Guest Editors
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- Dr Mark Turner, Solent University, UK
- Dr Jessica Richards, Western Sydney University, Aus
- Dr Stefan Lawrence, Newman University, UK
The temporal dimensions of leisure demonstrate the ways in which popular cultural and sub-cultural forms, intersect across multiple temporal periods in ways which force us to stretch and problematise the relationship between leisure and sociology. For Spracklen (2013), social changes themselves affect how we spend our free time, and how leisure has capacity to impact on our understanding and experience of culture. Recently, there has been a burgeoning area of research into the role events themselves play in our reconceptualization of leisure experiences, space, memory, histories, and power (Lamond and Platt, 2016; Spracklen and Lamond, 2016). Indeed, these scholars highlight how eventful leisure frameworks, in bringing these themes together, should seek address one of the most under-researched areas in leisure studies; that being the study of protests and social activism, as communicative and serious leisure.
Whilst some scholars have thus begun to theorise protest and activism as leisure, including case studies ranging from, but not limited to, urban environments (Lamond and Lashua, 2021), homelessness and public space (Harmon, 2019), skateboarding and gentle activism (Glover et al, 2019), and event bidding and new media activism (McGillivray, Lauermann, and Turner, 2019), there remains a dearth of research into the relationship between leisure and lifestyle politics in sport. Whilst the particular social worlds of professional football have become new cases and contexts of analytical thinking on social movements, protest, activism and engagement (Cleland et al. 2018; Numerato, 2018; Millward, 2019; Richards, Turner, 2021), these contributions focus on both the macro and micro-level events and networks of activists, and their strategies for relational collective action against corporate targets, but in doing so, neglect any theorisation of such protests as a type of leisure activism. Consequently, there remains a gap within sociology and the sociology of sport, in this case football, which brings together the study of protests, events, and activism, through critical engagement with leisure studies, and the specific cases of supporter mobilizations. Indeed, professional football, both in Europe and beyond, stands at a critical juncture. The recent high-profile protests against the proposed European Super League (ESL), and the subsequent UK Independent Fan-Led Review into football governance, reveals football supporter democracy and engagement to be high on the political agenda in the UK and across Europe. This represents an important opportunity to consider the meaning and purpose of wider sports fan activism as leisure, and the ways in which fan networks, by accessing important leisure spaces, building movement organisations, recruiting leaders, mobilising capital, and resources, and creating, and responding to, political and cultural opportunities for movement success, do leisure, and create important leisure identities and belongings.
It is the aim of this special issue to bring together international perspectives on protests and social movements, with focus on football, to unpack and understand the complexities and temporalities of modern leisure, and its intersubjective and interdependent relationship with fandom, and the construction of fan identities, politics, and social change.
Contributions might align with (but are not limited to) any or a number of the following themes:
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- Conceptualising and theorising fan protests, activism, and movements as leisure
- Fan collective behaviour, social unrest, and leisure
- Mobilizing fan resources and leisure
- Fan social networks, ties, and leisure
- Political processes, opportunities, and leisure
- Misbehaviour and deviant leisure
- New fan social movements and leisure
- Global fan movements and leisure
- Doing fan movements, tactics, framing, and leisure
- Digital leisure and online fan activism
- Fan movement recruitment, leadership, and leisure
- Spaces and places of fan activism and leisure
- Fan movement outcomes, success, and leisure
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Types of contributions
We would like to encourage a variety of different types of contributions, including conceptual papers, original research papers and applied case studies.
Abstract Submission
Please email your Abstract by the 1st of June 2022 to: Dr Mark Turner Mark.Turner@solent.ac.uk. Please add as a subject of the email: Abstract Special Issue IJSL
Full Paper Submission Guidelines
If you have been notified by the Guest Editors regarding the acceptance of your abstract, please use this link to help you prepare your full submission: https://www.springer.com/journal/41978/submission-guidelines
Indicative Timeline
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- Call for Abstracts: March 2022
- Successful contributors notified: July 2022
- Full paper deadline submitted online: January 2023
- Review and feedback from editors: March 2023
- Deadline for final version papers: July 2023
- Publication of special issue: January 2024
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