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Description
This paper considers how sport sociologists can engage publics by including sonic walks in their research alongside scholarly publications. It thus addresses the ISSA’s call for papers that make the study of sport meaningful to groups outside academia. Specifically, it identifies the value of designing a sonic walk of the parade route designed to celebrate the Toronto Raptors’ 2019 National Basketball Association (NBA) Conference Finals victory.
The Raptors’ participation in the 2019 competition carried national significance. Commentators suggested that the association between hockey and national identity was declining, and Canada was becoming a basketball nation (Aladejebi et al., 2022). This development offers an ideal opportunity to evaluate the growth of basketball culture in Canada. However, it is imperative to expand beyond a limiting focus on national myths to account for the material and embodied dimensions of the relationship between sport and nationalism. Springgay and Truman’s (2018) concept of “walking with” and approach to designing sonic walks offers an ideal methodology to achieve this goal. Informed by their queer, decolonial, and more-than-human approach to conducting place-based research, this paper proposes a sonic walk of the Raptor’s parade route narrated by Canadians discussing their relationship to the land. This walk advances three goals. First, offer Canadians the opportunity to co-author national narratives about basketball (see: Szto, 2020). Second, create a multi-sensory (aural, visual, haptic) experience for users that will prompt them to evaluate their relationship to the land. Third, highlight the material, racial, and Settler colonial dimensions of the Raptors’ victory.
