PLAYING THE GAME: AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF YOUTH, SPORT, AND PLAY

The NEOS Editorial Team has decided to try out a once-a-year publication model in order to increase article length and provide authors more space for robust theoretical engagement and inclusion of methodological rigor.

The Spring 2025 NEOS issue, Playing the Game: An Anthropological Exploration of Youth, Sport, and Play, will seek submissions of anthropological and interdisciplinary research focused on children’s and youths’ experiences with sport, play, recreation, and physical activity. Sport has been described as a microcosm of what life is about, and it is understood to both shape and be shaped by social, cultural, global, political, and historical practices (Besnier, Brownell, and Cater 2018). We imagine this issue to draw connections to the power and agency of children and youth to impact and be impacted by their larger worlds through sport and play, mirroring the many influences of sport mentioned above. We encourage a broad interpretation of how sport and play are defined, inviting scholars whose work includes topics of embodied learning, institutional or structural components of sport and play, imagination, action and acting, adventure, competition, leisure and recreation, and other forms of physical activity. We especially encourage contributions that develop ideas regarding diversity within sport and play, including but not limited to gender, race, and ability.

We will release a full CFP for this Spring 2025 issue later this summer, but we encourage you to consider this theme for a November 2025 manuscript submission deadline. Manuscripts must be original research and no more than 4000 words in length. Please contact the NEOS Co-Editors if you have questions about this CFP or your manuscript’s fit for this theme: ACYIG.editor@gmail.com.

References

Besnier, Niko, Susan Brownell, and Thomas F. Carter. 2018. The Anthropology of Sport: Bodies, Borders, Biopolitics. Oakland: University of California Press.