Call for Papers
As a second installment in the conference series
Centers and Peripheries in Sport
the Dept. of Sport Sciences at Malmö University proudly presents…
The Social Science of Sport: Scientific Quality, Position, and Relevance
Malmö, Sweden, April 19–21, 2012 • www.centersandperipheriesinsport.org
Confirmed keynote speakers:
John Bale, Keele University
Angela Schneider, University of Western Ontario
Boria Majumdar, University of Central Lancashire
Christine Toohey, Griffith University
Jay Coakley, University of Colorado
Rationale
In Knowledge and Human Interest, Jürgen Habermas clearly demonstrates that
knowledge and science is founded on different interests. He dismisses positivism for
serving the interest of control and instrumental reason, and criticizes hermeneutics for
being founded in a vicious circle of contextualism and the absence of ideological
criticism. Habermas is searching for a “critical theory” that could guide social science
beyond, for instance, instrumentalism and contextualism. Looking at the development of
the social sciences of sports we find positions similar to Habermas’ definition of
positivism and hermeneutics, without profound critical reflections on the “ideology of
positive sport”. The study of sport is either instrumental, in order to improve sporting
results, or contextual, in order to understand the “specificity” of the sporting culture.
Academic research at the Department of Sport Sciences at Malmö University is
essentially focused on social and cultural studies, and this has been advantageous for its
development towards becoming a vital environment for sport studies. There has,
however, emerged a need for substantial reflections on the “scientific” status of sport
studies and problems related to this development. The recruitment of faculty staff has
been geared towards several different academic disciplines and academic fields –
psychology, sociology, ethnology, history, urban geography, philosophy and sociology of
law among others, that essentially creates a cross-disciplinary horizon. However, to
satisfy the needs of a PhD-program in “sport science”, the department has to develop a
multi-disciplinary approach, regardless the cross-disciplinary structure of the faculty. In
addition, since the department works closely with the sporting practice, by tradition as
well as ideology, research is expected to be relevant to that practice, at least to some
extent.
The close association to sports, ideologically as well as by individual experiences and
preferences, is fertile soil for anecdotes as well as normativity, in absence of essential
theoretical foundations in sport studies. These local reflections are evidently in line with
more global considerations of the character of social and cultural sport sciences, where a
substantial discourse on the epistemology, social relevance of sport, and the scientific
status are more or less absent or overshadowed by more hands-on-studies.
Topics
In various ways and in different areas, sport has contributed to the improvement of
products in society. Motor sport, for instance, has been instrumental in profound advances
of motor vehicles in general. The broadcasting of sports events is behind many technical
innovations in television. The production of digital clocks has been influenced by the
temporal logics of sports.
Similarly, one might expect that sport science has made contributions to science in
general. In the Anglo-American world, sport science is generally interpreted as medical,
physiological and psychological studies of sports, and in those disciplines we will find
practical as well as theoretical contributions to the respective mother disciplines. In
Europe, though, sport science denotes any academic study of sports, be it based in the
natural sciences or in, for instance, sociology, history, philosophy or economy.
Now, if we consider the social and cultural sport sciences, will we find any kind of
evidence that such research has in any way contributed to advances of the theoretical
development of social science and theory or cultural science? Probably not, although the
study of sports relies heavily on theories and methods developed within a number of
social science disciplines. So, what are the reasons for this lack of reciprocity? To find
out, we have to look at the internal characters and status of social and cultural sport
science in Academia, related to:
The history and the localization of the development of sport studies.
The recruitment of research staff related to sport studies.
The impact of gender issues on the progress of the social and cultural sport
sciences.
An internal epistemological and ontological discourse versus stereotypical sports
“anecdotes”.
The scientific legacy of sport studies.
The scientist being a part of popular culture and the subject that is studied.
A normative and ideological point of departure.
The hegemony of (standard) social theories used in sport studies.
The mixture of cross- and multidisciplinary approaches.
The emphasis on “sports relevance ” versus “ a relevance for society” and the
social impact of sport science.
The Department of Sport Sciences in Malmö invites papers that discuss the scientific
quality of sport studies and the position of social and cultural sport science in Academia
along the lines presented above.
Please submit ABSTRACTS (250–400 words) electronically (a Word document attached
to an e-mail) to Kjell E. Eriksson (kjell.eriksson@idrottsforum.org) no later than
December 15, 2011. Notification of acceptance will be given no later than January 15,
2012. Accepted articles (5000–7000 words) must be submitted in full by March 15 2010,
and will be considered for publication in a planned special issue of Sport in Society, or in
Scandinavian Sport Studies Forum.
During the conference there will be an international intensive PhD-course
in relation to the scientific status and character of sport science, “Sport
Science and Scientific Quality, Position and Relevance”
For further information, please contact Bo Carlsson, Malmö University
(bo.carlsson@mah.se).
