This article contributes to the under-researched literature on the Europeanization of sports. We distinguish between two modes of Europeanization (broadly signifying the impact of European integration on the domestic realm): the traditional top-down approach and the neglected societal/transnational Europeanization track. Both modes are examined with regard to their effects within two national contexts (Germany and Austria), and across two cases: the Bosman ruling (the nationality issue) and European club competitions as an engine of Europeanization. Our analysis reveals some important differences: the domestic countermeasures regarding the nationality aspect of the Bosman ruling were more subtle and European Union-law-compliant in Germany, while the actions undertaken in Austria were, at best, questionably compliant. As for the second case, although Austrian football had undergone an important (Central) Europeanization period long before Bosman, some more recent developments at the European level -such as pan-European club competition and the parallel formation of top clubs' representatives -have constituted much stronger dynamics within German football. Finally, we tentatively address this variation in outcomes.
This contribution will discuss how the formation of a national sport space interacts with the development of national self-awareness and national identity with reference to the Austrian case. It will be argued that the growing of an Austrian identity is not merely synchronous with the establishment of an Austrian sport space but that this nation-building process has been helped along substantially by the “Austrification” of two leading sports: urban soccer (associated with Vienna) and alpine skiing (linked with rural—mainly alpine—Austria).
In recent decades, debates on the relationship between pop culture and the political have transgressed academia and have even been prominent in pop (media) discourses and texts, including pop literature. Amongst the contributions at the intersection of art, theory and entertainment are the novels and essays by the German author Dietmar Dath. Taking the example of his novel Für immer in Honig (Berlin 2005), it will be discussed how the book reloads and theorizes pop culture, and how a common cultural-theoretical narrative of de-politicized pop is challenged by the imaginative narratives of the novel.It will be argued that Dath's references to affective 'mattering maps' of pop culture, that on the one hand tend to fall into the pitfalls of exclusive 'pop sophistication', nevertheless play a key role for his aesthetical/theoretical project of political emancipation, and that these references can be viewed as examples of why popular passions matter for the formation of political identities/subjectivities as well as for the production and reading of political theory.
Abstract:In 1922, Julius Deutsch, one of the leading Viennese Social Democrats, spent a weekend in the Strudengau in Upper Austria. In a local inn, he was insulted by a right-wing alpinist, who accused him of being a traitor to the Emperor. The man claimed that Deutsch, along with other "Jewish Revolutionaries", played a part in overturning the old order and helping to "stab" the Empire's army "in the back". Deutsch brought his opponent to trial, in an attempt to present his actions both in the World War and as a State Secretary for Military Affairs in the new Austrian Republic in a better light. However, the provincial courts acquitted the defendant on appeal, following the anti-Semitic arguments of his defending lawyer. Like other trials in the interwar years, the lawsuit unfolded into a "court of injustice", with contested concepts of "Jewish difference" being performed. In the courtroom, Deutsch, who left the Jewish religious community as a young man, was forced to engage with his Jewish family background. The article focuses on Deutsch's retrospective narration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in his courtroom speech and the insights that can be gained about Jewish difference and the antagonistic political arena of the new nation-state of (Deutsch-)Österreich.
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