1st Edition
Football in Southeastern Europe From Ethnic Homogenization to Reconciliation
This volume draws together scholarship across a number of disciplines – history, sociology, media and cultural studies, political science, Slavonic studies – to examine the significance of the sport of football within Southeastern Europe, with an especial focus on countries of the former Yugoslavia. The volume is timely as there is growing recognition inside and beyond the academy that football is a key cultural site in which the tensions within the region have been, and continue to be, reflected. Important issues such as resurgent nationalism, ethno/religious identity construction, and collective masculine identity are played out in relation to the sport of football. The papers within the volume explore these and other themes in detailed case studies that will be of interest to academics and policy makers concerned with wanting to know more about how football should be considered within agendas focused on reconciliation and a socially inclusive future.
This book was previously published as a special issue of Sport in Society.
1. Introduction 2. Fighters, footballers and nation builders: wartime football in the Serb-held territories of the former Yugoslavia, 1991 – 1996 3. Fertile land or mined field? Peace-building and ethnic tensions in post-war Bosnian football 4. ‘A lofty battle for the nation’: the social roles of sport in Tudjman’s Croatia 5. ‘A Croatian champion with a Croatian name’: national identity and uses of history in Croatian football culture – the case of Dinamo Zagreb 6. Football matches or power struggles? The Albanian case within historical conflicts and contemporary tensions 7. Stronger than the state? Football hooliganism, political extremism and the Gay Pride Parades in Serbia 8. Football, hooliganism and nationalism: the reaction to Serbia’s gay parade in reader commentary online 9. Football after Yugoslavia: conflict, reconciliation and the regional football league debate
Biography
John Hughson is based at the International Football Institute, University of Central Lancashire. He is author of Making Sporting Cultures (2009); principal author of The Uses of Sport (2005); co-editor of The Containment of Soccer in Australia (2010); co-editor of Sport in the City: Cultural Connections (2011); and principal editor of The Routledge Handbook of Football Studies (2014 forthcoming), all of which were published by Routledge.
Fiona Skillen is Lecturer in Sport and Events at Glasgow Caledonian University. Her research interests focus on the history of sport, in particular, aspects of gender, politics, social policy and health. She is particularly interested in the influence which dominant discourses concerning gender and modernity had on women’s popular culture. Dr Skillen is the author of Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013).
‘The volume provides a thorough, valuable introduction to current issues surrounding football and society and its entanglement with nationalism in countries ravaged by ethnic conflict.’
Michael E Allen (October 2015) Rutgers University for CritCom- Council for European Studies:
http://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/critcom/football-in-southeastern-europe-from-ethnic-homogenization-to-reconciliation/'The study of sport in Southeastern Europe and especially in post-Yugoslavia has been revitalised and expanded in recent years by a new cohort of researchers, and Football in Southeastern Europe does an effective job of showcasing how the field is emerging: some of the projects represented in this book have continued since the volume was published and will no doubt lead to books of their own.'
Catherine Baker (2018) JSEE Vol. 42.1.
