The Irish brawn drain: English League clubs and Irish footballers, 1946-1995

This paper draws on world systems and resource dependency theories to show how the changing recruitment practices of English League clubs have deepened the brawn drain from Irish football, thereby compounding its underdevelopment. An analysis of the origins, method of recruitment and destinations of Irish players (North and South) who appeared in the English League between 1946 and 1995 shows that English clubs imported large numbers of Irish players throughout the second half of the twentieth century. However, it was the inclusion of Irish teenagers within the youth policies of the largest clubs in the period after the 1970s that marked a break from the traditional pattern of buyer-supplier relations. Instead of continuing to purchase players who had established reputations within the Irish leagues, English clubs began to hire the most promising schoolboys before they joined Irish sides. As this practice spread, it eventually eliminated a valuable source of income: the selling of players to English clubs. Despite this development it would, however, be inappropriate to view the relationship between the Irish and English football industries as a simple zero sum game as Irish clubs benefit from employing highly trained young players who return home after failing to establish careers in England.     

Children and the ‘Social Cohesion’ Agenda in Sport: Children's Participation in ‘Ethnically Mixed’ Sports Teams in the North of England

This study is set in the North of England in the context of debates around the integration of communities, after a series of street disturbances in the early 2000s. The debates centred upon ‘social cohesion’ and the social mixing of Pakistani British and White British communities. The current study explores this from the context of 10‐ to 11‐year‐old Asian, Black and White British boys participating in cricket and football clubs. It draws on the sociology of childhood approach that sees children as active participants and co‐creators of their own lives. This more nuanced approach sheds important light on children's own negotiations of home, peers, sports clubs and identities that are key to how cohesion is achieved.     

The globalization of football: a study in the glocalization of the 'serious life'

Sport, in particular football, constitutes one of the most dynamic, sociologically illuminating domains of globalization. This paper examines the globalization of football with particular reference to Robertson's theorizations of global processes. We examine football's cultural globalization through the concept of 'glocalization', which highlights the interdependence of local and global processes within the game's identities and institutions. We address economic globalization in football by considering the world's leading clubs as 'glocal' transnational corporations. We assess the political globalization of football with reference to the possible enhancement of democracy within the game's international governance. We conclude by affirming the utility of sport in advancing our empirical and theoretical understanding of globalization processes.     

Argentina and the brain drain: some perspectives from expatriates in the United States

This study focuses on the brain drain of health care professionals and physical scientists from Argentina, using survey data on a group of 89 immigrants who are currently US residents and listed in the current edition of AMERICAN MEN AND WOMEN OF SCIENCE. Although the loss of educated people is probably more likely if their degrees are acquired abroad, even at the doctoral level, the majority of those responding held Argentine degrees. The most important motivation was to gain professional and career advancement. Although pragmatism was associated with the decision to emigrate, the political environment was also quite important. Responses indicate that the losses of scientific personnel which have occurred in the past may be irreversible. Most of the respondents have become US citizens and now have families in that country. However, many respondents still have family, friends, or professional associations in Argentina. Some subtleties bear mention. The retreat of the generals has not removed all political factors from the problem list. Now scientific and professional activities must be de-politicized. The government must take explicit steps to ensure that academic and scientific positions are awarded on the basis of expertise. The evidence suggests that educational considerations are far less important as a causal element in the brain drain from Argentina than is the case in many Third World countries.     

Mapping the global football field: a sociological model of transnational forces within the world game

This paper provides a sociological model of the key transnational political and economic forces that are shaping the 'global football field'. The model draws upon, and significantly extends, the theory of the 'global field' developed previously by Robertson. The model features four quadrants, each of which contains a dominant operating principle, an 'elemental reference point', and an 'elemental theme'. The quadrants contain, first, neo-liberalism, associated with the individual and elite football clubs; second, neo-mercantilism, associated with nation-states and national football systems; third, international relations, associated with international governing bodies; and fourth, global civil society, associated with diverse institutions that pursue human development and/or social justice. We examine some of the interactions and tensions between the major institutional and ideological forces across the four quadrants. We conclude by examining how the weakest quadrant, featuring global civil society, may gain greater prominence within football. In broad terms, we argue that our four-fold model may be utilized to map and to examine other substantive research fields with reference to globalization.     

Child Protection in Voluntary Sports Clubs in Germany — Factors Fostering Engagement in the Prevention of Sexual Violence

Based on the theoretical framework of organisational capacity and using data from an online survey of 8571 sports clubs in Germany, this study investigates clubs’ engagement towards child protection and the prevention of sexual violence. Only half of the clubs indicate that the prevention of sexual violence is a relevant topic for them, and on average, the clubs have implemented between two and three prevention measures. Pertaining to organisational capacity, human resource capacity (e.g. share of volunteers, share of women on the board) and structural capacity (e.g. club culture) exhibit significant effects on clubs’ activation towards child protection.     

Great Expectations: Voluntary Sports Clubs and Their Role in Delivering National Policy for English Sport

Voluntary sports clubs (VSCs) account for about a quarter of all volunteering in England. The volunteers work in a mutual aid, self-production, self-consumption system whose main purpose is identifying and nurturing high-level performers. But the new HMG/Sport England strategies leading to London 2012 expects volunteers to make a major contribution to sustaining and extending participation. The study utilized six focus group sessions with a total of 36 officials and members of 36 clubs across the six counties of Eastern England to assess whether and to what extent government policy objectives can be delivered through the voluntary sector. The study focused on the perceptions and attitudes of club members about being expected to serve public policy and the current pressures they and their clubs face. The results lead the authors to question the appropriateness, sensitivity, and feasibility of current sport policy, particularly the emphasis on VSCs as policy implementers.     

Fans, homophobia and masculinities in association football: evidence of a more inclusive environment

This article draws on 3,500 responses from fans and professionals involved in association football (soccer) to an anonymous online survey posted from June 2010 to October 2010 regarding their views towards gay footballers. The overall findings are that, contrary to assumptions of homophobia, there is evidence of rapidly decreasing homophobia within the culture of football fandom. The results advance inclusive masculinity theory with 93 per cent of fans of all ages stating that there is no place for homophobia within football. Fans blame agents and clubs for the lack of openness and challenge football's governing organizations to oppose the culture of secrecy surrounding gay players and to provide a more inclusive environment to support players who want to come out.     

Violent pasts: collective memory and football hooliganism

Since the 1970s, the sociological analysis of football hooliganism has focused on the processes which lead to violence between fans. This has been a reasonable research strategy since the incidence of violence is a striking phenomenon and violent fans themselves look upon violence as the objective. However, this focus on the causes of violence has cast other important aspects of football violence into the shade. In particular, there has been a lack of consideration of the way in which violence has been used as a resource by violent fans for the creation and re‐creation of their hooligan gangs. In particular, there has been no discussion of the way in which the collective memory of violence, established in discussions between group members, affirms the solidarity of these groups. In exploring the way that shared memory is employed by violent fans to sustain their relations with each other, this article widens the focus of the sociological study of hooliganism but also makes a contribution to the understanding of how social groups are constituted more generally through the empirical example of hooliganism.     

Beyond the racist/hooligan couplet: race, social theory and football culture

This paper draws on recent research to explore the changing cultures of racism in English football. Starting from a critical analysis of key themes in the literature on football it seeks to show that existing analytical frameworks need to be reworked if they are going to adequately account for the complex forms through which racism is expressed in contemporary football cultures. In the course of this analysis we question some of the ways in which the issue of racism in football is collapsed into broader accounts of 'hooliganism' and other forms of violence among football fans. From this starting point the paper draws on some elements of our empirical research in order to outline an alternative way of framing the issues of racism and multicultrralism in football.     

Proletarianisation or Patagonia: Reassessing the rationale for the Afrikaner migration to Argentina, 1902–6

Patagonia in the late nineteenth century was a frontier region of Argentina, contested both by the indigenous people and by the neighbouring Chilean republic. After brutal repression of the Patagonians by the Argentine military forces, the area was opened up for colonial settlement. The Argentine authorities recognised Afrikaners as suitable recruits for colonial settlement and, starting in 1902, groups of settlers made their way to South America. Many explanations for this migration have seen its cause in the defeat of the Boer republics. While these explanations are partly justified, the majority of emigrants were dispossessed Cape landowners and tenant farmers, who chose to move to Patagonia to avoid proletarianisation in the South African mining towns. However, the Afrikaner community in Argentina did not flourish, and was finally broken by the economic depression that started in 1929. With the resurgence of right‐wing nationalism amongst Afrikaners in South Africa in the 1930s, moves to repatriate surviving South American families gained momentum. Of the few who remained in Patagonia, links with South Africa were virtually erased by cultural assimilation.     

The civilizing and sportization of Gaelic football in Ireland: 1884–2009

Over the course of the last 125 years the sport of Gaelic football in Ireland has undergone a sportization and civilizing process as the rules governing the sport became stricter and players developed greater levels of self-control. However, the civilizing of Gaelic football was a particularly fragile and uneven process. The growing social desire to diminish displays of violence was moderated by ambivalence towards violence. Gradually the external social controls on players increased and, greater and more stable levels of internalization occurred reflected by more advanced levels of player self-restraint in the control of violence. At the same time the threshold of shame toward displays of violence advanced. This transformation was shaped by lengthening chains of social interdependencies in Ireland.     

Crowd Control at English Football Matches

Abstract

This study examines the crowd control techniques of English police at football (soccer) matches. Data were gathered using participant observation procedures at football matches in the Midlands of England. The study concluded that English police are effective in nonlethal crowd control because they have subtle techniques which allows effective and quick responses to the changing dynamics of football crowds.     

Whose game is it anyway? The cultural analysis of sport and media consumption

This article presents work towards a critical sociology and a cultural analysis of sport, developing as the fullest example an interpretation of shifting patterns of power in English professional football, in the context of wider patterns of sports development and participation. The impact of selected work of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (at the University of Birmingham, England) is reviewed, and located with regard to some of its major formative influences and more recent critical responses to the work of the Centre. The application of a critical cultural analysis to a phenomenon such as the Olympic Games is outlined, and the methodological strengths of a critical sociology of consumption as a variant of cultural analysis are used to illuminate recent changes in sports and professional football in England     

The End of Football and Fiesta? Social Insurrection and National Identity in Twenty-First-Century Brazil

ABSTRACT

Carnaval and futebol (football) have both been central to the construction of Brazil in the imagination of global audiences. This includes contributing to stereotypes of Brazil as a country of peaceful, festive, and sensualized people, even though historically Brazilian Carnaval and football have always been sites of social contestation and popular participation in the construction of collective identity. In recent years, Brazil has burst onto the global stage as a key player due to its economic rise, its more proactive international diplomacy, and its venture as the host of major global sport events. Protest and political violence have erupted on the streets of Brazil in a manner quite at odds with the circulating reports on the ‘success story' of Brazil. A combination of the country's increasing global prominence and developments in media and communication technologies of the global era means that global and local audiences have access to more detailed, nuanced, and grounded information about Brazil than has ever been possible before. This moment of intensified visibility has brought Brazil's imagined identity (both within Brazil and within the global imaginary) to a turning point; one where national symbols such as Carnaval and football are declining in relevance. In this article we argue that due to this combination of forces, Carnaval and football, at least in their manufactured forms that are visible to global audiences, no longer have the popular potency within Brazil that they once did, but have rather become what Bakhtin would call ‘mere spectacles’. We consider Carnaval and football within historical and contemporary context drawing upon a variety of sources, including secondary literature and mainstream and alternative media reports.     

An alternative football club in a liquid modernity: FC United of Manchester

Critical management studies have taken an interest in ‘utopian’ models of management, especially within alternative organizations. This article focuses on FC United of Manchester, a small football club with 5000 members, whose principles of inclusion, affordability, community, and friendship evoke ideas of utopianism and collectivism. About 30 fan-owned football clubs exist in the UK, each with their own raison d’être, but all discontented with the commodification of the game. Bauman’s concept of ‘liquid modernity’, in which individuals find self-realization through consumption, is used to analyse how FC United reacts to the individualization and commercialization of football. This analysis employs CMS concepts to evaluate whether FC United is a genuine alternative to standard business models, and gives an empirical and critical dimension to liquid modernity as a framework for understanding society.     

Causes of Uruguayan migration to Argentina

2 main hypotheses have been suggested to explain Uruguayan migration to Argentina: 1) political emigration because of the military regime imposed in June 1973 and 2) economic emigration because of the economic improvement in destination countries and the worsening conditions at home. A further formulation of the 2nd hypothesis incorporates sociodemographic factors in its theory. This paper elaborates a theoretical framework using human capital theories to formulate a model of the effects of the economic variables of wages and unemployment, and adds political and sociological variables to the model. The authors then quantify the relative effects of the political, human capital, and informational variables. Results of multivariate analysis show that for 1966-1981, 53.1% moved for economic reasons, 25.7% moved for political reasons, and 21.2% moved for social reasons. In the long run, the most important cause of migration to Argentina is related to the relative situation of regional labor markets and people's willingness to incur the costs of migration if there is a reasonable probability of economic improvement in the other country. Only from 1973-1975 are political and institution reasons of primary importance. In 1976, sociological reasons predominated.     

‘Violent’ deaths of children in England and Wales and the major developed countries 1974–2002: possible evidence of improving child protection?

Child protection services are criticised for failing to prevent abuse but demonstrating successful prevention is impossible as it is trying to prove a ‘negative’. The alternative is to examine ‘failures’, i.e. the ‘violent’ deaths of children (0–14 years) to indicate whether matters are improving or deteriorating. This paper uses the latest World Health Organisation data to compare children's ‘violent’ deaths in England and Wales with those in other major developed countries. To account for possible ‘hidden’ under‐reported abuse deaths, undetermined, i.e. ‘other external causes of death’ (OECD) and fatal accidents and adverse events (AAE), deaths are also analysed along with homicides, to compare all ‘violence‐related’ deaths between 1974–76 and 2000–02. England and Wales infant (<1 year) homicide rates were annually 57 per million but fell to 17 per million, a 74% fall. Infant AAE deaths fell in every country with England and Wales falling from 341 per million to 71 per million, a 76% reduction. Both these results were significantly better than those of eight other major developed countries, although England and Wales infant OECD at 26 per million, were high compared to the major developed countries. In the 1970s, combined ‘violent’ deaths of all children (0–14 years) (homicide, OECD and AAE) in England and Wales were 203 per million, they are now 61 per million, a 70% decline with only Italy having lower rates. The worst rates were in the USA which had the highest combined ‘violent’ death rate. These overall results in the major reductions of ‘violence‐related’ deaths in England and Wales can be a boost to the morale of front‐line staff and provide the public with an indication of the progress being made. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Violence,life aspirations and displacement trajectories in civil war

Drawing on qualitative data from the civil wars in Syria and Libya since 2011, this paper seeks to build a better understanding of immobility and of displacement trajectories within conflict countries and towards neighbouring countries. The paper shows that different types of violent experiences—personal threats, generalized violence, an increasing hopelessness relating to the absence of violence in the future—trigger different exit movements across internal and external borders. Second, the analysis demonstrates that migration decisions in civil war contexts are complex processes with people balancing between strategies of how to avoid violence with strategies of how to realize broader life aspirations related to family, love, work and political change. Life aspirations often play a more important role once people move out of a situation of immediate danger and in later phases of trajectories and influence (im)mobility patterns in three different directions: stay, move (on) or return. Life aspirations, especially related to political change, outweigh perceptions of violence in some cases. Financial vulnerability can force people to stay in or return to violent contexts.