Tag: Lise Joern

I Rasmus Bysted Møllers och Jan Kahr Sørensens antologi Lidenskab og livskvalitet gennem idræt (Aarhus Universitetsforlag) berättar idrottsforskare och utövare hur olika idrotter kan göra en positiv skillnad i människors liv, trots krav på stor insats. Vi bad Anders Östnäs läsa och recensera boken, som utkom redan 2019. Han hittar flera exempel på att sport kan ingjuta lidelse och ökad livskvalitet och i bästa fall öka den sociala motivationen och upplevelser av ”flow” och glädje.

In his new book Running, Identity and Meaning: The Pursuit of Distinction Through Sport (Emerald), Neil Baxter showcases how gender, class, age and ethnicity influence whether and how different groups participate in the sport, and explores its role in the reproduction of social structure and the search for distinction. While noting a narrow British perspective, on balance our reviewer Lise Joern is impressed by the author’s effort and warmly recommends the book.

Ove Olsen Sæle’s Fotballens etikk: Idealer og realiteter [The ethics of football: Ideals and realities] (Fagbokforlaget) deals with football from various ethical perspectives: Aristotelian ethics, duty-based ethics, utilitarian ethics, ontological ethics, relating to current topics such as supporter culture, match-fixing, fair play, the historical development of football, VAR refereeing, coaching and e-sports. Lisa Joern’s review is very positive, finding this timely introduction to football ethics both practical and pedagogical.

Fanaticism in association football fandom is being witnessed these days in the wake of Maradona’s passing. Another expression is also the subject of Ultras: The passion and performance of contemporary football fandom by Mark Doidge, Radosław Kossakowski & Svenja Mintert (Manchester University Press). Our reviewer is Lise Joern, well versed in the world of football fandom, fanatic or not, and she really appreciates this sociological study and its novel theoretical approaches.

Brandi Watkins’ Sport Teams, Fans, and Twitter: The Influence of Social Media on Relationships and Branding (Lexington Books) provides an in-depth examination of the use of Twitter as an effective tool to enhance and maintain the fan–team relationship. In her review, Lise Joern finds much to substantiate this claim; however, the pitfalls of social media marketing is not sufficiently scrutinized.

The Taksim Gezi Park protests, originally against a municipal decision to build a shopping mall in the park, evolved into angry and violent anti-government demonstrations. Dağhan Irak’s book Football Fandom, Protest and Democracy: Supporter Activism in Turkey (Routledge) examines the role of football fans in the pro-democracy Gezi protests of 2013. Lise Joern thinks there is too much Turkish football history and to little supporter activism.

Soccer a.k.a (association) football, the most popular mass spectator sport in the world, has become a major social phenomenon since the late nineteenth century. Through the social prism of soccer, scholars across the world have tended to understand various aspects of life. Soccer & Society is the first international journal devoted to the game of soccer, aims to focus on the game in the context of a more global world.

In a new anthology from Routledge, Digital Football Cultures: Fandom, Identities and Resistance edited by Stefan Lawrence & Garry Crawford, a number of football scholars look at the digitalized future of the beautiful game. Our reviewer is Lise Joern, and she found interesting and critical insights to appreciate. She concludes, however, that technological development notwithstanding, much remains the same and is merely old wine in new bottles.

In her second contribution to the Football Research in an Enlarged Europe book series, Football Fandom and Migration: An Ethnography of Transnational Practices and Narratives in Vienna and Istanbul (Palgrave Macmillan), ethnologist Nina Szogs widens our understanding of transnational football fandom, according to our review, Lise Joern.

Lise Joern reviews a collected volume from the impressive “Football Research in an Enlarged Europe” series at Palgrave Macmillan, Female Football Players and Fans: Intruding into a Man’s World, edited by Gertrud Pfister and Stacey Pope. She appreciates the book and its contributions but ends on a note of pessimism about the situation for women’s football and its fans.