Football and Popular Culture

Football and Popular Culture
Author: Stephen R. Millar
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2021-05-17
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 100039106X

Football is ubiquitous and a permanent fixture of modern life. More than a sport, it frequently manifests in broader popular culture. This book examines the significance of football for, and in, popular culture across a wide range of forms, including music, film, and social media. Football and Popular Culture plots a new path in Football Studies, drawing on original research in countries including England, Brazil, Germany, Canada, and Yugoslavia. The book includes both historical and contemporary perspectives, exploring some of the most important themes in the study of sport and culture, including identity, nationalism, fandom, and protest. It presents diverse case studies ranging from sonic violence among Brazilian torcidas organizadas to fanled commemoration of the Munich air disaster, which together help us to better understand the intersection of sport, society, and popular culture. This is fascinating reading for any student or researcher working in sport studies, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, or contemporary history.

Football

Football
Author: Edward J. Rielly
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 2009-01-01
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 9780803226302

"...provides a detailed look at America's pastime through the lens of pop culture, [an] A-to-Z inventory of how certain aspects of the game affect and reflect broader society."--from publisher description.

Football and Philosophy

Football and Philosophy
Author: Michael W. Austin
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2008-07-11
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0813139023

“Vince Lombardi—who relished his undergraduate studies in philosophy—would have loved this book.” —Booklist Football and Philosophy: Going Deep investigates many of the issues surrounding the nation’s biggest sport. From a review of the flaws of the Bowl Championship Series, to a study of the violence inherent in the game, to an examination of Vince Lombardi’s views on winning, to the problems created by the development of instant replay, the essays in this collection tackle the moral and philosophical principles behind gridiron competition. The result is an insightful, humorous, and original book that will engage all fans of the game. “Insightful and informative, as well as provocative and entertaining.” —Charles Taliaferro, author of Consciousness and the Mind of God

Football and Colonialism

Football and Colonialism
Author: Nuno Domingos
Publisher: Ohio University Press
Total Pages: 466
Release: 2017-07-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0821445979

In articles for the newspaper O Brado Africano in the mid-1950s, poet and journalist José Craveirinha described the ways in which the Mozambican football players in the suburbs of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) adapted the European sport to their own expressive ends. Through gesture, footwork, and patois, they used what Craveirinha termed “malice”—or cunning—to negotiate their places in the colonial state. “These manifestations demand a vast study,” Craveirinha wrote, “which would lead to a greater knowledge of the black man, of his problems, of his clashes with European civilization, in short, to a thorough treatise of useful and instructive ethnography.” In Football and Colonialism, Nuno Domingos accomplishes that study. Ambitious and meticulously researched, the work draws upon an array of primary sources, including newspapers, national archives, poetry and songs, and interviews with former footballers. Domingos shows how local performances and popular culture practices became sites of an embodied history of Mozambique. The work will break new ground for scholars of African history and politics, urban studies, popular culture, and gendered forms of domination and resistance.

Football, Culture and Power

Football, Culture and Power
Author: David J. Leonard
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 299
Release: 2016-10-14
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1317410890

What does it mean when a hit that knocks an American football player unconscious is cheered by spectators? What are the consequences of such violence for the participants of this sport and for the entertainment culture in which it exists? This book brings together scholars and sport commentators to examine the relationship between American football, violence and the larger relations of power within contemporary society. From high school and college to the NFL, Football, Culture, and Power analyses the social, political and cultural imprint of America’s national pastime. The NFL’s participation in and production of hegemonic masculinity, alongside its practices of racism, sexism, heterosexism and ableism, provokes us to think deeply about the historical and contemporary systems of violence we are invested in and entertained by. This social scientific analysis of American football considers both the positive and negative power of the game, generating discussion and calling for accountability. It is fascinating reading for all students and scholars of sports studies with an interest in American football and the wider social impact of sport. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Reading Football

Reading Football
Author: Michael Oriard
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0807866962

Is football an athletic contest or a social event? Is it a game of skill, a test of manhood, or merely an organized brawl? Michael Oriard, a former professional player, asks these and other intriguing questions in Reading Football, the first contemporary book about football's formative years. American football began in the 1870s as a game to be played, not watched. Within a brief ten years, it had become a great public spectacle with an immense following, a phenomenon caused primarily by the voluminous commentary about the game conducted in popular newspapers and magazines. Oriard shows how this constant narrative in football's early years developed many different stories about what the game meant: football as pastime, as the sport of gentlemen, as a science, as a game of rules and their infringements. He shows how football became a series of cultural stories about power, luck, strategy, and deception. These different interpretations have been magnified by football's current omnipresence on television. According to Oriard, televised football now plays a cultural role of enormous importance for men, yet within the field of cultural studies the influence of football has been ignored until now. From the book: "A receiver sprints down the sideline, fast and graceful, then breaks toward the middle of the field where a safety waits for him. From forty yards upfield the quarterback releases the ball; it spirals in an elegant arc toward the goalposts as the receiver now for the first time looks back to pick up its flight. The pass is a little high; the receiver leaps, stretches, grasps the ball--barely, fingers clutching--at the very moment that the safety drives a helmet into his unprotected ribs. The force of the collision flings the receiver backward, slamming him to the turf. . . . This familiar tableau, this exemplary moment in a football game, epitomizes the appeal of the sport: the dramatic confrontation of artistry with violence, both equally necessary."

The Country of Football

The Country of Football
Author: Paulo Fontes
Publisher: Hurst & Company Limited
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2014
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1849044171

Brazil has done much to shape football/soccer, but how has soccer shaped Brazil? Despite the political and social importance of the beautiful game to the country, the subject has hitherto received little attention. This book presents groundbreaking work by historians and researchers from Brazil, the United States, Britain and France, who examine the political significance, in the broadest sense, of the sport in which Brazil has long been a world leader. The authors consider questions such as the relationship between soccer, the workplace and working class culture; the formation of Brazilian national identity; race relations; political and social movements; and the impact of the sport on social mobility. Contributions to the book range in time from the late nineteenth century, when the British first introduced the sport to Brazil, to the present day, as the 'country of soccer' prepares itself to host the 2014 World Cup, painting a vivid picture of the many ways in which soccer exists and functions in Brazil, both on and off the pitch.

Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture

Populism in Sport, Leisure, and Popular Culture
Author: Alan Tomlinson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 237
Release: 2021-03-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000364062

This book examines and establishes the sociological relevance of the concept of populism and illuminates the ideological use of sport, leisure, and popular culture in socio-political populist strategies and dynamics. The first part of the book — Themes, Concepts, Theories — sets the scene by reviewing and evaluating populist themes, concepts, and theories and exploring their cultural-historical roots in and application to cultural forms such as mega-sports events, reality television programmes, and the popular music festival. The second part — National Contexts and Settings — examines populist elements of events and regimes in selected cases in South America and Europe: Argentina, Brazil, Greece, Italy, and England. In the third part — Trump Times — the place of sport in the populist ideology and practices of US president Donald Trump is critically examined in analyses of Trump’s authoritarian populism, his Twitter discourse, Lady Gaga at the Super Bowl, and populist strategy on the international stage. The book concludes with a discussion of the strong case for a fuller sociological engagement with the populist dimensions of sport, leisure, and popular cultural forms. Written in a clear and accessible style, this volume will be of interest to sociologists and social scientists beyond those specialising in popular culture and cultural politics of sport and leisure, as the topic of populism and its connection to popular cultural forms and practices has come increasingly into prominence in the contemporary world.

AMERICA'S GAME

AMERICA'S GAME
Author: John Edward Price
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2019
Genre:
ISBN:

The relationship between popular culture and folklore is symbiotic, with each informing and expanding the other. However, cultural studies scholars historically dismiss folkloric aspect of sports or relegate them to a pre-industrial lifestyle, wholly replaced or marginalized in the twentieth century. Similarly, folklorists have been reluctant to analyze the role of sports in popular culture, focusing instead on either how recognizable folklore is used by popular culture or how contemporary folklore exists outside of popular culture. In order to bridge the gap between the two academic perspectives, this dissertation applies the tools of folkloristics to professional football in Cold War America, illustrating how popular culture has become a medium through which Americans form communities and enforce folkloric boundaries of language, symbolism, and narratives to create a group identity. Professional football is an ideal exemplar to demonstrate how popular culture has evolved into the role of modern tradition-bearer. Through professional football, Americans formed tribal loyalties, established customs and beliefs, and created a language of fandom that has expanded into the larger popular culture. Mass-media and entertainment enforced and propagated footbal's emerging lore, instructing consumers on which outfits to buy to fit in, and which foods to eat during the big game. The NFL took an active role in the process, creating a museum to itself and charging its own production company, NFL Films, to turn weekly game summaries into three-act dramas. The resulting elevated professional football from a game to a metaphor for America itself, reflecting and distorting beliefs and anxieties in the same way folklore has historically existed in other contexts. This dissertation outlines some of the problems with popular culture scholarship from different disciplines, suggests a solution for looking at popular culture through folkloristics, and demonstrates in detail how poplore is created, maintained, and functions in its native community: the mass-mediated, mass-produced, and mass-consumed popular culture of twentieth century America (and beyond).

Digital Football Cultures

Digital Football Cultures
Author: Stefan Lawrence
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2018-09-03
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 1351118889

As the digital revolution continues apace, emergent technologies and means of communication present new challenges and opportunities for the football industry. This is the first book to bring together key contemporary debates at the intersection of football studies, leisure studies, and digital cultural studies. It presents cutting edge theoretical and empirical work based around four key themes: theorizing digital football cultures; digital football fandom; football and social media; and football (sub)cybercultures. Covering topics such as transnational digital fandom, online abuse, and gender, Digital Football Cultures argues that we are witnessing the hyperdigitalization of the world’s most popular sport. This book is a valuable resource for students and researchers working in leisure studies, sports studies, football studies, and critical media studies, as well as geography, anthropology, criminology, and sociology. It is also fascinating reading for anybody working in sport, media, and culture.