Sport: Spaces, Places, Money and Politics

Sport: Spaces, Places, Money and Politics The Sport Project: Probing the Boundaries: 5th Global Meeting Call for Presentations 2016 Tuesday 13th September – Thursday 15th September 2016 Mansfield College, Oxford, United Kingdom Sport is a key space for controversies and issues over access, control, space and power. It is also a space for the construction of identity, belonging and community. 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. A key focus for the fifth meeting of this evolving project will be the role of politics and money in sport. Sports events are hosted and won by communities, organisations and nation-states. Sporting events provide positive opportunities for athletes to succeed, fans to cheer and economies to prosper. Unfortunately they have negative outcomes such as doping, match-fixing disgraces, corruption in governance and mega-event host city selection processes sometimes rife with scandal. The integrity of sport, sport-governing bodies, officials, athletes, media, and host cities are called into question on an almost daily basis, while at the same time we champion excellent performances and achievement of athletes and teams. Governing bodies investigate and promise reforms, such as IOC's Agenda 2020 and recent FIFA candidates' election rhetoric in the midst of rapidly rising costs of event hosting, especially mega-events. Under-girding these issues at times is their relationship to sporting spaces and sports geographies as well as the transformative potential of sport. A key question relates to the political economies of sports and mega-events: are they sources of corruption? Places for reform? Forces for good? And what kind of personal, social, community, national and international spaces do they create, encourage and develop? We invite academics, researchers, activists, theorists, policy-makers, journalists and practitioners to critically discuss and present interdisciplinary approaches to these and related questions. We are interested in interdisciplinary approaches to space, place, money and politics in relation to 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 the 2016 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 owns and controls sports spaces? - Exploring the fiscal dimensions of sporting spaces and sporting events - 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. Further details are available from the conference web site: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/sport/research-streams/sport-probing-the-boundaries/call-for-papers/ Details about our reviewing process can be found here: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/sport/research-streams/sport-probing-the-boundaries/call-for-papers/details/ Call for Cross-Over Presentations The Sport project will be meeting at the same time as a project on Cars In/Of Culture and another project on Roots and Legacies. We welcome submissions which cross the divide between both project areas. If you would like to be considered for a cross project session, please mark your submission "Crossover Submission". What to Send 300 word abstracts, proposals and other forms of contribution should be submitted by Friday 20th May 2016. All submissions be minimally double reviewed, under anonymous (blind) conditions, by a global panel drawn from members of the Project Team and the Advisory Board. In practice our procedures usually entail that by the time a proposal is accepted, it will have been triple and quadruple reviewed. You will be notified of the panel's decision by Friday 27th May 2016. If your submission is accepted for the conference, a full draft of your contribution should be submitted by Friday 5th August 2016. Abstracts may be in Word, RTF or Notepad 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: Sport Abstract Submission Where to Send Abstracts should be submitted simultaneously to both Organising Chairs: Organising Chairs: Susan Dun: s-dun@northwestern.edu Rob Fisher: sport5@inter-disciplinary.net This event is an inclusive interdisciplinary research and publishing project. It aims to bring together people from different areas and interests to share ideas and explore various discussions which are innovative and exciting. A number of eBooks and paperback books have been published or are in press as a result of the work of this project. An interdisciplinary sports journal is also launching later this year. All papers accepted for and presented at the conference must be in English and will be eligible for publication in an ISBN eBook. Selected papers 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. Ethos 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. 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.