Team Talk
Aarhus University
Football Practice in Brazil: Oral History and the Critical Review of the “Country of Football” (1970s-2010s) View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bernardo Buarque De Hollanda
This paper presents the process of non-professional players and clubs claiming urban spaces for the practice of “futebol de várzea” (amateur football) in several Brazilian cities, including the state capital of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte. Based on this case study we aim to show new aspects of the Brazilian sports universe, orally narrated by their anonymous actors and their respective associative entities, which have less common approaches to community dimensions when compared to the international image of the “the country of football”. This research uses sources and methods from Oral History, whose development in Brazil is contextualized in this paper. With the same purpose, the study presents an overview of the introduction of football studies in the country from the 1970s – when the theme was not recognized by academia – to contemporaneity, a period when research on the topic grows with significant qualitative and quantitative range.
Indian Premier League: Sport and the Transformation of a People's Self-conception
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Saeed Hydaralli
The Indian Premier League, founded in 2007, is a men's professional twenty20 (t20) cricket league. Since its inception, the IPL has been the marquee t20 league in the world. Indeed, the IPL, contested during a two-month period, attracts all of best players from across the globe. This has meant that local Indian players are able to play, and compete, with the best players on the planet, facilitated by the fact that each of the 10 teams are permitted to only play a maximum of four foreign players per game, which means that a minimum of seven players must be Indian. What is more, the unrivaled player salaries offered by the IPL has meant that participation in the game has grown exponentially amongst Indian boys and young men, with a view to ultimately being drafted into the league. This has had the dramatic effect of deepening the Indian talent pool to the extent that there is unprecedentedly fierce competition for a place on the Indian national team whereby many Indian players, while often recognized as amongst the best in the world, are unable to secure a spot on the national team. Consequently, this recent generation of Indians are developing an identity and self-confidence grounded in sports and athletics, an arena that is both unprecedented and unanticipated (vs. business acumen, computer technology, Bollywood, etc.). This research examines the implications for India’s place in the world as a consequence of this novel form of identity and self-confidence.
Sport, Migration, and Social Integration: Engendering Migrant Belonging through Football View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ciaran Acton, Teresa Willis
Northern Ireland is a deeply divided society and historically sport has played a key role in both reflecting and reinforcing those divisions. While the nature of the relationship between sport and ethno-religious differences has received considerable academic attention, there has been relatively little research on the implications of this for the growing migrant community in Northern Ireland. Moreover, although there has been a burgeoning of international research into the use of sport as a mechanism to support the integration of migrants, this has not translated to the specific context of post-conflict societies such as Northern Ireland. This paper addresses these gaps and, drawing upon ethnographic research on a number of sport-related integration initiatives, it considers the extent to which football might help to facilitate cohesion and integration among the migrant and refugee community in Northern Ireland. In particular, it focuses on an initiative led by migrants themselves, which seeks not only to integrate migrants into wider society but also aims to encourage the development of a separate, cohesive, migrant identity within the already divided context of Northern Ireland, looking at the role sport might play in achieving this kind of integration. The study will increase our understanding of the impact of specific sport-related interventions and inform current debates concerning the complex relationship between sport, migration and social cohesion. The evidence-based data provides lessons for other societies, both within the UK and internationally, and contribute to the growing academic literature on this topic.
