1st Edition

Governance, Citizenship and the New European Football Championships The European Spectacle

Edited By Wolfram Manzenreiter, Georg Spitaler Copyright 2012
    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    216 Pages
    by Routledge

    Over the past decade, European football has seen tremendous changes impacting upon its international framework as well as local traditions and national institutions. Processes of Europeanization in the fields of economy and politics provided the background for transformations of the production and consumption of football on a transnational scale. In the course of such rearrangements, football tournaments like the UEFA Championship or the European Champions League turned into mega-events and media spectacles attracting ever-growing audiences. The experience of participating in these events offers some of the very few occasions for the display and embodiment of identities within a European context.

    This volume takes the 2008 EUROs hosted by Austria and Switzerland as a case study to analyze the political and cultural significance of the tournament from a multidisciplinary angle. What are the special features and spatial arrangements of a UEFAesque Europe, in comparison to alternative possibilities of a Europe? Situating the sport tournament between interpretations of collective European ritual and European spectacle, the key research question will ask what kind of Europe was represented in the cultural, political and economic manifestations of the 2008 EUROs.

    This book was published as a special issue of Soccer and Society.

    1. Introduction: The Production of EUROtmpe  (Wolfram Manzenreiter, Dept. of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna Georg Spitaler, Dept of Political Science, University of Vienna)

    2. Towards a Europeanization of football? A history of European Championships (Jürgen Mittag, The Institute for Social Movements, Ruhr-University Bochum)

    3. EURO 2008: Governementality of a mega event (András Szigetvari, Dep. of Political Science, University of Vienna)

    4. Host cities, the EURO and transformations of public space (Anke Hagemann, Technical University Berlin)

    5. The televised European theatre: Football broadcast for European football audiences (Jürgen Schwier, Dept. of Sports Science Justus-Liebig-University Giessen)

    6. European cathedrals and ephemeral spaces: football stadium design in Austria and Switzerland (Michael Zinganel, Technical University Graz)

    7. Party-Nationalism? National identity in German and Austrian football in 2008 (Ulrich Brand / Georg Spitaler, Dept. of Political Science, University of Vienna)

    8. Football negotiating the placement of Switzerland within Europe (Christian Koller, School of History, Welsh History and Archaeology, Bangor University Wales)

    9. European discourse on gender at football mega events (Nicole Selmer / Almut Sülzle, Dept. of Gender Studies, Philipps-University-Marburg)

    10. EUROesque textualities: discourses on forced prostitution and women’s trafficking (Susanne Kimm / Birgit Sauer, Dept. of Political Science, University of Vienna)

    11. Conceptions of EUROpe – the West Balkan case (Gregor Starc, Faculty of Sport, University of Ljubljana)

    12. EUROpe from the fringes (Matthias Marschik, University of Vienna, Klagenfurt & Linz)

    13. The EURO incorporated: (Anti-)Racism and social responsibility campaigns: The EUROSCHOOLS case (Ken Horvath / Jakob Rosenberg, Dept. of Methods in Social Sciences & Dept. of Political Science, University of Vienna; Martin Rossbacher, Vienna Institute for International Dialogue and Cooperation)

    14. Economic impact forecasts and outcomes of EURO 2008 (Bernhard Hachleitner, Department of Contemporary History, University of Vienna)

    15. Material and representational legacies of sports mega-events: the case of the UEFA EURO™ Football Championships from England 1996 to Austria/Switzerland 2008 (John Horne, University of Central Lancashire)

    16. Concluding chapter: Football in the new Europe (Anthony King, Dept. of Sociology and Philosophy, University of Exeter)

    Biography

    Wolfram Manzenreiter is associated with the Department of East Asian Studies, University of Vienna, where he teaches modern Japanese society. His research is mostly concerned with issues of sports, popular culture, media, and labour in a globalizing world.

    Georg Spitaler has widely published on sports, popular culture and the politics of nationalism. The independent researcher is a part-time lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University of Vienna, as well as editorial board member of Austria’s leading football magazine, Ballesterer.