This book tells the important story of the 30-year social movement against all-seated stadia in football in England and Wales that developed in the wake of the Hillsborough stadium disaster and the wider European and international significance of that movement. Examining the fan networks, relations, tactics, and interactions which built the ‘Safe Standing’ movement, this book reveals an untold social history of football supporter activism and represents an important contribution to our understanding of football supporter-based social movements, the sociology of football, and social movement studies more broadly. This book argues that Safe Standing is sociologically highly significant because the restriction and partial exclusion of football fans as a social group in the timescape of English football after Hillsborough marked a moment of profound social change in the UK. Applying relational sociology, and drawing on original research and insider access, this book considers how events and ruptures, such as Hillsborough, shape the dynamics of a social movement. In this case, supporters, who have been deeply affected by the all-seating legislation, are now in a position to affect the future consumption of football. This book shows how this was achieved and how a small core network of approximately 30 supporters, networked with supporter groups across Europe, now stand to impact and shape the consumption habits of a key leisure practice all over the world. This is fascinating reading for any student, researcher, or policy-maker with an interest in football, sociology, political science, public policy, or cultural and social history.

This is the first book to focus on the interrelated issues of social control and disorder in football. It shows how the ‘beautiful game’ illuminates our understanding of the mechanisms and techniques of social control and regulation in contemporary societies. It explores past, new, and continued responses from law enforcers, football associations, sport’s governing bodies, the media, and international organizations to issues of disorder and misbehaviour in football, and how this is highly contested by fans and fan groups. Featuring the work of an international team of leading researchers in football and sport-related studies, the book examines key contemporary trends and topics including fan activism, football-specific legislation, power, violence, fan rivalries, subcultures, the policing of crowds, social sorting, and surveillance. Featuring diverse international cases, including the Qatar World Cup, stadium protests in Portland, Oregon, spectator violence in Polish football, social media and Brazilian football, and sectarianism in Scottish football, the book also looks ahead to what the future holds for the world’s most popular sport. This is an invaluable resource for students, researchers, or the general reader with an interest in the sociology of sport, criminology, sport management, and sports law.

While recent years have seen the emergence of a significant body of research on LGBT inclusion in sport, little is known about LGBT fans. This book provides the first in-depth examination of LGBT football fans’ experiences and sense of place in the contemporary English game. Drawing on almost 100 semi-structured interviews with LGBT fans, it explores several important findings, including how these fans represent ‘authentic’ notions of fandom, the emergence of LGBT Fan Groups, improved stadium environment for LGBT fans, LGBT-themed chanting and the role of governing bodies and professional football clubs. The research presented in this book extends current theorising of under-represented groups of sports fans. This is fascinating and important reading for those with an interest in the sociology of sport, sports fandom, gender and sexuality.

This is the first book to examine football (soccer) through the lens of diaspora studies. Presenting case studies from across four continents, it considers how diasporic minorities develop a sense of belonging between their national and transnational ethnic communities through an active participation in football. Bringing together a cross-disciplinary group of scholars working in anthropology, communication, cultural studies, history, psychology, politics, sociology and sport, it unearths the connections between culture, identities, politics, nationalism, globalization, and how those manifest in the lived experience of diasporic peoples. Against a background of the continued internationalization of sport and pervasive global migration, it explores key themes in the social sciences including migration, acculturation, and assimilation; sport, identity, fandom, and representation; and nationhood, citizenship, and politics. As the book focuses on diverse ethnoreligious groups dispersed around the world, it covers a wide range of geographic locations, with cases addressing the Bolivian, Ethiopian, Moroccan, Zimbabwean, Croatian, Irish, and Basque diasporas. It is fascinating reading for anybody working in sport studies, diaspora studies, political science, sociology, cultural studies, international history or social history.

This book examines the experiences of amateur players in women’s football, challenging conventional discourses that centre male, masculine, and heterosexual identities and offering a new narrative that re-positions women’s voices. Based on original empirical research, including extended interviews with female players, the book outlines current debates in women’s football around gender, identity, and intersectionality. It explores football as a space of contestation, examining the creative ways in which women have negotiated opportunities to play football and the friendships and sociality that emerge from playing the game. The book examines resistance to historically bound cultural norms that privileges men’s participation, reflecting on mixed-sex football, femininity, embodiment, physical capital, and authenticity, and considers how this deeper understanding of football cultures might help in the future development of the women’s game. This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in football, women’s sport, the sociology of sport, or gender studies.

This book examines the interplay between football, politics, violence, passion, and morality in Argentina. Drawing on original ethnographic research, it considers the role of fans, club officials, politicians, and others in the spread and perpetuation of corruption and violence within football and in wider Argentinian society. Argentina’s triumph in the 2022 World Cup brought millions onto the streets of Buenos Aires in celebration, but this book argues that beneath the veneer of sporting success lie networks of power and practices that have naturalized corruption and violence within Argentinian football and, by extension, in Argentinian society as a whole. It shows how the actions of club officials, politicians, barras (groups of organized, violent fans), and the police, which together represent a system of clientelism, exemplify in the world of football the system of organized chaos that habitually defines Argentinian politics. With the barras given licence to engage in violent behaviours linked not only to sporting passion but also to economic and political interests, this book argues that football, politics, and violence have become entangled in a web of social relations that illustrate Argentina’s struggle to break the vicious cycle of corruption and impunity. Shining new light on the significance of sport in wider society and the centrality of football in one of the world’s greatest footballing nations, this book is essential reading for anybody with an interest in the anthropology, sociology, politics, or history of sport, or in political science, corruption, or Latin American studies.

This is the first book to examine the growing movement of organised networks of LGBT+ football supporters, exploring activists' biographies and the meanings they ascribe to participation in identity politics-centred social movements. The book draws upon in-depth original research into the Pride in Football LGBT+ football supporters' network in the UK, alongside comparative material from other countries. It is also the first book to apply a cultural relational sociological framework to the study of football fans and supporters’ groups, marking an important theoretical step forward that opens up new perspectives in the sociology of sport, the sociology of collective action and social movements, and the sociologies of genders and sexualities in the twenty-first century world. As the struggle for cultural rights and recognition of LGBT+ communities continues, with football fandom providing an important site for understanding of these issues given its historically-embedded hegemonic masculine culture, and in the aftermath of gay male football player Jake Daniels’ ‘coming out’ in May 2022, the book offers timely insights into new social movements, the consumption of sport and the experiences of people from a diversity of sexualities. This is fascinating reading for anybody with an interest in the sociology of sport, football, fandom, gender, sexualities, social theory or social movements.