Football has emerged as an important symbolic field through which various social cultural
political economic and historical dimensions and antagonisms are negotiated. This volume
covers a variety of themes illuminating the multiple ways that football impacts on people's
everyday lives. Using anthropological research methods and data collected from ethnographic
fieldwork the contributors scrutinize not only the social fields of football fans and the
specific socio-cultural contexts in which they are embedded but also other actors beyond the
pitch and the possibilities for both agency and subversion. Taking into account processes of
Europeanization globalization commercialization and migration the collection offers fresh
insights into fan identity formations and practices and highlights the importance of
anthropology's self-reflexive and actor-centred perspective.
