CFP: The Consumption and the Representation of Lifestyle sport

Second Call for papers: Special Issue of Sport and Society,
‘The Consumption and the Representation of Lifestyle sport’. Extended deadline

The deadline for this special issues has now been extended to 30th October 2008.

Guest editor Belinda Wheaton, University of Brighton

This special issue seeks to explore the changing representation and consumption of lifestyle sport in the twenty-first century.

Since their emergence in the 1960s, lifestyle sports (also termed action sport, extreme sports, adventure sports, and so on) have experienced unprecedented growth both in participation, and in their increased visibility across public and private space. In Britain, for example, the BBC draws on imagery of street-running, surfing and kite flying between programmes to ‘identify’ the station, and in the USA extreme sport has featured on a postal stamp (Rinehart & Sydor, 2003, p. 1). The allure and excitement of lifestyle sport has been appropriated to sell every kind of product imaginable, and they have been the focus of numerous ‘mainstream’ television shows and films such as Blue Crush, Stone Monkey, Kids, Jackass and Dogtown and Z-Boys that present the danger but also the vertigo inspired by the sports. Specialist magazines such as On the Edge, Boards, Carve and Wavelength fill newsagent’s shelves, and are sustained by a multi-million dollar industry selling commodities and lifestyles to ‘hard-core’ aficionados and grazers alike. Furthermore, these representations of lifestyle sports provide images of ‘adventure’ and risk, demonstrating what Beck describes as the importance of experiencing danger and ‘living life to the full’ in a ‘risk society’. Possible topics for papers in the context of representation might include:

o Representations of lifestyle sports through place and space: in film, subcultural media, television, advertising.
o The relationship between global and local representations
o Ethics and values expressed in subcultural and mainstream representations of adventure sports
o Lifestyle sports and new media technologies.
o Media Parody - extreme ironing, extreme housework.
o The meaning and representation of risk in late modernity.
o How lifestyle sports imagery reproduces neo-liberal ideologies of the body, heath and consumer-citizenship.
o What part does the media and internet play in representing these activities and their cultures?

Lifestyle Sports cultures are also enjoying a period of unprecedented growth and transformation. As outlined in Wheaton (2004) participation in many lifestyle sports continues to grow, outpacing the growth of a number of ‘big league’ traditional sports, both among the ‘traditional’ consumer markets of (white western) teenage boys, and increasingly among older men, women and girls. A vibrant and highly profitable global and local consumer industry is driving these activities, and has seen rapid expansion and diversification, with consumer products ranging from board and decks to the ever expanding ‘sport style.’ Local, national, trans-national and global networks of lifestyle sports ‘subcultures’ have traditionally been linked by travel and the specialist sub cultural media, predominantly magazines and videos/DVDs. Yet increasingly these media forms have been supported and superseded by the internet with enthusiasts, clubs and commercial organisations setting up websites and chartrooms providing information about venues, news and local activities. However, these shifts have lead to changes in the meanings, experiences and identities of lifestyle sport cultures, particularly as participants attempt to retain their subcultural identities in the face of increasing popularity and widespread commercialisation. Central questions include:

o How have process of globalisation impacted the cultures, identities, and industries of lifestyle sport? Are there differences locally, nationally and trans-locally? Do lifestyle sports participants display a post-national cosmopolitan disposition? What is the relationship of lifestyle sport to (the politics of) environmentalism?
o Are these activities subcultures or are formulations such as neo-tribes more useful ways of conceptualising these sporting cultures?
o What is the relationship between the mass and micro medias, and between these different medias and the sports lived cultures?
o How are the experiences of identity and difference changing in this period of rampant commercialisation? Have they been wholly appropriated or are there new and different sites and expressions of subcultural ‘resistance’?
o How is inclusion, exclusion and the discourse of subcultural authenticity related to difference, particularly the intersections of gender, ‘race’, (hetro)sexuality, disability and age?
o Emerging lifestyle sports such as parkour, and kitesurfing and their interaction with popular culture.
o What are the experiences of those on the periphery of the subcultures, be they weekend warriors, grazers, ‘surf widow’s, spectators, or those who experience (many) lifestyle sport/s through tourism and others forms of commercial provision.

Papers on any aspect of lifestyle sport representation or consumption are welcome but we are particularly interested in papers that examine lifestyle sport outside of the global ‘core’.

Rinehart, R., & Sydor, S. (Eds.). (2003). To the Extreme: Alternative sports, inside and out. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Wheaton, B. (Ed.). (2004). Understanding lifestyle sports: Consumption, identity and difference. London: Routledge.

Information for contributors

Texts should reach the guest editor by email before September 30, 2008, and should include:

1) Typescripts in .rtf or .doc format;
2) A title page with the title of the paper and the name(s) of contributor(s) and institutional affiliation for each one; acknowledgements (expression of thanks, sources of financing); mailing addresses. The first page of the typescript must not include the name(s) or coordinates of the contributor(s);
3) An abstract: one paragraph of no more than 150 words.

Tables, figures and notes must be correctly inserted within the text. Pictures and photos require original resolution of no less than 130 ppi.

Contact info for guest editor Belinda Wheaton: b.wheaton@tiscali.co.uk


Manuscripts should be between 6000-8000 words. For detail on the journal house style see http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1743-0437&linktype=44