Full Description
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.
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
