Northern sandlots : a social history of Maritime baseball / Colin D. Howell.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Howell has written an informative and insightful social history that examines the transformation of Maritime community life from the 1860s to the late twentieth century.

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CHOICE Review

In this study of social processes, Howell uses the concepts of postmodern social science for paradigms and the world of baseball for a laboratory. He argues that as capitalism transformed the Maritime Provinces and New England after the middle of the 19th century, the baseball diamond, like much else, became "contested terrain" in the intersecting negotiations over issues of class, gender, ethnicity, and race. Until WW I, class considerations tended to control the shaping of a baseball culture in the region. In the postwar years, class was supplanted by regional and community identity. Finally, in the 1950s, undermined by various continental pressures and shifts in capitalism, community-based baseball in New England and the Maritimes collapsed, leaving the two regions on each side of the border free to go their separate scheduling ways when they later regrouped. The first chapter introduces theoretical approaches; succeeding chapters, organized in accordance with important contemporary analytical concepts (e.g., "The Social Construction of Masculinity," "The Others"), trace the history of baseball in the region. This work is likelier to speak to the social historian than to the baseball history buff, but in its summoning forth of forgotten diamond ghosts it can appeal even to the hopelessly pre-postmodern fan. General; graduate.