The Social Phenomenon of Football: The opposition in the service of culture – constituting of the structure and identity football fandom

• Authors: Kossakowski, Radosław

Abstracts

EN

The main goal of this article is to present some of the dimensions characterizing the worldof the committed (called also ‘fanatical’, ‘hardcore’) football fans. It is assumed that thestructure of this group is strongly saturated with a specific cultural content which generatesits identity. This refers to the cultural patterns that constitute a form of a culturalcommunity. A comprehensive analysis of the nuances of the fan culture would exceed theframework of an article, therefore only one cultural pattern is described. The patter whichis responsible, however, for a wide range of events. It is a frame of creating the ‘opposition’of various kinds, the mechanism of defining the identity on the basis of the distinction between ‘We’ and the ‘Other’. It is one of the fundamental characteristics defining thefan movement in Poland. It is assumed that the cultural and social factors independentlycontribute to the constitution of this community largely due to the identity of ‘difference’.It is reasonable to show the role played by the external factors that operate in a broaderstructural context in shaping this phenomenon.

Keywords

EN

Football Fandom; identity; antagonism; hooliganism; togetherness

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Gdański
• Journal: Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 16(4)
• Pages: 116-128

Contributors

author

Kossakowski, Radosław

Identifiers

DOI

10.5604/20842937.1189817