Full Description
The rodeo cowboy is one of the most evocative images of the Wild West. The master of the frontier, he is renowned for his masculinity, toughness, and skill. A Wilder West returns to rodeo's small-town roots to explore how rodeo simultaneously embodies and subverts our traditional understandings of power relations between man and nature, women and men, settlers and Aboriginal peoples.
An important contact zone - a chaotic and unpredictable place of encounter - rodeo has challenged expected social hierarchies, bringing people together across racial and gender divides to create friendships, rivalries, and unexpected intimacies. At the rodeo, Aboriginal riders became local heroes, and rodeo queens spoke their minds.
A Wilder West complicates the idea of western Canada as a "white man's country" and shows how rural rodeos have been communities in which different rules applied. Lavishly illustrated, this creative history will change the way we see the West's most controversial sport.
Contents
Introduction
1 An Old-Timers' Town: Western Communities, Performance, and Contact Zones
2 Truly Western in Its Character: Identities, Affinities, and Intimacies at Western Canadian Rodeo
3 A Sport, Not a Carnival Act: Transforming Rodeo from Performance to Sport
4 Heavens No! Let's Keep It Rodeo! Pro Rodeo and the Making of the Modern Cowboy
5 Going Pro: Community Rodeo in the Era of Professionalization
6 Where the Cowboys Are Indians: Indian and Reserve Rodeo in the Canadian West
Conclusion
Glossary; Notes; Index
