Call for Papers: Special Issue on
The Political Economy of Amateur Athletics
Special Issue Guest Editors:
Joshua I. Newman
Florida State University
Kyle S. Bunds
North Carolina State University
Concerned by the rise of professionalism in sport, and in an attempt to protect the
sanctity of amateurism, the famous author and early bicycling aficionado G. Lacy Hillier
proclaimed in 1892, “Sport is amusement solely…The essence of sport is
relaxation…The sportsman (sic), then, is the man who has an amusement which may cost
him something, but which must not bring him in anything, for an amusement which
brings him in anything is not a sport but a business” (as cited in Allison, 2001, p. vii). In
the historical present, however, it has become quite clear that sport is now a deeply
privatized and commercialized feature of most societies. Considering the widespread
development of both mass participant and mass spectator sport over the course of the last
150 years, historians, sociologists, economists, legal scholars, and behavioral scientists
have in recent decades dedicated considerable effort to the study of how market forces
and logics have infiltrated, and in some ways been remediated by, the function of
amateurism within sport.
This coupling of sport and business has impacted the structure of amateur sport
organizations as well as the ethic of amateurism more generally. Issues such as a) the
professionalization of the Olympic Games, b) the rights of intercollegiate student-athletes
to gain remuneration through their economically-productive sporting practices, and c) the
hyper-commodification of youth sports feature largely in many a nations’ public
discourse. It has been argued that amateurism serves a double function: on the supply
side, amateurism produces a system of governance that suppresses wage labor (in relation
to market value) and exacerbates income inequality (allowing those with capital to
produce incomes at rates that exceed those producing income through labor); and on the
demand side, the structure of amateur sport allows for the uneven allocation of public
resources dedicated to fostering community development and health through sport and
physical activity.
Given the current environment, there is a need for scholarly research and
discussion on the political economy of amateur sport in the contemporary (global) market
society. In this special issue on the political economy of amateur athletics, we welcome
submissions focused on the following topics:
Intercollegiate Athletics at all levels
Adult Amateur Sport and Recreation
The blurring lines between Amateur and Semi-Professional Sport
Amateurism and the Olympic Games
The Commercialization/Marketization of Youth Sport
The political economy of the contemporary sporting body
The market politics of gender, race, sexuality, or (dis)ability
We invite a wide range of articles, essays, and creative works that will embrace and carry
your work and/or the conference experience into the journal; scholars, researchers, and
practitioners across disciplines and drawing upon a wide range of methods are
encouraged to submit.
If you have an interest in pursuing a manuscript for submission, please send an
initial proposal (including a working title and a 150-200 word abstract) through e-mail to
both Dr. Joshua Newman (jinewman@fsu.edu) and the JAS office (jamsport@ku.edu) by
April 15th, 2015. The final manuscript needs to be submitted for review no later than
October 1st, 2015.
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