Presentation

Sports Sociology researchers and scholars representing Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia and Guatemala came together in the city of Antigua (Guatemala) in 2001. These researchers and scholars formed the Work Group (WG) "Sport, Leisure and Society" in the XXIII Congress of the Latin American Sociology Association (ALAS).

On that occasion, several studies were presented, and as a result of the debates and discussions, the group identified a need for and a possibility of carrying out further meetings focused on specific themes related to the Latin American group. Due to some adversities, in 2003, in the city of Arequipa (Peru), the group could not get organized to realize the intended meetings, but some members of the group did continue to maintain contact.

After two years, in 2005 in Porto Alegre (Brazil) the WG Sports, Leisure and Society was considered one of the most representative groups of the XXV Congress of the Latin American Sociology Association (ALAS), according to Evaluation Commission of the event, during the Closure Convention. At that point, the group of teachers and students involved with Sports Sociology in Latin America demonstrated maturity and established goals to be achieved both in the short and in the long run. It also established tasks - such as the confection of a CD with the complete papers of the WT - to be accomplished by and presented at the next meeting, looking forward to a consistent development of the group.

In 2007, in Guadalajara (Mexico) we - work group—had the pleasure to have representatives of Mexico and Venezuela who join us. This led us to identify the possibility of achieving the dream outlined in 2001, namely, the constitution of an association in Latin America, that would aggregate researchers and scholars of Sports Sociology. Thus, in a historic meeting on August 16th of 2007, we founded (not officially) the Latin American Association of Social and cultural Studies of Sports, ALESDE.

With a provisional board, among several determinations and goals, it was defined that the first ALESDE meeting would happen in the city of Curitiba (Brazil) in 2008, and that it would be organized by the Universidade Federal do Paraná (UFPR).

It is with great pleasure, that we now present the 1st Meeting of the Latin American Association of Socio and Cultural Studies of Sports (ALESDE). This meeting aims mainly at aggregating Latin American researchers, professors and students in a perspective of interaction and exchange of experiences from different places and institutional realities. Our meeting has the underlying understanding that sport is a contemporary social, cultural and multi-variated phenomenon , with expanded prospects and possibilities, capable of being analyzed from historical, sociological, anthropological, political, philosophical, economic, and ethnographic approaches, among others. In this sense we aim at gathering a significant amount of consistent work within different approaches, and at consolidating Latin America in the international context of social and cultural studies of sport.

In that sense, it is intended to gather a significant number of consistent work in these areas and finally consolidate Latin America in the international context of socio-cultural studies of the sport.

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