Paper short abstract:

My paper traces the contours of a transnational supporters group for the Turkish club side Besiktas. Through ethnographic fieldwork both online through social media and offline at matches, it investigates how technology is allowing for radically new forms of association, communication and belonging amongst fans.

Paper long abstract:

My paper proposes an anthropological approach to the question of how technology (specifically the internet) is allowing for new forms of association and communication based around sport. It takes as its subject fans for the Turkish football team Beşiktaş. Beşiktaş are one of the most widely supported clubs in Turkey but also have significant numbers of fans across diaspora Turkish communities in Europe. How are these individuals - many of whom do not have Turkish passports and have never been to a 'home' game - constructing their 'fanness'?

Based on ethnographic fieldwork, both with social media online and offline at European Cup matches, the paper teases out the issues present in the formation of the Beşiktaş footballing community. What happens when a fan identity and interaction that is generated online - through the social media of Twitter, Facebook pages and YouTube channels - is forced to become 'real' within the spectacle and ritual of a football match? Key questions include: what conflicts and contestations emerge when 'Turks' from a diverse array of nations, classes and diaspora communities come together in person to support a Turkish football club? How is social media shaping individual identity and the spectacle of mass sporting events? How are both fans and the club responding to the newfound realisation of the geographical diversity and global consumption patterns of the fan community? And finally, do we need to rethink the operation of some of sport's primary identifiers, namely gender-based association and embodiment, in an increasingly globalised virtual sphere?

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the relationship between football clubs and supporters as a contest over the limits of reciprocal obligation drawing on Mauss' analysis of the gift.

Paper long abstract:

Football as mass spectator sport has always been a commercial enterprise, yet the relationship between clubs and supporters is unlike those between other capitalist enterprises and their customers. Clubs form a considerable part of their supporters' cultural identity, and the emotion invested by supporters in their clubs creates, in the eyes of many, the implicit promise of mutual moral obligation that transcends a simple transactive relation. Yet there remains a tension between the commercial and the other cultural aspects of this relation. For long periods this tension may remain muted, but the emergence of international investors in the 2000s has brought these tensions once again to the fore. The high profile takeovers of Liverpool FC and Manchester United were fraught with tensions between owners and fans. Similar problems can be seen elsewhere. This paper explores the relationship between football clubs and supporters as a contest over the limits of reciprocal obligation drawing on Mauss' analysis of the gift.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines some of the ways in which an anthropology of sport can contribute to a greater understanding of sport by critiquing the dominant idea of a 'sport culture' pervasive throughout sport studies.

Paper long abstract:

This paper has two main points. The first addresses the contemporary approaches to sport outside of anthropology in which the premise for the study of sport is that there is an object of enquiry called 'sport culture'. The second is that contemporary approaches to sport are far too rooted in English-speaking, Protestant societies. An anthropology of sport can incisively critique these two weaknesses and provide a more pervasive, thorough, and insightful understanding of sport. I draw on my 3 years of fieldwork on Cuban sport conducted over the past seventeen years to demonstrate how an anthropological approach to sport unequivocally challenges the dominant understandings of sport found throughout sport studies. Cuban sport provides informative examples of how the sport may be the same but 'the way you play the game' differs from the presumed universal values of a 'sport culture'. By doing so I am arguing for a more anthropological and dynamic conception of culture that is informed by ethnographically based studies of any given sport wherever and whenever played in the world.

Paper short abstract:

The institutionalized models of LGBT sports, globally practiced and widely known, are the Gay Games and the Outgames. This research analyzes them and seeks to shed light on this sport and its relationships to the mainstream Olympic sports and the economic/political issues of the western nations

Paper long abstract:

It could be found in the world of sports uncountable expressions of groups and individuals who practice some sport activities. In the case of gays and lesbians there is no exception. The current models of LGBT sports are the Gay Games and Outgames. Gay Games was the first model, emerged in the 80's from the discourses on identities, and Outgames was recently born demanding revision in the power of these games, and proposing alternatives toward diversity and human rights of minorities. However such events reproduce the relation of consumption and commercialization interlinked to issues of cultural identity and community. Besides, they replicate hierarchies, logics of exclusion, and the standards of athletic performance of mainstream Olympic sports. Taking Social Anthropology core modes and ethnographic description, a multisited ethnography was developed in four sports tournaments. Thus some considerations can be summarized: those events are characterized as being "exclusively gay worlds" (a ghetto of gay male); they are destinations such as any others inside the international circuit of parties (like gay parades), and, besides, they reproduce the hierarchy of masculinities from the conventional world of sports. Having in mind these findings and based on the cultural comparison with the Olympics as the contemporary expression in sports, this research aims to rethink the LGBT sports - and, by extension, the conventional sports - through a distinct logic, which means not only criticize the institutional sports models available, as well as to challenge the sportive structure, thinking about a "distinct way" (less conventional) of doing sport

Paper short abstract:

This paper introduces "Football of the Blind" and analyses the social and sporting backgrounds of the players in the German "Blindenfussball-Bundesliga". While some practise it as a competitive sport, other blind footballers play it as a leisure actvity. On top of it, it also serves a function for the inclusion of handicapped into German society.

Paper long abstract:

"Football of the Blind" was introduced to Germany in 2005 and, although still largely unnoticed by the public, has since secured its safe place in the range of sporting activities in Germany. In 2008, the "Blindenfussball-Bundesliga" started with MTV Stuttgart as the most successful club. The national team coached by Uli Pfisterer competes on an international level and is among the four best European teams. Based on ethnographic research and documentary filmwork among most of the dozen German teams, this paper presents an overview of the activities in Germany and analyses the social, ethnic and sporting backgrounds of the majority of the active players in Germany. It presents this sporting practice as a mix of competitive sport, a leisure-time activity and successful inclusion of handicapped into mainstream society. Short film excerpts illustrate the skills, technics and tactics of this sport.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing upon fieldwork in Austria, Poland and Germany during the EURO 2012, the paper scrutinizes the performativity of group affiliations in football fan identities. With regard to strategies of selfing and othering, it analyses how stereotypes are used in the creation of loyalties and denegation.

Paper long abstract:

For hundreds of millions of people football is an important part of their everyday lives and identities. The UEFA EURO is one the biggest football events in the world, attracting not only dedicated football lovers, but also so-called 'event fans'.

Public screenings of EURO matches in fan zones, pubs, and public places create specific spaces, liminal zones that suspend ordinary rules while setting up new ones. Football demands the spectator to admit to a team - most likely to the national team. Fans perform loyalty using shared symbols, like the display of national colours or chanting and singing national songs, and thereby fans originate group identity.

While traditional football research has already extensively elaborated on national fan loyalties, our paper will focus on the largely under-researched realm of shifting loyalties: In the case of a national team not participating or dropping out early, most spectators will choose another team to support, if only temporarily. This highly contextual identification process does not happen individually, but the creation and legitimation of loyalties and denegation is not only strongly informed by personal experiences, but moreover by historical and socio-cultural narratives and media representations, and thus by stereotypes and prejudices.

Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in Austria, Poland and Germany in public places during the EURO 2012 the paper scrutinizes how fans use strategies of selfing and othering in creating loyalties. The key question lies in the tension between a playful performance of self and other and a transgression of mutually respected rules of the game.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the intertwined relationships between football, big-business, media and the neo-liberal state in Mubarak’s Egypt. It also discusses how this peculiar complex of state-controlled, politicised football has been challenged by Ultras groups, before and after the 2011 revolution.

Paper long abstract:

This paper dramatises some aspects of Egypt's peculiar neo-liberal experience, taking a closer look at Egyptian football in the last decades. Drawing on press material, movies and ethnographic fieldwork in Cairo, the paper argues that football formed an intrinsic part of the hyper-nationalist, state-controlled neo-liberalism that was intrinsic to the Mubarak-regime, not the least since the game provided an arena to discursively and materially define what Egypt ought to be, and how Egyptians ought to talk and behave.

Presenting findings from fieldwork among the Ultras groups of Cairo's two football giants Ahly and Zamalek, the paper also discusses how this complex of big-business, satellite media and oppressive politics has been challenged in recent years. Emerging in 2007, international Ultras principles such as 'anti-media', 'anti modern football' and an aversion for the police, resonated well with large sections of the Egyptian youth, and the Ultras grew quickly, directing stern criticism towards the corruption within the domestic game, while repeatedly fighting State Security forces inside and outside the stadiums. Consequently, the Ultras gained an experience that proved crucial in the 2011 uprising, and their importance as a revolutionary force is on the rise, not the least after the massacre of 74 Ahly Ultras at Port Said stadium in February 2012. How do Ultras in Cairo perceive of their role in the revolution and the struggle against the commercial-political monster that Egyptian football turned into under Mubarak? What are their alternative visions for what football should be and represent in a future, democratic Egypt?

Paper short abstract:

Football, a culture- complex, presently has become a popular culture in Kolkata under globalization. The variegated primary and secondary involvements in it, can be observed its ubiquity in social, economic, political, and cultural spheres of the mainstream society. The corporate sponsorships and media take the game in global networks.

Paper long abstract:

Globalization is a current phase of worldwide impact of industrialization and its socio-economic, political, and cultural consequences on the world over. Footbal ( Soccer), being a culture-trait complex, presently, creating frenzied popularity in Kolkata, the global city of West Bengal. Football, once has been introduced in the Bengali core by culture contact has gradually become one of the significant events of popular culture. Bearing an age-old social history, it merits attention, interests and involvement like participants of diverse ethnic backgrounds, regions, social status and strata, professions, political parties, and genders. The involvements and popularity depend on expansive network of mass media across the globe. Corporate honchos companies of good repute looking at clubs with greater interests to make their business strong. Money is spent in tournaments, telecast, tours, players'salary, training and so on. Present study explores the reflection of globalization in its technological, technical, social, economic, political, and cultural milieu.

Paper short abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to analyses some recent mobilities of brazilian football players. Such discussion is based on how these professionals chose clubs and cities to live and work, mainly taking the concepts of lifestyle and life project to produce a narrative of infamous players trajectories.

Paper long abstract:

The intentions and objectives in constitute a football career are not unanimous, some players alternate periods of unemployment and "good" contracts, others can chose club and city to live in a range of possibilities. Difficultly professional footballers can play and live at their hometown, on the opposite way of most part of other workers. This is important to understand how professionals footballers have to handle constant displacements, changing necessities, preferences and habits of life. Although the support of food and family nearby are significantly organized to a few part of them (two important elements according to football researches in anthropology), the majority of such professionals are forced to rearrange the life project by the conditions faced at field of work. In addition to traditional aspects which defines contract possibilities, as injuries, player agents, performances, nationality, age, etc., we sustain that such displacements on footballer's careers are promoted within some contacts and destinies previously known but not experienced, which implies in different ways to live in the cities.

Paper short abstract:

This Paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork to look at the politics of contemporary protests among English football fans.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on 15 months ethnographic fieldwork amongst fans of FC United of Manchester (hereon FC United), a supporter owned football club formed by disaffected Manchester United fans in protest against the leveraged buy-out of Manchester United by the Glazer family in 2005. I suggest that the formation of FC United needs to be understood within a context of rising discontent and politicisation amongst some Manchester United fans over the increased commercialisation and neo-liberalisation of football in general and Manchester United in particular. Within the paper I look at an argument often articulated by prominent figures within FC United, that fans of all clubs need to campaign together and set aside inter-club rivalries in order to bring about political change in the way the sport is governed and supporter ownership at all clubs. I argue that the position advocated here can be understood as a form of 'football consciousness', analogous to class consciousness, where supporters recognise their shared position within an iniquitous structure which harms all fans. I analyse moments where this shared political 'consciousness' can be glimpsed amongst supporters of different clubs but also argue that the uneven outcomes produced by the free-market model of football club ownership militates against broad-based inter-club fan campaigning.