Author: Mariann Vaczi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317677307
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Spanish soccer is on top of the world, at international and club level, with the best teams and a seemingly endless supply of exciting and stylish players. While the Spanish economy struggles, its soccer flourishes, deeply embedded throughout Spanish social and cultural life. But the relationship between soccer, culture and national identity in Spain is complex. This fascinating, in-depth study shines new light on Spanish soccer by examining the role this sport plays in Basque identity, consolidated in Athletic Club of Bilbao, the century-old soccer club located in the birthplace of Basque nationalism. Athletic Bilbao has a unique player recruitment policy, allowing only Basque-born players or those developed at the youth academies of Basque clubs to play for the team, a policy that rejects the internationalism of contemporary globalised soccer. Despite this, the club has never been relegated from the top division of Spanish football. A particularly tight bond exists between fans, their club and the players, with Athletic representing a beacon of Basque national identity. This book is an ethnography of a soccer culture where origins, nationalism, gender relations, power and passion, lifecycle events and death rituals gain new meanings as they become, below and beyond the playing field, a matter of creative contention and communal affirmation. Based on unique, in-depth ethnographic research, this book investigates how a soccer club and soccer fandom affect the life of a community, interweaving empirical research material with key contemporary themes in the social sciences, and placing the study in the wider context of Spanish political and sporting cultures. Filling a key gap in the literature on contemporary Spain, and on wider soccer cultures, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, anthropology, sociology, political science, or cultural and gender studies.
Author: Mariann Vaczi
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317677293
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 267
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Book Description
Spanish soccer is on top of the world, at international and club level, with the best teams and a seemingly endless supply of exciting and stylish players. While the Spanish economy struggles, its soccer flourishes, deeply embedded throughout Spanish social and cultural life. But the relationship between soccer, culture and national identity in Spain is complex. This fascinating, in-depth study shines new light on Spanish soccer by examining the role this sport plays in Basque identity, consolidated in Athletic Club of Bilbao, the century-old soccer club located in the birthplace of Basque nationalism. Athletic Bilbao has a unique player recruitment policy, allowing only Basque-born players or those developed at the youth academies of Basque clubs to play for the team, a policy that rejects the internationalism of contemporary globalised soccer. Despite this, the club has never been relegated from the top division of Spanish football. A particularly tight bond exists between fans, their club and the players, with Athletic representing a beacon of Basque national identity. This book is an ethnography of a soccer culture where origins, nationalism, gender relations, power and passion, lifecycle events and death rituals gain new meanings as they become, below and beyond the playing field, a matter of creative contention and communal affirmation. Based on unique, in-depth ethnographic research, this book investigates how a soccer club and soccer fandom affect the life of a community, interweaving empirical research material with key contemporary themes in the social sciences, and placing the study in the wider context of Spanish political and sporting cultures. Filling a key gap in the literature on contemporary Spain, and on wider soccer cultures, this book is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, anthropology, sociology, political science, or cultural and gender studies.
Author: Timothy J. Ashton
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 0810891743
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
Soccer has the unique ability to represent and strengthen different cultural identities and ideologies throughout the world. Perhaps nowhere can this be seen more prominently than in Spain, which has surged to the forefront of the world’s most popular sport. The national team has won the last two European Championships and the 2010 World Cup, while the two preeminent club teams in Spain, Real Madrid and FC Barcelona, have reached the semifinals of the UEFA Champions League in 2011, 2012, and 2013. Even before the sport became a global phenomenon, soccer had established a strong connection with Spanish identity and culture. In Soccer in Spain: Politics, Literature, and Film, Timothy J. Ashton examines the sport’s association with Spanish culture and society. In this volume, Ashton demonstrates how Spain’s soccer clubs reflected the politics of the region they represented and continue to reflect them today. The author also explores the often-tenuous relationship between the intellectual classes and the soccer community in Spain. Although some of the country’s most highly-praised literary figures had a passion for soccer—which was often reflected in their work—many intellectuals deemed the topic unsuitable for critical study. Ashton also discusses how soccer films faced a similar rebuff from Spanish intellectuals, though the popularity of these films has grown in recent years. As soccer continues to be one of the modern world’s most significant representations of globalization, its importance as a cultural touchpoint cannot be ignored. For anyone wanting to learn more about the relationship between soccer, politics, and popular culture, this volume offers critical insights. Soccer in Spain is a valuable read for students and scholars of Spanish political history, literature, film, and sport.
Author: R. Llopis-Goig
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137467959
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 201
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Book Description
In the past few decades, Spanish football has undergone a significant transformation, both on and off the pitch. Llopis-Goig analyses these trends, questioning the role of football in contemporary Spanish society and examining the historical reasons for its social hegemony.
Author: Jimmy Burns
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0857206559
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 433
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Book Description
The author of a best-selling biography of Diego Maradona, and similarly widely acclaimed books on FC Barcelona and Real Madrid, digs deep into the roots of the most popular sport, to look at how football played in Spain became the most admired in the world. From its early beginnings when the first football on the shores of Bilbao and Buenos Aires was played by British sailors and engineers, through to the influx of South American stars, and similarly inspirational Italians, Dutchman and Scandinavians, the author shows how the engagement of foreigners with home-grown Spanish talent overcame political adversity and produced football of sublime skill, passion, and unparalleled entertainment value. The book takes us on a journey through some of the extraordinary characters, games, and moments that have defined Spanish football from the early days when a few enthusiasts developed their talent kicking a ball around on a piece of industrial waste-ground or beach, to the emergence of rival giants, FC Barcelona and Real Madrid - the most powerful and successful football clubs in the world - and a national team that, encompassing all that was most brilliant in the Spanish League, became the World Champions.
Author: Sid Lowe
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1446496635
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
‘A history of modern Spain told through one of world football's most intense rivalries’ Independent ‘Sports Book of the Year’ Sunday Times It’s Messi vs Ronaldo, it’s Catalonia vs Castilla. It’s the nation against the state, freedom fighters vs Franco’s fascists. It’s majestic goals and mesmerising skills, red cards and bench brawls. It’s the best two teams on the planet going face to face and toe to toe. It’s more than a game. It’s a war. It’s Barcelona vs Real Madrid. Only, it’s not that simple. From the wounds left by the civil war to the teams’ recent global domination, historian and expert on Spanish football, Sid Lowe lifts the lid on sport’s greatest rivalry. Lowe has spoken to the biggest names and the forgotten heroes who defined their clubs. Men like Alfredo Di Stéfano and Johan Cruyff as well as the only survivor of the most politically charged game in history, the Barcelona striker who knocked Madrid out of the European Cup for the first time ever, and the president who celebrated his club’s defining moment by taking a midnight dip in the Thames. By exploring the history, politics, culture, economics and language, while never forgetting the drama on the pitch, Lowe demonstrates the symbiotic nature of the relationship between these two football giants. In doing so he reveals the human story behind this explosive rivalry.
Author: Kirstin Hallmann
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461489059
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 357
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Book Description
The aim of this book is to provide an overview of perspectives and approaches to sports development focusing on sport systems, sport participation and public policy towards sports. It includes twelve European countries covering all regions of Europe and eleven countries from around the globe. The objective is to present an overview of the diversity of approaches taken to sport development, focusing on the different sport systems and how sport is financed, the underlying applications of sport policy and how it is reflected in sport participation. This book takes a comparative approach which is reflected in each chapter following a similar structure. The diversity of sports systems in Europe and other continents and their (historical) context is shown. Thereby a range of policy approaches underpinning sport development around the world are presented, making it of interest to both academics and policy-makers concerned with sports economics and policy.
Author: Phil Ball
Publisher: WSC Books Limited
ISBN: 9780954013462
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 268
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Book Description
Author: Peter Kennedy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351668358
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 193
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Book Description
This book explores the tradition of left wing political thinking in the culture of fans of professional football in Europe. It sets out to chronicle and celebrate the fraternal, communal and radical tradition of football - seen to best effect in demands for democratic fan ownership and control of clubs, in fan campaigns against racist and fascist mobilisation of football supporters, and in a firm commitment to anti-corporatism. Drawing on the rich and varied traditions of fan cultures across Europe, the book examines how football, as a cultural form, carries with it the possibility of promoting the voices of the disenfranchised and the marginalised, and so the basis for nurturing solidarity against oppression, alienation and exploitation current in modern capitalist society. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.
Author: Peter Kennedy
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135166834X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 319
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Book Description
This book explores the tradition of left wing political thinking in the culture of fans of professional football in Europe. It sets out to chronicle and celebrate the fraternal, communal and radical tradition of football - seen to best effect in demands for democratic fan ownership and control of clubs, in fan campaigns against racist and fascist mobilisation of football supporters, and in a firm commitment to anti-corporatism. Drawing on the rich and varied traditions of fan cultures across Europe, the book examines how football, as a cultural form, carries with it the possibility of promoting the voices of the disenfranchised and the marginalised, and so the basis for nurturing solidarity against oppression, alienation and exploitation current in modern capitalist society. This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.
