Temporal, spatial and social patterens of self-organization within street sport

Due to an increased urbanization and digitalization self-organized practices are becoming a central way of doing sports among contemporary young people and adults in urban contexts. The aim of this presentation is to contribute with knowledge about what it means to be self-organized within street sport. Scandinavian youth research tend to discuss the practices of young people in relation to institutionalized places which tend to organize the practices in pre-established activities that are organized for them in terms of where it takes place, when, how and with whom (Zeiher 2001). In contrast young people can re-define urban space themselves (Skelton and Valentine 2007). During a multi-sited fieldwork (Marcus 1995) I followed people in Denmark that value to be able to improvise in the way they organize their own street-sport practices through temporal, spatial and social practices. Street sport tend to be conceptualized as unorganized, but by drawing upon the French urban philosopher Henri Lefebvres (2008) rhythmanalysis the aim of the article is to illustrate that practices of improvisation rely on their own organizational patterns. More specifically I analyse three different forms of being self-organized. This is showcased through different types of street sport as parkour, skateboarding, soccer and street handball. This multi-practices perspective allows me to analyse the way in which street sport is organized as a board phenomenon. Danish research show that associated sport experience a drop back in relation to young people’s participation (Kofoed 2004) and they search for fare more flexible and mobile everyday spaces (Sand 2014) and types of sport (Pilgaard 2012). I call for attention to understand self-organization as contemporary phenomenon in order to understand processes among young people and adults, in order to redefine and reconstruct future leisure organizations (Rojek 1995) and understand contemporary forms of street sport.