Cosmopolitan Fandom: a Critical Postcolonial Analysis of Liverpool FC's Supporters Discourses in Brazil and Switzerland
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Durham E-Theses Cosmopolitan Fandom: A Critical Postcolonial Analysis of Liverpool FC's Supporters Discourses in Brazil and Switzerland PETERSEN-WAGNER, RENAN How to cite: PETERSEN-WAGNER, RENAN (2015) Cosmopolitan Fandom: A Critical Postcolonial Analysis of Liverpool FC's Supporters Discourses in Brazil and Switzerland, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/11235/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 Cosmopolitan Fandom: A Critical Postcolonial Analysis of Liverpool FC’s Supporters Discourses in Brazil and Switzerland Renan Petersen-Wagner Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Applied Social Sciences Durham University May 2015 “‘Patriotism, Sir, is the last refuge of the scoundrel.’ Thus spoke Dr Samuel Johnson some 200 years ago [...] The partisans of that older form of devotion to an abstract cause regard their sentiments as pristine, as though endowed with a kind of vulnerable virginity. They tend to defend this virginity even when it is under no discernible form of attack [...] The British way of life, for instance, is a judicious mixture of Ancient British, Roman, Saxon, Danish and Norman ways of doing things, flavoured by many incidental condiments on the side [...] The virginity, then, is an illusion. All nations, even in their essence, are amalgams, the result of primeval jostling of tribes for better bits of territory, for water, for forests, for high places. The patriotic gleam in the eye is the result of an abstract concept, the fulfilling of some sort of human need by fantasy and make-believe.” Sir Peter Ustinov (Pitfalls of Patriotism, 1990) Cosmopolitan Fandom: A Critical Postcolonial Analysis of Liverpool FC’s Supporters Discourses in Brazil and Switzerland Renan Petersen-Wagner ABSTRACT It is argued by different social researchers that the Western contemporaneous world is living under a different set of conditions than in the one that classical sociologist’s theorised. Taking a reflexive modern perspective through a cosmopolitan sociological imagination this thesis discussed how a particular socio-cultural manifestation was used discursively by individuals to understand their being and becoming in a globalised world. As argued in this thesis, football’s transnationalism provided supporters a locus for creating and expressing cosmopolitan identities that challenge the modern sociological imagination, particularly the one centred in the nation-state. My understanding of the modern sociological imagination impact on football fandom theorisations emerges from a critical analysis of the academic discourse on authentic supporters. As demonstrated in the thesis, the authentic supporter under a modern sociology is imagined as homogeneously male, white, working class, and especially local. Thus, based on an 18-month ethnographic inspired research on Liverpool FC’s supporters in Brazil and Switzerland the argument that emerges from this empirical research is fourfold: the cosmopolitan football flâneur should be conceptualised ambivalently governed by individualisation; instead of a Bastelbiographie, individualisation should be understood as a Dasein-für-Gewälthe- Andere, where those others are the re-modernised structures of modernity; i cosmopolitanism does not render the nation-state obsolete as a Zombie-category, whereas it should be imagined as Frankensteins-monster; and Ulrich Beck’s notions of nationalism and cosmopolitanism should be understood as more real than real simulacras. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................i TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................................iii LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................xiii LIST OF TABLES ...........................................................................................................ix LIST OF APPENDICES .................................................................................................x STATEMENT OF COPYRIGHT ...................................................................................xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................xii DEDICATIONS ..............................................................................................................xvi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION .............................................................................1 1.1 Anecdote ....................................................................................................................1 1.2 Introduction ...............................................................................................................3 1.3 Problem Statement ....................................................................................................6 1.3.1 Background: Modernisation of Modernity ............................................................6 1.3.2 Background: Individualisation ...............................................................................13 1.3.3 Background: Reflexive Modernity is an Age of Cosmopolitanism .......................17 1.3.4 Research Problem ...................................................................................................27 1.3.5 Justification for Research .......................................................................................29 1.4 Research Approach ...................................................................................................31 1.4.1 Epistemology and Methodology ............................................................................31 1.5 Thesis Outline ...........................................................................................................32 THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ..................................................................................36 CHAPTER TWO: METHODOLOGICAL NATIONALISM ........................................37 iii 2.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................38 2.2 Historical Perspectives on Methodological Nationalism ..........................................41 2.2.1 The First Wave of Methodological Nationalism Critique ......................................41 2.2.2 Intermezzo: Eric Hobsbawm’s Nationalism Theory ..............................................47 2.2.3 Second Wave of Methodological Nationalism Critique .........................................54 2.2.4 Avoiding Methodological Nationalism ..................................................................58 2.2.5 Critique on Ulrich Beck’s Methodological Cosmopolitanism ...............................66 2.3 Concluding Remarks: Transcending Methodological Nationalism ..........................67 CHAPTER THREE: FOOTBALL FANDOM ...............................................................69 3.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................70 3.2 Cosmopolitanism and Otherness ...............................................................................72 3.2.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................72 3.2.2 Otherness within Cosmopolitanism .......................................................................73 3.2.3 Edward Said’s Otherness .......................................................................................80 3.2.4 Concluding Remarks: Otherness Framework to Analyse Football Fandom ..........92 3.3 Football Fandom .......................................................................................................94 3.3.1 Introduction ............................................................................................................94 3.3.2 Critical Discourse Analysis ....................................................................................97 3.3.3 The Other as Hierarchical Inferior .........................................................................100 3.3.4 The Stamp Collector Sociologist ...........................................................................117 3.3.5 The Other as Different but Similar .........................................................................131 3.4 Concluding Remarks .................................................................................................140 EMPIRICAL RESEARCH .............................................................................................142 CHAPTER FOUR: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ...........................143 iv 4.1 Introduction ...............................................................................................................144