From Frontiers To Football

This summer the eyes of the world will be on the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, and this will be repeated in 2016 for the Olympic Games inRio de Janeiro. Screens will likely be filled with cultural stereotypes about Latin Americans and airwaves packed with specious interpretations of Latin America’s position in the world. This book provides the historical analysis to rebut such misinterpretations and offers the reader tools with which tounder stand Latin America’s complex present.'From frontiers to football' tells the history of Latin America’s engagement with global empires from 1800 to today. It is a storyof repeated cycles of lessons learned and unlearned, continued dependency, victimhood and thwarted dreams. It is also anarrative of overthrown imperial designs,colonial armies defeated and new hope sexpressed – inspiration for other colonized peoples across the globe. This book redresses the absence of cultural history, giving as much attention to Shakira and Pelé as tocoffee producers, copper miners, government policies and covert imperialism. It avoids the polemical invectives of political interpretations,presenting a clear, readable and absorbing introduction to the history of Latin America’s interactions with the world over the last two centuries.Latin America is at the forefront of innovation and a global centre in many social, cultural and economic activities.No longer either a frontier or a periphery, 'From frontiers to football'presents a compelling and accessible portrait of a continent today.

With Brazil hosting the FIFA World Cup this summer and the Olympic Games in 2016, all eyes are on Latin America. But what vision of these countries will we be given? Will our airwaves be full of cultural stereotypes about Latin Americans and inaccurate interpretations of the region’s position in the world? In From Frontiers to Football, Matthew Brown provides a much-needed historical analysis to rebut misconceptions about Latin America’s past while giving readers the tools with which to understand the region’s complex present. Telling the story of Latin America’s engagement with global empires from 1800 to today, From Frontiers to Football is as much a narrative of repeated cycles, continued dependency, and thwarted dreams as it is a tale of imperial designs overthrown, colonial armies defeated, and other successes that have inspired colonized peoples across the globe. Brown restores a cultural history to the continent, giving as much attention to pop singer Shakira and retired footballer Pelé as he does to coffee producers, copper miners, government policies, and covert imperialism. Latin America, Brown shows, is no longer a frontier or periphery, but rather is at the forefront of innovation and a global center for social, cultural, and economic activities. Clear and readable, From Frontiers to Football presents a compelling introduction to the history of Latin America’s interactions with the world over the last two centuries.

Is soccer inherently political? What does soccer actually mean today? Games Without Frontiers seeks force us to think about what we mean when we say 'soccer'. Along the way, it skewers media cliches about footballers and fans, considers the sport's implications for radical politics and aesthetics, and situates the 'working-man's game' in relation to twenty-first century discussions of political authenticity. Written half as a travelogue, this book seeks to protect football from some of its would-be saviors without ever losing sight of what it means to have a fan's investment in the game.

What is the historical appeal of football? How diverse are its players, supporters and institutions throughout the world? What are its various traditions and how are these affected by pressures to modernize?? In what ways does the game help to reinforce or overcome social differences and prejudices? How can we understand football’s subcultures, especially football hooligan ones? The 1994 World Cup Finals in the United States have again demonstrated the conflicts which exist around football over its international future. The multi-media age beckons new audiences for top-level matches, but worries remain that the historical and cultural appeal of football itself may be the real loser. The global game? has a breadth of skills, playing techniques, supporting styles and ruling bodies. These are all subject to local and national traditions of team play and fan display. Modern commercial influences and international cultural links through players and fan styles, are accommodated within the game to an increasing extent. Yet, football’s ability to differentiate remains: at local, regional, national and even continental levels. In some cases the game’s traditions ensure that these differences are becoming as oppositional today as is modern football hooliganism. But, the overall picture is one of a game without frontiers - rich in historical and cultural detail, pluralistic in its traditions and identities. This volume brings together essays by leading academics and researchers writing on world football. Their studies draw on interdisciplinary researches in England, Scotland, France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Argentina and Australia. The book will be of interest to students of sports science, cultural studies and social science and to all those who simply enjoy football as the world's greatest sporting passion.

Football is unquestionably the world’s most popular and influential sport. There is no corner of the globe in which the game is not played or followed. More countries are affiliated to FIFA, football’s governing body, than to the United Nations. The sport has therefore become an important component of our social, cultural, political and economic life. The Routledge Handbook of Football Studies is a landmark work of reference, going further than any other book in considering the historical and contemporary significance of football around the world. Written by a team of leading sport scholars, the book covers a broad range of disciplines from history, sociology, politics and business, to philosophy, law and media studies. The central section of the book examines key themes and issues in football studies, such as the World Cup and international competition, governance and ownership, fandom and celebrity. The concluding section offers in-depth surveys of the culture and organisation of football in each of the regional confederations, from UEFA to CONCACAF. This book will be fascinating reading for any serious football fan and an essential resource for advanced students or scholars undertaking research in football or sport studies, and any practitioner or policy-maker working in football.

This book examines how since its arrival in 1867 with British immigrants, football has become the key cultural signifier of national identity in Argentina over the long twentieth century. With the international exploits of players such as Luis Monti, Alfredo Di Stéfano and Diego Maradona, the sport has projected Argentina onto the global consciousness not seen in any other way. In this book, Mark Orton challenges existing myths surrounding the nativisation of football in Argentina away from British influence, as he shows how the game provided a conduit for the assimilation of millions of European immigrants in the early decades of the century into a new Argentine ‘race’. The book also examines how football gave some of the ‘voiceless others’ such as women, Afro-Argentines, indigenous people and those in the interior an arena to project themselves in an Argentine society that was masculine, white and Buenos Aires-dominated.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- About the authors -- Introduction Stillborn in the USA? -- Tradition and modernity in European football -- 1. Exporting football: notes on the development of football in Europe -- 2. Austrification as modernization: changes in Viennese football culture -- 3. "We are Celtic supporters ... ": questions of football and identity in modern Scotland -- 4. From Saint-Etienne to Marseilles: tradition and modernity in French soccer and society -- 5. The drive to modernization and the supermarket imperative: who needs a new football stadium? -- Identities: local, ethnic, national -- 6. ''Rangers is a black club": 'race', identity and local football in England -- 7. Football and identity in the Ruhr: the case of Schalke 04 -- 8. 'Wogball:' ethnicity and violence in Australian soccer -- 9. Masculinity and football: the formation of national identity in Argentina -- 10. The stars and the flags: individuality, collective identities and the national dimension in Italia '90 and Wimbledon '91 & '92 -- Subcultures of opposition -- 11. New supporter cultures and identity in France: the case of Paris Saint-Germain -- 12. False Leeds: the construction of hooligan confrontations -- 13. 'Keep it in the Family': an outline of Hibs' football hooligans' social ontology -- 14. The birth of the 'ultras': the rise of football hooliganism in Italy

"This collection explores soccer's development in the United States as waves of immigrants arrived and America's cities began to industrialize and become major cultural hubs in the late-nineteenth century. While America is largely known today as one of the few countries in which soccer is not its primary sport, this collection aims to shed light on the US's little-known soccer history by focusing on immigration and immigrant stories playing out in major American cities"--