CFP: Play the Game 2015

Is college sport in urgent need of reform? If yes, where should it start?

This will be one of the main questions raised by Play the Game 2015 when the ninth edition of this world conference invites academics, investigative reporters, business representatives and sports leaders to engage in open, fact-based and constructive debates on themes that are essential to the future of sport.

Play the Game 2015 runs from 25-29 October in Aarhus, Denmark, under the subtitle “Global sport: Reform or revolution?”

We hope to gather a number of leading scholars from NASSS and other academic groups in North America in order to throw light on a various of the challenges connected with college sport:

The apparent injustice of a profitable business model building on amateur athletes, academic fraud, health risks, anti-doping policies, lack of access to recreational sport etcetera.

Play the Game 2015 brings up a number of international topics relevant for North American scholars under the following headlines:

·         The revolt against global events: A perfect storm for sport?

·         Governments vs. fixers: Will the rule of law beat the law of the jungle?

·         Good governance in sport: Setting standards, raising bars

·         A new World Code against doping: Anybody willing to comply?

·         The deadly disease of inactivity: Is the world ready for a cure?

·         Transfers and trafficking: The human cost of broken dreams

·         College sport in the USA: Unprotected amateurs in a billion-dollar business

North American scholars are warmly encouraged to bring their data, experiences and analytical skills into the debates and networking on these vital issues for world sport.

An Open Forum is also available to speakers:

·         who address issues not covered by the main themes

·         whose abstracts are not accepted in the peer review process

·         who offer interventions/investigations of a more personal character

·         who submit last-minute registrations

·         In the Open Forum, speakers are given a seven minute timeslot to present their main points.

In the Open Forum, speakers are given a seven minute timeslot to present their main points.

Submit your abstract/storyline

The deadline for abstract/storyline submission is Wednesday 13 May 2015. Please use our online submission page here: http://www.abstractreviewer.com/ptg/

Academic abstracts will be peer reviewed by academics only. Notifications on approval of abstracts will be sent by e-mail no later than 1 July 2015.

You can find information about registration and prices at http://www.kongreskompagniet.dk/playthegame2015

Please note that the registration price for abstract submitters will be calculated as of the day of the abstract submission, so nobody will miss an early bird discount. Prices start at 550€ for a 4-day conference with full conference participation, all social and cultural activities and most meals included.

More information in our Call for Papers and on Play the Game 2015’s website www.playthegame.org/2015

International launch of research projects

If you are preparing a major research project or a campaign, why not use Play the Game 2015 to launch your project internationally? Play the Game expects the participation of more than 100 journalists representing media across the globe and is an ideal platform for reaching a worldwide audience and building lasting working relations.

Please contact Play the Game’s international director Jens Sejer Andersen (details below) to discuss how coordinated action can be taken.

We thank you in advance for any help in distributing this message to friends, colleagues and others who share the goals of Play the Game: To promote democracy, transparency and freedom of expression in world sport.

Questions and contact

Abstract submission: Communications officer Stine Alvad, stine@playthegame.org or direct office line +45 87 48 20 22.

Programme issues: International director Jens Sejer Andersen, jens@playthegame.org or cell phone +45 20 71 07 01.

Hoping to welcome you in Aarhus in October,

Best regards/Bedste hilsner

Jens Sejer Andersen

International director/international chef

Play the Game/Danish Institute for Sports Studies

CFP: The Sport Project: Probing the Boundaries - Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Space, Place and Sport
The Sport Project: Probing the Boundaries

Thursday 24th September – Saturday 26th September 2015
Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom

Call for Presentations:
Sport is a key space for controversies and issues over access and power. It is a key space for the construction of identity, belonging and community, a place for meaning-making. Every year sports events are hosted and won by communities and nation-states. Every year people do sports or watch sports in spaces: sports grounds, fields, back streets and parks. Every year, there is political struggle over funding that goes to the development of sports spaces, whether it is global events such as the World Cup, or informal spaces such as walking and cycling routes in national parks. For this conference, we invite academics, researchers, activists, theorists, policy-makers, journalists and practitioners to critically discuss and present interdisciplinary approaches to examining sport as a space in which tangible and intangible meanings, identities, development, engagement, and community are created. We are interested in interdisciplinary approaches to space, place and sport at the intersections of academic disciplines and subject fields, and invite contributions from academics who approach their work on space, place and sport through an inter-disciplinary lens. We especially welcome voices from beyond the academic boundaries, news from those involved in sport or writing about sport. We also include in that invitation those active in campaigns: for better access to spaces, for more spaces, as well as those fighting to save non-sports spaces from the hands of those who might want to turn them into sports facilities for mega-events.

The aim of this conference is to develop an active network of academics, practitioners and campaigners with an interest in sports geographies. By sports geographies we mean the ways in which we might understand sport as something that creates spaces and places, as well as something that is shaped by spaces and places. An inter-disciplinary sports geography is one that uses the relationship between sport, place and space to tell a story about the meaning of sport, the history of sport and the socio-cultural importance of sport: for example, about the relationship between Le Tour de France, landscapes and French identity. Themes within the conference include:

– Understanding the social and political potential of sport spaces – can sports spaces be places where social divisions are broken down? Who controls sports spaces?
– How sport intersect other spaces – cultures, communities, societies and nation-states
– Geographies of sporting bodies – the growth and development of sports organisations
– The meaning and purpose of sport spaces – what do people use sports spaces for?
– Conflicts over sports spaces – who gets access

We invite abstracts that discuss things like the relationship between sports teams in the context of the local/global debate; stadium architecture (gentrification, class and gendered space within stadia); sport spaces and urban planning; virtual sports; sports clubs and their community outreach initiatives (or relationship to their communities generally); variations in sporting practices and game rules across space and place; sport-driven nationalism as a sense of space and place; and sport as uniting force that breaks down the barriers of space and place.

We would also like to draw your attention to the Special Workshop on Sporting Mega-Events, International Sports Organisations and the Future of Sport which will be just before the conference this year. Details of which can be found here: Power and Corruption Wednesday 23rd September 2015, Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom.

What to Send:
300 word abstracts should be submitted by Friday 1st May 2015. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by Friday 10th July 2015. Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs; abstracts may be in Word or RTF formats with the following information and in this order:

a) author(s), b) affiliation as you would like it to appear in programme, c) email address, d) title of proposal, e) body of proposal, f) up to 10 keywords.
E-mails should be entitled: SPORT4 Abstract Submission.

Organising Chairs:
Karl Spracklen: K.Spracklen@leedsbeckett.ac.uk

Rob Fisher: sport4@inter-disciplinary.net

The conference is part of the Making Sense Of: programme of research projects. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. All proposals accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook.  Selected proposals may be developed for publication in a themed hard copy volume(s). All publications from the conference will require editors, to be chosen from interested delegates from the conference.  The conference will also see the launch of the Sport: Probing the Boundaries journal, which will be published in 2016, and papers from the conference will be considered for the journal.

Inter-Disciplinary.Net believes it is a mark of personal courtesy and professional respect to your colleagues that all delegates should attend for the full duration of the meeting. If you are unable to make this commitment, please do not submit an abstract for presentation.

For further details of the conference, please visit:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/persons/sport/call-for-papers/

Please note: Inter-Disciplinary.Net is a not-for-profit network and we are not in a position to be able to assist with conference travel or subsistence.

CFP: Special Issue on The Political Economy of Amateur Athletics

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.