When you walk through a storm, Hold your head up high,
And don’t be afraid of the dark, At the end of a storm,
There’s a golden sky, And the sweet silver song of a lark,
Walk on through the wind, Walk on through the rain,
Though your dreams be tossed and blown, Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart,
And you’ll never walk alone, You’ll never walk alone.
“You’ll never walk alone”, sung by Liverpool fans, is probably one of the most famous expression of fandom. Every time I see this on television it gives me goosebumps. It is amazing to see how thousands of fans show the world that they not only support their club; they are the club.
As far as I can remember I have been interested in sports, especially football. Sport can be seen as inconsequential aspects of our lives, but if we take a closer look it emerges as a microcosm of what we value in life. That is why I try to understand sport as a social world what brings together physicality, money, emotions, politics, morality and senses of identity. The latter is what interests me the most. Lately, I read a lot about sports in anthropological perspective and I try to understand how senses of identity are created, recreated and challenged by sport.
I will write my blogs about the performance of football identities and the role the body has in this performance. The body plays a key role into sport, not only in case of athletes but also in fandom. With this blog I try to explore theories of the anthropology of sports in order to understand football identities and the role of the body.
The theories of ‘performance’ I will use are drawn upon works by Judith Butler. In the first blog, I will introduce and discuss this notion. This outline is important to keep in mind while reading the other blogs; all cover the notion of ‘performance’ but do not explicitly go through it again. The blogs cover a range of anthropological ethnographies that I chose based on my own interests.
Performances of sport identities 