Football fandom and post-socialist transformation in Zagreb, Croatia

Hodges, Andrew

doi:10.4324/9781351118866-2

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

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“…Whilst football is an emerging space for social movement research and relational sociology (Brandt et al, 2017; Cleland et al, 2018; Garcia & Zheng, 2017; Hodges, 2018; Numerato, 2018), future research should consider the ways in which some contemporary supporter movements continue to negotiate with features of political semiosis such as ‘Supporters Not Customers’, ‘Football without Fans is Nothing’ and ‘Against Modern Football’, but do so across multiple timescales which interact economically, culturally and politically (Gillan, 2020b). In the case of Safe Standing, the micro-level analysis of the storied dimensions of activism and the vectors of action reveals a complex and contradictory response to the neoliberal political economy which English football has inhabited over the past 30 years.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Safe Standing movement: Vectors in the post-Hillsborough timescape of English football

Turner

2021

The Sociological Review

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This article draws upon archival and fieldwork research to analyse the longer-term impact which all-seated stadia have had on football supporters’ consumption of the game in England. Consequently, 26 supporter activists identified as important in building a rich social history of activism were interviewed as a type of activist life story. By analysing empirical snapshots of a 30-year social movement against all-seated stadia, the article cross-pollinates ideas from sociology and social movement studies on eventful protests and temporality, to show how events and ruptures shape the dynamics of a social movement, and secondly, to show how discursive vectors indicate the developing understanding, by networked actors, of the stakes of a movement’s core conflict. In English football, historically significant events like the Hillsborough disaster continue to shape many of the key mobilisations of supporter networks, and their collective, but also complex and contradictory consumption of the game. This movement, Safe Standing, is sociologically important, because it evidences the complex interplay of cultural and technological vectors and their manifestation across the compelling timeframes and orientations which make up the consumption of English football in a post-Hillsborough timescape. By engaging in a 30-year struggle over Hillsborough as a restlessness event, Safe Standing sought to gain control over the interpretation of this timescape and is characterised by the complex struggle supporters face over the ritualistic expression of identity and solidarity.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Safe Standing movement: Vectors in the post-Hillsborough timescape of English football

Turner

2021

The Sociological Review

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“…Developing as a key component of the experiential commodity that is the professional sporting event (Kalman-Lamb 2018), fans play a key role in using the arena as an "auto-auditory apparatus" (Connor 2011:60) from which to address national and transnational audiences about issues that may relate to the aesthetics of athletic performance (Larlham 2012) but also extend past sports (Brownell 2012;Besnier, Brownell, and Carter 2018). While the fringe subjectivities and lifestyles associated with hardcore fandom are often misrepresented by news media and caricaturized in popular culture through the fetishization of violence (Armstrong 1998;Clarke 1973;Hall 1978;Poulton 2005), community work and political activism have also become common dimensions of fan praxis for ultras across Europe (Gabler 2010;Hodges 2019;Numerato 2018;Jack 2021). Fostering avenues for radical imagination, the performative aspects of hardcore sports fandom enculturate alternative identities and values in participants while serving as a collective means of expressing and communicating these alternatives ( Jack 2019).…”

Section: Fandom As Political Actionmentioning

confidence: 99%

What’s the Crowd Got to Do with It?

Jack¹

2022

TDR: Drama Rev

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For a group of antifascist fans who support Eis Hockey Club Dynamo Berlin, street protest and ice hockey games are both sites of left-wing political intervention. Despite the team’s reputation in Germany as “The Nazi Club,” the group aims to cultivate politically minded crowd action and uplift the atmosphere in the arena in hopes of ridding Germany of representations of its authoritarian past.

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“…This, of course, does not mean that there have not been tremendously insightful, usually ethnographic, studies of football supporters which have given us a first-hand view into the origins of their fandom or even activism in different cultural contexts (e.g. Bleakney and Darby, 2018; Dixon, 2012; Dubal, 2010; Gilbert, 2018; Hodges, 2018; Lalić and Pilić, 2011; Totten, 2016). Exceptional advances have particularly been made by scholars employing relational sociology frameworks who have exposed the constant process of building and rebuilding of often transnational networks of football communities (Cleland et al, 2018).…”

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Football activism as political contention: Contextual determinants of membership in the association of supporters of Hajduk Split

Glaurdić

2019

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

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Where do politically activist football supporters come from? What are the social conditions under which they are successfully recruited and mobilised? This article answers those questions by analysing a unique dataset of more than 43,000 members of Our Hajduk – the association of supporters of the Croatian club Hajduk Split – as well as a host of data on the communities they live in. The analysis shows that Our Hajduk thrives in exactly the same areas where most other social, civil and political organisations thrive: among the more educated and more socio-economically successful. Most importantly, the analysis shows that the pattern of Our Hajduk membership closely follows the patterns of political affiliation and participation in Croatia’s electoral arena and is guided by the opposition to political players who have dominated Croatian football and turned it into a social field marked by corruption and mismanagement.

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Football fandom and post-socialist transformation in Zagreb, Croatia

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

The Safe Standing movement: Vectors in the post-Hillsborough timescape of English football

The Safe Standing movement: Vectors in the post-Hillsborough timescape of English football

What’s the Crowd Got to Do with It?

Football activism as political contention: Contextual determinants of membership in the association of supporters of Hajduk Split

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