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, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2018)
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, examining the role of sport 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 Globalization and the neoliberal engineering of planetary inhabitants shapes the contexts within which we live and work.
Conference Sites (Seattle, Vancouver, Virtual)
The 2025 annual conference for the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport will be held in three sites (Hotel options will be posted on the website shortly):
Seattle, WA, November 5-8 at the Westin, Seattle Vancouver, BC, November6-8 at UBC Robson Square Virtual, November 5-8
Please submit according to your plans for attendance (Seattle, Vancouver, Virtual). While we will endeavor to offer as many sessions as possible in Hybrid format (integrating Seattle, Vancouver & Virtual), we are not able to predict this in advance. You must be prepared to be physically present in Seattle for a session located there, Vancouver for a session located there. There are obviously no such limitations for Virtual sessions beyond having the internet capacity to connect remotely. If you are unsure about attending in person, for example, submit toa Virtual session.
Instructions for Abstract Submission – June 10 deadline:
We invite you to submit an abstract to one of the sessions listed here. Sessions are listed according to location(Seattle, Vancouver, Virtual). Abstracts may also be submitted to an open session (Virtual) or placed there by the conference organizers. Should your paper not find a home in the session you submit for, we will work very hard to find a place for it.
All abstract proposals must include the title of the session; author name(s), institutional affiliation, email address(es); a title (10 words maximum); a brief abstract (150 words maximum) that describes the proposed paper and the location of your planned attendance. The expectation is that you will have completed a paper by the time you present at NASSS.
You may present only one paper as lead author: no multiple submissions (if you are listed as second author the first author must attend and present). This measure is in place to allow for more substantial audience/presenter discussions in each session.
Poster sessions: you must be prepared to bring a physical copy of your poster to Seattle or Vancouver or supply a digital copy for a Virtual poster session.
All presenters must be members of NASSS by September 1 and register for the conference by October 1, 2025.
Please note: It will not be possible to change the conference program to accommodate individual scheduling issues. Submitting an abstract commits you to presenting any time from 8:45am on Thursday, November 6 to Saturday, November 8 at 5pm.
- Deadline for submission of abstracts is June 10, 2025.
- Deadline to be notified about abstract acceptance/rejection is July 1, 2025.
- Final completed session submissions are due July 15, 2025.
- A preliminary program will be released by September 1, 2025.
- All presenters must be a member of NASSS as of September 1, 2025 and registered for the Conference by October 1 to remain in the program.
- Conference registration information, pricing, and hotel information is forthcoming on the NASSS website.
- Closing time for all dates is 11:59pm Pacific Time.
Direct questions to the Conference Program Committee Chair, Travers, at atravers@sfu.ca.
For more information and continuous updates,
visit the NASSS conference website.
