Sport and the Anthropocene

This editorial introduction to the special issue, ‘Sport and the Anthropocene’, examines the entanglements between sport, human activity, and the planet's accelerating ecological crisis. Framing the Anthropocene as a new epoch, marked by irreversible human-induced environmental change, the article highlights the catastrophic consequences of climate disruption, resource depletion, and socio-political instability. Yet, amid collapse, the Anthropocene also offers new beginnings, which can prompt critical reflections on human exceptionalism. In light of the sociology of sport's delayed engagement with these beginnings, especially important given sport's material dependence on vulnerable ecologies, the special issue challenges the adequacy of conventional sustainability discourses, which externalise nature and uphold anthropocentric assumptions. Instead, we call for a reorientation towards our ecological entanglement and temporal complexity, examining how objects, surfaces, and environments shape movement, meaning, and our planetary future(s). In doing so, the issue foregrounds diverse theoretical and empirical contributions that position sport as both problem and possibility. Ultimately, we contend that sport must be reimagined through the lens of the Anthropocene, indeed, as a site of contested and contingent relations where ecological, ethical, and existential stakes converge.