changing on the Fly

Hockey through the Voices of South Asian Canadians

By Courtney Szto

SERIES: Critical Issues in Sport and Society

Rutgers University Press

Winner of the NASSS Outstanding Book Award

Hockey and multiculturalism are often noted as defining features of Canadian culture; yet, rarely are we forced to question the relationship and tensions between these two social constructs. This book examines the growing significance of hockey in Canada’s South Asian communities. The Hockey Night in Canada Punjabi broadcast serves as an entry point for a broader consideration of South Asian experiences in hockey culture based on field work and interviews conducted with hockey players, parents, and coaches in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. This book seeks to inject more “color” into hockey’s historically white dominated narratives and representations by returning hockey culture to its multicultural roots. It encourages alternative and multiple narratives about hockey and cultural citizenship by asking which citizens are able to contribute to the webs of meaning that form the nation’s cultural fabric.

Changing on the Fly will force a rethinking of race, hockey, and the politics of citizenship in the social margins. In this pioneering text, Szto’s rich intertextuality highlights the competing and contradictory nature of race and representation in sport. There is nothing else like it. Stanley Thangaraj, author of Desi Hoop Dreams

Changing on the Fly offers an original, powerful analysis of the hockey rink and the racial, national, gendered, and political landscape. Szto's ability to build on existing scholarship all while carving out new areas of analysis and her centering of South Asian Canadians' voices will change the ways we talk about sport, about hockey and about the (South) Asian Diaspora. Stzo is a force who will shape discussions in sports studies for decades to come. The future of sports studies is in good hands with Stzo leading the way. David Leonard, author of Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field

A groundbreaking book. Courtney Szto’s insightful study of hockey’s growing significance in Canadian South Asian communities, as well as challenges faced by racialized Canadians when they play the game, makes an important contribution to the analysis of contemporary Canadian society. Richard Gruneau, Simon Fraser University

This is a desperately-needed intervention from our most influential scholar of race and hockey through both a systematic and nuanced analysis of how multiculturalism and racism shape Canada and its beloved sport, and a powerful account of how those dynamics are experienced. Nathan Kalman-Lamb, author of Game Misconduct: Injury, Fandom, and the Business of Sport

Interview: Dr. Courtney Szto, author of 'Changing on the Fly: Hockey Through the Voices of South Asian Canadians'
https://www.burnitalldownpod.com/episodes/interview-dr-courtney-szto-author-of-changing-on-the-fly-hockey-through-the-voices-of-south-asian-canadians Burn It All Down podcast

Changing on the Fly interrogates the culture of hockey honestly, and from a place of love, offering a critique that is meant to change the nature of the sport so that everyone — not just white, straight Canadian men and boys — can truly have a place in it. The Tyee

The groundbreaking work of Courtney Szto in Changing on the Fly captures the multiple ways that the Canadian national pastime of ice hockey constitutes an important site to examine the essential izing and shifting realms of race and belonging....[A] call to action and a demand to think about race critically in relation to sport and the nation. Changing on the Fly destabilizes the normative investments in sport and the nation while articulating forms of citizenship that can be liberating. With the increasing discussion and silence around race in professional sports, this book is vital to understanding the expansive infrastructure that secures whiteness and excludes communities of color.'
Sociology of Sport Journal

COURTNEY SZTO is an assistant professor in the School of Kinesiology and Health Studies at at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. She is a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) funded researcher whose work broadly explores the relationship between physical cultures and intersectional justice.

Dedication
List of Acronyms
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Complicating Canadian Culture
Research Methods
Overview of the Book
Chapter 1 Myth Busting: Hockey, multiculturalism, and Canada
            Myth #1: Hockey is Canada
                        Who or what are we integrating?
            Myth #2: Canada is a multicultural haven
                        Whiteness in Canadian hockey
                        Citizenship
                        South Asians in Canada
                                    The Space of Surrey
Chapter 2 Narratives from the Screen: Media and cultural citizenship
            Hockey Night in Punjabi
            Ethnic (Sports) Media
                        Breaking Barriers
            Co-Authoring One’s Existence
            Limits of Ethnic Media
Chapter 3 White Spaces, Different Faces: Policing membership at the rink and in the nation
            Who belongs in a space? Who is trespassing?
            Self-Identification
                        Brown
            Being the Only One
Chapter 4 Racist Taunts of Just Chirping?
            Just chirping?
            Was it really racist?
            An archive of evidence
Chapter 5 South Asian Masculinities and Femininities
            The irony of hockey performativity
            South Asian masculinities
                        Verbal trauma and the body
            South Asian femininities
                        The noisiness of women’s hockey
Chapter 6 Hockey Hurdles and Resilient Subjects: Unpacking forms of capital
            Navigating forms of capital
                        Cost, time, and interconnections with other forms of capital
                        Language and other aspects of cultural capital
                        The gatekeepers
            Assumptions about diversity: Flaws in logic
            Meritocratic and resilient subjects
Chapter 7 Racialized Money and White Fragility: Class and resentment in hockey
            Model minorities
            Throwing money at hockey
            White fragility
            Brown out hockey: Capitalism at its best
Chapter 8 Taking Stock: Public memory and the re-telling of hockey in Canada
            Hockey Hall of Fame
            The role of media
            Writing in: DIY citizenship
Conclusion: A commitment to the future
            Shifting labor
            Writing the wrong
Appendix A: Qualitative methodology
Appendix B: Participant information
Appendix C: British Columbia competitive hockey structure
References
About the author

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