Football and Community in the Global Context: Studies in Theory and Practice

ISBN-13: 9780415448161 / Angielski / Twarda / 2008 / 145 str.

Adam Brown;Tim Crabbe;Gavin Mellor

Opis

During the past 15 years, interest in association football across many areas of the world has risen to a new level. This is manifest in the blanket media coverage that often accompanies every aspect of elite levels of the game, the increased attendances which have been enjoyed in many countries, and the ritualised identifications with football that have come to permeate wider contemporary social formations. Professional football clubs have been regarded as sites for the expression of common identity for much of the game’s history, and it could be argued that recent developments in and around the game have seen this process emphasised with renewed vigour. Football clubs now, as much as ever, embody many of the collective symbols, identifications and processes of connectivity which have long been associated with the notion of ‘community’.

At the same time that ‘community’ connections and identities are being expressed strongly through football, the very term ‘community’ has itself become the focus of renewed interest within popular discourse and amongst academics, politicians and policy makers. It has become something of a ‘buzz’ word, wheeled out as both a lament to more certain times and as an appeal to a better future: a term which is imbued with all the richness associated with human interaction. Indeed, a ‘crisis of community’ has emerged in many areas of the developed world in recent years in which policy makers have sought to blame crime and ‘anti-social’ behaviour, health problems, poor educational standards, and a variety of other ‘social issues’ on the decline of community and civic culture more generally. In this regard, the very notion of ‘community’ is increasingly open to debate as people reflect on what it is to be a member of a community, and what reciprocal responsibilities come with such formations.

This book was published as a special issue of Soccer & Society.

O autorze

Dr Adam Brown, Professor Tim Crabbe and Dr Gavin Mellor are Directors and founder members of Substance, a UK-based social research company specialising in areas of sport, youth inclusion and community regeneration. www.substance.coop