Sport, Justice and Belonging: Critical Analysis and Worldmaking

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

- Arundhati Roy

If the Anthropocene proclaims a sudden concern with the exposures of environmental harm to white liberal communities, it does so in the wake of histories in which these harms have been knowingly exported to black and brown communities under the rubric of civilization, progress, modernization, and capitalism. The Anthropocene might seem to offer a dystopic future that laments the end of the world, but imperialism and ongoing (settler) colonialisms have been ending worlds for as long as they have been in existence.

- Kathryn Yusoff (2018), A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None

Key words: justice, social inequality; worldmaking

Since its emergence as a site for wealthy white men to consolidate power during the development of capitalism in mid 18th century England, modern sport has been a contested site in terms of participation, representation, cultural symbolism and economic benefit. Ideas about what counts as ‘sport’ and how sport matters for identity, belonging and legitimacy are stitched into the mythical fabric of many nation states and animate national and global systems of social stratification and cultural conflict.

Despite declarations and protestations from global, national and corporate sporting bodies that sports are not political, sport has never been separable from power and politics. In its various forms it has served as both a tool for white/male/cisheteropatriarchal/racial capitalist domination and as a site of resistance to injustice both on and beyond the playing field. The history of sport, for example, cannot be told without attention to colonialism and postcolonialism. But neither can colonialism’s history be told without attention to sport. Substitute “white supremacy,” "racism,” “heteropatriarchy,” “homophobia,” “transphobia” or “organized religion” for colonialism and the relationship holds, however equivocally. Sport is global in reach and full of layers. Global sports mega-events and corporate sporting bodies put profit ahead of people and environmental sustainability and yet so many of us, in so many places, love sport/physical culture with great intensity and devotion, often grappling with the cognitive dissonance this brings about.

As sociologists we identify and analyze social systems for distributing material and cultural resources, from the local to the global, and the ways in which these systems are contested; we study the past to understand the present; and we craft stories of worlds we have never seen. Whether explicitly or implicitly; as critical sports studies scholars we are engaged in world making, meaning the process(es) by and through which the realities of social life are created, through both interactions and symbolic meanings. Given that sport has multiple and layered materialities and meanings, particular to time and place, the sociological imagination empowers us to engage with this complexity.

This is a crucial time for our field. The Sociology of Sport analyzes the relationship between sport and structures of power, domination and social control and contributes to world-making via engagements with activists and social movements. NASSS as an organization has a long history of critically interrogating the bases of inclusion/exclusion in sport and beyond, the role of sport role in normalizing the social structures of the nation, hierarchies based on race/gender/sexuality/ability/citizenship etc., and colonialism and postcolonialism in all its variations. We also have a strong track record of revering sport, highlighting its power and beauty and inviting each other to engage from this place of feeling.

The current world that has been made is a troubling one. Authoritarian and oligarchic modes of governance are contributing to a nearly unbearable level of human and planetary suffering that is unexceptional given world history. Social movements at all ends of the political spectrum have been able to reshape societies and ecologies in extraordinary ways, often unexpectedly, at times leveraging sport symbolically and/or materially.

Key questions:

What does sport DO in the world? How is sport a form of worldmaking? What worlds
does sport contribute to building/sustaining?
What contributions does our scholarly field and international community of sports-
minded humans make to understanding our worlds and to movements striving to
build worlds that are more equitable and sustainable?
How are sport sociologists engaging in projects to build more just worlds? How can
sport sociologists contribute to and/or disrupt certain forms of worldmaking?
How can our work expand the boundaries of what is possible?
The societies NASSS scholars inhabit are global and interconnected. Globalization and the neoliberal engineering of planetary inhabitants shapes the contexts within which we liveand work. We invite in-person and hybrid session proposals that critically focus on sport in
this social context.

Some broad topic examples:

Sport and Contested Belongings
Sport and the Far Right
The Future of Women’s Sport
Sport and Racial Justice/Capitalism
The relationship between sport scholarship and social activism
Sport and social movements
Athlete Activism across the political spectrum
Sport mega-events, nation-states and the politics of resistance
Neoliberalism and sport
Globalization and sport
Human rights and sport
Religion and sport
War and sport
Envisioning more just sporting spaces/practices
While the organizing committee encourages dialogue around these pressing issues, NASSS also welcomes session proposals that address other issues related to sport and movement cultures.