An impressive analysis of football fan culture and modernity

Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen
Liverpool John Moores University, UK

Over the last decade, different scholars have produced fascinating in-depth accounts of how football supporter cultures have evolved across different national contexts. Whilst I cannot list them all here, Geoff Pearson’s (2012) An Ethnography of English Football Fans, Kossakowski et al.’s (2020) Politics, Ideology and Football Fandom (on Polish fans) and Hodges’ (2019) Fan Activism, Protest and Politics (on Croatian fans) all spring to mind. By focusing on the case of Turkey, John Konuk Blasing’s new book, Nationalism and Globalization in Turkish Football: Voices from Fan Culture (2025) provides another important addition to our sociological understanding of traditions, struggles and cultures of control that are embedded in football supporter cultures, although this book also successfully speaks to wider debates concerning nationalism, globalization and hyper-modernization.

To be clear: there are several aspects of this ethnographic study that deserve praise. It is well-researched and draws upon an appropriate repertoire of sociological and philosophical concepts and theories (e.g., Anderson, Baudrillard, Weber). The author’s voice shines through the book and the arguments are coherently built up over the ten chapters. Given the book’s comprehensive nature – at nearly 300 pages – it remains difficult to detail each chapter here. Hence, I will focus mostly on its broader arguments and certain chapters that illustrate these.

In Chapter One, the book starts with three personal stories about sociological curiosity, being a football supporter and making sense of, comparing and contrasting two different cultures:

At the end of each summer, we would return to the United States from visiting my mother’s family in Turkey, and I would look out the window of the Bonanza bus plying the route from Boston’s Logan Airport through New England. As a child, I would watch the Dodge Ram trucks, the Chevrolet Lumina sedans, and the Ford Crown taxis go by, comparing them to Renault 12 TX sedans, Fiat 123 compacts, and Peugeot hatchbacks I had just left. It was my own childish way of making sense of two different world – two different nations – that lay in my heart (p. 1).

Taking this early, ‘childish’ sociological sensemaking further, Blasing is primarily interested in the extent to which a marker of ‘Turkishness’ relates to supporting a football team and, relatedly, the role of the football fan in an age of globalization. In doing so, he captures the shift from football as a project of the nation and nation-building, towards more global and consumer-oriented processes. Fans, accordingly, are important to analyse here, because they are the heart of this change. As he notes, ‘[i]t is the fans of football clubs who experience this shift most directly’ (p. 6). Fans ultimately have to balance locality, tradition and communities against globalization’s marginalizing and alienating effects.

When someone enters the stadium with their card, their picture is taken, and a screen above the turnstiles shows both pictures side by side so that security can be assured that the person entering is indeed the owner of the card in question

Blasing’s starting point thus echoes those of other scholars who – in other national contexts – have explored changes to supporter cultures according to local/national/global and modernizing dynamics (King, 1998; Millward, 2012; Numerato, 2015). Blasing argues convincingly for the continued examination of these issues, and the under-studied nature of the context which he researches.

The next chapter elaborates upon this context, with an account of Turkish football’s social history, situated next to the key concepts of globalization, hyperreality, hypermodernity and nationalism. Chapter Three explains the details surrounding the author’s ethnography, involving a combination of a 13-month long ethnography (2019-20) and interviews with supporters and other stakeholders. Chapter 4 and 5, then, explore Turkish football fandom in more depth, in relation to its emotional and community bonds (Chapter 4) and nationalism (Chapter 5).

In Chapter 6, focusing on the topic of violence, Blasing offers an account on the different meanings attributed to violence in relation to fandom, attachment to a team and the relationship between violence, law and policing. Specifically, how the latter, in some cases, exacerbates disorder and violence, as all supporters are approached as ‘guilty until proven innocent’ (p. 155). As contended, this creates a cycle of responses that – as the book’s next part explores further – drives football further in line with global ideals of social and commercial control.

The next chapters explore three exemplars of state-led ‘attempts to implement the hegemonic narrative of neoliberal consumer culture in the stadiums while further marginalizing fan populations’ (p. 162). In part, as a response to concerns about violent, disorderly or politicized fandom, but also the top-down desire to ensure that football remains an attractive, controlled product, these interventions include the e-ticketing/supporter ID initiative, Passolig (Chapter 7), the construction of new consumer-oriented stadiums (Chapter 8) and the invention of new teams (Chapter 9).

Whilst these chapters all demonstrate the experiences of football’s neoliberal forces accurately, and the state, league and clubs’ longing for more affluent consumers, I especially found Chapter 7 interesting as it powerfully captures the overlapping security, political and economic interests that lie beneath modern football and the control of consumption spaces. The Passolig system (and the related Law 6222) was implemented in the top two divisions of Turkish football in April 2014. In short, Passolig meant that:

It would no longer be possible to buy a paper ticket from turnstiles and gain entry to the stadium; all tickets would become electronic, connected to a card that requires fans to provide their citizenship number – or passport number in the case of foreigners – along with a picture, both of which appear on the card. When someone enters the stadium with their card, their picture is taken, and a screen above the turnstiles shows both pictures side by side so that security can be assured that the person entering is indeed the owner of the card in question (p. 167-68).

Of course, supporter ID cards which for long have been implemented (e.g., Italy) or considered (e.g., the UK) (Testa, 2018) in different European contexts cannot be separated from the historically-grounded, but perpetuating discourses surrounding football supporters as a ‘risky’ social group. Given that the book is situated within a globalization framework, it could therefore also have been interesting to see the author draw out the Passolig system’s position within these global circuits of knowledge and control. For instance, the relevant, innovative law and technology could be analysed in light of a broader, converging context of the legal and security regulation of supporters that again is often hegemonically enabled by UEFA and Council of Europe standards that open the door for national interpretations in the control of supporters (Lee Ludvigsen and Tsoukala, 2025).

Notwithstanding, Blasing demonstrates simultaneously how the Passolig system not only produces ‘Kafka-esque’ (p. 173) situations in attempts to (spontaneously) purchase a ticket, nor a Foucauldian system of surveillance; but how the system serves clear commercial and political interests with the card’s annual renewal fees, and connection to a bank with state links (p. 171). As he argues, ‘the state, teams, and big business all benefit from this system. The state is able to remove political messages from the stadium’ (p. 183). These overlapping interests, and the enforcement of a hegemonic vision are also central to Chapters 8 and 9.

The central argument presented in Nationalism and Globalization in Turkish Football is twofold. Whilst football represents a space where conceptions of ‘Turkishness’ and emotional bonds can develop, the powerful forces of globalization and its rational, homogenizing effects have positioned Turkish football on the path towards becoming ‘just another’ example of a global culture industry. A consequence on the level of fans, Blasing argues, is that this reduces supporters’ agency and spontaneity, despite some attempts of resistance at the ranks of supporters.

Overall, Blasing has an impressive writing style. His book – telling an important story – makes a strong contribution to the sociology of football. Yet, his arguments are also highly relevant beyond sport, speaking to debates on globalization and its impact on the traditional nation-state. For this reason, this is not a book that could, or should, merely be read by sociologists of football, or sport, but by students and scholars with an interest in cultural sociology, globalization studies and nationalism studies.

Copyright © Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen 2025

References

Hodges, A. (2018) Fan Activism, Protest and Politics: Ultras in Post-Socialist Croatia. London: Routledge.

King, A. (1998) The End of the Terraces. London: Leicester University Press.

Kossakowski, R., Nosal, P. and Woźniak, W. (2020) Politics, Ideology and Football Fandom: The Transformation of Modern Poland. London: Routledge.

Lee Ludvigsen, J.A. and Tsoukala, A. (2025) Defining and controlling violent fandom in Europe: More than meets the eye. Soccer & Society, 26(3), 567-580.

Millward, P. (2012) Reclaiming the Kop? Analysing Liverpool supporters’ 21st century mobilizations. Sociology, 46(4), 633-648.

Numerato, D. (2015) Who says “no to modern football?” Italian supporters, reflexivity, and neo-liberalism. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 39(2), 120-138.

Pearson, G. (2012) An Ethnography of English Football Fans: Cans, Cops and Carnivals. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Testa, A. (2018) The all-seeing eye of state surveillance in the italian football (soccer) terraces: the case study of the football fan card. Surveillance & Society, 16(1), 69-83.