Fifteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

When stock car racing is conflated with NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) - which oftentimes it has by historians, sociologists, and other scholars of the social sciences - the identity of this broader auto racing discipline is subsumed by a single organizing body and its respective history. That is, stock car racing becomes merely a synonym for NASCAR. As a result, this allows for a rich, nuanced history of stock car racing to go unnoticed in the shadow of NASCAR’s monolith. Even more, this allows for our understanding of what constitutes perpetuation of misconceptions and falsehoods regarding our understandings of sporting cultures, particularly within the American context. When we make sweeping statements about stock car racing being “the most Southern U.S. sport on earth,” for example, is this an accurate representation of stock car racing’s cultural, political, and technological development at local tracks across small-town America, or is this predicated solely on the unique regional (re: Southern) history of NASCAR and its fleet of national touring series? As such, this study provides a historical assessment of the sport of American stock car racing, with particular regard to the cultural traditions and cultural differences on how this sport is staged and viewed, as well as its influence on community identity - an identity that transcends the U.S. sporting south and in turn, should be re-framed as representing small-town America across regional boundaries.