CFP: NASSS 2009 -- Sport and Bodily Culture in Hard Times

North American Society for the Sociology of Sport
30th Annual Conference
November 4-7, 2009
Ottawa, Canada

The 30th annual conference of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) will be held November 4-7, 2009 at the Ottawa Marriott Hotel on Kent Street in Ottawa, CAN. Those interested in submitting an abstract for a paper or poster should do so by August 15th, 2009. Paper abstracts or poster abstracts should be directly submitted via the proposal form at:  http://nasss.org/2009/submissions.php (Session themes can be found at http://www.nasss.org/2009/sessions.html.)

This year’s conference theme of “Sport and Bodily Culture in Hard Times” encourages us to consider how the economic downturn has produced “Hard Times” whose impact has been felt all over the planet. More specifically, we as NASSS members wish to reflect on the “Hard Times” behind and ahead of us and what they mean for sport, and more broadly, for culture. Hard times impact on the lives of people in so many negative ways. At the same time, they may push us to reinvent ourselves and to rethink the social structures that organize our worlds so that we do not end up in the same catastrophic situation. Since sport is so often appreciated for the values it instills and the leadership it creates, one has to wonder whether drastic changes should occur so that sport could help in developing leaders with different values (e.g., interdependence) who would work to transform our societies and avoid past errors. In a world where increasingly we define ourselves by what we have (e.g., a house, a car, a membership in a club, friends on Facebook, a nice body), should the social dynamics as well as the individual choices that have brought us to Hard Times be renewed? Could we define ourselves and our social worlds differently? How are sport and bodily culture linked to subjectivities and social forces, and how could they be part of an effort to think ourselves/our planet anew? Should we struggle to keep sport and bodily culture just as they are and continue to pursue “business as usual?” What role should we play, as scholars, in asking and answering such questions?

For further information, please contact the Chair of the 2009 Program Committee. The following individuals are part of this committee:

Geneviève Rail, Chair (Simone de Beauvoir Institute) Gen.Rail[at]Concordia.ca
Nancy E. Spencer, Co-Chair (Bowling Green State University) nspencr[at]bgsu.edu
Bob Rinehart (University of Waikato) rinehart[at]waikato.ac.nz
Rich King (Washington State University) crking[at]wsu.edu
Christine Dallaire (University of Ottawa) cdallair[at]uottawa.ca
Jean Harvey (University of Ottawa) jharvey[at]uottawa.ca
Sammi King (Queen's University) kingsj[at]post.Queensu.ca
Ted Fay (SUNY Cortland) ted.fay[at]cortland.edu
Dee Pearson (University of Houston) dpearson[at]uh.edu
Kyoung-Yim Kim (University of Toronto) ky.kim[at]utoronto.ca
Robert Pitter (Acadia University) robert.pitter[at]acadiau.ca)
Karima Dorney (Queen's University) karima.dorney[at]gmail.com