2,303
Views
20
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
Original Articles

A ‘third way’ for football fandom research: Anthony Giddens and Structuration Theory

Pages 279-298 | Published online: 17 Mar 2011
 

Abstract

Although football fans actively discuss all of the ‘big players’ within their practice, the same cannot be said for sociologists of sport. Anthony Giddens is a world renowned intellectual and author of some of the most predominant sociological texts of the last millennium. He is the most frequently cited contemporary sociologist spanning all aspects of the social sciences, and yet his work is seldom referred to or used within the sociology of sport. In response to this and in reaction to calls from authors such as Williams to re‐think football fandom, this article aims to explore the potential of Giddens ‘Structuration Theory’ (ST) for moving the sociology of sport closer towards meeting this end. It draws on in‐depth qualitative interviews with thirty football fans. The findings of these and their implications are discussed in relation to the ‘everyday’ processes of fandom.

Notes

1. The term ‘football’ is used throughout this article to refer to the sport of Association Football, often abbreviated to ‘soccer’.

2. See both Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory and Cohen, Structuration Theory; Stones, Structuration Theory for further discussion.

3. See Bale, ‘Review of Jarvie and Maguire 1994’; Horne and Jarry, ‘Anthony Giddens’, 129.

4. Such calls have been recently made by Gibbons and Dixon, ‘Surfs Up!’ and Stone, ‘The Role of Football in Everyday Life’.

5. See Horne, Sport in Consumer Culture, 30–6.

6. See Crawford, Consuming Sport; Gibbons and Dixon, ‘Surfs Up!’

7. Williams, ‘Rethinking Sports Fandom’.

8. For the type of dichotomies that Williams is critical of see Clarke, ‘Football and Working Class Fans’; Boyle and Haynes, Sport, the Media and Popular Culture; Nash, ‘The Sociology of English Football in the 1990s’; Quick, ‘Contemporary Sports Consumers’.

9. See Crawford, Consuming Sport; Giulianotti, ‘Supporters, Followers, Fans and Flaneurs’; Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves.

10. Williams, ‘Rethinking Sport Fandom’, 142.

11. For discussions on football and post‐modernity, see Blackshaw, ‘Politics, Theory and Practice’; Crabbe, ‘Postmodern Community and Future Directions’; Giulianotti, ‘Supporters, Followers, Fans and Flaneurs’; Redhead, ‘Post‐Fandom and the Millennial Blues’.

12. See Bale, Sport, Space and the City; Tuan, Topophilia.

13. Gibbons and Dixon, ‘Surfs Up!’

14. For further discussions on virtual communities see Auty, ‘Football Fan Power and the Internet’; Bell, ‘Cyberculture’; Rheingold, The Virtual Community.

15. Typical examples include Gibbons, Dixon and Braye, ‘The Way It Was’; Back, Crabbe and Solomos, The Changing Face of Football; Wann and Dolan, ‘Attributions of Highly Identified Sports Spectators’.

16. Bennett, Culture and Everyday Life.

17. See Kirchberg, ‘Cultural Consumption Analysis’, 123–4.

18. See Stone, ‘The Role of Football in Everyday Life’, 170.

19. Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, 8.

20. Ibid., 9.

21. Ibid.

22. Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 22.

23. Ibid., 21.

24. Ibid., 22.

25. J.H. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory, 493.

26. Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 258–2.

27. Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves.

28. Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 33.

29. J.H. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory, 498

30. Walseth, ‘Sport and Belonging’, 447.

31. Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory, 9

32. Ibid., 10.

33. J.H. Turner, The Structure of Sociological Theory, 494.

34. See Bale, Sport, Space and the City; Hills, ‘Fans and Fan Culture’.

35. See Reckwitz, ‘Towards a Theory of Social Practices’; Warde, ‘Consumption and Theories of Practice’.

36. Denzin, The Research Act.

37. See the following articles: Waddington, Dunning and Murphy, ‘Research Note’, 131; Malcolm, Jones and Waddington, ‘The Peoples Game?’; Nash, ‘Research Note’.

38. See earlier discussion of authenticity in the section on ‘Making the case for “Structuration Theory” and football fandom’ in this article.

39. King, in The End of Terraces, interviews Manchester United Fans, whilst Sandvoss in A Game of Two Halves interviews fans of Chelsea and Bayer Leverkusen.

40. Silverman, ‘Doing Qualitative Research’.

41. Hoffmann, ‘Open‐Ended Interviews’, 330. Also see Flick, An Introduction to Qualitative Research; Giorgi and Giorgi, ‘Phenomenology’.

42. Denzin and Lincoln, Handbook of Qualitative Research.

43. Crawford, Consuming Sport, 230.

44. Miles and Huberman, Qualitative Data Analysis.

45. The ‘bob end’ is a name given to a particular space within the Ayresome Park Stadium (previous home of Middlesbrough FC 1903–1995) where children would stand.

46. See Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 84–92.

47. Also see Kirchberg, ‘Cultural Consumption Analysis’, for fuller reflections on Giddens’s work, 119.

48. For further discussion of this phenomenon see Dixon and Flynn, ‘Consuming “Celebrated Athletes”’, and G. Turner Understanding Celebrity.

49. ‘The Top’ is a form of vernacular used to describe the replica football shirt.

50. Willis, Common Culture, 112–14.

51. Anderson, Imagined Communities. For further discussions of this concept in relation to sport see Horne, Tomlinson and Whannel Understanding Sport, 179; and Maguire and Poulton, ‘European Identity Politics in Euro 96’.

52. Warde, ‘Consumption and Theories of Practice’.

53. Bale, Sport, Space and the City; Tuan, Topophilia.

54. Sandvoss, A Game of Two Halves.

55. See Holt, Sport and the British; Vamplew, Pay Up and Play the Game.

56. For example, the majority clubs represented in the current sample were competing in the English Premier League, but were not likely to challenge for major trophies or gain access to European competition. In fact, both Newcastle United and Middlesbrough FC were relegated from the Premier League in the same season. Additionally representatives of fans from lower league teams were also present within this sample.

57. The reference to ‘favourites’ refers to a short cut system for personal computers allowing direct access to specifically chosen Internet websites.

58. Rheingold, The Virtual Community, 3.

59. Giddens, Profiles and Critiques in Social Theory; Giddens, The Constitution of Society.

60. See King, The End of the Terraces and ‘The Lads’.

61. See Crabbe, ‘Postmodern Community and Future Directions’.

62. Stone’s ‘The Role of Football in Everyday Life’, also emphasizes this point.

63. See Hills, ‘Fans and Fan Culture’.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.