Soccer as a Global Phenomenon (Harvard, 2016)
Soccer as a Global Phenomenon
April 14th-16th, 2016
Harvard University
An international conference examining globalization through the prism of soccer.
“Soccer as a Global Phenomenon” was organized around the theme of tension between the globalizing impulse and the tenacious appeal of local attachments. Soccer offers one of the most interesting examples of that tension because it grew out of and is still, to a large degree, embedded in affective bonds to neighborhood, community, hometown, nation. If globalization merits study as one of the most significant aspects of the modern history of the world, soccer certainly represents a most appropriate venue through which students can approach and try to understand different facets of that complex process and its mutually transformative as well as constitutive relationship with the local.
We are interested in exploring different dimensions of that theme while sparking a conversation about the relevance of a study of soccer and of sports for a deeper critical understanding of global history and of globalization, which is widely recognized by historians and social scientists as a master process of the modern era. Soccer represents a prism, potentially one of the most capacious and productive prisms, through which globalization can be better understood since the game has, from the late nineteenth century onwards, been a part of global exchanges and networks, evolving from the colonial to the post-colonial era with varying trajectories in different parts of the world and interacting with various other dynamics of the processes of globalization.
Another important contribution we hope to make is in terms of the framework in the study of sports in general. Until recently, sports in general and soccer in particular have been studied mostly in individual societies, but there is also a growing trend to research different aspects of soccer as a transnational phenomenon and from a truly global perspective. Given the importance of soccer to the global South, it constitutes a particularly useful theme for us also in terms of our additional goal of bringing the experts of the South into this conversation on the nature of global history.
Conference Conveners:
- Francesco Erspamer, Professor of Romance Languages and Literature, Harvard University
- Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies, Department of History, Harvard University
- Stephen Ortega, Associate Professor of History, Simmons College
- Mariano Siskind, Professor of Romance Languages and Literature, Harvard University
Location: Tsai Auditorium, S010, CGIS South, 1730 Cambridge Street
Made possible by the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, and Olympiacos FC, Greece.
Sponsored by the the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History, Harvard University, with generous support from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University; the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University; the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University; and Simmons College.
Many thanks to the presenters, attendees, volunteers, and sponsors who made this event such a success!
A report on the conference is available for download. A future publication will be combined with papers from the 2017 soccer conference.
Film Screening
New Generation Queens: A Zanzibar Soccer Story
A film by Megan Shutzer
Wednesday, April 13th, 2016
7:00pm
Simmons College, 300 the Fenway, Boston
Science Building, S183
This documentary is the story of Zanzibar's women's soccer team, the New Generation Queens. The movie examines the history and culture around women's soccer in Zanzibar. It also follows the team to mainland Tanzania, where the Queens participate in a tournament for the first time and several hope to be recruited to the Tanzanian national team. A trailer for the film is available here.
A panel discussion will follow with director Megan Shutzer, Temryss Xeli'tia Lane (UCLA), and Yagmur Nurhat (Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey).
Free and open to the public. No registration required.
Program
Thursday, April 14
4:00-4:30 | Welcome and Introduction
- Cemal Kafadar and Sven Beckert
4:30-6:30pm | Panel 1: Early History and Diffusion of the Game
- “How the Global Became Global.”
Tony Collins, Professor of History, De Montfort University, United Kingdom - “The intercultural transfer of soccer in the late nineteenth century.”
Thomas Adam, Assistant Professor of Transnational History, University of Texas, Arlington - “Football in the Ottoman Empire.”
Salmaan Mirza, PhD Candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University
Friday, April 15th
9:30am-12:00pm | Panel 2: Soccer in the Age of Decolonization and Cold War
- “The Football of Europe in the Early Cold War.”
Robert Edelman, Professor of History, University of California, San Diego - “Practicing Decolonization: Combating Intergenerational Trauma of Indigenous North Americans with Soccer.”
Temryss Xeli’tia Lane, MA Candidate in American Indian Studies, University of California, Los Angeles - “The Re-articulation of Local Values, Strategies, and Social Relations: African Soccer Migrants across the Portuguese Colonial Empire.”
Todd Cleveland, Assistant Professor of History, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville - “Soccer Players’ experiences and Popular Cosmopolitism in ‘El Dorado’.”
Ingrid Bolívar Ramírez, PhD Candidate in History, University of Wisconsin, Madison
12:00-1:00pm | Lunch break
1:00-4:00pm | Panel 3: Globalization and Soccer
- “The Place of Football (Soccer) in the New Global History.”
Richard Giulianotti, Professor of Sociology, Loughborough University, United Kingdom and
Roland Robertson, Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus, University of Pittsburgh and Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Global Society, University of Aberdeen, UK - “Men, Women, and Film-as-a-Medium in the Globalizing Soccer World.”
Heidi Voskuhl, Associate Professor in History and Sociology of Science, University of Pennsylvania - “Pele’s Visit to Beirut and the Intersection of the Athletic, Commercial and Historical.”
Tarek Hussein, PhD Candidate in History and Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University - “African Football/Soccer Postage Stamps and Globalization: A Comparative Visual Studies.”
Agbenyega Adedze, Associate Professor of African History, Illinois State University - “Musical chairs: Brazil’s foreign policy, transnational elites and Cold War in João Havelange’s election to FIFA Presidency.”
Luiz Guilherme Porto Rocha, PhD Candidate in History, University of São Paulo, Brazil
4:30-6:30pm | Panel 4: Migration: South to North and North to South
- “Women’s soccer goes global. A critical case study of Scandinavian clubs’ recruitment of African women’s soccer players.”
Sine Agergaard, Associate Professor of Public Health, Aarhus University, Denmark - “Constructing global dreams in local contexts: Football academies, intergenerational reciprocity and involuntary immobility in Ghana.”
Paul Darby, Reader in Sociology of Sport, Ulster University, United Kingdom - “How did soccer become 'European': a perspective from Europe's periphery.”
Can Evren, PhD Candidate in Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
Saturday, April 16th
9:00am-12:00pm | Panel 5: Soccer’s Place in Urban Space
- “Play and the City: The Communal Making of Informal Soccer Fields in Beirut.”
Nadine Bekdache, Graphic Designer, Public Works Studio, Lebanon, and
Abir Saksouk-Sasso, Architect, Public Works Studio, Lebanon - "Ethnicity, Class, Leisure and Aspirations: Tracking Football in Mumbai, Singapore, and Bangkok."
D. Parthasarathy, Professor of Sociology, Indian Institute of Technology, India - “The new stadium of F. C. Monterrey: Public space and cultural conflicts in the most industrialized city of Mexico.”
Herón Gómez, PhD Candidate in Latin American Studies at National Autonomous University of Mexico - “amaXhosa Maradona: Global icons, local followings and soccer talent as a gift and a curse in a South African Township.”
Tarminder Kaur, Doctoral Student, Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, University of the Western Cape, South Africa - “Soccer Victory Authorized by the gods: Prophecy, Popular Memory and the Peculiarities of Place.”
Olutayo Adesina, Professor of History, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
1:00-4:00pm | Panel 6: Soccer’s Public and its Politics: The World of Fandom
- “Fans as Agents of Accommodating Locality and Globality: The Case of Liberal and Anti-Liberal Clubs in Jerusalem.”
Tamar Rapoport, Professor Emerita of Sociology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and Columbia University, USA, and Daniel Regev, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Tel-Aviv University, Israel - “Who’s Representing Shanghai? Intra-city Rivalry and Group Identity of Football Fans in Shanghai.”
Yannan Ding, Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Shanghai Jiao Tong University - “Fan love versus market love: Negotiating emotionality and ethics in changing structures of football in Turkey.”
Yağmur Nuhrat, Instructor in Sociology, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey - “Brazil, tell me how it feels”: football, music and narcissism- or how to be a local fan in global times
Pablo Alabarces, Professor of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires, Argentina - “Global brand versus local activism: welcome to the contradiction of St. Pauli.”
Nick Davidson, Writer, United Kingdom