Loyalism, Linfield and the territorial politics of soccer fandom in Northern Ireland

Abstract

It is generally recognised that sport, and particularly soccer, plays an important role in the construction and reproduction of identities in modern society. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the centrality of sporting spaces in the identity formation and reinforcement of soccer fans. Centred around a geography of socio‐cultural domination and/or resistance in which power relations are spatialised and imagined in distinct and observable ways, this paper reveals the ways in which sports stadia in Northern Ireland function as key elements in identity politics. In particular, it is argued that those fans who congregate at Windsor Park to support Linfield Football Club and the Northern Ireland national team regard the stadium not only as a built environment which demands collective devotion, but also as a metaphor for an imagined Ulster. As a consequence, the paper argues, Windsor Park has become a site for the reactive cultural resistance of a certain group of men as they endeavour to come to terms with socioeconomic change together with the politico‐cultural demands of the Collective Other in the form of Irish nationalism.