CFP: Sport, Communication, and the Culture of Consumption

Call for Papers
American Behavioral Scientist
Special Issue
"Sport, Communication, and the Culture of Consumption"

Guest Editor
Lawrence A. Wenner
Loyola Marymount University

Extended Submission Deadline
February 1, 2008

American Behavioral Scientist, one of the world's preeminent interdisciplinary journals in the social and behavioral sciences, published by Sage Publications, is pleased to call for papers for a special issue focused on "Sport, Communication, and the Culture of Consumption." From media events such as the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games to global sport celebrities such as Tiger Woods and David Beckham to the transnational media and advertising corporations that drive them all, it is easy to recognize that the communication of sport has become a large engine of consumer culture. Such mega-phenomena combine with the constant drip of sports communication, not only in specialty sports networks and in print and web publishing, but in interpersonal and group settings where we make sense of what sport and its promotional culture means. Through communication, the sensibilities of sport are often intertwined with decisions about what we drink and eat, what we drive, what we wear and the activities we choose to value. Because such decisions circulate meaning themselves, the influences of sport and its commodification become more even more ubiquitous and naturalized. Towards understanding such phenomena, this special issue seeks to examine emerging concerns and trends associated with the increasingly large social and cultural footprint of sport and its commodification. The issue explores the role and impact of communication and media in enabling sport and its culture to serve as an engine of consumer culture. The special issue especially seeks studies that examine how the shadow of sport fans out via marketing, advertising, and other promotional strategies to make connections with audiences and consumers. Also of interest are studies that shed light on the role that norms and values that come with the commodification of sport play in interpersonal and group communication settings. There is special interest in hearing from scholars from diverse disciplinary and geographic quarters on topics that assess the forces of globalization in the consumption culture of sport and consider its impacts in relation to race, gender, class, religion, age, and disability.

Manuscripts should not exceed 30 pages, including text, references, notes, tables, and figures, and must conform to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). In order to facilitate the blind, peer review process, no material identifying the author(s) of submitted manuscripts should appear anywhere other than the title page. The title page should include:
(a) the title of the paper;
(b) the author's name, position, institutional affiliation, address, telephone and fax numbers, and email address;
(c) any acknowledgments, including the history of the manuscript if any part of it has been presented at a conference or is derived from a thesis or dissertation;
(d) a word count.
The first page of the manuscript itself should include the title of the paper, an abstract of not more than 200 words, and up to six key words for indexing.

Manuscripts must be received via email attachment in either MS-WORD (.doc) or Rich Text (.rtf) formats by September 1, 2007 at lwenner@lmu.edu. In the subject line of the email message, authors should specify "ABS Submission." In the text of this email message the submitting author should provide:
(a) complete contact information (address, telephone, fax, and email);
(b) brief biographical summaries (full name, highest earned academic degree, institution granting that degree, and present academic or professional position) for each author;
(c) the title of the manuscript; and
(d) a statement that the manuscript is the author(s)'s original work, that it is submitted for consideration for this special issue of American Behavioral Scientist, that it is not presently under consideration at any other journal nor published elsewhere; and that the reference list is complete and in appropriate form.