Football and Community in the Global Context by Brown, Adam; Crabbe, Tim;

Short description:

A ‘crisis of community’ has emerged in many areas and many have sought to blame a variety of other ‘social issues’ on the decline of community. Football clubs now embody many of the collective symbols, identifications and processes of connectivity which have long been associated with the notion of ‘community’.

Long description:

Football clubs across the world continue to embody many of the collective symbols, identifications and processes of connectivity which have long been associated with the notion of ‘community’. In recent years, however, the very term ‘community’ has 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 imbued with all the richness associated with human interaction.

‘Community’ has also been employed increasingly within football, for instrumental reasons concerned with policy and stadium redevelopment, and in broader rhetoric about clubs, their localities and fans.

This book brings together a range of key debates around contemporary understandings of ‘community’ in world football. Split into four sections, it considers

1. political and theoretical debates around football and its connection with community;


2. different national and ethnic football communities;


3. instrumental uses of football to bridge gaps within and between groups;


4. future directions in the football and community debate.

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

Table of Contents:

1 Introduction: football and community - practical and theoretical considerations  Adam Brown, Tim Crabbe and Gavin Mellor

Politics, theory and practice

2 'The Janus-faced sport': English football, community and the legacy of the 'third way'  Gavin Mellor

3 Contemporary community theory and football  Tony Blackshaw

4 'Our club, our rules': fan communities at FC United of Manchester  Adam Brown

Nations and ethnicities

5 Football, komyuniti and the Japanese ideological soccer apparatus  John Horne and Wolfram Manzenreiter

6 'The nation and its fragments': football and community in India  Kausik Bandyopadhyay

7 Coming in from the margins: ethnicity, community support and the rebranding of Australian soccer  James Skinner, Dwight H. Zakus and Allan Edwards

Community and the instrumental use of football

8 Anyone for Football for Peace? The challenges of using sport in the service of co-existence in Israel  John Sugden

9 Vamos, Vamos Aceirteros: soccer and the Latino community in Richmond, California  Ilann S. Messeri

Postmodern community and future directions

10 Fishing for community: England fans at the 2006 FIFA World Cup  Tim Crabbe