CALL FOR PAPERS
1ST INSA CONFERENCE
DURHAM 18-19 APRIL 2024

The International Network of Sport Anthropology Conference invites submissions for its first conference, entitled ‘(Re-)Placing Sport: Anthropological perspectives on a global problem’.


Please do share the following information & attached pdf among your networks! The call closes on the 17th January. If you have any further queries, please email: [log in to unmask]


Modern sport is hegemonic. Games codified in Europe during the 19th Century are now central to social lives across the globe. These sports maintain their broad appeal, which hides their problematic aspects and often insidious nature. The modernist ideals of teamwork, meritocracy and fair play – though outwardly positive – have long restricted the worldview of sporting participants. With an excessive focus on individual excellence, sports limit the potential for wider systemic change. Sport is now at the vanguard of neoliberalism, and is often mobilised to maintain the status quo as much as to uplift and ‘develop’. Such critiques of sport are not new. Calls to ‘transform sport’ (Carter et al. 2018) or even ‘end’ its largest spectacle (Boykoff 2020) have been made across various platforms in recent years. At the International Network of Sport Anthropology, we recognise the need to challenge the hegemonic force of sport. We invite researchers from all related disciplines to consider how we might place sport more appropriately in context, seek to re-place it elsewhere, or indeed replace it altogether. We challenge researchers to consider more closely what sport is, including recognising that the very idea of ‘sport’ now permeates much of social life, affecting the ways definitions are formed. We hold that the perspectives anthropology and adjacent disciplines can bring to the study of sport is critical for critique in the present moment. We invite scholars to address the problem of hegemonic sport across the globe by joining us in (re-)placing it.

We invite paper abstracts around (but not limited to) the following themes:

The place of sport in perpetuating inequalities
Ontologies of sport
Alternatives to sport
‘Modern’ sport and ‘traditional’ games
The (mis)use of sporting ideals
Local and global sporting contexts
Sport policy and the ethics of practice
Sport-like activities in the face of sport’s hegemony

To submit, please send your name, affiliation and abstract (including 3 keywords) to [log in to unmask] by 17th January. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words in length. We welcome abstracts from all adjacent disciplines, and encourage scholars from ‘outside’ anthropology to contribute to the debate.

Kind regards,
Sean Heath, PhD
MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow, KU Leuven
Director International Network of Sport Anthropology (INSA)

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