Call for papers: Leisure, sport and consumption in Africa

Edited by
Scarlett Cornelissen (Stellenbosch University, South Africa)
Susann Baller (Basel University, Switzerland)

The International Journal of the History of Sport
Regional Issue: Africa 2013
Volume 30, issue 16

In recent years there has been a notable surge in studies about sport as
expressions of popular culture on the African continent. Much of the focus
has fallen on the role of specific sports, such as football, in contemporary
African culture, although there has also been exploration of the practices
and spaces of indigenous sports and sport in pre-colonial and colonial
contexts.

In these works sport is commonly used as entry point to understand a variety
of social dynamics - identity, social hierarchies, power and resistance - in
African societies. In contrast, there has been relatively little focus on
sport as an aspect of leisure and consumption within Africa and few works
that offer treatment of sport as one among multiple leisure practices on the
continent. Looking at sport as leisure form encourages looking at various
aspects of its creation (or production), use (or consumption), performance,
expression, as well as contestation and challenge. It provides insights into
the geographies of leisure, the policies of leisure, and the relationships
between work, time and leisure. Moreover, it allows for exploring the
commercial and economic side of sport and leisure activities, as well as the
role which transnational leisure industries increasingly play in sport.

In the early 1980s, Tim Couzens coined the concept of 'moralizing leisure
time' which describes how missionaries, mining industries and colonial
administrations used leisure as a means to 'educate' African elites
according to their own norms. Since then, there have been some important
studies of the everyday in Africa (e.g. Eckert and Jones, 'Historical
writing about everyday life', 2002), some of which include examinations of
leisure and sport (Zeleza and Veney, 'Leisure in Urban Africa', 2003; and
also Akeyampong and Ambler, 'Leisure in African history: An introduction',
2002, Martin, 'Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville', 1995). Yet, it
seems time to revisit the leisure practices of African societies for further
research, as theorisation of various expressions of leisure activities,
including sport, beyond the 'moralizing effects' of leisure in Africa
remains relatively sparse.

In this special issue we would like to build on earlier work on leisure in
urban, colonial, precolonial and contemporary Africa by explicitly exploring
sport as leisure form with distinctive political economy features. We
consider questions such as the following: what is the nexus between leisure
and sport in past and/or present, and how do varieties of leisure shape each
other? How is leisure produced in Africa? How is it consumed, and how is it
commoditised? What meanings are attached to leisure and what processes of
commodification are relied on? We are also interested in questions of
leisure as economic activity - how it is corporatized, how it is regulated
and how it functions as industry in the African setting.

The editors welcome papers that address one or a variety of the following:

i) Leisure space and leisure time in Africa;

ii) Sport as leisure form;

iii) Producing and marketing leisure: culture/sport industries in Africa;

iv) Performing sport: sport, fandom and identity on the continent;

v) Consumption of leisure: sport and tourism;

vi) Sport events and the economy of leisure;

vii) Transnational sport industries and leisure in Africa;

viii) Sport, media and leisure economies.

Please submit a 300-word abstracts by 5 January, 2013 to Scarlett
Cornelissen ([log in to unmask]) and Susann Baller ([log in to unmask]).
Successful applicants will be notified by 5 February, 2013. Draft papers
will be due by 6 May, 2013. Publication is scheduled for autumn 2013.