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North American Society for the Sociology of Sport :: Société nord-americaine de sociologie du sport :: La Sociedad Norteamericana para la Sociología del Deporte

Re-Imagining Community/Re(En)Visioning Sport   **   November 1-4, 2006   **   Vancouver, British Columbia, CANADA

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Posters | Papers | Panels

After choosing the session to which you will be submitting your paper proposal, please go to the Abstract Submission page (linked on the menu on the left and at the bottom of this page) to submit your abstract. Please do not send your abstract directly to the session organizer.

POSTER SESSIONS

Open Session
Organizer: Nancy Spencer, Bowling Green State University


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PAPER SESSIONS

Action Sports: Empowerment or Co-Optation?
Since the mid-1990's, action or "extreme" sports have been heralded as sites for a variety of types of empowerment. In this session, we examine the fundamental questions of sport as a tool for empowerment, most especially within areas of gender, race, class, and age.
Organizer: Bob Rinehart, Washington State University
And ain't I a citizen?
This session will present papers that investigate the concept of designated (through legislation or tradition) national sports and the ability of females and/or specific minority groups to access participation in the 'National Game' at any level. Many nations have designated 'national' sports which are closed to girls and women's participation, which limit or prohibit participation of specific marginalized groups or minorities, or which function as a developmental device to transmit and train masculinity within the commonsense understanding of this construction in the specific country. The designation of a national sport which may restrict or prohibit females or other citizens from participating likely reflects a structure for sport delivery which also promotes sexist, racist, or ethnic/religious bias. Papers are invited which examine this aspect of nationalism and sport.
Organizer: Dayna Daniels, University of Lethbridge
Area, Diaspora and Sport Studies: Re-imagining Conceptual Categories
In the debate between Diaspora and Area Studies, sport studies has yet to intervene, but the potential to do so exists. For example, though not framed as Area Studies, several scholars in our field have claimed themselves to be experts on Africa, Asia, or Latin America. Moreover, the study of globalization continues to flourish, and interest in diaspora and transnationality is increasing. However, rarely are these texts read together.
This session invites papers that examine sport in various regions and discusses how Diaspora Studies can contribute to the study of sport (and vice versa), with consideration of how we can intervene in debates between Diaspora and Area Studies.
Organizer: Yuka Nakamura, University of Toronto
Asian/Americans and Sport
Popular understandings of race/racism and sport frame them in black and white—moral panics over crime and deviance, progressive celebrations of inclusion and acceptance, and troubled accounts of inherent aptitudes that reinforce established social hierarchies. Asian American athletes, coaches, and fans have no place in these narratives. Unfortunately, sport studies has mirrored this broader pattern, neglecting and marginalizing the play and place of sport in Asian/American communities in the United States and Canada. This panel seeks to reframe race/racism and sport through close readings of the Asian (North) American sporting experience. On the one hand participants interpret the significance of Asian American athletes, teams, coaches, fans, and body cultures. On the other hand, they critically interrogate the silences, symbols and stories central to popular imagining and alienations of Asian Americans and sport. It concerns itself particularly with Orientalism and anti-Asian racism, the body and difference, identity and power, exclusion and athleticism in accounts of and engagements with sporting worlds.
Organizer: C. Richard King, Washington State University
Athletes with Disabilities in Sport
What does it mean for athletes with disabilities to be in the same world of sport in which all athletes exist? This session will address issues and themes concerning athletes with disabilities in sport. This session will focus on the inclusion/exclusion of athletes with disabilities at all levels of sport. Papers are encouraged to explore the connections of ableism with athletes with disabilities in sport. This session will examine the value and meaning relative to athletes with disabilities as part of mainstream sport.
Organizer: Eli Wolff, Center for the Study of Sport in Society
The Athletic Culture: Do Academics Matter?
Researchers and organizations (such as the Drake Group) have addressed the term "student-athlete." Issues such as the rights of athletes, academic progress, and time to degree (among others) have been discussed. An area discussed less is the impact of this culture on graduate students who have assistantships with an athletic department. At what expense are these students gaining experience? Are assistantships used in a similar manner as scholarships (control vs. informational)? Papers addressing both undergraduate and graduate student experiences within the athletic culture are invited.
Organizer: Brenda Riemer, Eastern Michigan University
The Body Habitus Revisited
This session will revisit various ways of representing the (post)modern body vital to the expressive performativity of identities and semantics of being (in) the body. Our focus is on unpacking the ideological complexities of notions of masculinity in sport, physical education and popular culture. Specifically we are interested in critiquing and theorizing semiotics of the male body from male cyborgs and hybrid bodies to ontologies and epistemologies of bodies of knowledge.
Organizers: Tatiana Ryba and Patricia Vertinsky, University of British Columbia
Challenges to the Gender Binary
This session focuses on theoretical and empirical challenges to the use of the two sex system as a basis for organizing modern sport.
Organizer: Ann Travers, Simon Fraser University
Coaching Cultures and Discourses
Well into the 1990s coaching was largely considered by coach educators and sport scientists to be a mechanistic process concerning the Xs and Os of sport. Coaches were trained to coach players not people and sport scientists examined the functional aspects of sport performance not the human aspects. The concept of the coach as a social being who operated within a dynamic environment steeped in various meanings was relatively ignored in the development of coach education programs. Only in the last decade has the coach come to be seen as a powerful social agent whose actions, opinions and beliefs are "inextricably linked to both the constraints and opportunities of human interaction" (Potrac et al, 2002, p. 184). This session explores a range of topics, issues and concernes related to coaching as a cultural production.
Organizer: Jim Denison, University of Bath
Critical investigations of Inclusion, Community, and Sport
Inclusion goals and strategies hold much promise in our efforts to make sporting and recreation communities more socially just spaces. However, theories of inclusion vary from being ill-defined to all-encompassing; ideological groundings of inclusion are sometimes materially-based, other times rights-based, and occasionally moralistically-based. Seldom do we ask critical questions about the nature of, and assumptions associated with, our well-intended goals of inclusivity. In this session, we seek to critically explore inclusion’s terrain epistemologically, theoretically, and/or practically within community. Presenters may ask and respond to questions such as: What is inclusion and how is it manifested in our sporting communities? Who is excluded in the process of inclusion? Who benefits from inclusion and who doesn’t? Is inclusion achievable and desirable as a path toward cohesive communities? And if so what conditions does it require? Our goal here is not to dismiss inclusion as a useful framework for social justice in sport, but to bring us closer to meeting its potential by critically investigating its nuances and complexities.
Organizer: Pamela Ponic and Wendy Frisby, University of British Columbia
Deviance in Sport
All sports are guided by numerous rules, regulations and expectations of proper behavior. Often, people involved in sports (players, coaches, owners, referees, and fans) engage in on-the-field and off-the-field deviance. Deviant behavior includes drug use, blood doping, taking performance-enhancing drugs, and sports gambling. Papers submitted for this session should center on these and/or other related topics.
Organizer: Tim Delaney, SUNY Oswego
Embodying the Sociology of Sport and Physical Activity
How does one engage in or promote a fully embodied sociology of sport and physical activity? This aim of this session is to and attract papers that discuss theories, methods, and/or practices that address this question. Examples of topics or issues that papers in this session might discuss: transcending the body s absent presence in sport and physical activity research, understanding the body as a multidimensional medium for the constitution of society through sport physical activity studies, and the need to place sociology of the body and physical activity before sociology of sport in undergraduate Kinesiology curricula.
Organizer: Robert Pitter, Acadia University
Examining How Sport Construct Ideals About Masculinity, Race, Sexuality, and Self in the Sporting Experiences of Black Males
Beyond sport being used as a means of social mobility for many young Black males, sport has been a space where identities are constructed about masculinity, sexuality, race, and self. Too often, it is within the culture of sport that indoctrinate young males about masculinity, sexuality, race, and self. Furthermore, values about self and self-worth are formed within the culture of sport for many Black males. This session seeks to engage the following questions: How does the culture of sport construct identities about masculinity, sexuality, race, and self in the lives of young Black males?
Organizer: Billy Hawkins, University of Georgia
Faith-Based Physical Activity and Sport Initiatives
Privately sponsored sport, health, and fitness programs are growing in popularity in American society (Bucher & Krotee, 2002; Hawkins, 1999; Parkhouse, 2005). This trend may be due in part to a more affluent lifestyle, increased sport technology, certification standards for fitness professionals, and the demise of publicly funded programs. Interestingly, publicly funded programs have not been readily endorsed or implemented in spite of escalating levels of childhood and adolescent obesity (Lumpkin, 2002; Ogden at al., 2006). The decline in compulsory physical education offerings and rates of participation at the scholastic and collegiate levels are examples. "Faith-Based" Physical Activity and Sport Programs (FBPASP) appear to be increasing in popularity. Although these programs are not new they are somewhat different than conventional public and private programs with respect to their stated mission and source(s) of funding. The most celebrated FBPASP is the Young Men s Christian Association (YMCA). Established in England in the mid-19th century, the YMCA emanated from a movement known as "muscular Christianity." Proponents of the movement perceived a spiritual link between religion and sport, and thus extolled the virtues of healthy lifestyles for God and country. A reemergence of this concept appears to be taking shape within religious denominations and congregations around the country; thus, physical activity and sport program initiatives are being implemented and conducted in church-owned facilities. The growth of such programs and initiatives elicit a myriad of questions yet to be answered by researchers who study the social, cultural, and historical aspects of physical activity and sport. This session will solicit research studies and scholarly papers designed to acquaint conference attendees with this community-based trend, while concurrently attempting to address some of the questions raised by such activities. It is hoped that meaningful discourse will ensue as a result of the disc ussion topic.
Organizer: Demetrius Pearson, University of Houston
Fans, Spectators, and the Consumption of Sport
Abstract: This session is intended to highlight issues of fandom and spectatorship. An underexplored actor in commercial sport, the spectator and the spectator s experience of sport are open to the same exploration at the nexus of gender, class, and race as other topics in the sociology of sport. Papers are welcome on a wide range of topics concerning the fans/spectators relationship to commercial sport. These could include, but are not limited to, spectator engagement with sport, fan behavior and hooliganism, and the consumption of media spectacles.
Organizer: Russell Field, University of Toronto
Gender Identity and Sport Participation
This session seeks to explore the social forces that may impact the participation in sports traditionally identified as either male or female. The rise, for example, in college/university women playing rugby in the USA (identified by the NCAA as the fastest growing collegiate sport in the USA) has elicited interest in those factors that may determine whether participation is socially acceptable for males or females.
Organizer: Ken Muir, Appalachian State University
Gender, Media and Major Events
Recent research indicates that some females gain high levels of media coverage during major events such as the Olympic or Commonwealth Games or tennis grand slams. In this session, we are seeking papers that qualitatively explore the kinds of media representations of women that emerge during such events, with a particular focus on how such representations intersect with existing understandings or ideologies of femininity, gender and/or nationalism.
Organizers: Pirkko Markula, University of Bath and Toni Bruce, University of Waikato
Gender, Space and Culture in Sport
This session seeks papers that engage in discussions about how the intersections of gender, space and culture affect/direct participation in sport. Submissions that focus on broad examinations of these topics or more specific case studies are welcome.
Organizer: Jodi Cohen, Bridgewater State College
Graduate Student to Tenured Professor: A Practical Guide
There are so many things that Graduate students and Assistant Professors should know about the processes of academia. This session will address key concepts and questions new faculty should explore.
Part I: Key Concepts (Lecture/Question & Answer)
  1. Job Search/Interviewing
  2. Making the transition: demands & decisions of the first year
  3. Major concerns—How do I...manage my time, increase my research, keep up with scholarly developments, recruit students to my classes, cope with stress?
  4. Collegiality, professionalism and ethics
  5. Research agenda for the beginner
  6. Art and politics of teaching, research, and tenure
  7. Ideas to smooth out rough spots on the academic road
Part II: Key Questions (Small Group) Focus & Discussion
  1. Development and discussion of questions Students/Assistant Professors need to know about academia
Part III: Summary
  1. Move back into large group and discuss selected questions and applications.
Organizer: Joy Griffin, University of New Mexico
Interspecies Sport Cultures into the 21st Century
Animals are key components of many sport cultures, including horse racing, dog racing, equestrian events, and god sports. Yet, this area of research has not been examined in depth within the sociology of sport. This session invites papers that examin interspecies sport cultures.
Organizer: James Gillett, McMaster University
The Male Body and Militarized Consumer Culture
This session explores current militarized images of male bodies in consumer culture.
Organizers: Faye Linda Wachs, Cal Poly Pomona and Leslie Heywood, SUNY - Binghamton
Masculinities and Sport
This session will examine the construction of masculinities in sport.
Organizer: Eric Anderson, University of Bath
Media and the Globalization of Sport: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Globalization and the role of the media are certainly intertwined within the cultures, structures, and identities of sport. Within this corporate capitalistic commodification of consumerism and tourism, global technology is used to drive and expand the nearly insatiable demand for international, empire-driven and Americanized sports, or as some might say: the good, the bad, and the ugly. This session is limited only by the imagination of the presenters. It certainly will welcome papers that address the role of global media and capitalism and the increasingly integrated role that they play in commodification of global sport within an ever more powerful political and economic consumerism ideology. Presenters with papers who may want to speak to the "good, bad and ugly" in international sport will certainly be welcomed. It will be the presenters' game to designate the "good, bad and ugly," and to choose the level of analysis they wish to pursue. In sport at almost any level today, the choices are overwhelming.
Organizer: James Steele, James Madison University
Medicine, Health and the Sport Community
In many developed and developing countries around the world, sports medicine has come to assume a part, albeit ambiguously, in sport and healthcare systems and yet it remains a relatively under-researched area in the socio-cultural study of sport. This session welcomes papers exploring the role, structure and dynamics of sports medicine and/or other types of issues and relationships between medicine and health within the sport community.
Organizer: Parissa Safai, York University
New Racism and the Imagined Black Athlete
This panel works to give voice to how the simultaneity of commodification and demonization of sports styles and its black male signifiers within contemporary sports becomes visible, illustrating the complex and contradictory place of aesthetics, cultural values, and bodies that are constructed as both fashionable (desirable and cool) and suspect (dangerous). It accepts the task of analyzing, deconstructing and offering contextual meaning to a series of sporting issues (spectacles/debates/events) and the larger discursive field which provides a context of understanding the contemporary place of black athletes and athletics. Given the importance of sports within American culture and its existence as "one of the few places in American society where there is a consistent racial discourse" (gender as well), it is crucial that we offer critical, in the moment, yet accessible, scholarship that reflects on the current cultural significance of American professional basketball. Offering critical analysis of Lebron, Kobe, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, BALCO, the Williams Sisters, hip-hop and sports, the And-1 phenomenon, amongst other things, this panel not only attempts to shed light on these rich cultural events as powerful pedagogies of race, gender, culture and national memory, but offers insight into the dominant public discourses of hip-hop, law and order, cultural values, criminality and accountability, in and around contemporary basketball, all of which illustrate the powerful, yet often coded, place of race in American society.
Organizer: David J. Leonard and C. Richard King, Washington State University
The New Sporting South?: Interrogating the Sporting Mystifications of the Great [American] Moving Right Show
The localized sporting cultures of the American South came into focus during the lead-up to the 2004 Presidential election, as many political pundits rightly predicted that the members of NASCAR Nation, a group that has been defined as rural, small-town, mostly white, Southern fans of America s fastest growing spectator sport (Derbyshire, 2003, p. 21) would play a significant role in determining the outcome of that year s Presidential election. George W. Bush and his high-profile cabinet members emerged as fixtures at the weekly racing series, bringing with them the rhetoric of Christian values and small town economic growth and claiming NASCAR Nation as the central territory of Red State America. This contextually-specific symmetry of sport, regionality, race, class, gender, and political ideology led one analyst to proclaim: Right now Republicans rule. They control the White House, both houses of Congress and most state governments. The basis of the Republicans ruling majority: NASCAR Nation (Schneider, 2004, p. 4).
The aim of this session is two-fold: 1) to problematize the extent to which Southern sport cultures (along with country western music, prime time television, and film) have been intercepted by political intermediaries; and 2) to offer a critical pedagogy of the popularized political singularity imbedded in Southern sport and of the identity politics of an overtly masculine, racially-divisive ethnocentric monoculturalism therein (Sue, 2004, p. 761). In other words, as aspects of Southern culture are being transformed into active sites of cultural mystification (Freire, 1970/2000), whereby oppressive ideologies and social structures are disguised or concealed by being configured as natural, unobtrusive, and value free, hegemons of the Right have seized Southern sports such as NASCAR and college football and successfully fused consumer identity with political ideology. As such, contributors are invited to examine, consider, and debate the possibilities of a New Sporting South: one-part re-territorialization of iniquitous gender and race politics that have been pervasive throughout the historical and contemporary conditions of the Southern sporting local; and one-part local sporting configuration borne of, and inextricably bound to, Bush-era neo-conservative values and neo-liberal economics.
Organizer: Joshua I. Newman, Towson University
Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sport
Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sport is currently a very controversial topic in mainstream sport. Much of the media discourse echoes taken for granted assumptions about the "natural" body and "normal" as opposed to "deviant" mechanisms for enhancing athletic performance. We are seeking papers that challenge these assumptions and raise important questions about underlying understandings of gender, race, sexuality, nation, etc.
Organizers: Bryan Slugget, Simon Fraser University and Ann Travers, Simon Fraser University
Performing Gender/Performing Race
Papers in this session analyze the performance of gender and racial identities in contemporary sport culture. Contributors are particularly interested in pushing the limits of dominant theoretical frameworks and assumptions in the field.
Organizer: Samantha King, Queen's University
Playing Rough: Women in Non-traditional Sport
For many years women have been advancing in traditional and non-traditional female sport. One area of non-traditional female sport is contact sport. Much of the literature seems to focus on women participating in traditional female sports such as gymnastics. With the debut of female wrestling in the 2004 Athens Summer Olympic Games and the eruption of women participating in ice hockey it would appear that women are drawn to more physical, male-identified sports. This session will explore women s participation in non-traditional sport in keeping with the NASSS diversity initiative. The exploration of women in contact sport will open up another avenue for research on gender and sport. This session is open to any papers on women in non-traditional sport.
Organizer: Giovanna Follo, Wayne State University/University of Windsor
Political or Athletic: Perceptions of Images of the Olympic Games
The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity. Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement (IOC, 2004).
If the goal of the Olympic Games is to promote peaceful development of man and society in a non-political setting, then why has politics played a major part in all of the modern day Olympic Games?
This research looks at political or athletic perceptions of selected images of the Olympic Games
Organizer: F. Michelle Richardson-Touson, University of New Mexico
Poststructuralist Research on the Body, Sport and Physical Activity
This session examines the contribution(s) of poststructuralist theory to research on the body, sport, and physical activity. Presenters are invited to highlight how poststructuralist concepts can be used to critically examine sport and physical activity in the increasingly globalized societies; how poststructuralism deals with the challenges of theorising representation, identity, community, and embodied experiences within the world of multiple theoretical discourses; and/or how poststructuralist theory might re(en)-vision sport sociological research.
Organizer: Pirkko Markula, University of Bath
Race and Sex Segregation in Sport
Assumption about biological differences on the basis of race and sport play powerful roles in structuring sporting opportunities and institutions and in reinforcing racism and sexism more broadly. Papers that effectively address race and sex as interacting variables are a priority. Comparisons of racial and sex segregation in sport will be of particular interest.
Organizers: Ann Travers, Simon Fraser University and Robert Pitter, Acadia University
Reclaiming the Nation via Sport
In spite of claims about the death of the nation in the face of widespread globalization, sport continues to be a realm in which 'the nation' is symbolically and visually present. This session focuses on ways in which nations use sport to reclaim and reaffirm particular understandings of 'the nation.' Papers which explore the ways in which such popular imaginings of nationhood act to include or exclude particular groups are welcome.
Organizer: Toni Bruce, University of Waikato
Re(En)Visioning Sport: A Native American Perspective
This session presents a Native American philosophy and model that can be used to re-envision sport as a site of greater inclusivity. The main purposes of this session are to: introduce Native American teachings surrounding the important place of sport & physical activity and to enhance interdisciplinary conversations that encourage new ways of thinking about sport. This seems especially appropriate in Vancouver as we are surrounded by many First Nations Peoples.
This colorful and engaging power point presentation with music, graphics, text and photos of (NA) traditional life ways will focus on ancient teachings and values associated with sport. Sport and physical activity are used to enhance spiritual, emotional/social, physical, and intellectual capacities of each individual, which in turn enriches the community. The model used to convey these concepts is the Medicine Wheel (the oldest found is situated in my Siksika First Nations Blackfoot community in Alberta. The Medicine Wheel is a symbol used by almost all Native peoples of both North and South America. There are many different ways that basic concepts are expressed and many layers of meaning. The Medicine Wheel is a holistic model of growth and self discovery. It is a transformational model based on personal choices, values, and social responsibility. This session will provide traditional knowledges associated with the Medicine Wheel and concepts surrounding meanings and potential of sport in human growth, development, and self discovery.
Photos from tribal and pueblo ceremonials will illustrate how sport and dance reflect the 4 dimensions of self (spiritual, emotional/social, physical, mental). We will explore concepts surrounding sport, choice, accountability, self responsibility and social responsibility. All things are related and connected. How one perceives the world is a reflection of what is happening inside of oneself. We will look at sport and how we can empower ourselves and others to reach potential. Comprehensive handouts accompany this session.
Part 2 of the session will encourage interdisciplinary conversation about the concepts presented. We will explore new ways of thinking about sport.
Organizer: Joy Griffin, University of New Mexico
Re-examining Gender Equity Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics
Title IX and Title VII are Federal laws that require educational institutions to provide equal access and treatment to girls and women in education, including sport, and require employers to provide equal access to job opportunities, including athletics employment opportunities. Based on a review of empirical data as well as qualitative data on women in intercollegiate athletics as athletes, coaches, and administrators, it appears that the athletics community has not fully embraced these concepts of equal access and treatment.
What gender equity concerns within intercollegiate athletics continue to exist? What specific issues have been overlooked? What new approaches can be taken to examining such issues? What new solutions can be provided? And how can the athletics community work collaboratively to increase gender equitable opportunities for women in intercollegiate athletics?
This session will include a discussion of gender equity issues that have been overlooked. It will include a discussion of theoretical approaches that can be used to examine such issues.
This session will also include a discussion on strategies for change. Strategies for change are explored from a variety of perspectives, including legislative considerations, governance issues, policy initiatives, and programming.
Organizer: Athena Yiamouyiannis and Heather Morris, Ohio University
(Re)Imagining Fan Empowerment: New Forms of Fans
The rise of new forms of communication and interactivity between fans and participants in contemporary sport (e.g., internet, radio talk shows, interactive fantasy leagues) has elevated secondary "participants" in sport—that is, fans—to a position of prominence where they feel empowered to do and say anything regarding teams and athletes. What have new forms of communication meant to the meaning, positioning, and delivery of contemporary sport fans?
Organizers: Chris Grenfell, CSU, San Bernardino and Bob Rinehart, Washington State University
Re-Imagining Community/Re(En)Visioning Sport: The International Network for the Marxist Study of Sport
This session will mark the launch of the International Network for the Marxist Study of Sport (INMSS). The INMSSS will create a community of scholars, practitioners and policy-makers united in a shared commitment to developing Marxist critiques of sport and to re(en)visioning sport as a humanistic and empowering social practice.
The idea for the INMSS emerged out of the 2004 NASSS conference in Tucson, Arizona, in a panel on "Critiquing Sport: What is the relevance of Marxism". The session was well attended and demonstrated an increase interest in what Marxism has to say about the relationship between sport and politics, culture, identity, society and the prospects for social change in sport. Following the conference, a proposal to establish the INMSS was circulated and received over 60 signatories.
NASSS 2006 marks the birth of the INMSS, the first step in bringing together individuals from around the world who are interested in engaging with and developing Marxist approaches to the study of sport. To mark the occasion, we invite papers in the following areas:
  • The international political economy of sport: how do we locate the place of sport in global capitalism and current forms of imperialism?
  • The Marxist sociology of sport: in defence of class; Marxist critiques of politics and policy; issues of praxis and pedagogy.
  • A question of theory: what is the current state of Marxist theory in the sociology of sport: what is the Marxist critique of/relationship to alternative approaches to the critical study of sport (such as postmodernism/structuralism, post Marxism, Cultural Studies, Queer Theory, and identitarian theories) within the academy.
  • Any aspect of Marxism and sport not covered above will also be considered.
Organizers: Alan Bairner, Rob Beamish, Hart Cantelon and Ian McDonald, University of Brighton, Chelsea School
Reimag(in)ing the Sport-City Relationship
The advance of post-industrial society is one in which traditional material production is supplanted by local consumer-oriented service economies as the primary raison d'etre of many cities around the world. The shift towards an even greater level of consumption is implicated heavily in the commodification of sport. City strategies that blend public and private interests in attracting of hallmark sporting and cultural events are said to provide a major revenue stream, and are often the primary rationale for sports infrastructure development. Competition for such events can also be reread in the context of the competitiveness evidenced between cities to draw flexible, mobile capital resources and elite/professional sport becomes an even greater symbolic representation in battles between have versus have-not status. This raises questions about whether local sport development policies that rely upon large-scale stadium development and the hosting of major events are at all a suitable avenue for public investment to further urban development aims.
Organizers: Laura Misener, University of Alberta and Gregory Duquette, University of Alberta
Sexualities and Sport
This session will examine the relationship between sexualities and sport.
Organizer: Eric Anderson, University of Bath
The Social Construction of Fat
This session invites presentations about the way in which fat is socially constructed in North American culture; papers must be connected in some way to sport, exercise, physical activity, leisure, or body culture. Possible topics might include the intersections of fat with sexuality, disability, race, ethnicity, and class; the globalization of fat, the fat body as transgressive spectacle; the fat-but-fit or fitness-at-every-size social movement; the medicalization of fat, and other subjects dealing with fat and physical activity.
Organizer: Margaret Carlisle Duncan, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Sport and Aging Communities
While most developed societies are encountering a demographic shift to a graying population, social gerontology has identified that the process and physical signs of aging are often stigmatized as a disease, regardless of the actual health status of individuals. This may serve to marginalize, and legitimate surveillance in, the lifestyles of older members of populations. This, in turn, may cause distress to individuals who experience both a reduced capacity to accumulate physical capital, while simultaneously tolerating a sense of diminished cultural capital that the aging body is a mask disguising the youthful self underneath. National and international policies promote the benefits of physical activity for aging communities, suggesting that involvement may challenge both the actual effects, and dominant ideas about, aging. Nevertheless, many older people experience particular constraints on their lifestyle choices in later life, including their ability to take part in physical activities. The challenges of age are often also exacerbated by a double-, or even multiple-, jeopardy of other forms of social inequity (gender, ethnicity, class, disability) increasing morbidity and social isolation. This session intends to explore both the enabling and constraining factors influencing participation in sport and physical activity by members of aging communities.
Organizer: Elizabeth Pike, University of Chichester
Sport, Culture and Communities
This session invites papers exploring the role of sport and culture in community building or alternatively the effect of sport in reproducing national, minority/ethnic or civic/local communities.
Organizer: Christine Dallaire, University of Ottawa
Sport and Human Rights
Topics in this session will address the promotion of human rights in sport as well as the promotion of human rights through sport.
Organizers: Eli Wolff, Center for the Study of Sport in Society
Sport, Media and Culture
Our understanding of the relationship between sport, media and wider culture remains integral to our ability to identify a range of global transformations, identity formation and politics, and sites of power and resistance. As such papers are invited to address issues related to the broad realm of the mediated landscape of sport.
Organizer: Steve Jackson, University of Otago
Sport and Migration
This session aims to discuss about sport and migration in a theoretical and methodological and empirical perspective. The issues we want to discuss in this session are: diaspora, immigration and nationalism in the postmodern era. We think the unbalance globalization brought problems in many third world countries. One of those impacts can be seen in Sports, when many athletes travel far way to work in their profession. There are many examples around the world, and it can be seen when athletes get dual nationalities so as to compete for different national teams. A good example is the soccer players in South America that are playing for European National teams in the next FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany. The sense of dislocation and identity of those athletes are important to understand the relation between sport and globalization. We want discuss the cultural moves around the world and the economic impact for the countries that are involved.
Organizer: Carlos Henrique de Vasconcellos Ribeiro, UNISUAM/ Rio de Janeiro/ Brazil
Sport and the Neoliberal Conjuncture
According to Grossberg (2006), a fundamental precept of cultural studies is the project of constructing a political history of the present. Although a number of scholars working within the cultural studies of sport domain are making significant contributions toward understanding the present conjuncture and sport’s dialectic relation therein it is our considered opinion that more can be done. Specifically, we believe it is important that those working within the cultural studies of sport take seriously Hall’s (1992) challenge to fully embrace the intellectual practice of self-clarification, such that we begin to formulate more insightful, conjuncturally prescient, understandings of sport and its complex insertion into the broader social formation. As a contribution to this radically contextual project, our aim within this session is to solicit papers through which it will become possible to explicate sport’s relationship to the institutional, processual, and empirical contingencies of the neo-liberal order that has come to dominate, and define, the U.S. context and beyond. Hence, we would seek contributions which interrogate, amongst other things, the asphyxiating liberal individualization, rampant marketization and privatization, internally and externally wrought moral authoritarianism, and imperialist politico-economic militarization, of the present neo-liberal conjuncture, and their necessary relationship to the manner in which sport is presently structured, delivered, and experienced. Sport often appears as a benign element with the life of the nation, however, within the contemporary moment it has become a resonant and central component of the organic success of the right who, through the strategic incorporation of various sporting situations (spectacles, events, athletes, and issues etc.), have mobilized particular agendas in such a populist manner as to virtually attenuate the very possibility of dissent (Grossberg, 2005).
As scholars whose central focus is the critical interrogation of sport, it is absolutely essential to confront this disquieting present head-on, understand, interrogate, intervene, and mobilize dissent, knowledge, and, desires that can lead to significant changes in minimizing the degree of oppression in people s lives (Giroux, 2004). We thus call for papers that intervene into contexts and power... in order to enable people to act more strategically in ways that may change their context for the better (Grossberg, 1996, p. 143 in Giroux, 2001) and that expose, interrogate, understand, take sides against, and imagine new ways of envisioning sport within our neoliberal present scholarship that foregrounds social justice and keeps ethical considerations alive in, and through, progressive discourses.
Organizers: David L. Andrews and Michael L. Silk, University of Maryland
Sport Policy in our Society
This session will examine the different legislation (i.e. Title IX) and policies (i.e. the Rooney Rule, NCAA rules) that have helped shape the world of sport that exists today. Questions such as, how has this impacted different individuals, teams, communities, and schools will be examined by the papers in this session. Further, this session will explore how these policies have affected the lives of the athletes that inhabit this world.
Organizer: Amanda Paule, Michigan State University
Sport & the Politics of Commemoration
This session invites presentations that interrogate issues concerning the “presence of the past within the present” (Nora, 1989, p. 20). We encourage papers that address the broadly-conceived concept of ‘lieux de memoire’ or sites of memory, such as statues, monuments, performances, myths, language, museums, archives, records, media, artifacts, halls of fame and historic places any elements that commemorate and construct particular versions of a sporting past. These projects should be mindful of the understanding that “while the object of commemoration is usually found in the past, the issue which motivates its selection and shaping is always found among the concerns of the present” (Schwartz, 1982, p. 395).
Organizers: Jaime Schultz, University of Maryland and Maureen Smith, California State University, Sacramento
Sport, Risk and Gender
This session will examine intersections of risk and gender in sport, interrogating how both gender and risk are constituted through various sporting experiences and how risks and risk perception are themselves gendered.
Organizer: Jason Laurendeau, University of Lethbridge
Sport Spectating and Sport Fandom: What We Know and Don’t Know
Sport spectating is a pervasive and compelling expression of popular culture in North America as evidenced by the fact that approximately $11 billion is spent annually on sports attendance. More impressively, 63% of all Americans consider themselves sport fans. What influences an individual's decision to attend a sport event? To what extent does gender, race/ethnicity and social class impact the decision-making process? What psychosocial needs, if any, do sport fans satisfy through their identification with a favorite team, player, coach or sport? Considered more broadly, do communities benefit from hosting and actively supporting a local team? The session will address these questions and others from experiential, empirical and theoretical perspectives in order to better understand the sport spectating/sport fandom phenomenon.
Organizer: Merrill J. Melnick, State University of New York, College at Brockport
Sport and the Urban Condition
This session welcomes papers that address a range of urban-related issues from, for example, the development of infrastructures necessary to host large sporting events to the broader economic trends and geopolitical transformations, whereby contemporary cities have become the battlegrounds on which global powers and stubbornly local meanings and identities meet (Graham 2004b: 8). Especially encouraged are papers that consider the ecalating economic expenditures devoted to major sport infrastructure and also the intensifying militarization of urban space where security has become the justification for measures that contribute to downgrading the quality of life for urban residents. Sport and sport-related infrastructure development is powerfully bonded to the material, cultural, and discursive representations of urban space. Themed cultural landscapes and aggressive marketing and promotion of a city s image have become the hallmarks of urban design. However, in the post 9/11 era, the physical planning of cities, the control of urban space, and management of urban residents and visitors is being reshaped by far-reaching 'security agendas. At the intersection of all of these trends stands sport: reconstituting large areas of urban space for stadium and area construction; connecting city image creation to sport mega-events; and, the increasing normalisation of military doctrine and tactics in an attempt to control urban populations and secure sporting venues.
Organizer: Kimberly S. Schimmel, Kent State University
Sport and Youth
This session will examine the complexities of youth sport. The title is intended to be as broad as possible, encouraging individuals from diverse research perspectives to submit. These perspectives may include among others, parental involvement in youth sport, youth sporting experiences, challenges to youth participation and coaching perspectives.
Organizer: Michael Robidoux, University of Ottawa
Sports Media: Still Running with the Pack?
After more than three decades of discussion and debate about diversifying the coverage and content of newspaper sports sections and sports segments of TV news, as well as efforts to recruit more minority members (women, blacks, Hispanics, GLBT persons) into news media organizations, what is the current status? What progress has been made? How do new media, and citizen-journalists (bloggers, for example) factor into the future? What hopes and prescriptions exist for media that examines and explains sport in a way that enriches and enhances the experience for participants and spectators?
Organizer: Rick Kenney, University of Central Florida and Susan Keith, Rutgers University
Sports, Rights, and Citizenship in the Community
Community is a complicated notion in part because communities are built and not born. In examining community we must determine what makes a community. Citizenship can be a key component of community, and sport has long been linked to notions of citizenship. For example, the original objectives of Little League Baseball in the early part of the twentieth century were to assist in developing qualities of citizenship, sportsmanship, and manhood. The organization currently offers academic scholarships to students who in part demonstrate superior citizenship but does not define what superior citizenship is although clearly playing baseball is supposed to be part of that.
The struggle to define citizenship and to identify who is and who can be a citizen is, however, a complex and multi-layered one that challenges the United States to this day. Citizenship is defined in part by the rights that the citizen is privileged to hold and the duties that are an inherent obligation of a responsible citizen.
This session will examine the role that sport and athletes play in helping to build citizenship and hence communities. It will consider the rights and duties of the athletes as citizens in both the legal and moral sense. It will examine how citizenship is linked to communities and how sport is linked to both.
Organizer: Sarah K. Fields, Ohio State University
State Intervention and Sport: Policy Objectives, Instruments and Impact
In many countries over the last twenty-five years or so there has been an increase in the use of sport by the state to address a range of challenging social and economic issues including the improvement of public health (HIV/aids and obesity), the stimulation of local economic (re)development (hosting major events, stadium investment), the renewal of local communities (through the generation of social capital), and the achievement of behavioural change (especially among young disaffected groups).
The increasing enthusiasm among states to utilise sport as a tool of social and economic policy has led many to express dissatisfaction with the non-state partners with which they frequently are obliged to work. Consequently, a number of states have sought to reshape national sports organisations and other national agencies through strategies of modernisation and professionalisation in order that they should be suitable vehicles for policy delivery.
Papers would be welcome that addressed one or more of the following questions:
  • How has sport been used to achieve social and economic objectives?
  • What have been the major targets of state intervention and how can their prioritisation be explained?
  • How does the utilisation of sport by the state vary between countries?
  • What forms does state intervention take and how might variation in intervention techniques between policy areas and countries be explained?
  • What is the impact of state intervention and how can the impact of state intervention be evaluated?
  • How have intermediate organisations such as schools, national sports organisations and commercial organisations been affected by state socio-economic policy interventions?
  • What insights can be drawn from feminist, neo-Marxist and neo-pluralist policy analysis?
  • How useful is recent Foucauldian and Foucauldian-inspired theorising of governmentality and modernisation?
Organizers: Barrie Houlihan, Loughborough University and Bruce Kidd, University of Toronto
Stereotyping the Athlete: Sources and Consequences
Stereotypes about athletes abound in popular culture, literature, educational discourse and sport sociology. In some cases it is performance that generates racial/ethnic stereotypes. In others, especially in higher education, the minority status of athletes may expose athletes to negative stereotyping. These stereotypes may affect performance in sport and in other phases of life as well (stereotype threat). What audiences stereotype athletes? In what ways are athletes represented in these stereotypes? Are athletes affected for good or ill by these stereotypes? Assuming most stereotypes are wrong, how might we explain the persistence of stereotypes?
Organizer: John Phillips, University of the Pacific
The Subject in Nature: Re(en)visioning Outdoor Sport
This panel poses strong and needed questions about conceptualizations of nature, the subject and outdoor sport. From various extreme sports to the use of outdoor recreation as therapy, nature has become a privileged location for many sporting subjects. In this panel we ask: how are our understandings of nature shaped? Who are these subjects in nature? How does the subject of outdoor sport come to know him/herself in the space of nature and what is their relationship to sport communities? How can we simultaneously interrogate and re-imagine the outdoor sport communities to enable a more accountable form of outdoor physical culture?
This panel hopes to open up dialogue around outdoor sport, the production of subjectivities and/or identities and the creation of particular communities (such as communities of colour, queer communities, nations, environmental advocacy groups, academia, etc). It is our intention to engage with critical issues that transverse borders and create bridges between the sociology of sport, critical gender and anti-racist studies, geography and environmental studies.
Organizers: Marie Vander Kloet, University of Toronto and Bruce Erickson, York University
Teaching the Sociology of Sport
This session will focus on theoretical, thematic, and methodological perspectives in teaching the Sociology of Sport.
Organizer: Wib Leonard, Illinois State University
Theory and Method in Sports Media Studies
This session is designed to stimulate discussion about theoretical and/or methodological issues encountered while researching the sports media. Papers in this session may address topics such as limitations of theory, impact of new media technologies, or logistical challenges of conducting research in relation to any aspect of sports media production, transmission and/or reception.
Organizer: Emma Wensing, University of Toronto
United States Intercollegiate Athletics: The Academy v. Corporate College Sports
In the United States public interest in big-time college sports is widespread. According to a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sponsored survey, 53% of Americans, including 65% of men and 43% of women, follow college sports (Harris & Associates, 1991). This potential to generate public interest and promote institutional messages was one of the initial justifications for the formal incorporation of athletics into the university structure (Case, 1994). As Duderstadt (2000) notes, competitive athletics were viewed as an extracurricular activity, justified by the university as part of its ideal objective of educating the whole person (p. 70). Since athletics has often been one of the most visible components of collegiate life, and if intercollegiate athletics is truly part of the university community, analyzing the university’s proverbial front porch and the pressures that shape the relationship between the academy and athletic departments is relevant for sport sociologists.
According to Silk and Amis (2000), macro pressures constrain behavior of similar organizations within similar fields, since these pressures may be coercive, mimetic, or normative, and can be exerted formally or informally. However, it is also important to recognize that micro pressures may also influence organizational assumptions: that a given group has invented, discovered, or developed in learning to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, and that have worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems (p. 46).
Hofstede, Nuijen, Ohayv, and Sanders (1990) describe such micro pressures within organizations as broad, nonspecific feelings of good and evil, beautiful and ugly, normal and abnormal, and rational and irrational feelings that are often unconscious and rarely discussible, that cannot be observed as such but are manifested in alternatives of behavior (p. 291).
This session is designed to offer contributors the opportunity to present research investigating the micro and macro pressures that exert pressures on the academic and athletic subcultures on U.S. college campuses and the ongoing conflicts that develop as a result of these competing pressures.
Organizer: Richard M. Southall, The University of Memphis
Violence, Aggression and Civilizing Processes
This session will showcase streams and trends in figurational studies of sports violence and aggression. Particular emphasis will be given to the role of figurational sociology in culling sociological, psychological and social psychological explanations of violence in sport into an integrative whole. Papers may highlight the long-term development of violence within specific sport fields, the lived experiences of sport violence, player habituses, violence and global sport cultures, the mass mediation of sport violence, and the affirmation of established-outsider relationships in sport through violence and aggression. Preference will be given to grounded empirical investigations of sport violence. Empirically-based critiques of figurational explanations of violence and counter-position papers are equally welcomed and encouraged.
Organizer: Michael Atkinson, McMaster University
Visual and Material Physical Culture and the Imaginary
As a “real” space of consciousness, an imaginary represents an ability to read cultural conditions and project a future configuration of such conditions – thus disrupting a belief of current cultural configurations as “official” or “natural”. In his focus on a Latino imaginary, Flores (2003) argues that the imaginary is a consciousness of diasporic subjectivity, informed by the cross-cutting currents of dominant and marginalized values and beliefs – a middle space or decolonial imaginary. In addition, Haraway (1997) highlights the practices that create material, embodied, and imaginary realities which can only be read and inhabited by “subjects who learn to see and touch with the right conventions” (p. 185). A critical examination of the way imaginaries are (visually) materialized and made meaningful is then useful, and necessary, when undertaking a (re)imagining of physical culture.
Visual representations of physical culture are often tied to “official” political agendas, images of progress, and an imagined harmony between material, social and cultural aspects of embodiment. Simultaneously, visual and material practices can also produce or perform alternative or decolonial imaginaries which disrupt conventional images of physical culture, re(en)visioning sport and physical activity as a space within a hypermediated and commodified visual culture that is more representative of lived experience and available for social action. This session invites papers or performances that examine visual-material aspects or artifacts of physical culture, their sites and practices of production, representation, and interpretation, and their ability to affect a cultural status quo. Topics that interrogate interdisciplinary theoretical or methodological approaches to researching visual and material culture are also welcome as are those which adopt visual forms of expression as a means of scholarly inquiry or dissemination. Submissions from various disciplines and cultural workers are encouraged.
Organizer: Jennifer Sterling, University of Maryland, and Kathy Jamieson, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Women, Physicality and Aggression in Sport
While there is no evidence to suggest that females have participated in hyper-physical, aggressive or violent sport-related behaviours or sport cultures in anything like the numbers, or to the degree, of their male counterparts, there is a growing body of research that unambiguously demonstrates that using the body aggressively and with risk in sport settings does resonate with female experiences. As opportunities for female athletes have expanded, actions such as privileging risk, playing hyper-aggressively, hitting, being hit, becoming injured, and injuring others are assuming an increasingly central place in female sport. While, as with men’s sport, this is not an exhaustive or homogeneous process, the trend towards women s involvement in aggressive and sometimes violent sport behaviours seems undeniable. The purpose of this session is to investigate the nature and extent of female physicality, aggression and violence in sport, and to move toward an explanation.
Organizer: Kevin Young, University of Calgary
Open Paper Session
If your paper doesn't seem to fit in any of the above sessions, submit your abstract to this session.
Organizer: Nancy Spencer, Bowling Green State University


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PANEL SESSIONS

Gender, Leadership and Sport Organizations
The dominance of men in leadership positions in all areas of society, including sports organisations, is not only the product of but also the driving force behind the gender order, at least in Western industrialised societies.
Since the 1990s scholars have been seeking with increasing interest to discover why and how gender hierarchies arise in societies, which forbid discrimination on grounds of gender, and in organisations, which have embraced the principle of equal rights and opportunities. Thus, they have been researching the everyday actions and interactions, procedures and decisions in various organisations in-and outside the world of sport that have resulted in gender segregation and gender hierarchies. Scholars have described how gender is anchored in structures, underlies processes and pervades the organisation's work and norms, power structure and culture (Acker, 1999). But also the written and unwritten rules and expectations as well as social relations and specifically how, where and when work is done is part of a gendered organisation's culture.
Drawing on the work of Smith (1989), we explain gender hierarchies in a seemingly gender neutral society by means of a "gendered subtext" which, "covered by equality,” is invisible but all the more intricately and effectively interwoven with the deeply-rooted structures of society and organisations, including sport associations.
The contributions in this session deal with the gender hierarchies in sport organisations, with concrete barriers as well as with the invisible subtexts which permeate the structures and cultures of organisations, but also shape conditions of everyday lives of women and men.
Organizer: Gertrud Pfister, Institute of Exercise and Sport Sciences (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Intercollegiate Athletics and the Black Athlete: Athlete, Student, and Graduate
This panel will focus on the multiple roles Black athletes have encountered in the system of higher education: athlete, student, and graduate. The culture of higher education and the demands of intercollegiate athletics have often presented obstacles to the academic success and social well-being of Black students that are athletes. This session intend to examine the strategies, mentors, coping mechanisms, etc. that Black students use to balance these different roles, become graduates, and transition into careers.
Organizer: Billy Hawkins, University of Georgia
Reform Movements in College Sport: The Drake Group and Others
This panel will examine contemporary reform movements in college sport in the United States with an emphasis on the work of The Drake Group. The efforts of other reform efforts, such as The Knight Commission and the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, will be reviewed. Prospects for real reform in the near future will be critiqued.
Organizer: Michael Malec, Boston College
Social Movements & Sport
The scholars presenting in this session are working together to apply social movement theory to sport. First, they reviewed the literature on social movement theory. Second, they developed a single methodology to examine the relationship between this theory and sport. Third, they collected data on three social movements: the women's sport movement, the movement to eliminate Native American mascots, and the movement to block the use of taxes to fund pro-sport stadiums. Methodologically, each scholar selected cases where social movement activists had been successful and unsuccessful. In each case, both activists and those opposed to the activists were interviewed. In this session, each scholar will present their findings on the social movement that they studied. A fourth participant, George Sage, will serve as discussant.
Organizers: George H. Sage, University of Northern Colorado and Laurel R. Davis-Delano, Springfield College


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