14–17 Aug 2023
Ottawa
America/Toronto timezone

Exploring Social Class and Sport Participation of the Taoyuan High School Indigenous Baseball Players

Not scheduled
20m
Ottawa

Ottawa

Speaker

Kuan Chuan Yu (National Taiwan Sport University)

Description

Indigenous baseball players play an important role in Taiwan baseball. In Taiwanese professional baseball, more than 40% of the players are indigenous. This study examines the relationship between the Taiwanese indigenous’s socio-economic status and baseball participation. The research methods are semi-structured interviews and participatory observations on 15 high school new graduate indigenous baseball players in the Taoyuan City of Taiwan to analyze participants’ family economic, social status, and power classes. This study inducted the reasons for initially participating in high school baseball and combined the research findings with social class theory. The results showed five main reasons for initially participating in baseball: interest, family influence, poor academic performance, influence from peers, and failure of family members to take care of them. In addition, there are four main reasons for joining a high school baseball team: high school coach invitations, family recommendations, team performance considerations, and influence from peers. This study further implemented a social class analysis and found that all participants were from the middle and lower classes, which is an important finding of this study. The findings highlight how high school baseball players becoming professional league players affects their family environment, and this phenomenon is widespread in low socio-economic status—an understanding of how the effects of social class for high school players participate in baseball.

Primary author

Kuan Chuan Yu (National Taiwan Sport University)

Presentation materials

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