Call for Papers | Sociology of Sport
Coordinators:
Rahul Kumar (NOVA/IHC)
João Sedas Nunes (NOVA/FCSH)
Daniel Seabra (UFP)
In different degrees and modalities, the social worlds of sport are also presently characterized by complex social processes in which both (political) rationales of polarization and institutional elasticity endure.
The growing penetration of these worlds by economic capital and, especially, by financial capital, has been partially counteracted by reactive forms of resistance, discursive but also institutional, which (de)harmonize the social spaces of sporting practices, thus becoming loci of significant tensions and contradictions which, in critical episodes and moments of proof, challenge the stability of the principles of sporting greatness.
At the same time, the various worlds of sport have also represented fertile ground for the political mobilization of different social actors, who activate different repertoires of protest, various rhetorical formations, and forms of political performance.
From this point of view, over the last few years, and articulated with the processes of mediatization of social practices, the sports field has also been a terrain of symbolic dispute over authority, prestige, and power, over inclusion and exclusion, over integration and alienation. Linked to a plurality of organizational forms, articulated with cultural industries, and integrated in a multiplicity of local, regional, national, international, and transnational networks of collective deliberation embodied in the worlds of sport, clubs and other sports organizations reflect, integrate, and produce many of the tensions that saturate contemporary societies.
Within the XII Portuguese Congress of Sociology, the thematic section of sociology of sport of the APS welcomes proposals for papers and panels that focus on how the worlds of sport, its institutions, its actors, and its ideologies relate to the ongoing processes of social polarization. What makes and proves the esteem due to a manager, coach, athlete, referee, even athlete? What are the (social) rules and audiences that (de)mark and set forward that esteem? In this framework, in which the classic problem of the autonomy of the sportive sphere seems to have taken the form of a classification game proposing, polemically and contradictorily, both its sequestration and denouncement, it is crucial to account for the present reconfigurations of the social worlds of sport
The rules and deadlines to consider for the submission of abstracts, as well as more information about the XII Portuguese Congress of Sociology, can be consulted on the APS website at http://www.aps.pt.
The Thematic Section's coordination will select the best communications to be proposed for publication in the journal SOCIOLOGIA ON LINE.
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