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Soccer, the most popular mass spectator sport in the world, has long been a site which articulates the complexities and diversities of the everyday life of the nation. The imaging and prioritization of the game as a 'national' or an 'international' event in public opinion and the media also play a critical role in transforming the soccer culture of a nation. In this context, the FIFA World Cup remains the grand spectacle for asserting the identity of the nation. This book intends to offer eclectic perspectives and discourses on the FIFA World Cup, and to throw light on the changing dimensions of football and sports culture in terms of identity, race, ethnicity, gender, fandom, governance, and so on. On the one hand, it focuses on the significance of the FIFA World Cup for nations in terms of hosting, performance, playing style, and identity formation. On the other, it looks beyond the World Cup to highlight the growing importance of a host of perspectives in sport in general and football in particular with reference to art, fandom, gender, media, and governance.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
List of contents
Introduction 1. FIFA World Cup and beyond: sport, culture, media and governance Kausik Bandyopadhyay, Souvik Naha and Shakya Mitra FIFA World Cup and the Nation 2. A second ‘Maracanazo’? The 2014 FIFA World Cup in historical perspective Kevin Moore 3. Reporting the 2014 World Cup: football first and social issues last Helton Levy 4. Risk and (in)security of FIFA football World Cups – outlook for Russia 2018 Donna Wong and Simon Chadwick 5. The language of football: a cultural analysis of selected world cup nations Niels N. Rossing and Lotte S. Skrubbeltrang 6. Conflicting traditions: the FIFA World Cup, Australia and football identities Binoy Kampmark 7. Amnesia and animosity: an assessment of soccer in the States David Kilpatrick Sport, Culture, Media and Governance 8. The art of goalkeeping: memorializing Lev Yashin Mike O’Mahony 9. Politics and international fandom in a fringe nation: La Albiceleste, Maradona, and Marxist Kolkata Sarbajit Mitra and Souvik Naha 10. Soccer and the city: the game and its fans in Solo and Yogyakarta Andy Fuller 11. Women’s time? Time and temporality in women’s football Kath Woodward 12. Making sense of race/ethnicity and gender in televised football: reception research among British students Rens Peeters and Jacco van Sterkenburg 13. FIFA, the video game: a major vehicle for soccer’s popularization in the United States Andrei S. Markovits and Adam I. Green 14. Stakeholder governance and Irish sport David Hassan and Ian O’Boyle
About the author
Kausik Bandyopadhyay is Professor of History at West Bengal State University, India. He was a former Fellow of the International Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland. A Deputy Executive Editor of
Soccer & Society (Routledge), his most recent works include
Mahatma on the Pitch: Gandhi and Cricket in India (2017) and
Sport, Culture and Nation: Perspectives from Indian Football and South Asian Cricket (2015).
Souvik Naha has a PhD in History from the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. An Editor of
Soccer & Society (Routledge), he has published his research in journals such as
International Journal of the History of Sport,
Sport in Society,
Soccer & Society,
Sport in History, and
Economic and Political Weekly, as well as in various edited volumes.
Shakya Mitra is a post graduate in Sports Management from Stirling University, Scotland. He has worked in the Sports Management Industry as well as in the media in India for close to eight years. He has contributed articles to international journals and co-edited special issues of Routledge journals on sport.
Summary
The book offers diverse perspectives and discourses on the FIFA World Cup, and throws light on the changing dimensions of football and sports culture in terms of identity, race, ethnicity, gender, fandom and governance. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Sport in Society.
