Category Archives: Football and Nationalism

Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Soccer, by Gabriel Maletta

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The first article, Banton’s Theories of ‘Race’ seeks to define Race as a social construct born out of the scientific and social enlightenments of the last few centuries. He argues that the development of race as a science was adopted in order to find meaning to what was, at the time, a complete European domination of other cultures. Banton shows, along with Mariel Mikaila and Arthur Lemonik’s article “Race”, how race is an inherently social construct stemming from geographic, political, cultural, economic and religious factors. Their articles shed light on late 19th and early 20th century attempts by social scientists to create a scientific approach to racism, such as Curie ‘European, African, Mongoloid theorem’ or social Darwinist principles. Mikaila and Lemonik go on to argue the consequences of race in modern society particularly in its limiting factor and its ability to create social, political and economic stress on society.  Continue reading →

Race, Nationalism, Globalization and Soccer, by Seth Browner

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Race, as Michael Banton details in the article Theories of “Race”, was first academically described by the intellectuals in Europe. Observing the inequalities between European colonizers and the impecunious colonized, many “attributed inequality in development to different biological inheritance” (Banton 1).

Furthermore, race was used as a classification system, as discussed in another article by Mariel Mikalia and Arthur Lemonik. One can certainly claim today that race is not the sole cause of poverty or underdevelopment; the first analyzers of race, I believe, were mistaken. I believe the educated Europeans who initially explored race studies confused with an observation with an explanation and failed to delve deeper into certain topics.

To start, I believe these academics noted the disparities in the quality of life between themselves and those in their colonies. Unable to explain this phenomenon, they attributed the gap to race, since these trends of racial minorities in squalor were nearly ubiquitous throughout the age of imperialism. Then, these academics hence failed to examine further than this point until Darwinism introduced new ideas of fitness and survival, which were subsequently linked to caucasian superiority. Continue reading →

Fandom, Nationalism, Globalization and Soccer, by Mac Daly

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In the definitions packet we received I noticed a link between two sections. Under Nation and Nationalism, on page 16 the author writes

“Among the Jews of the Old Testament and among the ancient Greeks we find the sence of belonging to a distinct people marked off from the rest of the world by special characteristics – an embryonic sense of national superiority”

Later on page 31 under Nationalism and Sport the author writes

“The desire, particularly on the part of fans, to express their national identity in the relm of sport is clearly linked to nationalism in the broadest sense or, at the very least, to patriotism”

Together these definitions explain fandom, especially on the national level. People feel that their nationality is superior and they look to sport to prove it.

In the 2nd article we read, a major point Ithought was interesting was the fact that the EPL has been on television in 211 nations. That is tremendous, I can’t think of any other thing that would be on so many televisions. It shows how important soccer is to so many people and how big of a market their is for the sport both in terms of fandom but also strictly business.

Something the essay doesn’t touch on to much is foreign investment in the EPL. While it does say many players come from outside England it doesn’t really dive deep into the surprising about of teams who are not owned by Brits. This is important to my topic of American’a making money in soccer.