Tag: Jim O’Brien

Soccer, a.k.a (association) football is the most popular mass spectator sport in the world. Soccer & Society is the first international journal devoted to the game of soccer, and aims to focus on the game in the context of a more global world. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Football and right-wing populisms: S. Berlusconi and G. Becali by Traian Sandu & Andrea DU Ruzza (open access).

FC Barcelona: History, Politics and Identity, edited by Jim O'Brien, Xavier Ginesta and Jordi de San Eugenio (Routledge) is the first critical, in-depth academic study of FC Barcelona (also known as Barça), one of the world’s great football clubs, exploring the historical, political, cultural and commercial dimensions of this global sporting institution. Jan Andre Lee Ludvigsen is our appreciative reviewer, and he lauds the idiographic approach. His only complaint is the missing chapter on El Clásico.

The edited collection Sport, Globalisation and Identity: New Perspectives on Regions and Nations by Jim O’Brien, Russell Holden & Xavier Ginesta (Routledge) explores the complex interrelationships between nations, regions and states in the landscape of contemporary international sport, with a particular focus on identity. Christer Ericsson, a self-confessed anthology skeptic, had some reservations while reading but concluded that this anthology had done its job, presenting interesting new studies in a way as to create a coherent whole.

STADION serves as scholarly platform for well-known historians, and is aimed both at experts and at all those who strive for a deeper and more differ entiated understanding of sport, play, physical education and physical culture from an historical perspective. The Forum Editor’s pick from the current issue: Getting on the Good Foot and Showing True Colors: Football, Diversity, and Nation-Building in France and Germany, 1950–2018 by Pierre Weiss, Jean Christophe Meyer.

Sport can be a vehicle for the expression of identity, and also a factor in the shaping of identity. In Sport, Globalisation and Identity: New Perspectives on Regions and Nations, edited by Jim O'Brien, Russell Holden, Xavier Ginesta, the complex interrelationships between nations, regions and states in the landscape of contemporary international sport, with a particular focus on identity, is explored.

I Borja Garcias och Jinming Zhengs antologi Football and Supporter Activism in Europe: Whose Game Is It? (Palgrave Macmillan) diskuteras i ett dussintal bidrag elitherrfotbollens distansering från sin supporterbas som en följd av globalisering och kommersialisering. Ur de åt lite olika håll spretande bidragen utläser Daniel Alsarve en genomgående tes: Herrfotbollen bör vara rädda om sina supportrar.

David Holt Olsen har läst en brittisk antologi om fotbollens makt och vanmakt inför diskriminering på grund av etnicitet och ras, Ethnicity and Race in Association Football: Case Study Analyses in Europe, Africa and the USA sammanställd av David Hassan.