In Praise of Athletic and Cultural Mongrelization

I find the particulars of Frisby’s essay, “Promising Physical Activity Inclusion Practices for Chinese Immigrant Women in Vancouver, Canada,” completely persuasive. More specifically, her argument that social inclusion should be based on mutual interaction and mutual learning between immigrants and members of the host nation, her claim that simply relying on the status quo even in the most progressive western nations will likely not promote intercultural exchange and integration, her insistence that neither national groups nor cultural minorities are monoliths, her feminist-based, gender-sensitive approach to this issue, and her reliance on dialogue in the form of a multicultural workshop to foster communication between these two groups regarding, among other things, the meaning of sport, all strike me as not only entirely plausible but as entirely compelling points. What I am less sure about is where to place her own argument for social inclusion in the various multiculturalist accounts of social inclusion she sketches in her paper. That is, if we set aside the assimilationist model of social inclusion, which blithely insists subordinate cultural groups simply adapt to the ways of the dominant group, I am not at all sure that her own account of mutual cultural and sporting accommodation fits comfortably with what she calls the intergrationist model, or what she calls after Sandercock the shallow and rich multiculturalism models, or what, finally, she calls echoing DeSensi “valuing diversity” that requires the “acceptance of, adaptation to, and integration of difference” (2010, p. 9). Frisby’s written remarks suggest she is somewhat partial to the “valuing diversity” account of social inclusion, which is worrisome because I think it is, in fact, the least suited to her argument for reasons that will, I hope, shortly become clear. What needs be said for now, however, is that my worry about where to place her argument is not a trivial intellectual worry, but a profoundly practical one. That is because how we construe social inclusion will obviously play a large role in how we go about trying to accomplish it. The revised Canadian 1988 Multiculturalism Act that Frisby mentions in her paper is a case in point, because it advocates for two goals that, I think, are at loggerheads with one another, namely, the goal “to support all of Canada’s cultures,” and the goal “to promote creative encounters and interchanges” between cultural groups” (2010, p. 6). The first goal commits us to the project of cultural preservation, whereas the second one commits us to the significantly different project of cultural innovation and reinvention. I think Frisby’s

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