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ABSTRACT
This paper critically examines football (soccer) fandom as an important yet under-explored site for the production of new understandings of multiculturalism and cultural hybridisation. Building on the analytical framework of everyday multiculturalism, we report on ethnographic research undertaken with football fans in Western Sydney, Australia, to analyse the interactions and conflicts between football fans and authorities that surrounded the 2014 Harmony Day celebrations. This paper argues that across the fabric of professional football in Australia, multiculturalism is lived in conflicting ways. It is shown that despite attempts by stakeholders of the game to promote a mainstream ‘family-friendly’ form of fandom, Western Sydney football fans create new forms of cross-cultural conviviality through their fandom practices that not only reshape their own identities but also challenge the country’s official, governmental discourse of multiculturalism and its attendant policies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Dr Jorge Knijnik is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Education and a researcher in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. His most recent books are: World Cup Chronicles: 31 Days that Rocked Brazil (forthcoming, Common Ground); Embodied Masculinities in Global Sport (2015, FIT, with Daryl Adair); and Gender and Equestrian Sports: Riding Around the World (2013, Springer, with Miriam Adelman). Dr Knijnik was presented with the ‘Building the Gender Equality’ prize by the Brazilian Research Council and UNESCO and with a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, presented by the Ministry of Education (Australia).
Dr Ramón Spaaij is an Associate Professor in the College of Sport and Exercise Science and leads the Sport in Society Research Program in the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Active Living (ISEAL) at Victoria University. He also holds a Professorial Chair in Sociology of Sport at the University of Amsterdam. His most recent books are Mediated Football: Representations and Audience Receptions of Race/Ethnicity, Nation and Gender (2015, Routledge with Jacco van Sterkenburg); Sport and Social Exclusion in Global Society (2014, Routledge with James Magee and Ruth Jeanes) and The Olympic Movement and the Sport of Peacemaking (2013, Routledge with Cindy Burleson).
ORCID
Jorge Knijnik http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2578-8909
Ramon Spaaij http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1260-3111
Notes
1. The ACL is the region’s equivalent of the European Champions League.
2. In order to protect the identity of the individuals who have posted these comments, in this paper we only provide the dates of any posts cited, but not the names of the social media platforms where the comments were posted.