The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism

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Student Guide

Introduction The dataset explores how the photographs utilised in the article “Football, the Military and Invisible Nationalism in Contemporary Britain” published in Armed Forces & Society in 2016 were created, selected, and incorporated within a wider hermeneutic enterprise designed to probe “invisible nationalism.” The dataset emphasises that the meaning of these photographs can only be understood within the wider context of the sociological narrative within which they are embedded. This narrative was the product of employing a wide range of sociological concepts and research techniques which included observation, interviews, focus groups, and historical research.

The photographs came from a variety of sources. The majority were taken by Roger Penn, but others were supplied by specific football clubs in England. These latter photographs were not taken with any sociological intent but rather for matters internal to these clubs themselves. The overall topic for the research lay at the interface of the sociology of sport and the sociology of the military but, more widely, sits within the parameters of cultural and visual sociology.

The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism The use of visual materials is relatively uncommon in the sociology of sport and almost non-existent in the sociology of the military. This is perhaps surprising given the highly visual nature of contemporary sport. However, this reflects a wider reluctance by sociologists to embrace the visual within their main concerns.

Page 2 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 The present dataset illustrates how visual methods can enhance a sociological explanation.

Visual data in general, and photographs in particular, do not speak for themselves. They have multiple meanings dependent both upon the intentions of their auteurs and the interpretations of their audiences. Visual data require interpretation, and the dataset takes readers through the process whereby the nine photographs were incorporated into a wider hermeneutic process of understanding and explanation. Central to this is the notion of context: visual methods make sense within a wider narrative discourse that involves a combination of a range of different, albeit complementary, qualitative methods. In the research discussed, these included observations, interviews, historical research, and focus groups. The dataset devotes considerable attention to explaining how the photographs illustrated and enhanced the wider sociological argument presented in the published research.

Data Exemplar The research reported in this dataset began in 2014 as a result of a puzzle surrounding the 2014 Football Association [F.A.] Cup Final. Whilst watching the game on television, as the players of both teams were standing in the tunnel ready to walk out onto the Wembley turf, Professor Penn was surprised to see a naval rating holding the new F.A. Challenge Cup trophy alongside these players. He was then shown walking onto the field and placing the trophy on a plinth beside the pitch. This evoked no comment from the television commentary team covering the match for BT Sport, but Penn wondered what this signified. This prompted further research in 2014 and 2015 involving a range of different qualitative methods. These included observations, interviews, historical research, and focus groups as well as the visual data that forms the centrepiece of this dataset.

The research formed part of a wider set of visual projects in sociology and

Page 3 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 was designed to integrate visual methods within a wider sociological explanatory framework. The research took place in the United Kingdom, but most of the photographs dealt specifically with English football. Most of the photographs were taken by the main author of the published research, Professor Roger Penn of Queen’s University in Belfast.

Analysis This Qualitative Method Dataset explores the process whereby visual images were deployed as part of the examination of invisible nationalism in contemporary British sport. In particular, a series of photographs were taken to illustrate various elements within the overall interpretation that was published as an article in Armed Forces & Society (Penn & Berridge, 2016). Another version was published in a collected edition of papers presented at the European Association for the Study of Sport Conference in Dublin in 2015 by Dolan and Connolly in 2017. The dataset emphasises the central importance of grasping the overall substantive empirical argument in order to understand the role and importance of the photographs used in the article.

Visual Data in the Sociology of Sport Visual data have rarely been used in the sociology of sport. Over the last 20 years, sociologists and ethnographers have begun increasingly to incorporate visual materials into their research strategies (one example is Margolis & Pauwels, 2011). Such ocular data can be generated relatively easily using digital cameras, camcorders, and mobile phones. There are some recent examples of the use of visual data in the sociology of sport (for example, Hockey & Collinson, 2006) but not in the main specialist journals in the field. Conversely, the main visual sociology journals rarely contain articles examining sport.

Photographs as Illustrations Embedded Within a Wider Narrative Photographs have long been used to depict social life. Riis (1890/1971) published a seminal study of poverty and social life in late 19th century America in his How the Other Half Lives, which incorporated a wide range of photographic evidence. Subsequently, the Documentary Movement in the United States produced an efflorescence of books examining American life through the use of photography (see, for example, Agee & Evans, 1939; Frank, 1959). This spread to Europe with the publication in 1967 of Berger and Mohr’s classic study of migrants.

Anthropologists have also deployed photographic evidence in their research publications, most notably in Bateson and Mead’s (1942) classic Balinese Character.

In a seminal reaction to the use of photographs as self-evident “facts,” Becker (1974) argued that photographs reflect the point of view of their auteur and that their meanings are embedded within the narratives in which they are deployed. The use of photographs as sociological evidence is inherently recursive: there is a process of interpretation that goes to and fro in a dialectical fashion. A photograph generates reactions and reflections both for the original taker of the photograph and amongst its viewing audience. The nine photographs used within the original article to illustrate the overall argument can only be understood within the wider hermeneutic interpretation presented. This wider framework involved a combination of a wide range of other sociological concepts and research methods, including observations, interviews, focus groups, and historical research.

Parameters of the Overall Argument The central argument of the published research was that sport, and association football in particular, has been at the epicentre of efforts by successive British Governments and the military itself to promote the armed services and to

Page 5 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 legitimize the near-permanent state of war in the country. The research began with an observation and a puzzle. Whilst watching the 2014 Football Association Cup Final on television, as the players of both teams were standing in the tunnel ready to walk out onto the Wembley turf, Professor Penn was surprised to see a naval rating holding the new F.A. Challenge Cup trophy alongside these players. The sailor was then shown walking onto the field and placing the trophy on a plinth beside the pitch. This evoked no comment from the television commentary team covering the match for BT Sport. He wondered what this signified. The next day he consulted the main UK Sunday newspapers and discovered that they had not mentioned this either. This led him through a convoluted Internet search to try and uncover the back story to this event about which both the visual and print media had been silent. In the end, he discovered part of the answer on the Ministry of Defence’s website. The sailor – Liam O’Grady – had won the Military Cross in Afghanistan in 2012. He had been a Royal Navy medical assistant on secondment to the British Army and had displayed conspicuous gallantry during a grenade attack.

As this initial exploratory phase of the research progressed, Penn was reminded of an event he had witnessed at an earlier play-off match between Rochdale and Stockport County at Wembley in 2008. At that game, prior to the players entering the arena, a parade of members from different branches of the armed services in their respective uniforms walked around the perimeter of the pitch to thunderous applause from the crowd of 35,000. He was sure that he had photographed that event and pleasingly the picture was located in his folder of photographs taken at the game. This featured as Photograph 3 in the article. These phenomena indicated that the military were present at major football events in England, and their presence generally merited no comment. No mention of this was to be found in newspaper coverage from that time nor did it feature in the televised commentaries. To all intents and purposes, it was “invisible.” The subsequent research involved an analysis of what this meant in a wider context.

Page 6 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 The research problem lay at the interface of the sociology of sport and the sociology of the military. In Britain, these are generally seen as tangential to the core concerns of sociology. The reasons for this are complex and lie deep in history of the discipline over the last 50 years and in the underlying implicit hierarchy of knowledge that is embedded within that trajectory. It merits reflection that football, which is central to British culture and British discourse (see Penn, 2016) and which attracts the largest television audiences in the country, is not more prominent in sociology.

The Triangular Relationship of Monarch, Church, and the Military in Britain The connection between the military and football in Britain is deeply sedimented within broader taken-for-granted cultural, political, and social relationships which have powerful historical antecedents. Indeed, the entwining of football and the armed services is part of a wider triadic relationship that sits at the core of British nationalism and of dominant notions of “Britishness.” The military provides the bedrock for the British monarchy. The monarch is head of the armed services, and service personnel swear allegiance to the “Crown,” pledging to protect the monarch and his or her family. No reference is made within these ceremonies either to the nation or to Parliament. The Royal Family itself has a long association with all the armed services. Prince William and Prince Andrew were both Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots, and Prince Harry was an army officer, serving in Afghanistan until recently. Regiments and warships receive royal names, and members of the Royal Family often appear in military uniforms in their ceremonial roles as heads of various branches of the armed services.

The monarch is head of the Church of England and has been since the time of Henry VIII. The military are also closely connected to the established Anglican Church. In Holywood, in County Down, Northern Ireland [a part of the United

Page 7 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 Kingdom], army personnel from the local barracks attended the cenotaph in the centre of the town on 10th November, 2013 and then marched up to the nearby Church of St. Philip and St. James (which is part of the Anglican Church), for a Service of Remembrance that was identical in form and content to those taking place simultaneously in the Church of England on the mainland. Behind the pulpit within the church itself was a memorial to a deceased British soldier from the town who had died during the First World War and had been awarded the Victoria Cross (as illustrated in Photograph 1). His marble epitaph had the union flag as its background motif. Surrounding the font at the other end of the aisle hung a series of regimental standards from the British army and the British Legion, all of which also contained the union flag. These symbols and objects are standard in all Anglican churches in the UK (as illustrated in Photograph 2 from Hexham Abbey in Northumbria in England), but they have particular resonance in Northern Ireland as signifiers of the majority population’s British heritage. These two photographs were selected to reveal relatively unknown elements within the close symbiosis of religion, the armed services, and the nation in Britain.

Football in Britain is linked to this triangular relationship of the monarchy, established Anglican religion, and the military in a variety of ways. Football is closely connected to the Royal Family. George V attended many F.A. Cup Finals in the early decades of the 20th century. The first was in 1914. Subsequently, he made it known that “Abide with Me” – the Cup Final hymn sung since 1927 – was both his and his wife’s favourite (see Nannestad, 2010; Russell, 2008). This was introduced into the repertoire and choreography of successive F.A. Cup Finals as part of the general commemoration of the military sacrifice made during World War 1 and was part of a much wider set of traditions created during the 1920s to commemorate the slaughter during the First World War (Ashplant, Dawson, & Roper, 2000). The hymn had been sung earlier in the trenches by Allied troops during World War I. Nowadays, it is accompanied at Wembley by a military band,

Page 8 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 which also marches up and down the pitch playing military marching tunes prior to kick-off and during the half-time interval. In a real sense, these features embody central elements in the “invention of a modern tradition” around football, the military, and the F.A. Cup Final (Hobsbawm & Ranger, 1983). Weber defined the nation as unified around memories of a common political destiny, central to which was war: Indeed, societies remember the past through very specific constructs, within which warfare has been pivotal (Connerton, 2000). Images of the past also serve to legitimate the present social order. This became increasingly apparent in 2014 with extensive commemorations of the start of World War I, particularly on BBC television and radio.

The Queen attended her first F.A. Cup Final in 1949 when she presented the trophy and has attended many since, as well as the World Cup Final at Wembley in 1966. Prince William, a keen player and fan, is currently President of the English Football Association and regularly attends the Cup Final. The armed services are also closely involved with the internal organization and governance of the F.A. Currently all three branches – the Army, the Navy, and the RAF– have representatives sitting on its governing body. Indeed, football has been an integral part of the sporting activities within the British Armed Services since the game’s inception in the last third of the 19th century (Fuller, 1991).

Football and the Military: Local Links The increasing links between football and the military in Britain can also be seen clearly at a more local level at specific English professional football clubs. Bolton Wanderers, for instance, has a Book of Remembrance built into the structure of the University of Bolton Stadium [formerly the Reebok Stadium] (as shown in Photograph 4). This originally commemorated those Bolton spectators who had died at the Burnden Park [their previous ground] disaster in 1946. The pages are turned daily in a way that mimics Books of Remembrance for fallen members

Page 9 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 of the armed services in Anglican churches (as illustrated in Photograph 5 from Hexham Abbey). In 2014, a generic commemorative message was added to the Book of Remembrance on 4th August (the anniversary of the UK’s entry into World War I) as a memorial to the dead of the First World War. A Remembrance Service to commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War was also held at the stadium in August 2014 (as shown in Photograph 6).

On Remembrance Day itself (11th November), the club holds a short ceremony and then the traditional two minutes silence at the pitch-side for those Bolton Wanderers’ employees who wish to attend, and it also supports the British Legion’s Poppy Appeal at an appropriate home match. In 2014, the club commemorated the outbreak of The First World War a century earlier. Bolton Wanderers has a long tradition of supporting charities that assist veterans of the armed forces and announced that BLESMA – The Limbless Veterans Charity – was their national charity of choice for the 2014/2015 season. This had the wholehearted support of the club’s new Italian shirt sponsors – Macron – who recognized a shared history of mass slaughter in Britain and Italy during the First World War. In September 2014, the club brought out a special, limited edition green “military-style” third strip for wearing at certain away games during the 2014/2015 season to support BLESMA (as illustrated in Photograph 7). For each shirt sold, the charity received £10. The shirt had the words “Lest We Forget” embossed on the reverse with the words from Laurence Binyon’s poem “For The Fallen” featured inside the neck label (as shown in Photograph 8). The two photographs of the remembrance shirt were supplied to the author by Bolton Wanderers Football Club and were interpreted within the wider matrix of invisible nationalism. The poem by Binyon is the most read in the United Kingdom as it features at thousands of Remembrance Day commemorations throughout the country.

Carlisle United was another English professional football club that exemplified

Page 10 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 more general links between football and the military at a local level. In 2007, the club joined the “Tickets for Troops” scheme. This mimicked earlier US schemes such as Gameday for Heroes and Seats4Soldiers and provides free tickets for members of the armed services to attend Carlisle United home matches. This was partly because the Duke of Lancaster Regiment (the club’s local Regiment as a result of the reorganisation of the army) was deployed at the time in Afghanistan, and there was a sizeable contingent of Carlisle United fans there on active service.

On three occasions, the club has arranged special celebrations for the return of the Regiment from overseas’ tours of duty (twice to Afghanistan and once to Northern Ireland). On these occasions, 10 soldiers provided a guard of honour for the players’ entry onto the pitch and also brought the ball out to present it to the referee (as illustrated in Photograph 9). These soldiers were provided with free tickets, food, and hospitality. Around the 11th of November each year, the players commemorate Remembrance Day by wearing black arm bands with a poppy on them along with many other teams in Britain. Every summer, the Duke of Lancaster Regiment’s Outreach Team visits the club to provide military- style training as part of the club’s preseason preparations. Once again, the photograph was supplied by the football club, and its wider cultural significance necessitated the adoption of a wider hermeneutic frame of understanding. This included interviews with key informants and also historical research.

The Significance of the Photographic Evidence The photographs were used in the published articles to illustrate various aspects of the substantive empirical argument. Their significance depends upon an understanding of that wider hermeneutic process itself. There were constraints on the deployment of visual images. As the author wanted to incorporate visual evidence to support the empirical claims wherever possible, he approached the American editor of Armed Forces & Society (Patricia Shields) and asked her

Page 11 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 whether the journal would accept an article on soccer and whether it would countenance photographs as part of the text. She replied positively on both counts but pointed out that the journal had not published photographs before and that it would be better not to include too many. The journal itself was chosen for two main reasons. Most recent literature on the substantive topic of sport and the military had been published in this particular specialist sociology journal. The journal was also based in the USA, which traditionally has been a difficult area for British sociologists to publish in. Her response necessitated serious thought as to which images would provide the most support to the overall argument. The authors would have liked to incorporate visual images from the F.A. Cup Finals discussed in the article, but this proved impossible as a result of copyright restrictions. These images appear in google under the search term https://www.gov.uk/government/ news/fa-cup-final-duties-for-service-personnel

The photographs themselves were assembled over a period of time. The first photograph was taken at Wembley in 2008, but subsequent photographs were mainly taken in 2014. All the photographs used in the text were taken by the author apart from Photographs 7, 8, and 9. The photographs of the commemorative Bolton Wanderers shirt were provided courtesy of Bolton Wanderers FC’s Club Chaplain, Phil Mason. The final photograph was supplied courtesy of Carlisle United FC by their Head of Media, Andy Hall. Both these local contacts proved invaluable for the local dimension to the research.

It is also worth pointing out that all the photographs had been taken with the highest resolution in pixels. This is an important element to keep in mind when taking photographs as part of an empirical research project. It is vital to select the highest resolution for photographs as this greatly enhances their visual qualities if they are to be reproduced in any subsequent publication. This applies equally to both print and online publication.

Conclusions This dataset presents the process whereby a set of nine photographs were incorporated into an article that examined invisible nationalism in contemporary English football. These photographs were deployed to illustrate various aspects of invisible nationalism. In some ways, it was paradoxical to use visual images to probe an “invisible” cultural form. However, the concept of invisibility was relative. The claim made in the substantive sociological argument was that these phenomena are obscure to many, relatively unknown and evoke little or no general comment. The meanings of the photographs go beyond the original intentions of the various photographers. Their meaning resides within the wider narrative discourse of the argument presented in the analysis. Of course, different readers will interpret these images and their concomitant significance in different ways, but the nine photographs themselves act as physical anchors within the wider text.

Reflective Questions

1. Looking at the ten supplementary photographs provided on “football and rites of passage,” what sorts of additional qualitative sociological research would be needed to interpret their cultural significance? 2. What areas of sociology would provide useful signposts on how to interpret these phenomena? 3. How important are the headings to the photographs for their understanding? 4. What other visual data could supplement these ten photographs?

Further Reading Curry, T. (2008). Where the action is: Visual sociology and sport. Social Psychology Quarterly, 71(2), 107–108.

Page 13 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 Hughes, J. (Ed.). (2012). Visual methods: 4 volumes. London, UK: SAGE.

Ledin, P., & Machin, D. (2018). Doing visual analysis: From theory to practice. London, UK: SAGE.

Margolis, E., & Pauwels, L. (Eds.). (2011). The SAGE handbook of visual research methods. London, UK: SAGE.

Penn, R. (2017). Association football, the armed forces and invisible nationalism in Britain. In P. Dolan & J. Connolly (Eds.), Sport and national identities: Globalisation and conflict (pp. 171–191). London, UK: Routledge. ISBN: 978-1-138-69776-8.

Penn, R. (forthcoming). The phenomenal forms of graffiti in Rome and Buenos Aires: A comparison based upon detailed descriptive analysis. Visual Studies.

Penn, R., & Berridge, D. (2018). Football and the military in contemporary Britain: An exploration of invisible nationalism. Armed Forces & Society, 44, 1–23. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0095327X16682784

Pink, S. (Ed.). (2012). Advances in visual methodology. London, UK: SAGE.

Rose, G. (2016). Visual methodologies: An introduction to researching with visual materials (4th ed.). London, UK: SAGE.

Tinkler, P. (2013). Using photographs in historical and social research. London, UK: SAGE.

References Agee, J., & Evans, W. (1939). Let us now praise famous men. Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press.

Ashplant, T., Dawson, G., & Roper, M. (Eds.). (2000). The politics of war memory and commemoration. London, UK: Routledge.

Page 14 of 16 The Use of Visual Data to Explore Invisible Nationalism SAGE SAGE Research Methods Datasets Part 2019 SAGE Publications, Ltd. All Rights Reserved. 2 Bateson, G., & Mead, M. (1942). Balinese character: A photographic analysis. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.

Becker, H. (1974). Photography and sociology. Studies in Visual Communication, 1(1), 3–26.

Berger, J., & Mohr, J. (1967). A seventh man: Migrant workers in Europe. New York, NY: Viking Press.

Connerton, P. (2000). How societies remember. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.

Frank, R. (1959). The Americans. New York, NY: Aperture Press.

Fuller, J. (1991). Troop morale and popular culture in the British and dominion armies 1914–1918. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Hobsbawm, E., & Ranger, T. (Eds.). (1983). The invention of tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Hockey, J., & Collinson, A. (2006). Seeing the way: Visual sociology and the distance runner’s perspective. Visual Studies, 21(1), 70–81.

Margolis, E., & Pauwels, L. (Eds.). (2011). The SAGE handbook of visual research methods. London, UK: SAGE.

Nannestad, I. (2010). Pack up your troubles: Football and community singing. Soccer History, 22, 3–6.

Penn, R. (2016). Football talk: Sociological reflections on the dialectics of language and football. European Journal for Sport & Society, 13(2), 154–166. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/16138171.2016.1183931

Riis, R. (1971). How the other half lives. New York, NY: Dover Press (Original work published 1890).

Russell, D. (2008). Abiding memories: The community singing movement and English life in the 1920s. Popular Music, 27, 117–133.

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