After sport: Physical culture in the Anthropocene

Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to underscore the importance of contemplating the unsustainability of neoliberal sport in the Anthropocene. It contends that the conditions associated with anthropogenic environmental change should compel researchers who study the sport industry to consider the possibility that not only are contemporary capitalist forms of sport and physical activity generally not ecologically sustainable, but that post-growth forms of physical culture attuned to the conditions of the Anthropocene represent potentially more pleasurable and desirable alternatives. This argument is rooted in the work of the late Brian Pronger and others on “post-sport,” which serves as a conceptual foundation for valorizing the physical cultural possibilities beyond the boundaries of neoliberal sport. The crisis of the Anthropocene, however, arguably requires a revisiting and recalibrating of post-sport towards what we call after sport—the possibility of developing and desiring post-growth physical cultures aligned with philosopher Kate Soper's notion of “alternative hedonism.” The article also provides an analysis of the constraints and limits of current scholarship and industry practices intended to address climate risks to sport via adaptation, in order to underscore the necessity of coupling such vital work with the exploration of other physical culture possibilities that might arise in conditions in which neoliberal sport is no longer sustainable nor desirable.