Cultural production and the reproduction of power: Political economy, public television and high-performance sport in Canada

Sport and broadcast media have had a long and intimate association within Canadian society, from limited range radio broadcasts of professional hockey in the 1920's to an internationally connected multi-million dollar industry of the 1990's. Within this historical development, the emergence of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's English-language television network as a primary producer of high performance, or elite-level, athletics has been most notable, bearing implications of state control in the spheres of sport and broadcasting alike. The central argument of this dissertation is that the televisual presentation of "amateur" sport on the public television network constitutes an important site of cultural production, and its critical analysis reveals a seemingly innocuous area of social practice as profoundly supportive of conditions favourable to particular forms of power. Specifically, I argue that the systematic organization of sport and the logic which informs its televisual production contributes to the reconstruction of dominant/subordinate relations of gender within a cultural realm which is anything but politically neutral.;The final part of the thesis presents evidence collected from a series of interviews with broadcast officials and field research conducted at production sites. Three events (international-level speedskating, diving and track) are examined in terms of their origin and location on the agenda of CSC Sports and the production practices which shapes them for public presentation. This is followed by a critical analysis of documents relating to the role of the state and capital in elite sport, and further analysis based on the established theoretical framework. The issue of consensual power, emanating from and reinforced by fractionally located forms of control, is examined in light of evidence which reveals a significant application of a gendered logic of production. The thesis concludes with suggestions for the extension of a research agenda based on the critical study of culture, sport and power.;Beginning with a discussion of the philosophy of sport as it exists under liberal-democratic capitalism, I move to a descriptive overview of amateur sport and the television industry, mapping the history of the Canadian high performance system onto the emergence and increasing diversification of television broadcasting. The next part of the thesis presents a series of theoretical arguments (based on conceptual treatments of hegemony, culture and feminism) wherein I suggest that the hegemonic process, carried forward and elaborated within a sphere of society often deemed "unproductive", exists in partnership with patriarchal structures, and that the interconnective power of the state, private capital, the broadcasting industry and the high performance sport community works toward the systemic structuring of relations of gender.