Sport in Society

Cultures, Commerce, Media, Politics

ISSN: 1743-0437 (Print) 1743-0445 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fcss20

New ethnographies of football in Europe: people,

passions, politics

Gyozo Molnar

To cite this article: Gyozo Molnar (2016): New ethnographies of football in Europe: people,
passions, politics, Sport in Society, DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2016.1165423

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2016.1165423

Published online: 29 Mar 2016.

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 Sport in Society, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2016.1165423

BOOK REVIEW

New ethnographies of football in Europe: people, passions, politics, by

A. Schwell, N. Szogs, M. Z. Kowalska and M. Buchowski, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, 241 pp., £65 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-137-51696-1

The claim that ethnography is a novel and infrequently used approach to explore the sociocul-
tural aspects of sport, exercise and physical activity is gradually wearing thin. The continuously
growing popularity of this research methodology is a welcome addition to the already dominant
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investigative approaches. Ethnographies have been employed to provide in-depth accounts of

boxing, surfing, snowboarding, to name but a few areas. Naturally, football, given its popularity
in most Western countries, has also enjoyed the explorative insight provided by the long-term,
extensive self-immersion afforded by ethnography. This comes as little surprise given that football
itself has been and still remains one of the dominant foci of contemporary sport-related sociocul-
tural research. In fact, there have been more books published on football in general than I could
list or care to remember. Therefore, when looking at the title (New Ethnographies of Football in
Europe) of this anthology, the reader might plausibly arrive to a concluding thought along the
following lines: ‘Yet again a book on football!’. As appropriate as this initial observation may seem
based on football’s history in sociocultural research, a cursory look at this edited volume does
suggest some potential for anticipation by not being one of the ‘run-of-the-mill’ publications
centred on English/British football, their fans and their behavioural concerns. Indeed, based on
the title, this collection of essays could make an interesting and pertinent contribution to our
contemporary understanding of football in a Europe-wide context.
Largely, the book delivers on this expectation and the reader will find some intriguing chap-
ters on Croatia, Poland, Israel, Turkey, etc. Those chapters make a significant contribution to
our understanding of the complex socio(-sub-)cultural tapestry of football. For instance, in
Chapter Five, Hani Zubida presents an exploration into the complex nature of identities in
Israel. Specific heed is paid to the multifaceted relationship between Israeli society and football,
including the balance between national and local identities in club football. I think that it is
specifically interesting how Zubida teases out identity-related tension between Israeli Jews and
Israeli Palestinians. It is noted that while Palestinians do not wish to quibble with the state of
Israel they do not want to lose their traditional identity and thus display the Palestinian flag at
Benei Sakhnin stands. This symbolic display of national identity and inherent links to historic
political tension problematizes contemporary relations between Israeli Jewish and Israeli Arab
national identities in the football arena. In the chapter, there is a lengthy excerpt from a radio
interview that is an illustrative example of such identity tensions and how they are related to
football. The only thing Zubida’s chapter lacking is any reference and relation to ethnography,
which one might find surprising given the title of the book in which it is published.
Another chapter which might be worth mentioning is written by M. Z. Kowalska and focuses
on providing an insight into the local politics of Poznań before, during and after the Euro 2012
Championship. This is an insightful, theoretically sound and empirically well-justified chapter
that makes a relevant contribution to our understanding of the constant interplay between
politics and sport, i.e. sport in the power–capitalism–politics complex. The chapter is based
on Kowalska’s PhD thesis, which involved an extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the public
sector. Through a cultural studies theoretical lens, Kowalska explores the political rhetoric that
surrounded the Euro 2012. She argues that the hegemonic political practices and narratives
associated with the mega event created a form of local resistance in Poznań. Three key areas of
 2    Book Review

counter-hegemonic action was identified: questioning the city’s investment strategy in terms of
attracting businesses, highlighting the exclusive nature of certain infrastructural benefits that
were made before the Euro 2012 and the lack of input by regular citizens that was considered by
the city leadership in their decision to host the mega event. In other words, the public actively
questioned the reasons behind and benefits of hosting Euro 2012, which potentially is harbinger
of more local citizens questioning having large amounts of monetary investment into hosting
sport mega events with questionable legacies and benefits to the average citizens.
A credit to the editors as well as contributors, the above examples are only snippets of the
rich sociocultural field to which the reader is exposed in this edited volume. Perhaps, one of
the debatable aspects of the anthology might be that the initial sections do not fully radiate the
European flavour one might expect based on the title. I may even be so bold to recommend
‘cutting to the chase’ and beginning reading the book with Chapter 3. Another potential short-
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coming of the book might be its lack of attempt to strategically unpack what is meant by ‘New
Ethnographies’ in the given context(s). Whilst most (but not all!) of the chapters in this edited
volume engage and employ some form of or method related to ethnography, it is never really
made clear what is essentially novel about the approaches adopted by the contributors to this
book from an ethnographic perspective? Most of the researchers indicated to have used partic-
ipant observations and interviews to collect rich data which occasionally were complimented
by various media narratives and netnography. Those are well-established instruments of data
collection befitting the toolbox of most ethnographers for some time. Consequently, in the
end, the reader is left wondering what the conspicuously stated ‘New Ethnographies’ might be
in this volume.
To leave on a positive note, another enjoyable and cosmopolitan aspect of the book is that
many of the chapters are written by academics who use English as their second (or third or
fourth) language. This sometimes results in idiosyncratic ways of expression and manifestation
of thought processes. Whether consciously or not, those linguistic characteristics have not been
edited out, which is much to the pleasure of this reader. Thus, in my opinion, the written language
greatly contributes to authenticity of the sporting stories being told in this book. I would even
argue that the chapters have the potential, if specific ones are read in a sequence, to take us by
our ethnographic imagination and create the illusion of the reader participating in a football
focused seminar somewhere in Central Europe. In a small classroom, where opinions collide
and accents mix, and the participants cannot wait to rid of their formal attire and further engage
in ‘football talk’ in less official settings more suitable for the topic at hand.

Gyozo Molnar
University of Worcester, UK
g.molnar@worc.ac.uk
© 2016 Gyozo Molnar
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17430437.2016.1165423