football & its fans: memories, matches & meanings dr david mcgillivray
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Football & its fans: Memories, Matches & Meanings Dr David McGillivray. Historical perspective. Football fandom provided (men) with affiliations to place, people and industry The game of the working man inseparable from the rhythms of everyday life: Work Family Friendship Play - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
Football & its fans: Memories, Matches & Meanings
Dr David McGillivray
Historical perspective• Football fandom provided (men) with affiliations to place,
people and industry• The game of the working man inseparable from the
rhythms of everyday life:– Work– Family– Friendship– Play
• Football fundamentally a collective social experience• Continuity a key feature of the passing of time/rite of
passage from one generation to the next
Meanings, Matches and Memories• Football was (and is) the stuff of informal public debate - it
gave meaning and structure to people’s lives• Historical matches, giant-killing feats and important victories
were celebrated widely at the time and remembered long afterwards
• Individual and collective memories structured around football • Physical attendance at a football match always a collective
experience with powerful roots in the sensory dimensions of the stadium: the sounds of the crowd, the smells of the half-time food and drink, even architectural oddities of the ground
The times they are a changin’• Since the 1980s, football has been transformed– All seater stadia– Out-of-town stadium developments– Irregular scheduling– Media saturation– ‘Shareholders’ rather than supporters– Widening gap between players and fans
• Football increasingly an individualised, consumer-led experience
Football Reminiscence• Changes reinforce the importance of
maintaining collective memories through heritage artifacts:– Photography– Film & documentary (e.g. the Football Years)– Memorabilia (badges, programmes, newspapers,
scarves etc)• Recreating the environment of the past as a
means of establishing continuity in the present