New Ethnographies of Football in Europe : People, Passions, Politics

Annotation Exploring how football impacts on people's everyday lives, this volume uses anthropological research methods to scrutinize the social fields of football fans and the specific socio-cultural contexts in which they are embedded, taking into account processes of Europeanization, globalization, commercialization and migration Front Matter....Pages i-xxix Introduction....Pages 1-17 Front Matter....Pages 19-19 Going for the Reds: Max Gluckman and the Anthropology of Football....Pages 21-36 Front Matter....Pages 37-37 Normalising Political Relations through Football: the Case of Croatia and Serbia (1990–2013)....Pages 39-54 The Paradoxes of Politicisation: Fan Initiatives in Zagreb, Croatia....Pages 55-74 We Are One! Or Are We?....Pages 75-96 Front Matter....Pages 97-97 Hegemony in Question? Euro 2012 and Local Politics in the City of Poznań....Pages 99-119 Travelling European Gay Footballers: Tournaments as an Integration Ritual....Pages 120-137 To Pass and Not To Pass....Pages 138-158 Front Matter....Pages 159-159 Being a Football Kid. Football as a Mediatised Play Practice....Pages 161-175 Why We Wear It: the Football Shirt as a Badge of Identity....Pages 176-191 Front Matter....Pages 193-193 Performing Loyalties/Rivalries: Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe Fans in Vienna....Pages 195-211 Building a Turkish Fan Community: Facebook, Schengen and Easyjet....Pages 212-227 People, Passions — but What about Politics?....Pages 228-234 Afterword....Pages 235-237 Back Matter....Pages 238-241 Football has emerged as an important symbolic field through which various social, cultural, political, economic, and historical dimensions and antagonisms are negotiated. This volume covers a variety of themes illuminating the multiple ways that football impacts on people's everyday lives. Using anthropological research methods and data collected from ethnographic fieldwork, the contributors scrutinize not only the social fields of football fans and the specific socio-cultural contexts in which they are embedded, but also other actors beyond the pitch, and the possibilities for both agency and subversion. Taking into account processes of Europeanization, globalization, commercialization and migration, the collection offers fresh insights into fan identity formations and practices and highlights the importance of anthropology's self-reflexive and actor-centred perspective.