Relational Sociology, Collective Action, and Football Fandom

Cleland, Jamie; Doidge, Mark; Millward, Peter; Widdop, Paul

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-73141-4_1

Cited by 13 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 108 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…While some question to what extent the activism of football supporters goes beyond the sociocultural domain of sport or fits into any sort of party politics (Cleland et al, 2018), its political character cannot be denied. Contemporary football supporter activists are political because they clearly aim to intentionally alter the existing relations of political power and bring about social change (Brough and Shresthova, 2012), even if their activities are often circumscribed by the domains of their clubs, local communities or the sport.…”

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This collective action is fuelled by continuous mobilisation which is most often highly intensive because it strikes at the core of participants’ social lives (Numerato, 2015). Indeed, football supporter activism is political exactly because it is directed at something that is much more than ‘a form of consumption’ (Cleland et al, 2018: 16).…”

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…All of these defining characteristics of being a football supporter – identity, community, socialisation – are inherently political. Or, rather, they give football the potential for easy transformation from a relatively autonomous social field (Bourdieu, 1991) into a prime site of political contention – particularly in times of crisis, whether on the level of individual clubs (García and Welford, 2015) or whole polities (Cleland et al, 2018; Zaimakis, 2016).…”

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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). Nevertheless, the disciplinary methodological boundaries, as well as objective obstacles to data collection, have precluded generations of sociologists of sport from shedding systematic empirical light on the aforementioned question: where do (politically activist) football supporters come from?…”

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The fact that higher levels of education and socio-economic wellbeing lead to higher levels of political participation and associational membership is perhaps one of the strongest empirical findings in social science (Verba et al, 1993; Verba and Nie, 1972). In spite of a wave of scholarship demonstrating the broad appeal of football and the class and educational/professional diversity of the various coalitions and networks of activist supporters (Cleland et al, 2018; Giulianotti, 2002; Numerato, 2018), this relationship between educational and socio-economic performance and political activity is in tension with some of the classics of the sociology of football (Giulianotti, 1999: 40–47) and with the conventional popular view of the social foundations of football fandom.…”

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 4 more Smart Citations

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

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Social Foundations Of (Political) Football Activismmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

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

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

The Safe Standing movement in English football: Mobilizing across the political and discursive fields of contention

Turner

2021

Current Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Twenty-eight years after the Taylor Report into the Hillsborough disaster recommended that all football grounds in the top two divisions in England and Wales should become all-seated, the UK government, in 2018, announced a review into the safety of modern standing areas and whether developments in stadium safety might justify changing the all-seating legislation to permit Safe Standing. These events are the outcome of a 30-year social movement in which a critical mass of supporters, through the relational networks they formed, have built collective action. Drawing upon both 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, the article uses relational sociology to tell the story of the movement, and studies the working tactics and structure of a small network mobilizing across the political and discursive fields of contention post-Hillsborough. It argues that whilst now a more effective movement with technological and political capital, Safe Standing continues to raise important questions around the historical views on football fans as somehow deviant and reinforces the long-term impact and legacy of Hillsborough on supporters’ modern cultural consumption of the game by moving within the parameters of the all-seating legislation.

show abstract

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

Turner

2021

The Sociological Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

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.

show abstract

Relational Sociology, Collective Action, and Football Fandom

Cited by 13 publications

References 108 publications

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

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

The Safe Standing movement in English football: Mobilizing across the political and discursive fields of contention

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

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About